While Army and Marine leaders took petty swipes at each other, Leathernecks and Doughboys fought—and died—side by side in the final days of World War I.
With a propitious sense of timing and a skillful demonstration of political legerdemain, Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps George Barnett insinuated a regiment of Leathernecks into the initial force of Doughboys sailing for France when America entered World War I in 1917. Even as Army General John J. Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), was cabling in vain that "no more Marines be sent to France," another regiment and a machine-gun battalion had arrived.
