The rivalry among the U. S. Marine Corps and the other armed services—sometimes friendly, more often not—has long been a staple of Leatherneck history. The most eminent of the Corps’ historians, Colonel Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., identified so many assaults on his beloved Marine Corps during its first century that he called it “the cat with more than nine lives.” But the attempts to disband the small force of Leathernecks or transfer it to another armed service came almost solely from reform-minded, budget-conscious legislators, rather than from senior Army officers eager to absorb the Marine Corps’ seagoing mission in support of the Navy. In World War I, however, Leathernecks and Doughboys came to loggerheads over a token Marine Corps presence in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).1
Almost two decades before the United States entered the war, the Marine Corps scored a minor public relations bonanza at the Army’s expense. The battalion of Leathernecks that deployed in 1898 to establish an expeditionary camp in support of the fleet at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, impressed members of the fourth estate with its professionalism and elan, while the massive contingent of soldiers encamped at Key West, Florida, appalled most observers with its inaptitude and inefficiency. Basking in the warmth of the accolades, Headquarters Marine Corps began recruiting under the colorful slogan “first to fight,” hoping to capitalize on its exploits during the war with Spain. In the next few years, Leatherneck feats throughout the world did nothing to mar that bold claim. Thus, when the United States entered World War I, participation by the U.S. Marine Corps became essential, lest its slogan become a hollow mockery. In the process, however, the pride and jealousy between soldiers and Marines in the AEF precipitated considerable friction.
As the United States drifted closer to war with the Central Powers in 1917, Commandant Major General George Barnett took immediate action to involve his Leathernecks in the conflict. In testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee that month, he engaged in an unusual argument with Admiral William S. Benson, Chief of Naval Operations. Barnett cited the existence of three brigades of Royal Marines then serving with the British Expeditionary Force in France; Benson countered vigorously, claiming that the Leathernecks should be used solely for naval purposes. Barnett’s insistence that every trained fighting man be available in time of war or national emergency, regardless of armed service, won the day. On 22 May 1917, the naval appropriations bill for fiscal year 1918 became law; more significant, it included provisions for an increase in the number of men wearing forest green to more than 30,0002
Barnett convinced a less-than-enthusiastic Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to offer a brigade of Marines to accompany General John J. Pershing and the initial contingent of the AEF to France. Anxious to participate, Barnett agreed to several administrative changes that would outfit and organize the token Leatherneck force along Army lines. Because the typical Marine Corps brigade numbered approximately the same as an Army regiment, Barnett ordered the 6th Marines combined with the 5th Marines for the deployment. To give the outfit more polish and grit—and the characteristic Marine Corps eccentricity and toughness—the Commandant ordered eight veteran companies home from the Caribbean to form the backbone of the regiment. The Rudyard Kipling of the Old Corps, Colonel John W. Thomason, remembered the Marines who filled the ranks at the Philadelphia Navy Yard:
Diverse people who ran curiously to type, with drilled shoulders and bone-deep sunburn, and a tolerant scorn of nearly everything on earth. Their speech was flavored with navy words, and words culled from all the folk who live on the seas and ports where our war-ships go. They were the old breed of American regular, regarding the service as home and war as an occupation; and they transmitted their temper and character and view-point to the high-hearted volunteer mass which filled the ranks.3
After the war, Barnett and many of his officers delighted in recalling that senior Army officers and even the Secretary of War attempted an eleventh-hour ruse to keep the Leathernecks from sailing for France. But except for Barnett’s unpublished memoir, no evidence supports the claim. In truth, the Army was almost overwhelmed by the commitment; the first four regiments of regular infantry—the nucleus of the 1st Division—were “regular” in name only and could hardly cause Kaiser Wilhelm and the German High Command to lose any sleep. An additional regiment of infantry, seasoned and polished, lent Pershing and his staff a welcome surplus of manpower. From the outset, however, the Leathernecks faced resistance, as Secretary Daniels noted in his memoirs: “When war was declared, I tendered, ready and equipped, two regiments of Marines to be incorporated in the Army. Senior Army officers were not keen to accept them.”4
Despite wails of protest and claims of discrimination from senior Leathernecks, Pershing ordered the 5th Marines to guard duty along the lines of communication, while the Doughboys began a rigorous program of training before moving to the front. When word of the decision reached Washington, Barnett complained bitterly to Secretary Daniels and any congressman who would listen. News of the meddling irritated Pershing and his staff, who considered the interference a patent example of attempts by the Department of the Navy to muscle in on the Army’s show. Meanwhile, as Pershing visited units of the AEF at Gondrecourt, he displayed outrage at the Leathernecks’ more soldierly bearing than his own Doughboys. However professional the 5th Marines might have appeared evidently made no difference to Pershing, because he moved then to end the deployment of further Marines to the AEF with a terse cablegram to Washington:
The 5th Marines, a fine infantry regiment, arrived in June complete. The division supply machines, trains, etc., are based on four regiments and the fifth regiment is an inconvenient addition. Its infantry, certain features of supply, inability to meet hospital expenses, and this odd replacement organization do not assimilate into Army organization. If Marines can be spared from the customary duties for which maintained, it is believed these surpluses should become part of the Army and otherwise no more Marines be sent to France.
To Pershing’s dismay, however, the War Department informed him that President Woodrow Wilson already had directed the deployment of Marines to France, and no one could deter the decision. Then, the Adjutant General boldly ordered an assignment for the unwanted Leathernecks, an order that surely must have made Pershing bridle: “This regiment [6th Marines] to combine with the other one [5th Marines] to a brigade in the 2d Division commanded by a Marine Corps general about to be nominated, and will be part of the Army under your command.’’5
From then until spring 1918, Pershing apparently paid scant attention to the Marines. The brigade—a headquarters, two regiments of infantry, and a machine gun battalion—became the 4th Brigade (Marine), and joined the 2d Division, AEF. Meanwhile, its commander, Brigadier General Charles A. Doyen, came under the sharp scrutiny of Pershing’s special medical examination team. Concluding that the ranks contained too many aged, obese, and redundant senior officers, Pershing ordered many of those who failed to mirror his meticulous standards shipped home. The medical team determined that Doyen—a stout, graying 59-year-old—had worn himself out and was not a well man. Although Pershing paid generous tribute to Doyen as he departed France, he probably concluded that the Naval Academy classmate of the Commandant “lacked the grasp”—a pungent comment that routinely ended many a professional career.
Pershing saw this as an opportunity to replace the veteran Leatherneck with an Army crony. Brigadier General James G. Harbord, the first chief of staff of the AEF, assumed command of the 4th Brigade (Marine) on 6 May 1918. Despite Pershing’s reluctance to have Leathernecks in the AEF, he considered the brigade an elite unit and worthy of assignment to his old friend. Marines claim that Pershing admonished Harbord: “You are to have charge of the finest body of troops in France, and if they fail to live up to that reputation I shall know whom to blame.” But Harbord recalled simply that Pershing said “he could give me no better command in France than to let me succeed General Doyen with the Marines.”
Harbord must have had grave misgivings over his new assignment: both of his regimental commanders, Colonel Wendell C. Neville and Colonel Albertus W. Catlin, were graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy; Harbord had attempted to gain nomination to the U.S. Military Academy, but failed. Both Neville and Catlin had earned the Medal of Honor at Vera Cruz in 1914; Harbord wore no personal decorations. However the senior Leathernecks must have felt at the time, they managed to put the best face on the situation. Neville assured Harbord that he could depend on them. Catlin gave Harbord a pair of Marine Corps collar devices and suggested that he wear them. Years later, at the first meeting of the Marine Corps League, Harbord exclaimed that “if he had to do it over, he would be a Marine.” In his memoirs, he noted that “I look back upon my service with the Marine Brigade with more pride and satisfaction than on any other equal period in my long Army career.”6
At home, news of Harbord’s accession to command the Leathernecks sent shock waves through the ranks of senior Marine Corps officers. Pershing’s terse cablegram informed the Department of the Navy that no replacement for Doyen was required. Although Barnett had resisted the pleas of his capable assistant, Brigadier General John A. Lejeune, for an assignment in the AEF, he relented quickly. Just as the epic battle of Belleau Wood was about to un- fold in early summer 1918, Lejeune embarked for France. He carried with him orders to encourage Pershing to accept more Leathernecks than anyone other than Barnett himself could have imagined the year before. As the disarming but calculating Lejeune—whose down-home and courtly Louisiana charm masked a shrewlike demeanor— prepared to depart, events in France put the capstone on Leatherneck aggrandizement. Ironically, one of the Marine Corps’ most heroic and costly victories spurred Pershing and his staff to dig in their heels and resist further deployment of Marines to France.
When the German Army failed to destroy the British forces in its offensive of early 1918, the Imperial High Command ordered a strike against the Aisne Heights. Quickly, the Germans captured Soissons and advanced toward the Marne; Paris appeared threatened, and the French government began preparations to evacuate the capital to Bordeaux. Although Pershing had resisted entreaties from the Allies to employ U.S. troops in their lines—perhaps to stiffen the resolve of weary and disspirited British and French soldiers—he relented, given the gravity of the situation. The AEF released the 1st Division to the French at Cantigny, north of Paris. To stem the threat to Paris itself, the 2d and 3d Divisions deployed to Chateau Thierry.
During the next two weeks, Leatherneck blood spilled more freely than at any time in its history. By 2 June 1918, the 4th Brigade (Marine) had dug in along the Paris- Metz Highway just south of Belleau Wood with orders to hold at all cost. A day later, German forces approached the U.S. positions. The Marines allowed the columns of field-gray infantry to advance within 100 meters of their lines before cutting them down with well-aimed rifle fire. For two days, the Kaiser’s troops attempted to pierce the narrow front but failed. Then, on the afternoon of 6 June, Harbord received orders to eject the Germans from Belleau Wood. A short, savage artillery and mortar barrage preceded the Leathernecks’ attack, as waves of Marines fixed bayonets and crossed wheat fields dotted with poppies. Withering German fire tore through their lines as the Leathenecks entered the forest, but the ranks continued to advance. During the first day in Belleau Wood, the Marine Corps counted 1,097 casualties—more losses than it suffered during any single engagement in its history.7
By nightfall 12 June, all the wood except a small fringe on its northern edge was in U.S. hands. A German counterattack next morning failed. Although the 4th Brigade (Marine), AEF, was able to march out of the hellish terrain by the 15th, the replacement Army infantry regiment failed to blunt a German counterattack, and the enemy reoccupied the wood. On 23 June, the Leathernecks returned and ejected the Germans once and for all. With a characteristic flair for the dramatic, a Leatherneck battalion commander reported: “Woods now U.S. Marine Corps entirely!” From first to last, it had cost the Marine Brigade 4,677 casualties—a rate of almost 50%. A grateful France announced that Belleau Wood henceforth would be named Bois de la Brigade de Marine. In a senseless and petulant gesture, however, AEF headquarters altered the name to Bois de la Brigade des Americains. Just as forthright, the French changed it back!
With sweet victory came an outburst of intense interservice acrimony that persisted throughout the war. Although Pershing had issued orders that U.S. war correspondents were not to identify specific units in their dispatches, those covering the Battle of Belleau Wood reported the attacking units to be Marines. Then, an intrepid correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, Floyd Gibbons, fell gravely wounded while accompanying a Leatherneck platoon in an assault. Believing his wound mortal, friends in the AEF’s censorship unit allowed Gibbons’s “last” and particularly vivid dispatch to go through unaltered. Because Belleau Wood constituted unfamiliar terrain, Gibbons chose to use the name of the entire geographic region—Chateau Thierry—as the site of the battle. Thus, to the consternation of every soldier in the AEF—especially those in the 1st and 3d Divisions, and the Army infantry brigade in the 2d Division—the Marines became the beneficiaries of a public-relations bonanza, as readers at home believed that the token force of Marines constituted the assault force of the AEF. For the remainder of the war, Doughboys taunted Leathernecks with a musical doggerel, sung to the tune of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” that precipitated its share of black eyes and broken noses:
The Marines have won the Croix de Guerre, parlez-vous?
The Marines have won the Croix de Guerre, parlez-vouz?
The Marines have won the Croix de Guerre,
But the sons-of-bitches were never there.
Hinky dinky parlez-vous?8
The Army’s resentment also surfaced in official snubs. After the capture of the woods, a beaming French President Georges Clemenceau visited the headquarters of the 2d Division, AEF. Neither Harbord nor any of his senior Marines were invited to meet him. The irritation caused by the prominence enjoyed by the Marines at Belleau Wood grew like a festering boil on the backside of senior officers, both in the AEF and at home. Even before the Belleau Wood affair, Barnett and Department of the Navy officials had repeatedly annoyed senior Army officers by touting the history of Leatherneck heroism and resolve under fire. Marine Corps recruiting posters proclaimed loudly: “Join now—don’t wait to be drafted” which meant, simply, “join now—don’t wait to be drafted into the Army." But the Belleau Wood controversy continued to produce the most friction between the Army and the Marine Corps.9
Lejeune arrived in France just as animosity and interservice rivalry reached crescendo pitch. As instructed by Barnett, he broached the matter of employing additional Marines in the AEF with Pershing. The unyielding commander-in-chief repeated his conclusions regarding commonality of units and equipment, leaving no doubt that he could do without the impediments of an entire division of Leathernecks. While the staff of the AEF likely had suggested the importance of commonality, Pershing probably refused the offer for other reasons. He had grown increasingly annoyed over intrusions by the Department of the Navy, Headquarters Marine Corps, and vocal Leatherneck supporters in Congress. Barnett’s repeated queries concerning employment of his Marines grew tiresome. The hyperbolic journalism about Leatherneck prowess on the battlefield exacerbated the problem. After meeting with Lejeune and rebuffing his request, Pershing cabled the Secretary of War in hopes of ending the matter.
[Lejeune] brings up the subject of the formation of a Marine division for service here ... I am of the opinion that the formation of such a unit is not desirable from a military standpoint. Our land forces must be homogeneous in every respect . . . While the Marines are splendid troops, their use as a separate division is in- advisable.
The War Department concurred and informed Pershing that it did not intend to authorize formation of a separate Marine Corps division for service in France: “Your query with reference to the Marine [Corps] division is in harmony with the policy of the War Department in that matter,” read a cable from the Chief of Staff of the Army. Then, perhaps to close any loophole, Major General Peyton C. March added: “If you are called upon to send any troops from your force to Italy or any other place, they will be selected from the Army and will not be chosen from the marines.”10
While Pershing’s reasoning may have been tempered by the excessive publicity showered on the Leathernecks as a result of the battle to seize Belleau Wood, he harbored grave reservations toward the ability of Headquarters Marine Corps to meet the constant demands for infantry replacements. From the outset of the war, Barnett had insisted that every Leatherneck be trained thoroughly prior to embarking for France. Besides enduring a regimen of recruit training that exceeded anything to which the Army subjected its troops, Marines earmarked for the Western Front reported to the woods of Quantico, Virginia, for a period of advanced combat training.
The program had its drawbacks, however. By lengthening the training pipeline, it took longer to provide Leatherneck replacements for the AEF. Although Headquarters Marine Corps strove to maintain a replacement battalion in the AEF to support the 4th Brigade (Marine), fierce periods of combat depleted assets rapidly. Between the summer 1918 Battle of Soissons, the offensive to take the St. Mihiel Salient in the early fall, shortages of Leathernecks prompted personnel officers at AEF headquarters to consider replacing them with Doughboys. The plan failed to reach fruition only after additional Marines materialized from a scouring of the lines-of-communications. As Lejeune noted ruefully in his memoirs, Pershing had little faith in the ability of Headquarters Marine Corps to provide adequate replacements and claimed that “a division would require such a large variety of Marine replacements as to make the problem almost or altogether insoluble.”'1
Meanwhile, Pershing had grown increasingly disconcerted and wary of the leadership of the 2d Division’s commanding general. Major General Omar Bundy appeared to be yet another doddering senior Army officer who “lacked the grasp.” Pershing noted in a stinging diary entry, “General Bundy disappoints me. I shall relieve him at the first opportunity.” First, Pershing promoted Harbord to major general; next, he shunted Bundy off to command a corps unlikely to play a significant role in any offensives, and gave command of the 2d Division, AEF, to Harbord.
The vacancy for a brigadier general to command the 4th Brigade (Marine) solved Pershing’s problem of how to employ Lejeune in the AEF. But after the Battle of Soissons later that summer, Pershing asked Harbord to relinquish command of the division and take charge of the muddled Services of Supply that appeared to be failing in its mission to support the AEF adequately. Because Lejeune ranked as the senior of the division’s three brigadier generals, he assumed command. Perhaps not coincidentally, Secretary of the Navy Daniels and Commandant Barnett already had submitted Lejeune’s name for promotion to major general. Pershing may have hoped that by giving Lejeune command of the 2d Division, AEF, Leatherneck dreams to field an entire division of Marines in France would end then and there. It was not to be.12
Even before Lejeune’s fateful meeting with Pershing, Barnett persuaded Daniels to approach the War Department and offer a brigade each of infantry and artillery. On 30 March 1918, Barnett accompanied Daniels to meet with the Assistant Secretary of War. From the outset of the conference, Benjamin Cromwell appeared to have been briefed by the Chief of Staff of the Army on the subject of commonality and the undesirability of accepting further Leathernecks in the AEF.
Barnett agreed to whatever changes Cromwell wanted, including the request to adopt Army-style organization and equipment. The 4th Brigade (Marine), AEF, already had turned in its trusted Lewis machine guns for the Army’s less-reliable Hotchkiss model. When Marine Corps uniforms wore out, the Leathernecks donned Army brown, but sewed on their Marine buttons. The Marines already in the AEF even learned the Army’s style of close-order drill, much to the disgust of its members. Still, Cromwell continued to resist the offer of additional Marines. Daniels’ diary entry for that day mirrors the frustration and resentment he and Barnett must have felt: “saw [the] Assistant Secretary of War about sending Marines to France . . . question [is] whether [the] Army desires them.”13
What Barnett hoped for, however, was not merely an additional brigade of Leatherneck infantry in the AEF but an entire division. The Commandant first argued his case in hearings before the House Naval Affairs Committee the previous January, citing the pressing need for additional troops on the Western Front. When Congress and the President approved personnel increases, the Commandant ordered the formation of a brigade of infantry and two regiments of artillery for deployment to the AEF.14
Throughout summer 1918, the Leathernecks of the new units earmarked for deployment to France sweated and trained at Quantico. After the conference with the Assistant Secretary of War, Barnett heard nothing but rumors about future deployments. Then, believing it had the winning hand, the War Department informed Barnett that it was: “sorry to have to tell you that it will be utterly impossible for the War Department to furnish transportation for a Marine [brigade] in the [forthcoming] sailing.” Just as forthrightly, and more than a bit smugly, Barnett informed the Army that he already had arranged transportation for the Leathernecks in the Navy ships escorting the draft to France.15
Just as determined, however, AEF headquarters disbanded the brigade and used its personnel in a variety of capacities within the lines-of-communications and services of supply. Its two brigadier generals, Eli K. Cole and Smedley D. Butler, received assignments to command processing camps or depot divisions. Many of the Leathernecks ended up as infantry replacements to the 4th Brigade (Marine) to replace combat casualties as the war drifted toward its conclusion later that fall.
While bureaucrats in Washington—both in and out of uniform—maneuvered delicately around the fractious issues surrounding interservice rivalry in the AEF, animosities between the Doughboys and Leathernecks intensified. Pershing’s staff informed him that the comradeship between the two services was tissue thin; just a month after the Battle of Belleau Wood, the inspector-general reported: “friendly rivalry between [the] Marines and infantry which for lack of tact ... is developing into jealousy.” Nonetheless, Pershing demonstrated a willingness to employ talented Leatherneck officers in important positions of command without prejudice to their Marine Corps origins. Although Lejeune—and, for that matter, most Leatherneck historians—argued that his assignment to command the 2d Division came about because of his superlative performance at the Army War College and the friendships he made there, it may well have been Pershing’s way of squelching the unpalatable notion of a Leatherneck division in the AEF. Although two of his three U.S. corps commanders wrote damning fitness reports on him, Lejeune kept his command; other general officers in similar circumstances, thought to be wanting or who failed to get along with the staff of the AEF, found themselves re-assigned to the lines-of-communications or, worse, returned to the United States.16
The best evidence to support the argument that Lejeune’s assignment to command the 2d Division was a sop may be an incident that occurred shortly after the armistice. During the long march of the 2d Division to take up occupation duties in Germany, Pershing passed by the weary columns in his staff car. He expressed his displeasure after arriving at 3d Army headquarters, calling the 2d Division an “eyesore.” Quickly, Lejeune received an “acid-official” letter from the Chief of Staff, 3d Army, citing Pershing’s concerns: the soldiers of the 3d Brigade appeared slovenly and unshaven, and walked instead of marched; as an old cavalryman, the sorry condition of the horses and mules outraged Pershing. The cautionary memorandum reminded Lejeune that “if the officers cannot lead, they will be replaced by others waiting in the rear.” In similar instances, Pershing had simply relieved the offending senior officer. But in Lejeune’s case, he remained in command.17
Marine Corps historians have demonstrated a fondness for linking Doughboy-Leatherneck animosities during World War I with subsequent bursts of intense interservice rivalry. A decade after the war, when President Herbert Hoover warmed to General Douglas MacArthur’s plan to absorb the Marine Corps’ amphibious assault mission within the Army, fiscal opportunism—not interservice rivalry and an opening of old wounds from World War I—lay at the root of the proposal. During World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada, the incursion into Panama, and finally, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the Marine Corps has operated at times as a second army. Animosities resulted. Ironically, the Secretary of War during World War I provided the most damning criticism of Army parochialism:
An Army staff, with all the appreciation of the Marines’ superb spirit, considered that Marine training for landing parties, policing occupied ports, and operating as sources of pacification in backward countries, had not fitted their officers in the same way as those of the Army for Army operations. Granting the soundness of the hypothesis, an influential factor to be considered is that here was the hour and it was met by the man.18
Marine Corps swagger and a flaunting of Leatherneck eccentricities, however, aggravated the situation and rubbed Army sensibilities raw. In the 2d Division, Doughboy grievances focused either on Marine Corps leadership or the excessive publicity heaped on the 4th Brigade (Marine) at the expense of the Doughboys of the 3d Brigade. The feisty former commanding officer of an infantry regiment in the 3d Brigade, Brigadier General Paul D. Malone, spoke reams about Doughboy-Leatherneck rivalry in an official letter when he referred to the Marines as “a bunch of adventurers, illiterates, and drunkards.”
Ironically, the faithful and trusted Harbord provided an appropriate condemnation of Army bias:
The Marines have been taunted with having thought they had won the war, and there have been some unkind comments from Army officers of high enough rank to be above such pettiness . . . the wounds inflicted by publicity received by someone else do not rate a wound stripe, but they are a long-time healing.19
1. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., “The Cat with More Than Nine Lives,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1954, pp. 659-71.
2. George Barnett to William S. Benson, 17 March 1917, Container 3, Benson Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress; and U.S. Congress, House Naval Affairs Committee, Hearings on Estimates Submitted by the Secretary of the Navy, 1917; 65th Cong., 1st Session, 1917. For the most thorough study of Leatherneck growth in World War I, see Jack Shulimson, “First to Fight: Marine Corps Expansion, 1914-1918,” Prologue 8, Spring 1978, pp. 5-16.
3. John W. Thomason, Jr., Fix Bayonets (New York: Scribners, 1925), pp. x-xiii.
4. George Barnett, “Soldier and Sailor Too,” Chapter 25, George Barnett papers with Secretary of War to the Secretary of the Navy, 16 May 1917, Table of Organization subject file, both sources located at the Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard; Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Years: Years of War and After (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), p. 150; Josephus Daniels’s diary, Daniels Papers; and John J. Pershing’s diary, John J. Pershing Papers, (both Manuscript Division, Library of Congress) are silent on the subject; finally, the records of the Secretary of War, Record Group 107, National Archives and Records Service, reveal nothing untoward on the token deployment of the Marine contingent to France.
5. Pershing to Adjutant General, War Department, 31 August 1917, number 133- s, correspondence of the commander-in-chief; and Adjutant General to Pershing, 17 September 1917, Entry 6, Record Group 120, National Archives Records Service; emphasis added.
6. Albertus W. Catlin, With the Help of God and a Few Marines (New York: Doubleday, 1919), p. 57; James G. Harbord, Leaves from a War Diary (New York: Scribners, 1925), p. 278; “Organization of the Marine Corps League,” The New York Times, 15 May 1923, p. 1; Harbord to John A. Lejeune, 12 July 1918, reel 3, John A. Lejeune Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and Harbord to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 14 November 1918, container 94, Josephus Daniels Papers.
7. Second Division: Summary of Operations in the World War (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1944), p. 23; see also, Robert B. Asprey, Belleau Wood (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1965), passim.
8. Frederick G. Wheeler to Lejeune, 29 March 1919, reel 3, Lejeune Papers; see also, Floyd Gibbons, “The Hottest Four Hours I Ever Went Through,” American Magazine 87 (March 1919): 34-35; 143-148.
9. Newton D. Baker to Daniels, 19 May 1917 and Daniels to Baker, n.d., container 60, reel 39, Daniels Papers.
10. Pershing to the Secretary of War, 18 June 1918, AEF 1331-S and War Department to Pershing, 20 June 1918, Department of the Army 1561-R (confidential), entry 269, Record Group 120, National Archives Research Service; emphasis added.
11. John A. Lejeune, Reminiscences of a Marine (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1930), p. 260.
12. Pershing’s diary, 4 and 9 June, 27 July 1918, Pershing Papers; Lejeune to Daniels, 5 August 1918, Lejeune 1913-1919 file, container 88 and Daniels to Lejeune, 12 September 1919, container 88, Daniels Papers.
13. E. David Cronin, ed. The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913-1921 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), p. 295.
14. U.S. Congress, House Naval Affairs Committee, 23 January 1918, Hearings on Estimates Submitted by the Secretary of the Navy, 1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), p. 230; and Barnett to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 12 June 1918, folder 7, Record Group 10, Roosevelt Papers, Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.
15. Barnett, “Soldier and Sailor Too," chapter 25, unpublished memoir, Barnett Papers, Marine Corps Historical Center.
16. Lejeune’s fitness reports from Hunter Liggett (III Corps, St. Mihiel) and Charles G. Summerall (V Corps, Meuse-Argonne) contain no damaging information; however, the secret evaluation prepared subsequently by Summerall impugns Lejeune’s professional character. A final report prepared by John L. Hines was so damning that Lejeune succeeded in having the document removed from his official record. Container 1953, central file 201.6.e.e, Research Group 120, National Archives Research Service.
17. Malin Craig to Lejeune, 22 November 1918; and Lejeune to Craig, 25 November 1918, reel 3, Lejeune Papers.
18. Quoted in Frederick Palmer, Newton D. Baker: America at War, 2 vol. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931), 2:222.
19. Paul D. Malone to Harbord, 13 June 1919, file 21678-A-592, entry 15, files of the chief of staff, Research Group 120, National Archives Research Service; and Harbord, The American Army in France (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1936), pp. 290-291.