Marching to the sound of Korea’s gunfire,* as Marines have marched in every American war from 1775 to 1950, the United States Marine Corps, military anomaly par excellence, has again highlighted itself, not only as stormy petrel among the four Services, but as the outfit which since 1946 has waged a fight for the right to fight – and finally won.
But it was no later than nine months ago that the Corps, standing firmly beside its sister Service, the Navy, put forward, through a fighting Commandant, (and firmly believed) the suggestion that there existed a sort of cartel in restraint of combat – a significant participation in future wars of the United States.
Criticized by its enemies – the American ones, that is – as a kind of anachronism like the horse Cavalry, or at best as a duplicate army, the Marine Corps seems to arouse at large the kind of white-hot, indignant defense that Everyman reserves for his alma mater, Mother’s Day, or the flag.
Most Marines are aware that this deep hold on the national affections constitutes one of the Corps’s brightest assets. After all, it is a matter of history that the nine previous attempts against the Marine Corps, dating at regular intervals from 1829, foundered each and every one in Congress – on the rock of public feeling.
This is very well as a starting point, or possibly as a final defensive position: that the Marine Corps constitutes part of the national heritage and ought to be preserved like the bison or Yellowstone Park. But many thoughtful taxpayers wish that Marines would acquaint the country with the reasoned basis which supports the instinctive national conclusion that in our vast defensive machine there exists a substantial, useful place for the Marine Corps.
In a single question (which the drifting smoke from Korea may answer for some) – why do we need the U.S. Marine Corps?
Before venturing a direct answer, we might profitably run through the most frequently encountered arguments propounded by those who were first to assert that the United States really didn’t need a Marine Corps.
Contrary to widespread popular belief, hardly anyone wanted to abolish the Marine Corps – not even the General Staff clique which two Commandants, General Cates and Vandegrift, had charged was out to get the Corps. For one thing, the impolitic character of any such move would generate its own destruction. For another, most of those who sincerely opposed today’s Marine Corps would have been willing to leave it alone if changed into something like the Royal Marines of Britain – a few ceremonial troops entrusted with a multitude of odd jobs which range anywhere from acting as ships’ butchers, bandsmen, and printers to manning landing craft to put the British Army ashore.
Thus, the preponderance of controversy over the U.S. Marine corps was due, not to its existence, but to its modern status, size, and combat missions – and perhaps its unexcelled public reputation.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s examine the theses upon which Marines’ opponents predicated their case.
Argument 1: The next war will provide no occasion for amphibious warfare, which the Marine Corps developed and so successfully practiced between 1941 and 1945. If you accept this prediction, it follows that the Marine (like the “tried and proven horse,” to which the War Department clung until the eve of World War II) had become irrevocably outmoded. Like coast artillery, said its critics, the Marine Corps is an anachronism.
Let us meet this proposition head on and assume for the moment that the useful destiny of the Marine Corps really does hang solely on the Corps’ vested position as our national amphibious assault force.
Then suppose we take a look at the map and ponder the geographic facts which would dominate the character of war between the United States and any major Eurasian power.
(1) Eurasia is surrounded by sea and presents an exposed coast line about eight times longer than that of the United States.
(2) The coasts of Eurasia are ringed with islands, like Formosa, peninsulas, like Korea, and isolated mainland terrain--compartments which in a military sense constitute “islands” by virtue of the geography which compartments them from the interior land-mass.
The obvious military derivative of this geography, weighed in light of the fact – rarely admitted publicly – that the limiting effective range of airborne attack is about 500 miles, is twofold:
(1) Eurasia and its natural approaches are immensely vulnerable to seaborne attack; and
(2) No other kind of attack (ground or air) can possibly be launched in appreciable strength against Eurasia without possession of a ring of close-range advance bases just offshore of the great land-mass, or on the littoral.
Moreover – and this is important to every family with draft-age members – the price of such advanced bases (both in blood and resources) skyrockets with the onset of hostilities.
A few examples from the past war prove the point.
The Iceland advanced base, secured in 1941 by a combination of ready Fleet Marine Forces and political action, cost the United States not one single casualty.
Striking swiftly, with the aggressor’s advantages, the Japanese snapped up Wake inside the first three weeks of shooting war. The Japanese employed a force about the size of a U.S. regimental combat team, and sacrificed about 1,200 casualties.
Two years after war had begun, however, an entire Marine division was barely able to capture Betio Island (Tarawa) as a U.S. advance base – at a cost of 4,000 casualties.
More than three years after the outbreak of war, it required three Marine divisions to conquer Iwo Jima, not much bigger than either Wake or Tarawa. The toll in casualties exceeded 20,000.
The obvious moral is that, to conserve life, resources, and dollars, the essential overseas advanced bases must be secured as soon as possible. Obviously, as well, it would be preferable to secure such bases prior to the outbreak of war. But even under optimum conditions of statecraft, this is an unattainable ideal.
The foregoing historical examples drive home the plain fact that U.S. strategy must anticipate and contemplate instant readiness to seize and defend overseas advanced bases. Not three months after war, not six months after war. On M-Day. Furthermore, if forces for this crucial job are kept sufficiently ready, they need not be large. The aspects of readiness; of carefully intensified training for just this type of employment; and the knowhow of advanced base warfare – these are the things that count.
In a few instances, the means of committing such ready striking forces might be airborne. But that method of expeditionary transport hits a point of diminishing returns less than 500 miles from base. This makes it simple arithmetic – that no nation can yet conduct large-scale, long-range overseas operations except by sea.
Which means that, without firm control of the sea and without amphibious shipping, there can be no significant overseas or advanced base operations at all. As General Vandegrift put it in 1948,
“. . . so long as control of the sea remains the indispensable element of victory, so also amphibious warfare remains an essential element of that formula.”
The campaign for Okinawa is an example. To secure this overseas base within economical striking distance of Japan, the United States had to move something short of a million measurement tons of combat troops, combat equipment, ammunition and supplies, through the 7,000-mile pipeline from the West Coast to the Ryukyus – all within the single month of April 1945. By contrast, note that the Berlin airlift, mightiest air effort in the history of flight, was able to reach the level of 13,000 tons per day (over microscopic 300-mile hauls) – or about one-third the daily tonnage of what we had to deliver 25 times as far, to Okinawa. Only seapower possesses physical capability of mounting such as assault.
If these considerations add up to anything at all, it is this:
At the onset of war, the United States will stand (as it stood on 25 June 1950) desperately in need (1) of means to control the sea; and (2) of a moderate-sized, well-organized, highly trained force, versed in the seizure and defense of advanced bases and skilled in amphibious warfare.
On past performance and on present readiness, who else but Marines?
Argument 2: The Marine Corps maintains substantial ground and aviation units which needlessly duplicate the Army and the Air Force.
Does the Marine Corps represent a needless duplication? Perhaps the best answer lies in still another question – does anyone believe that, if the Marine Corps were to be absorbed into the Army tomorrow, there would be any corresponding cut in the overall Defense Department budget? Of course not; the Marine divisions now in being would reappear as Army troops, service or combat. And the U.S. taxpayer would be paying for just as many men under arms as ever, but now via a different paymaster.
Anyhow – who duplicates whom? Surely the Corps which invented the art of modern amphibious war and has maintained ready operating forces for that mission ever since 1908 can hardly be said to be duplicating any other Service which may have lately projected itself ankle-deep into amphibious matter.
And surely no one will try to maintain that there were too many U.S. Marines during World War II. Or on 7 August 1950, the day the 1st Marine Brigade reached Pusan.
But concede a duplication, for the moment at least. Then you find that the Marine Corps, man for man, and unit for unit, costs the taxpayer less than corresponding units in other Services when units exist at all.
Take the matter of Marine Corps aviation, sometimes dismissed as a sort of rump tactical air arm which ought to be in the Air Force. Proponents of such a transfer (always advanced in economy’s name) have asserted that the Air forces could operate the seven-group (21 squadron) Marine air arm of 1949 for something under a hundred million dollars yearly per group. But the fact is – a fact which had obviously not been ascertained when transfer was proposed – that counting every expenditure for Marine Corps aviation, both direct and submerged in the Navy’s budget (such as medical and chaplain services, Naval Aviation material, etc.), the entire cost of Marine aviation in 1949 was about $175,000,000.00 – less than a third of what the most optimistic transfer-artists estimated that the same forces would cost if submerged in the Air Force.
In ground units, comparable economy exists as between the net cost of the Marine rifleman and his Army comrade. General Vandegrift repeatedly emphasized, while Commandant of the Marine Corps, that a Marine was the better bargain. As of 1949, it remained a fact that the Treasury could “purchase” an individual Marine for less than $5,000.00 per annum, in terms of food, clothing, pay, weapons, and housing. The comparable yearly cost to the U.S. taxpayer for the individual enlisted soldier averages more than $7,000.00.
Argument 3: By maintaining a specialized type of division (such as the Marine division) mainly organized for amphibious assault, the United States needlessly sets aside troops for missions that any general-purpose Army division can perform. In short, the United States cannot afford to maintain special-purpose divisions primarily set aside for a single type of mission.
The contention that just any general-purpose ground division can launch an amphibious assault is one of the most specious claims which the public has been asked to swallow. This assertion is usually supported by the bland observation that, after all, there existed only six Marine divisions, and that the non-Marine landings of World War II (a considerable number) were executed by “ordinary” infantry divisions. What the man on the street never hears is the fact that each and every one of these supposedly run-of-the-minel, general-purpose infantry divisions had to be put through a long and exacting course of special training before it was ready to accomplish amphibious missions.1 Furthermore, by the device of temporary reinforcement, each such “ordinary” division was reorganized specifically for its amphibious units (such as joint assault signal companies, DUKW companies, amphibian tractor battalions, etc.) and special amphibious equipment. Actually, if the truth were squarely stated, it would be apparent that every one of the so-called general-purpose infantry divisions which performed amphibious missions was in fact specially trained, specially organized, and specially equipped – precisely as a Marine division is, and for the same mission.2
Perhaps momentary consideration of the airborne problem would bring this matter of general-purpose versus special-purpose assault divisions into perspective.
Who would maintain that the airborne assault is any more exacting, complex, or difficult a feat than the amphibious assault?
Yet those who decry the need for specially equipped, organized, and trained amphibious divisions in being are the first to demand that funds be allocated to maintain specially equipped, specially organized, and specially trained airborne divisions.
Why is it, therefore, that the United States must be told in one breath that “we cannot afford" specially trained and organized Marine divisions, but that, on the other hand, "we vitally need” specially trained and organized airborne divisions?
Argument 4: The Marine Corps is an élite force. But if there were no Marine Corps, then the quality now compressed into the Corps would be divided, fair and square, among the other three Services, and, overall, the national military establishment would benefit.
Yes – all things considered – perhaps the Marine Corps is an élite force.
But why?
Whatever the reasons may be, it is not because the incoming recruits and potential officers of the corps constitute any elect body of supermen. The recruit who passes through Horse Island Gate at Parris Island is just an average American boy in physique, intelligence, and background. He is no different from the youngster the Army drafts.3 It is what happens to him after he enlists, and while he is becoming a Marine at boot camp, that begins the long process of making him élite. It is the Marine Corps system, not the raw material, which counts.
Even more to the point, during the past war – a war which saw Marines executing the most bitterly contested, critical assaults in the Pacific, and one which ended without a whisper of disaffection, disorder, or mutiny among Marines – the Marine Corps, not through any inclination, was nevertheless compelled by Selective Service to accept (in place of many eager volunteers) its share of draftees, including the illiterates, the dimwits, and all the other military undesirables dredged up by conscription's net. But somehow the Marine Corps came through with élite character quite unchanged.
The fact is, every army in history has needed élite troops, not only to perform shock tasks (such as the capture of Iwo Jima) and special missions (such as amphibious or airborne assaults), but to hold up a performance-standard and yardstick to the armed force at large. These élite units, as a rule, have been distinguished by special organization, and special traditions. The Marine Corps, prima facie, is such a body. And those who call loudest for its removal would in turn be the first to set up new élite units.
But anyone versed in economics or political science would quickly discern by analogy that the whole argument (that the Marine Corps over concentrates quality) carries a socialistic, if not Marxian color. To bring the best down to the lowest common denominator level would result only in a stabilization of military poverty.
Argument 5: Whatever the overall case for the Marine, surely no need exists for Marine aviation, which should forthwith be absorbed into the Air Force.
American se power is the power of the balanced fleet, the power of a team made up of surface and subsurface vessels of the Fleet; the Fleet Air Arm; and the Fleet Marine Force.
Within that larger team which we call the balanced fleet, the Fleet Marine Force is itself a unified team, an air-ground team. Without air support – direct, tactical air support – the soldier on the ground is being inefficiently employed.
Although the need by ground forces for tactical air support is no longer disputed, especially since June of this year, many aviators still regard air support of ground units as a low-priority, unimportant job. These individuals minimize the amount of support required for “ground cooperation” – as indeed they minimize the importance of ground operations at all. They attach little importance to development of aircraft and techniques specially suited to ground support missions. They deprecate, and sometimes deny, the need for close association between ground and supporting air units and personnel. They frown on any suggestion that tactical air units be attached to or under control of the ground units they support. They insist upon a “parallel command” for air support operations, in which the final choice of targets – even for direct support of troops – rests out of the hands of the ground commander. And they refuse to think of air support as something an individual rifle battalion commander can promptly bring to bear against target within a hundred yards, if need be, of his own front lines.
Marines are perhaps not qualified to say whether or not such views are correct when applied to conventional, large-scale land warfare. But Marines do know that acceptance of such views would be fatal to those hard-fought assault operations in which the Corps specializes. The point which Marines make is that the assault operations of Fleet Marine Force ground units have required, now require, and will require, the support of air units tightly integrated and organic with their ground comrades. Support of this quality cannot be achieved by bringing ground and air units together for a hasty period of postgraduate training in air-ground cooperation – or even an extended period. If the pilot in the sky is going to be able to understand the viewpoint, the problems, and the requirements of the Marine rifleman on the ground; or conversely, if the Marine rifleman is to understand the viewpoint, the problems, and the requirements of the supporting pilot in the sky; both of them will have to live together in the same organization from the day they first sign their names to a military payroll.
Amphibious assault operations (and airborne ones, too) postulate unusually stringent requirements for close air support. The limitations on assault shipping or air-lift, landing-craft or plane dimensions, beach or landing-area conditions, and initially limited maneuver space – all these factors combine to reduce the weight of armor and artillery which any landing force (air or seaborne) can bring to bear. To offset these limitations, the commander must have at his disposal not only a massive quantity of close air support, but also close air support of a quality which will enable it to approximate the accuracy and promptness of artillery. This requirement, most Marines feel – and the record supports them – has only been met by Naval Aviation in general, and by Marine Corps aviation in particular, the latter a force in which (not withstanding the disruptive effects of World War II) 90 percent of all Marine pilots have graduated from one or more of the Marine Corps schools which teach the tactics and techniques of Marine ground forces, together with the whole art of modern amphibious operations.
Thus it is plain that the Marine Corps needs its air, and that the high degree to which Marine aviation is integrated, operation-wise and training-wise, is the key to its combat value. Of this value in World War II, it is perhaps enough to quote two testimonials:
Major General Verne D. Mudge, USA, Commanding General, 1st Cavalry Division: “I can say without reservation that the Marine dive-bomber outfits are one of the most flexible I have seen in this war. They will try anything and from my experience with them I have found that anything they try usually pans out.”
Lieutenant General R. L. Eichelberger, USA, Commanding General, Eighth Army: “The value of close support for ground troops as provided by these Marine fliers cannot be measured in words, and there is not enough that can be said for their aerial barrages that have cut a path for the infantry.”
Up this point, we have confined ourselves entirely to examination and refutation of the significant arguments which its opponents put forward publicly against the Marine Corps. Still to be answered is the question with which this article began – why do we need the U.S. Marine Corps?
Friends of the Corps answer from their hearts that we need the traditionalism, the military flair, the crisp quality, the elan, and the esprit which have made the Marine a national symbol.
But there are major reasons, good military reasons – even beyond today’s urgency – why the United States needs its Marines as never before.
In an era of unification, the Marine Corps is wholly unified.
If those who seek effective unification need an exemplar, they can find it in the Marine Corps: a Service without internal compartmentation into branches, a Service in which aviation is wholly integrated with ground, a Service without any smell of “caste” distinction.
What is more, the Marine Corps today is the single one of the four Services which, as a general matter, thoroughly understands the technical capabilities, military characteristics, problems, and tactics of each of the other three.
In no other Service than the Marine Corps, for example, can you find not a few but many Regular officers who have served in routine Marine Corps rotation as infantrymen, military aviators, general staff officers, and watch and division or gunnery officers aboard U.S. men-of-war. This unequalled spread of professional experience – not in the role of observers, it should be remarked, but in every case as practitioners – deserves notice, and surely deserves widest use throughout our unified Department of Defense.
In inter-Service situations which often cry out for mutual understanding and for clear-cut professional knowledge of the widest character, Marine Corps’ catholic foundation of professional knowledge and insight could be effectively employed to solve many problems.
The Marine Corps provides the public a military yardstick to hold up to other Services.
Operating (relatively) independently, somewhat like a highly successful small business, the Marine Corps constitutes a yardstick of professional efficiency and economy to hold up beside other Services.
The importance of such a yardstick, both for taxpayer and legislator, has been enhanced by the fact that since 1947 Service missions and functions have, in effect, been cartelized. Thus, by granting monopoly in defined fields of military enterprise to the respective military departments, the National Security Act has tended to reduce the areas in which competition, even of the limited kind which formerly obtained, can sort out the superior from the inferior.
In industry, for example, General Motors keeps Ford up to the mark, and vice versa; Chrysler in turn provides a comparative standard for both. Because of this, the man on the street can determine what kind of auto best meets his needs, and he can also exercise considerable influence in forcing manufacturers to make that kind of car.
In the same way, the existence of the Marine Corps as a kind of Service yardstick is useful because of the otherwise complete functional monopolies which the larger Services possess. This “yardstick” can be used in two ways – performance-wise and dollar-wise. Examples:
Can the Marine Corps operate a taut and efficient Service with a certain ratio of commissioned officer strength to total enlisted strength? If so, Services with less favorable ratios are bound to invite questions when appropriation time rolls around.
Or does the Marine Corps pay so many cents per yard for herringbone twill cloth? Then, allowing for the increased cost which frequently accompanies sheer bigness, other Services should not be budgeting more than comparable sums in their own purchases of herringbone twill.
The Marine Corps is American’s amphibious fountainhead.
Earlier in this essay, we undertook to consider the factors of immutable geography which render conflict with Eurasia a war of advanced bases and a struggle for control of the sea. With these factors in mind, we can realize how important it is that the United States retain in full vigor a skilled amphibious Service. At the same time, in a series of recent public pronouncements before Congress and to the press, the Chief of Staff of the Army has announced that his Service intends to concentrate its developmental efforts in the field of airborne assault. This means that now, as in the 1930s, the country is again compelled to look to the Marine Corps for amphibious leadership.4
Such leadership comes very naturally to the Service which invented modern amphibious war. But it is essential that the Marine Corps of today continue to be allowed the necessary special troops, funds, experimental latitude, and freedom to develop, which characterized its fruitful period of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Marine Corps is conspicuously efficient and frugal.
Most people will agree that the Marine Corps is an efficient military Service. This efficiency stems from many forces, some intangible, some beyond the control of the Corps, and some which result directly from Marine concepts as to show how things should be done.
Much Marine Corps efficiency can be related directly to size. When the late Justice Brandeis inveighed against “the curse of Bigness,” he was confining himself neither to moral judgment nor to economic theory. He was saying that, as institutions exceed a certain size, they become progressively less able to discharge their missions in society and progressively less able to function efficiently. This was true of business, Brandeis believed, as it is true of government.
In light of the Brandeis thesis – which is supported by business and industrial studies – the Marine Corps may well be compared, among the Services, to a carefully managed, middle-sized enterprise which, in both peace and war, continues to operate well short of the point of increase at which size becomes a real deterrent to efficiency and a potent cause of increased cost.
A striking illustration of Marine Corps efficiency is to be found, for example, in the ratio which the Corps maintains between commissioned officer strength and total enlisted strength. As of 30 June 1949, the following tabulation shows this Marine Corps ratio by comparison with similar ratios in the other Services:
U.S. Navy: 1 commissioned officer per 8 enlisted men
Air Force: 1 commissioned officer per 6 enlisted men
Army: 1 commissioned officer per 7 enlisted men
Marine Corps5: 1 commissioned officer per 12 enlisted men
In weighing these statistics, it is instructive to look backward to comparable 1937 figures. These show that the Army (including Air Corps) then had a ratio of 1:13; the Navy, 1:11; and the Marine Corps 1:14. What is significant in this comparison is that, alone among the Services, the Marine Corps continues, largely, to get along in 1949 – in manpower management – on what it found to be efficient more than a decade and one world war earlier.
Hand in hand with efficiency (and probably contributory thereto) goes Marine Corps frugality. Because of this, the Marine Corps is in no sense a “fat” service. Nor could it ever afford to be; indeed, much of the strength of the Marine Corps inter-Service position derives from its austere, almost parsimonious fiscal habits. In items which range from flashlight batteries to jeeps, from field shoes to utility clothing – except when stopped cold by aspects of unified procurement – Marine procurement experts have been able to underbuy with striking consistency.
Perhaps it will surprise those who think of billions as the common units in defense expenditure to realize that the entire 1949 budget of the U.S. Marine Corps (including indirect charges) amounted to slightly more than five hundred million dollars – about as much as the cost of five Air Force air groups.
The Marine Corps brings true professionalism to its tasks.
The tradition of the part-time soldier, of the millions springing to arms overnight, lies deep in American folkways. In both strength and simultaneous weakness, this concept colors even our armed forces. As a result, the mass of American Regular personnel, officers and enlisted alike, are perhaps less “regular,” less single-minded, and less consecrated to their professions than are many corresponding careerists abroad.
This observation (which is not criticism) stops short of the Marine Corps.
To be a Marine is something like taking holy orders – a “vocation” as theologians would describe it. At the very least, it is like receiving life membership in an extremely select club. Thus, every Marine, be he officer product of Basic School, or enlisted graduate of Paris Island (or perhaps alumnus of both), becomes a dedicated professional. The reserve Marine shares this dedication – and promptly becomes reservist incidentally, and Marine foremost.
This professional spirit reflects in every aspect of Marine performance, from close-order drill to the air-ground team, from Marine dress uniforms to the assault of a blockhouse.
Part effect and part cause of the intensity of Marine professionalism is the Marine Corps’ entire disinterest in bureaucratic aggrandizement or attainment of power on the national level. Alone among the four Services, the Marine Corps fails, as a career, to present any avenue to high national office, even within the Department of Defense. Thus no Marine can aspire, so long as he remains a Marine, to become anything more than a better Marine. His Corps constitutes an end in itself, and, in the moving phrase of the present Commandant, asks only
“that recognition which cannot be denied to a Corps of men who have sought for themselves little more than a life of hardship and the most hazardous assignments in battle.”
The Marine Corps is America’s national force in readiness.
Readiness, more than any military characteristic – more even than quality – is the attribute which Americans have come to expect of their Marine Corps.
It is already a factual part of the American story that Marines proved ready to meet the British at Bladensburg in 1813; that a Marine expeditionary force was the first U.S. unit to land in Cuba in 1898; that Marines were first with the Fleet at Vera Cruz; that Marines alone were prepared to secure Iceland in 1941; that Marines were ready on 7 December 1941, at Wake; that Marines alone were ready to wrest Guadalcanal from the Japanese, at this turning point of the Pacific War.
That Marines were ready to move out for Korea.
This record expresses itself, among Americans, in such catch-phrases as “Call out the Marines!” … “First to Fight” … “The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.”
U.S. citizens take it for granted, not that the Marine Corps is solely a skilled amphibious force, but, far more, that it is our ready force. To the man on the street, with his clear insight (as to thoughtful military men), it is plain that amphibious virtuosity is only the transient expression of a much deeper Marine Corps trait – the trait of readiness. Between 1922 and 1945, while the United States faced or waged a war inevitably certain to be wholly amphibious, amphibious specialization constituted the essence of readiness. Now, with new expeditions ahead, the Marine Corps must be permitted (as it was prior to World War II) to develop and realize to the full its dominant readiness – as opposed to its amphibious characteristic alone. As General Cates put the matter during a public statement:
“We are confronted with the possibility of a war in which out opponent would hold the initiative. We must prepare to meet his moves with promptness and with whatever force we can muster. …
“Under such circumstances, there is nothing clearer than this: Out plans must be flexible; our forces must be ready, mobile and assembled. Never have circumstances placed a greater premium on those very qualities, which are so characteristic of our Fleet Marine Force.”
The United States possesses a tremendous military potential, and, as of 1949, historically a winning one. It is also a historical fact that our country has never burdened itself with the costly and oppressive luxury, if that is the word, which a huge standing land army and a continental strategy entail. In a maritime nation, such as the United States, we have always found it possible to project our forward defense-lines overseas; in the past traditionally by seapower, and now by combination of sea and air power. Corollary to this well adapted national strategy, we have been able to raise mass armies after the onset of war, and we have then proceeded, as necessary, to engage our enemies’ armies on terms much of our choosing. In every war, however, need has existed, as it obviously exists today, for a national force in readiness.
In much the same relationship as that of the Foreign Legion to the Metropolitan Army of France, such U.S. ready forces have been in no way associated with those whose primary duty has been to serve as cadre and springboard for immense, thoroughgoing, ultimate, total mobilization.
Voltaire declared, “If God did not exist, we should have been compelled to invent Him.” We might well reshape that epigram by the statement that if the Marine Corps did not exist toady, the United States would have to invent one.
Where else, as of 1950, in a single package, do we find (1) readiness, (2) mobility, (3) the élite characteristic? And how many battles could the United States win without these?
Certain it is that the Marine Corps stands unique within our defense establishment: a service whose very existence may puzzle those who seek to reduce military organization to sterile symmetry – but also a Service toward which the American people (who possess a long record for picking winners) have more than ever vouchsafed affectionate, instinctive reliance.
Thus heartened by the national confidence, and here to stay because of it, stands the Marine Corps: proud of its past, resolute as to its future – certain in possession of at least one priceless ingredient in the security of the United States: the ingredient of readiness. Closely associated with this attribute is a second: quality.
Relying on readiness and on quality as his arguments, the U.S. Marine squarely faces those who, from whatever motives, would have denied his Corps the realization of full usefulness; and, echoing a Marine battalion commander of 1918, today’s Marine rejoins:
“Retreat, Hell! We just got here.”
*Submitted for the 1950 Prize Essay Contest, The Marine Corps—Here To Stay, has been revised by the author in light of developments since the outbreak of hostilities in Korea—developments which he believes have lent further force to his basic theses, which of course remain as put forward in the original draft.
1. Seven Army divisions—comprising a total strength larger than the Army in 1933—received amphibious training from the U.S. Marine Corps. These were the 1st, 3d, 7th, 9th, 77th, 81st, and 96th Infantry Divisions. The 1st, 3d, and 9th were the first three U.S. Army divisions ever to receive amphibious training.
2. Except in one important particular, at least as far as the record of the Pacific war is concerned. The Marine divisions' missions involved far more beach assaults in which really stiff opposition was expected—and realized.
3. To support the assertion that Marine recruits do not in any way tend to monopolize quality manpower, we need only take judicial notice of the fact that, as this is written, the minimum GCT Score (an overall basic aptitude test) for admission to the Marine Corps is 90; that for the Navy is 94; that for the Air Force is 100; and that for the Army is 90. This hardly substantiates the complaint that the Marines monopolize the cream and leave the skim to other Services.
4. Selecting one among numerous examples of present day Marine Corps amphibious contributions, we might note that the Marine Corps Schools now provide, by means of their annual Advanced Base Problem, a major demonstration of up-to-date amphibious techniques in a traveling presentation which reaches the Naval War College, the Armed Forces Staff College, the Air University, the Command and General Staff School, and the Canadian Army Staff College.
5. Inclusion, even, of Navy medical and chaplain personnel does not significantly affect this ratio.