Archives: Leatherneck Magazines

Executive Editor’s note: We fully realize that it’s a risky maneuver to create a list of the “best of” anything. Not every­thing could make the list; we’d love to hear from our readers about which aircraft would make your list.

Marine Corps aviation dates from 1912 when First Lieutenant Alfred Cunningham, the fifth Naval Aviator, was designated the Corps’ first pilot. Since then, “flying Leathernecks” have logged 113 years of service to the nation in a remarkable variety of aircraft.

Historically, Marine aviators have focused on supporting “the ground,” most notably in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The symbiotic nature of that relationship probably was best illustrated at Guadalcanal where infantry protected Henderson Field while fighter and bomber squadrons countered the enemy at sea and ashore.

This subjective list of aircraft is based on historic sig­nificance to Marine Aviation, combat record and longevity of service. Most of the selections have passed into history, but the primary list and an honorable mention category include current aircraft such as the CH-53, F/A-18 Hornet, AV-8 Harrier and C-130 Hercules. For a look at which aircraft made our Honorable Mention list, check out page 67 in the May issue of Leatherneck.

Vought O2U Corsair

For 75 years, Vought Aircraft in its many iterations provided naval aviation with everything from 90-knot biplanes to supersonic jets. Among the first was the O2U observation plane of 1927. Its wheels were removable for floats, enhancing the type’s versatility.

First Lieutenant Christian Schilt flew an O2U in his 1928 Medal of Honor actions in Nicaragua, though the aircraft’s public exposure peaked in the 1933 “King Kong” movie. Some 460 were built for U.S. plus export models, and the biplane was still in service at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Wingspan: 34 ft. 6 in.
Length: 24 ft. 8 in.
Height: 10 ft.
Wing Area: 337 sq. ft.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R1340
425 hp radial
Maximum Weight: 3,600 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 151 mph
Service Ceiling: 22,500 ft.
Range: 580 statute miles

Douglas SBD Dauntless

Though considered obsolescent by 1942, the Dauntless carried the offensive load at Guadalcanal and points north. In fact, the Pacific War could not have been prosecuted with another scout-bomber, as the limited-production Vought SB2U proved inadequate and the Curtiss SB2C only arrived at the end of 1943.

Captain Richard Fleming was the only Marine dive bomber pilot awarded the Medal of Honor, as he perished at Midway.

The Corps continued flying SBDs until VJ Day, notably in the Central Pacific, plus the unique record of guarding the Sixth Army’s flank during the advance on Manila in 1945.

Wingspan: 41 ft. 6 in.
Length: 33 ft.
Height: 13 ft. 7 in.
Wing Area: 325 sq. ft.
Engine: Wright R-1820 radial, 1,200 hp
Maximum Weight: 10,700 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 255 mph
Service Ceiling: 22,500 ft.
Range: 1,400 statute miles

Grumman F4F Wildcat

From Wake Island onward, the Wildcat monopolized Marine fighter squadrons for the first 21 months of the Pacific War. Corsairs only began arriving in February 1943 and did not fully replace Wildcats until that summer.

When Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox famously said, “Grumman saved Guadalcanal,” he was referring to the F4F, though the TBF Avenger also contributed to that effort.

Seven Marines earned Medals of Honor in F4Fs: Henry Elrod, John L. Smith, Bob Galer, “Joe” Bauer, Joe Foss, Jeff DeBlanc and Jim Swett. Elrod died at Wake Island and Bauer disappeared near Guadalcanal.

Wingspan: 38 ft.
Length: 28 ft. 9 in.
Height: 11 ft. 10 in.
Wing area: 260 sq. ft.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney
R-1830 Twin Wasp
Maximum weight: 7,065 lbs.
Maximum speed: 330 mph
Service ceiling: 31,000 ft.
Range: 770 statute miles

Vought F4F-4 Corsair

If any aircraft personifies Marine aviation, it remains Vought’s crank-winged F4U Corsair. Its iconic status remains due to VMF-214’s notoriety with Major Gregory Boyington. But from 1943 to 1945, the “U bird” flew with 35 other VMFs.
Contrary to legend, the Corsair was not kept off aircraft carriers because it was unsafe. The reason had more to do with sustaining two fighters in the fleet. However, in late 1944, the Kamikaze crisis brought Marines aboard carriers, augmenting Grumman F6F Hellcats.

At the start of the Korean War in June 1950, at least eight Marine squadrons flew F4U-4s plus two with F4U-5N night fighters. The last Reserve squadrons retired Corsairs in 1967.

Wingspan: 41 ft.
Length: 33 ft. 8 in.
Height: 14 ft. 9 in.
Wing area: 314 sq. ft.
Engine: 2,300 hp Pratt & Whitney R2800 radial
Maximum weight: 14,500 lbs.
Maximum speed: 446 mph
Service ceiling: 41,500 ft.
Range: 1,000 statute miles clean

Sikorsky UH-34 Seahorse

The widely used UH-34 was variously called the Choctaw (Army), Seabat (Navy) and Seahorse (Marines). Usually leatherneck aircrews just said, “The 34” or referred to the ubiquitous D model as “The Dog.”

Powered by the same basic engine as the SBD, Sikorsky’s UH-34 personified Marine “in country” aviation during the Vietnam War. It was the Corps’ last piston-powered helicopter but remained in combat alongside Bell UH-1s and CH-46 Sea Knights until 1969. In his book “Dispatches,” correspondent Michael Herr wrote “The 34 had a lot of heart.” It remained in service until 1973.

Main rotor diameter: 56 ft.
Length: 45 ft. 9 in.
Height: 15 ft. 11 in.
Main rotor area: 2,463 sq. ft.
Engine: Wright R-1820 1,525 hp radial
Maximum Weight: 14,000 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 122 mph
Service Ceiling: 12,000 ft.
Range: 190 statute miles

Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight

Originally the Sea Knight was designed by Vertol, then produced by Boeing. The first flight of the commercial version was in 1958, entering service in 1964 as a rare twin-turbine design. The twin rotors provided greater hover and lift capability.

The “Phrog” became a common sight in Vietnam, as it could carry 25 troops. But 109 were lost, more than any other Marine aircraft.
Production ended in 1971 with 524 for U.S. and foreign clients. It was best known to the public for evacuation of the embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1975.

The CH-46 was used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines retired it in 2015.

Rotor diameters: 55 ft.
Length: 44 ft. 10 in.
Height: 16 ft. 9 in.
Rotor Area: 3,900 sq. ft.
Engine: Two GE T58 turboshafts, 1,870 hp each
Maximum Weight: 24,300 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 166 mph
Service Ceiling: 17,000 ft.
Range: 690 statute miles

McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk

Designed as a subsonic attack jet, the long-lived A-4 was produced as single- and two-seaters. Originally cast as a nuclear delivery “platform,” the Skyhawk carved a niche for itself in Marine attack squadrons throughout the Vietnam War. About 80 were lost in Southeast Asia.

Douglas’ A-4 airframe proved rugged and durable, surviving battle damage in thousands of close air support sorties.

In all, more than 30 Marine operational, reserve and training squadrons flew the “Scooter.” The last Marine Skyhawks retired in 1998.

Wingspan: 27 ft. 6 in.
Length: 40 ft. 5 in.
Height: 15 ft. 2 in.
Wing Area: 260 sq. ft.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney
J51, 8,500 lbs. thrust
Maximum Weight: 16,200 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 673 statute mph
Service Ceiling: 40,000 ft.
Range: 1,100 statute miles

McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom II

Big, angular and imposing just sitting on the ramp, the Phantom exuded power and lethality. Its twin J79 afterburning engines drove the two-seater past Mach 2 in both fighter-bomber and reconnaissance versions.

With extraordinary ordnance capacity, the Phantom could loiter over forward air controllers “in contact” with enemy forces. Marine squadrons lost nearly 100 Phantoms in the Vietnam War.

The last Marine F-4s were retired in 1992, concluding a 30-year career. They were replaced by the same firm’s F/A-18 Hornets, which continue operating today.

Wingspan: 38 ft. 5 in.
Length: 63 ft.
Height: 16 ft. 5 in
Wing Area: 530 sq. ft.
Engines: Two General Electric J79s, 17,800 lbs. thrust
Maximum Weight: 41,500 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 1,470 mph (Mach 2.2)
Service Ceiling: 60,000 ft.
Range: 370 statute miles combat

McDonnell Douglas AV-8 Harrier

Intended for expeditionary air support, the subsonic AV-8 Harrier was inspired by a British prototype from 1960. The Harrier’s single engine with thrust nozzles permits unmatched agility including vertical takeoffs and landings on ships as well as confined spaces ashore.

Marines obtained AV-8As in 1971, and the B model in 1985.

AV-8s have been flown by eight operational squadrons and a dedicated training unit. In 2024, two squadrons retained Harriers, and earlier this year, “AV-8-tors” were shooting down Houthi drones threatening shipping in the Red Sea.

Wingspan: 30 ft. 4 in.
Length: 46 ft. 4 in.
Height: 11 ft. 1 in.
Wing Area: 243 sq. ft.
Engine: Rolls-Royce Pegasus turbofan, 23,500 lbs. thrust
Maximum Weight: 22,900 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 673 mph
Service Ceiling: 50,000 ft. plus
Range: 1,400 statute miles

McDonnell Douglas FA-18 Hornet

The Hornet arose from a Navy requirement for a lower cost replacement for the F-14 Tomcat. Designated F/A-18 for fighter-attack, it first flew in 1978 and entered service in 1983-1984 with the larger, more capable FA-18E/F Super Hornet debuting in 2001.

Two-seat Hornets with a naval flight officer are better able to perform strike missions than single-seaters, with enhanced night capability.

As of 2024, six squadrons still flew Hornets during transition to the F-35B vertical takeoff and F-35C conventional carrier versions.

Wingspan: 40 ft. 4 in.
Length: 56 ft. 1 in.
Height: 15 ft. 5 in.
Wing Area: 410 sq. ft.
Engines: Two GE F404 turbofans, 17,750 lbs. thrust
Maximum Weight: 36,900 lbs.
Maximum Speed: 1,190 mph (Mach 1.8)
Service Ceiling: 50,000 ft. plus
Range: 1,250 statute miles clean

 

Alfred Austell Cunningham is rightly celebrated as the “Father of Marine Corps Aviation.”

His arrival at the Navy’s aviation training camp is the birth date of Marine aviation, and in fact, his own lobbying for aviation in the Marine Corps led to his assignment in aviation training. He is well known for his nearly 10 years of de facto leadership in the field of aviation, but what is less well known is the lasting impact that he has had on the fundamental nature of Marine Corps aviation, specifically, his maxim that the only reason for Marine aviation is to support the Marine on the ground—an idea that remains part of the organizational identity today. Though Cunningham did not express this idea explicitly until 1920, there is evidence that it was a driving idea, albeit perhaps unconsciously, of his vision for Marine aviation from the very beginning.

Not much is known about Alfred Cunningham before he became a Marine in 1909. He was born in Atlanta, Ga., in 1882, the sixth child (and fourth son) of John Daniel and Cornelia Cunningham. The one incident from his life before the Marine Corps, and the one most often mentioned, is his ascension in a balloon in 1903, which reportedly engendered his interest in flight.

Nothing in the documents found in­d­i­cates why Cunningham applied for a Marine commission in 1908, but his ap­plication was successful, and he took his oath of office on Jan. 25, 1909. After at­tending the Marine Officer’s School at Port Royal, S.C., he was as­signed to various ships’ Marine detach­ments. In July 1911, Cunningham was “stashed” on the receiving ship in Phila­delphia, awaiting his next assignment to the newly established Advanced Base Force, where he reported on Nov. 11, 1911.

In Philadelphia, Cunningham was finally able to pursue his aviation in­terests. Soon after checking in aboard the receiving ship, he quickly found an airplane he could borrow to try to teach himself to fly. He nicknamed it “Noisy Nan.” He secured permission from the Navy Yard CO to use a field on the base, and he made his first attempts to pilot the plane less than a month after reporting to Philadelphia, though Nan was too under­powered to fly.

Cunningham also connected with the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, a group that included prominent Philadelphia busi­ness­men interested in promoting aviation. According to at least one history, he per­suaded members of the club to lobby Congress for a Marine flying field at the Navy Yard. Reportedly, Major General Commandant William Biddle, found out Cunningham was behind the campaign and agreed to send him for flight training if he got the club to stop badgering Congress.

The ABF had developed from lessons learned by the Navy in the Pacific during the Spanish-American War. Its purpose was to protect an advanced base (a pro­tected anchorage) where the Navy could repair and refuel after crossing the Pacific before going into battle. The Marines, however, had only been given responsi­bility for defending such a base against landward attack in 1910. The newly estab­lished ABF school was as much about deciding what the ABF should be as it was about teaching that doctrine to Ma­rines. Thus, it was not untoward for Cunningham to make a recommendation about the force.

On Feb. 12, 1912, Cunningham wrote a letter to the ABF School’s commanding officer recommending the purchase of airplanes for the ABF, arguing that “the necessity for an aeroplane is constantly and emphatically evident” and that air­planes for reconnaissance were “neces­sary to the proper efficiency of the Ma­rine Corps.” The letter worked its way up to Biddle, who agreed that aircraft would be useful to the ABF.

Though Cunningham did not explicitly describe aviation as he would in 1920—with its purpose being only to help the Marine on the ground—this supporting relationship was inherent in the proposal. He did not say that the airplane could or would act independently. He was describ­ing it, in modern terms, as a force multi­plier: something that would make the ground Marines more effective. Admit­tedly, the technology of the airplane at this time meant that it was incapable of independent action. On the other hand, that did not stop some flight enthusiasts from anticipating that that would soon change. However, Cunningham never ad­vocated for independent aerial missions.

Biddle consulted with the Navy De­part­ment, which agreed that airplanes would be useful to the Marine Corps and suggested that Marine officers be sent to the Navy’s aviation camp for training and experience. Cunningham got his orders, reporting to Annapolis, Md., on May 22, 1912. The second Marine aviator, Bernard Smith, also got orders to aviation at this time but did not report until September.

While Cunningham had envisioned a particular mission for Marine aviation, neither he nor Smith had much oppor­tunity to practice a uniquely “Marine” form of flight. All of the naval aviators needed to gain experience in the air and transition from simply learning to fly safely toward learning to navigate and become useful in the air. At the same time, the small naval aviation camp needed to do its own experiments with aircraft. Flying time with the limited number of aircraft was a scarce commodity.

In August 1913, Cunningham had to leave flying behind. His fiancée, Josephine, refused to marry Alfred if he was actively flying. Though he was out of the pilot’s seat, he remained connected to Marine aviation, serving as the Corps’ representative on the Navy’s Board on Aeronautics. The “Chambers Board” as it was known (after its chair, Navy Captain Washington I. Chambers), was intended to create a comprehensive plan for naval aviation. Its final report on Nov. 25, 1913, among other recommendations, proposed purchasing six aircraft for the ABF along with all necessary equipment and even suggested designating auxiliary vessels to carry all of it for expeditionary service. Such considerations likely reflected Cunningham’s presence on the board. On the other hand, he missed out on the one pre-war opportunity for Marine Corps aviation to operate independently: as part of the ABF maneuvers at Culebra, Puerto Rico, in early 1914.

By 1915, he was apparently able to change Josephine’s mind, as he returned to aviation, with the stipulation that he would have to go through the training curriculum as it then existed. He finished the Navy’s new schooling in September, and in the spring of 1916, he requested to be sent to the Army’s flight school in San Diego. Landplane and seaplane flying were considered very different skills at the time, with landplanes exclusive to the Army. Cunningham, recognizing that an effective aviation section for the ABF would need both types of planes, wanted to be trained in both. He received the requested orders and reported to San Diego at the end of June.

While he was traveling to San Diego, the Navy officer at the “aviation desk” in Washington proposed that the Navy establish the aeronautic section of the First ABF in Philadelphia as soon as possible. He recommended that the unit consist of two airplanes, two seaplanes, two ob­servation balloons, and the equipment and personnel to operate and maintain them in the field. The suggested table of organization and equipment closely matched the ideas of Bernard Smith following the 1914 Culebra maneuvers. Commandant George Barnett, who had replaced Biddle in 1914, agreed with the proposal, issuing orders on Aug. 24 to establish the aeronautic unit in Philadelphia.

While Cunningham had missed out on the Culebra exercises, he returned to aviation intent on establishing a distinct Marine aviation identity. He responded to the Aug. 24 order as though he were going to be in charge. He wrote to Barnett on Aug. 29 giving preliminary recommen­dations for the aeronautical unit, promis­ing to send an itemized list of equipment, machinery, and tools needed at the new airfield along with his own wooden hangar design. He likely finished Army flight training before October 1916, but other duties kept him on the West Coast for several more months. At the end of January, Barnett ordered Cunningham to Philadelphia, on temporary duty, to inspect the proposed flying field and make recommendations for the physical organization of what was soon to be known as the Marine Aeronautic Com­pany. While Cunningham had put con­siderable work into planning and or­ganizing the aeronautic company, he was not formally named its CO until Feb. 26. However, he was still wrapping up work for another Navy board (examining sites for new bases and airfields) and did not officially arrive in Philadelphia until March 3.

As soon as the United States declared war against Germany on April 6, 1917, Barnett began advocating for the Marines to have a combat role alongside the Army. This would eventually take the form of the 4th Marine Brigade of the 2d Division, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Headquarters Marine Corps proceeded on the assumption that the Corps would provide its own aviation assets for the brigade as called for by the Army’s tables of organization and equipment. On July 27, Barnett proposed that the Marine Corps organize a squad­ron of landplanes “for service with the Marines in France.” Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels approved this plan on Aug. 20 and directed Barnett to contact the Army’s Signal Corps, in charge of Army aviation, to discuss equipping and training the squadron.

On Sept. 17, Barnett wrote to the Army’s Chief Signal Officer proposing that the Army train one balloon company and one landplane aviation squadron of Marines for service in France. On Oct. 10, Cunningham re­ported to Barnett that the Army would train the Marine Aviation Squadron in both basic and advanced flight training in landplanes. He wrote that once the training was complete, “the Squadron [would] then be ready for service in France and the Army [would] completely equip it with the same technical equip­ment furnished their squadrons.” At the same time, eight Marine officers and six enlisted Marines would be sent through the Army’s Balloon School to learn bal­loon ground crew duties. The Marines would then have flyers and balloonists ready to support the Marines on the front lines in France.

Though the Army had agreed to train the Marine flyers, the nature of that service had not been specified. Sometime in October, the Army told Cunningham that it would not let Marine aviation pro­vide air support for the Marine brigade. This was not simply Army aviation want­ing to keep all the glory for itself: The Army at this time was recycling most of its own newly fledged aviators as well as Marine aviators back into the training pipeline as instructors. Even in France, the Army never had enough squadrons to permanently assign a squadron to divisions or even corps, much less brigades!

Not happy with a non-combat role, Cunningham arranged orders for a trip to Europe. Ostensibly, his purpose was to investigate French and British training methods. He later admitted, though, that he had made the trip hoping he could get the AEF staff to give Marine aviation a combat role. He arrived in France on Nov. 18, 1917. He packed a lot into his in­spection tour, but he was no more successful in talking the AEF into giving Marine aviation a combat role than he had been with Army officials in Washington. All was not lost, however, as he did come back from Europe with an idea for how Marine aviation could contribute in a combat role.

During his tour, he had learned of British attempts to bomb German sub­marines as they transited in and out of captured Belgian ports. The subs were particularly vulnerable here as extensive shallows forced them to remain on the surface for miles and limited their ability to evade attacks. German counter­measures included heavy coastal artillery guns to keep ships out of the area and land-based fighter squadrons to prevent aerial attacks. Cunningham believed that a few squadrons of land-based Marine Corps fighters could provide the neces­sary escort for Navy seaplanes to bomb the submarines. He returned to the United States in January 1918, presented his proposal to the Navy’s General Board on Feb. 5, and on March 11 received orders to proceed to Miami to begin assembling four Marine fighter squadrons as the First Marine Aviation Force (FMAF).

Cunningham’s idea did not get Marine aviation to France to support the Marine brigade, but it did get his aviators into combat. As it happened, the nature of what became the Northern Bombing Group (NBG), and the FMAF’s role in it, changed significantly even before the first FMAF personnel reached France. On April 30, the Navy authorized what would eventually be known as the NBG—the name changed several times as the plan was developed—for a round-the-clock bombing campaign against the U-boat bases in occupied Belgium. The four Marine squadrons Cunningham was training up would become the Day Bombing Wing of the NBG.

Cunningham and three of the squadrons arrived in France on July 30. But because of supply problems, they did not yet have any airplanes. Cunningham arranged with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) to have small numbers of his aircrew rotate through the nearby RAF No. 217 and No. 218 Squadrons, which flew very similar aircraft to what the Marines were expecting. The arrangement gave the Marines an introduction to combat alongside veteran aviators and the RAF a solution to their personnel shortages.

Both RAF squadrons were dedicated entirely to what today would be called air support and interdiction missions in support of the Allied armies in Flanders. Even once the Marine Day Wing began getting its own aircraft, it continued to work closely with the two RAF squad­rons. In doing so, the Marine squadrons had drifted considerably from both Cunningham’s original plan and the Navy’s intent for them as part of the NBG. However, they were getting ex­perience in the kind of warfare that Cunningham originally sought: they were supporting troops on the ground.

When the armistice appeared immi­nent, Cunningham began angling to have the Marine aviators sent home as soon as possible. The Marine Day Wing arrived back in Miami in January and February of 1919, where the unit was disbanded and most of the personnel demobilized. The same happened to the First Marine Aviation Company (which had been flying anti-submarine patrols in the Azores) in March.

Back in the United States, Cunningham resumed his efforts to establish an in­de­pendent Marine aviation. Barnett formally named him head of the Ma­rine Section of Naval Aviation, and Cunningham was quick off the mark with a “Proposed Program for Marine Section, Naval Aviation.” This three-page doc­ument, dated Jan. 13, 1919, proposed a “definite program and mission for the Marine Aviation Section.” Cunningham reiterated that the Marine aviators with advanced base and expeditionary oper­ations would need to be trained in both land and seaplanes. Despite his antag­onism toward the Navy in some of his letters both at the time and later on, he insisted in this document that the Marine Section should continue to be closely associated with the Navy by continuing to train and operate alongside Navy pilots. Perhaps he recognized the political necessity of remaining on good terms with the Navy, which, after all, was—and remains—responsible for providing air­planes and necessary supplies and equip­ment to the Marine aviation program.

Cunningham urgently wanted to get aviation into the field too. In Miami, those personnel who had not been demobilized were redistributed among the five extant Marine squadrons (four from the Day Wing and one, Squadron E, from the Azores). The 1st Division, Squadron D, left Miami to work with the Second Provisional Brigade in the Dominican Republic in February 1919. Squadron E left the following month to work with the 1st Provisional Brigade in Haiti. Other squadrons established new Marine airfields at Quantico and Parris Island.

During this reshuffling, the Navy General Board’s hearings on naval avi­ation policy in early 1919 also considered a Marine aviation policy. Cunningham appeared before the Board on April 7 to speak for Marine aviation, telling the Board, “I believe there is an important logical and well-defined mission for the Marine section and that is to furnish the air force required for operating with the advanced base and expeditionary forces.” When the Board asked whether Marines really needed their own airfields—whether they could not continue using existing Navy fields—Cunningham ex­plained his belief that Marine airfields should be established near the ground forces they were to work with so that air and ground units could practice together. The General Board’s final report recom­mended that the Navy Department ac­quire kite balloons, landplanes, and sea­planes for use with Marine Corps ad­vanced base units. The Board also sug­gested that each ABF unit should have an aerodrome nearby to improve air-ground cooperation. This relationship was something Cunningham had wanted from the very beginning, and this was his first chance since 1912 to clearly reiterate it.

Cunningham had another chance to influence official doctrine around that time. In a letter to the Navy Bureaus and the Commandant describing the plans for Naval Aviation in the 1920 fiscal year, Chief of Naval Operations William Benson stated (or at least signed off on the statement) that, “The most important work ahead of [M]arine aviators is to prove to the ground troops that they can be of real service to them in carrying out their war duties. This can only be done by actually operating with them.” Following this was a long list of specific duties for coordination with infantry and artillery, which Marine aviators would be expected to train for. While the letter appeared over Benson’s signature, Cunningham more than likely contributed the original draft of this portion of the plan.

Cunningham’s article in the September 1920 Marine Corps Gazette, “Value of Aviation to the Marine Corps,” likely drafted about the same time as the in­put to Benson’s report, is more open about some Marines having a poor opinion of aviation. Early in the article, Cunningham cites the need for Marine aviation to “overcome a combination of doubt as to usefulness, lack of sympathy, and a feeling on the part of some line officers that aviators and aviation enlisted men are not real Marines.” A bit later, Cunningham states, “Having in mind their experience with aviation activities in France, a great many Marine officers have expressed themselves as being un­friendly to aviation and doubting its full value.”

He explained the issues that prevented the FMAF from serving with the 4th but went on to say that, with the conclusion of postwar reorganization in the States, “we are looking forward with enthusiasm to our real work of cooperating helpfully with the remainder of the Corps.” Cunningham tried to re­assure the doubters, stating that “the only excuse for aviation in any service is its usefulness in assisting the troops on the ground”—an assertion he had also made to the General Board in 1919. The declaration may also have been a clear position against Army aviator William “Billy” Mitchell, who was just beginning to agitate for a unified and independent air service.

The first half of Cunningham’s article is a brief history of Marine aviation to date, emphasizing its small size prior to 1917 and detailing how it came to staff the aerial patrol bases in the Azores and Miami and become part of the NBG. He gave plenty of detail on what the Marine Day Wing did accomplish during the war and went on to note the detachments sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1919—and that the brigade commanders in both places have been “very compli­men­tary” of the aviators’ work. He sug­gested various ways in which aviation could assist troops in the future, a list that is copied almost verbatim from the list of duties in the CNO’s July 1 letter. He expressed confidence that, by working with the ground forces, aviation would begin to show the ground forces “that we can contribute in a surprising degree to the success of all their operations.” This, however, would be Cunningham’s last direct influence on Marine Corps aviation.

In December 1920, Cunningham was relieved as Director of Marine Aviation and sent to command the squadron in the Dominican Republic. Then, in July 1922, Cunningham turned over command of the First Air Squadron and left Marine Aviation in accordance with a policy he himself had promoted to ensure that aviators did not become too isolated from the rest of the Corps. In 1928, Cunning­ham wanted to return to aviation duty. He was told there were no administrative positions open. If he wanted back into aviation, he would have to do so as a flyer: pass the physical and take some refresher training.

Unfortunately, before he could formally request new orders, he was sent to Nicaragua, where the Marine Corps was sending as many Marines as it could to help control the political violence ahead of contentious national elections. While there, Cunningham con­tracted a tropical disease that saw him medically evacuated back to D.C. on a hospital ship. Health problems dogged him for the rest of his life, preventing him from taking up flying again. Cunningham retired from the Corps in 1935 without ever returning to aviation and died in 1939.

Cunningham’s influence, however, would remain with Marine aviation well past his leadership assignment, partic­ularly in his desire for the close coordina­tion of Marine aviators and ground forces and his assertion that aviation only existed to help the troops. Cunningham’s influence is reflected to this day in the six functions of Marine aviation as taught at The Basic School: Offensive Air Sup­port, Anti-Air Warfare, Assault Support, Air Reconnaissance, Electronic Warfare and Control of Aircraft and Missiles. Each of these functions has a greater or lesser coordination be­tween air and ground forces, but all are aimed at en­suring that the aviators’ efforts make the troops’ tasks easier, whether that is of­fense, defense or force sustainment. De­spite having vacated the senior leader­ship role for aviation in 1921, Cunning­ham’s belief in the raison d’etre for Marine aviation remains foundational more than a century later in the notion of the Marine air-ground team. It is this, rather than merely being the first Marine to report to aviation, for which he de­serves the appellation “the Father of Marine Aviation.”

Author’s bio: Dr. Laurence M. Burke II is the aviation curator at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and author of “At the Dawn of Airpower: The U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps’ Ap­proach to the Airplane, 1907-1917.”
He earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. After grad­uating, he held a postdoc position in the history department at the U.S. Naval Academy followed by several years as the curator of U.S. Naval Aviation at the National Air and Space Museum before joining the NMMC.

Author’s note: To the Marines of MAP 7, thank you for entrusting me with your experiences and allowing me to share them. I hope what follows may appropriately honor the memory of your fallen and elevate your service toward the level of recognition it deserves. Semper Fidelis.

In late 2004, Sergeant Randall Watkins faced the most unusual task of his Marine Corps career. An active-duty infantry squad leader turned prospective officer candidate, now Watkins found himself in a POG (Person Other than Grunt) reserve unit with orders to create an infantry platoon out of the cooks, clerks and mechanics surrounding him.

Watkins left active duty earlier that year to finish college and achieve his goal of becoming a Marine officer. Tumul­tuous events in Iraq, however, swayed his decisions elsewhere. The war would end soon, he believed. If he wanted in on the action, he had to get back in uniform and over there now. Watkins dropped out of school in his home state of Texas and joined the nearest reserve unit, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion, out of San Antonio. Despite his infantry background and active-duty experience, 4th Recon did not have a place for him. The battalion shipped Watkins and numerous others like him to Twentynine Palms, Calif., to fill out another reserve unit preparing for war.

The 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Reg­iment, 4th Marine Division, gathered there for predeployment training and time was running short. Based in Ohio, the battalion was activated to fight in Iraq and called up Marines sprinkled across the country. Even now gathered at full strength, 3/25 came up short-handed. Officers planning the deployment faced another problem. Their future area of operation spanned a huge swath of Anbar province, the Wild West of Iraq. To ad­equately cover the zone, they needed high­ly mobile, heavily armed small units capable of speeding throughout the area at a moment’s notice. The battalion’s lead­ers devised the Mobile Assault Platoons (MAPs) to fill the gap.

When Watkins showed up, 3/25 assim­ilated him into Headquarters and Service (H&S) Company. He loathed the prospect of an Iraq deployment trapped inside the wire with headquarters, until one day when everything changed. Battalion command tapped Staff Sergeant Michael Brady, another former infantryman and longtime 3/25 member, to be the new platoon commander for MAP 7. Watkins, by coincidence in the company office as the conversation took place, was named platoon sergeant. In addition to its “mo­bile assault” function, an ambiguous role still being defined, MAP 7 would act as the battalion’s personal security detail for the officers and senior enlisted leaders traveling around Iraq. Whatever its role might turn out to be became the primary problem for Brady. Watkins’ responsibility was to create the platoon from scratch.

The available pool from which to select proved woefully limited. Infantrymen were not available. Instead, the battalion offered mechanics, truck drivers, cooks or any other Marine Watkins wanted from H&S Company. He began with the highest scores on the rifle range and physical fitness test. Beyond those basic qualifications, he scrutinized civilian jobs, looking for any Marine employed or trained in anything remotely “Marine.”

The candidates’ lack of face value be­lied the prior service or civilian roots of numerous H&S Marines that distin­guished them as immediate choices. Like Watkins, most joined the Marines how­ever they could to get into the fight. Many selectees came from the batch of Texans pawned off from 4th Recon. Corporal Zane Childress very nearly earned him­self Non-Judicial Punishment for the hell he raised over being assigned as a radio operator with H&S rather than an infan­try platoon. The comm shop gladly gave him away. Sgt Aaron Cepeda, a cook by trade, was also a double major in chem­istry and biology, well on his way to medical school, and one of the smartest people Watkins ever met. Sergeant Michael Marzano was a former active-duty mortarman who rejoined in the Marine Corps Reserve and wound up a bulk fuel specialist.

Lance Corporal Lance Graham towered over the Marines around him, standing nearly 6 1/2-feet tall and weighing almost 250 pounds without his gear. He filled a slot in the supply section but could shoot as good as any Marine Watkins knew.

“Whoever that reserve recruiter was for 4th Recon, he deserves an award be­cause he got some rockstars into some shitty billets,” Watkins mused recently. “People got labeled with their bullshit reserve titles, but I had some real studs.”

Ohio natives volunteered as well. Four mechanics out of the motor pool and fast friends from Cleveland interviewed with Watkins. LCpl Todd Corbin stood out as a no-brainer for selection. In his early 30s, nearly a decade older than most others, Corbin served as a deputy sheriff and SWAT Team member. Watkins also brought on LCpl Mark Kalinowski, the brightest and hardest working mechanic in the motor pool, and Cpl Jeff Schuller, a high school and college wrestler. To set himself apart from the bulk of Ohioans volunteering, Schuller fabricated part of his personal history, adding a background in military police, banking that Watkins would not check into it. The ploy worked and Schuller was accepted. Corporal Stan Mayer volunteered once he learned Schuller and the rest of his friends had left H&S to join MAP 7. Watkins ac­cepted Mayer based on his training, hav­ing completed the first half of Platoon Leader’s Course on his way to becoming a Marine officer, and having trained extensively with the U.S. Army National Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group in Columbus.

For the next few months, Watkins worked the platoon day and night.

“Mobile Assault Platoon 7 was not infantrymen, it was ‘every Marine a rifleman,’ ” remembered Mayer. “Watkins was not happy that he didn’t have in­fantrymen, and he would be damned if he didn’t make us into the infantrymen he wanted. He treated that work up like a deployment. He would not let us sleep. There was not one minute he let go by that we weren’t learning. What that really did was it made the platoon have a special chemistry.”

The battalion arrived in Iraq on March 6, 2005, and proceeded to Haditha, 150 miles northwest of Baghdad. The Marines occupied the Haditha Dam, a massive, multi-level concrete structure situated across the Euphrates River.

Other towns in Anbar Province such as Fallujah or Ramadi already gained notoriety since the 2003 invasion. Haditha had yet to cement its place in the history of the Iraq War.

MAP 7 fell into a repeating cycle. The platoon spent most days on the road conducting route reconnaissance, setting up observation posts or ferrying the bat­talion commander around the AO. Peri­od­ically, the platoon received a scheduled day of rest. Despite the size of the dam, living space was cramped. Marines piled into dormitory-style rooms, some with balconies overlooking the river and the urban center of Haditha several miles south. They filled their off days cleaning weapons, tinkering with their trucks and chain-smoking cigarettes on the balcony while heckling sister platoons doing the same.

When not on rest or a planned mission, MAPs took turns as the battalion Quick Reaction Force (QRF). The duty platoon stuck close to the dam, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. If nothing bad happened, QRF days became another day of rest. Platoons could never relax, however, in the presence of the phone. Marine communicators strung telephone wire down the MAP hallway inside the dam, ending at a single, red telephone. Like the ubiquitous “bat phone,” the QRF phone existed for one purpose.

“It’s not like it was ever your mom calling,” said Jeff Schuller, today a major and active-duty infantry officer. “It’s never good news. You’re just sitting there reading, watching stupid movies, trying to think about anything other than what you’re doing. That thing would ring and hearts would just drop. I don’t think I’ve ever hated an inanimate object in my life as much as I hated that phone.”

The phone rang a lot. Any time the battalion had troops in contact, the QRF deployed to assist. Any time a mortar round struck the dam, the QRF inves­tigated the point of origin. Any time another platoon struck an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), the QRF de­ployed to recover the vehicle. By the time a tour of duty ended, platoons coming off QRF gleefully passed the phone to the next in line like a hot potato.

MAP 7 had its first casualty less than two weeks into the deployment when a humvee in the column hit a landmine. The explosion severed the leg of LCpl Aaron Rice seated inside the vehicle. The vehicle was destroyed, but thankfully, Rice survived. At the motor pool in Al Asad, the platoon sought another humvee as a replacement. The Motor Transport chief offered instead an up-armored, heavily modified 7-ton. The truck pre­viously served as a command vehicle. The gutted cargo area had new seating and tables installed.

Marines welded pintle mounts around the exterior of the bed, enabling the addition of several machine guns. When fully outfitted, the truck bristled with gun barrels like an old WW II bomber. A 7-ton was a poor plat­form for casualty evacuations and the antithesis of “mobile” or “assault,” but the platoon would have to make it work. As one of the only Marines with a license to operate the vehicle, Todd Corbin volunteered to drive.

By the beginning of May, MAP 7 covered hundreds of miles around Anbar province. The platoon encountered IEDs and traded fire with the enemy in numerous encounters. Despite several close calls, Rice remained the only casualty. MAP 7 returned to the dam on May 6 to rest and refit once again following another 24-hour patrol. As the sun rose on May 7, the exhausted Marines sipped coffee and tried to relax, waiting out the daylight hours. Again that night already, MAP 7 was scheduled to depart after dark to an overnight observation post. To make matters worse, QRF duty fell to them once again for the day. A significant portion of the battalion de­ployed west toward the Syrian border in preparation for Operation Matador, a major offensive scheduled to begin the next day. MAP 7 remained in the rear with a skeleton crew at the dam.

In the morning, Mark Kalinowski lo­cated Schuller in his room and hounded him to get their truck down to the motor pool. Earlier that week, Schuller spotted brand new humvee turrets, boxed up and waiting to be installed. Kalinowski ada­mantly wanted the upgrade. As the vehicle gunner standing exposed above the roof, his life depended on it. A cylin­drical metal shield formed his current turret, like a large barrel cut in half, offer­ing meager protection. The upgraded turrets were constructed of true armor plating, spaced and angled for maximum protection. Schuller chafed at the idea, wanting instead to relax for the remainder of his day at the dam, but eventually he capitulated. The two spent the next four hours constructing and installing the upgrade. Kalinowski mounted his M240G machine gun and tested the turret’s operation. When traversing the gun left or right, only a small 3-inch gap opened on either side of the armor plate in front of him. The surrounding armor felt sig­nificantly better than his previous ac­commodations. The true level of protec­tion, however, would only be revealed in combat.

The Marines prepared for their over­night mission as the sun dipped in the western sky. Watkins sat with Cepeda in an internet cafe penning digital Mother’s Day cards to send home. A dull “boom” suddenly thudded outside. Watkins im­mediately recognized it as an enemy mortar striking the dam. He ordered Cepeda down to the rest of the platoon to start getting ready to roll out. Watkins made his way to the Combat Operations Center (COC) to find out what they knew. Deep inside the dam, the QRF phone rang to life.

The platoon assembled with their vehicles at the gate leading out the east side of the dam. Insurgents routinely fired mortars from the eastern side of the Euphrates then fled into the open desert. Tonight, however, the COC instructed Watkins to turn his column around and stage at the west gate. This mortar attack originated in Haditha on the western bank. Watkins sensed something off. This was a new tactic. The COC ordered Watkins to stand by and wait for a pair of tanks to support his column.

While MAP 7 waited, machine-gun fire echoed to the south. Word spread of a sister platoon several miles downriver on the eastern bank taking fire from a palm grove in Haditha on the western bank. Marines in riverine patrol boats sped downriver from the dam and blasted the palm grove with machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. Each time the enemy fire ceased and the boats de­parted, mortars soon resumed firing toward the dam and insurgents shot at the MAP on the eastern side.

“We heard the radio traffic start coming through and I was thinking why would someone with an AK-47 start shooting at a gun truck with a machine gun on top?” Watkins said. “It’s suicide. This was obviously something we had never seen before.”

The platoon waited nearly two hours for the tank support to arrive. Despite their frustration over the delay, the Ma­rines’ spirits remained high. Mayer was certain tonight would finally be their opportunity to actively take the fight to the enemy. The sentiment spread. Two Marines from outside the platoon joined at the last minute, a staff sergeant from the armory and a cook eager for his first chance to leave the wire.

Darkness enveloped the dam by the time the tanks arrived. Mayer fired up his humvee. Watkins sat in the vehicle commander seat next to him. One by one, the three humvees of MAP 7 fell in behind the first tank and surged out the gate. Corbin drove his 7-ton in the middle of the line with the last tank bringing up the rear. The palm grove was only 15 minutes away in the heart of Haditha.

The column drove south paralleling the river. Mayer followed the tank ahead through his night vision goggles. He passed a single vehicle on the side of the road with hazard lights flashing at the city line, but no one else appeared anywhere in sight. On the radio, their sister MAP reported the enemy broke contact and disappeared. Haditha fell silent.

Watkins tracked the column’s position on his global positioning system. It lagged and failed to provide him a real-time position as they crossed into the city. By the time it finally updated, Watkins realized they passed their objective in the darkness. He halted the column. Their only option now was to turn around, and to do it as quickly as possible. Six-foot walls line the street on either side of the road. Street lamps dimly illuminated the Haditha hospital rising above the wall on their left, with narrow alleyways dis­appearing into the darkness down either side of the compound. It was a bad spot, and everyone seemed to know it. Chatter over the internal radios ceased.

“It was night so no one really should have been around, but I mean no one was around,” Mayer remembered. “Like in an old western, the rocking chair is rocking but no one is in it. You knew something was going to go down.”

The tanks covered the road to the south as Marines dismounted and the convoy reversed direction. Even the smaller humvees required multi-point turns to spin in the street and point north once again.
Watkins dismounted to provide se­curity and guide his humvee through the dark. He glanced at Mayer before exiting the vehicle.

“I’m gonna go run the rabbit and draw some fire.”

An ambush felt imminent. Watkins figured he would trigger it by exiting the vehicle. With Graham in the turret above watching over him, he remained confident. He reached back and elbowed Graham’s shin standing behind him.

“Let’s go get some.”

Mayer weaved his way around and back through the rest of the vehicles. He parked near the intersection at the corner of the hospital, covering the rear of the column. Behind him, the rest of the platoon began turning around.

“I wanted to get into a good spot for Graham to cover us with his machine gun,” Mayer said. “I was asking him, ‘Is this good? How about this Lance?’ All of the sudden, I heard Lance screaming, ‘Stop motherf–ker! Stop!’ I thought he was screaming at me so I stopped. I thought we had somehow rolled onto an IED he saw that I didn’t. The last thing I heard was Lance spinning the turret, racking his machine gun, and just beginning to open fire when an eruption occurred that was just like a hard reset.”

Unseen by Mayer, a suicide bomber in a van packed with explosives emerged from the darkness, careening down the alley. The van plowed into a wall near Mayer’s humvee and detonated. The awful blast leveled walls and buildings around the intersection. An impenetrable dust cloud covered the area, and a ball of fire exploded upward like the sun rising over the Euphrates.

In his humvee a few dozen meters away, Schuller had just completed his turn. He found an unmolested patch of concrete and drove off the road on top of it. No insurgent, he thought, would go through the effort of pouring fresh concrete over a planted IED. When the suicide bomber detonated, all four wheels of Schuller’s vehicle lifted off the ground. Schuller was dumbfounded and angry, believing he had in fact parked directly over an IED. Behind him, Kalinowski slumped down beneath the turret. A chunk of shrapnel flew through the gap beside his machine gun and obliterated his wrist. Schuller crawled through the cab, closing all the doors that hung open. Gunfire and screaming filled the air. Schuller took Kalinowski’s place in the turret. Outside, dead or wounded Marines littered the street. The remaining hulk of Mayer and Watkins’ humvee glowed a fiery orange through the dust cloud. Muzzle flashes illuminated the hazy outlines of sandbagged positions across the roof line of the hospital. Without hesitation, Schuller spun the turret and opened fire. He poured an unending stream of lead into the building as rounds pinged off the metal around him. The upgraded turret might now save his life rather than Kalinowski’s.

When the blast pressure passed over, Mayer convinced himself that he was not dead. He couldn’t hear. He could barely see or feel. He reached out from inside himself, working through a mental checklist of body parts to rediscover and determine if they were working. He felt pain. His entire body felt flash-fried, like the worst sunburn one could possibly endure. He found his door blown open and lifted himself out of the vehicle. He turned back toward his seat. The ruined humvee sat low on four flat tires with the roof line at chest height. Ricocheting bullets sparkled brightly off the metal top without a sound.

Confounded, Mayer gazed upward toward the hospital. The building disappeared, veiled in dust. Hovering muzzle flashes twinkled in the air, bedazzling the dirty sky.

Amid the sparkling rounds, a per­fectly flat surface stretched out in front of Mayer where the armored turret had once sat. Fire licked up through the hole where the gunner once stood. Where was Graham? The question zapped Mayer back to reality.

“I dropped to the ground and scrambled around on my knees until I found my rifle which had been blown out of the truck,” he said. “I racked a round into the chamber then sat there and took cover. I guess I was waiting for somebody in charge to tell me it’s OK to shoot my rifle because I’d never shot it without a Marine telling me to. I just sat there listening to the rounds slap against the humvee until I realized this was not the rifle range. So I stood up, aimed at the muzzle flash, and pulled the trigger until it went away. After that moment, everything became less ethereal. Everything was all just like a dream state until I had that realization that this was combat.”

Dismounted and standing nearby, Watkins absorbed shrapnel across his body. Enemy gunfire followed the explo­sion. Two rounds struck the plate in Watkins’ body armor and one punched through his shoulder in the same area where a large piece of metal tore through moments before. The resulting wounds looked like someone dug out his left breast with an ice cream scoop.

“I went down and I couldn’t move,” Watkins recalled. “There was rubble every­where. I could hear people scream­ing. I couldn’t feel my left arm or my left leg, but I still had my rifle in my hand. I emptied the magazine but couldn’t reload another. Rounds were impacting in the street all around and I could see muzzle flashes on both sides of the street. I basically just laid there waiting for a bullet to hit me in the head. I tried to yell, but nothing was coming out. Across the street, I watched Childress go down but get right back up and go to a Marine who was screaming in pain.”

Todd Corbin materialized through the dust cloud, standing over Watkins. He heaved the grievously wounded sergeant over his shoulder and ran back to the 7-ton. As he loaded Watkins in the bed, a tank next to them fired a main gun round into another vehicle approaching the ambush site. Concussion waves swept over the Marines in the back as they dragged Watkins to the front of the bed. Outside, Corbin found Childress leaning over a Marine with the muscles shorn from the back of both legs and femurs exposed. In the darkness and rubble-strewn chaos, Childress inadvertently looped a downed power line inside a tourniquet placed on the Marine’s leg. The line snagged and went taught as Childress and Corbin dragged him away. They freed the line, replaced the tourni­quet, then placed the Marine in the 7-ton with Watkins.

The cook who joined the mission at the last minute stumbled out of the back seat of Mayer and Watkins’ humvee. He found Graham lying motionless nearby beneath a pile of building rubble and twisted turret armor. Mayer tried to move Graham’s body but was unable to pick him up. Mayer told the cook to stay put and set out in search of the remainder of the platoon. He ran through a cloud of smoke and dust to where the other vehicles sat mixed together on the street.

“The scene that I saw in front of me was so stunning,” he remembered. “All the humvees were destroyed, the 7-ton was billowing smoke, pools of oil on the ground had caught fire, power lines were on the ground, there were bodies and casualties lying around, there was Jeff on the turret in the background just yanking back on the trigger of his 240; it was like a scene from a movie. It was total apocalyptic chaos.”

Mayer came across a Marine leaning over Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jeffery Wiener, the Navy corpsman assigned to MAP 7. Mayer prepared a tourniquet and checked the doc for wounds but found no external bleeding. The blast pressure alone produced significant internal damage. Wiener passed away as Mayer swept across his backside checking for injuries.

Mayer continued on, finding Corbin standing outside his 7-ton.

“When I got up to Todd, I must have been screaming at him,” Mayer said. “I couldn’t hear shit, my eardrums were melted, I had just found Lance’s body, Doc just died in my arms, I ran past another body that I couldn’t even tell who it was. I ran up to Todd and grabbed him and just started screaming some sort of gibberish at him. He was just like, ‘you need to calm down son.’ He’s a lance corporal, 30-something-year-old sheriff deputy, just lawless. You could not get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. I love him, he’s my brother for life, but when he told me to calm down, I wanted to f–king kill him.”

The pair set out together collecting more casualties. Mayer fired at muzzle flashes in the dark while Corbin focused on moving the dead and wounded. They first returned to the body Mayer earlier passed, later identified as Sgt Marzano. They brought him to the 7-ton and went back for Doc Wiener. At one point, Mayer passed close by the humvee where Schuller stood protecting the entire column with his machine gun.

“I was completely black, charred and covered in dirt,” Mayer remembered. “I looked like I just stuck my finger in an electrical socket powered by an atom bomb. When Jeff saw me, he yelled, ‘what are you doing here?’ I shouted back, ‘what the hell do you mean?’ He says, ‘where is the chaplain at?’ The whole time we’re having this conversation he is continuously firing the 240 into the hospital. I realized he didn’t recognize me. I was like, ‘what the f–k are you talking about? It’s me! Stan!’ After a second, he giggles and goes, ‘oh shit! I thought you were dead! Awesome buddy!’ We had a Marine who was the assistant to the battalion chaplain and he was black. Jeff saw me and thought that the chaplain came out and I was his assistant. He thought I was dead. He knew I was dead. It made more sense to him that I was the black Religious Program specialist than his best friend Stan.”

Schuller stood exposed continuously in the turret. Beyond the rifle fire from Mayer, Childress, and a few others still standing, Schuller’s machine gun stood alone as the sole weapon keeping the enemy ambush at bay. He burned through several hundred rounds in rapid succes­sion. Every time an ammo can ran dry, Kalinowski readied and passed up another from inside the humvee.

Whenever they paused to reload, Kalinowski handed him an M16 to keep up the return fire. The muzzle flashes morphed into visible insurgents on the street.

“I shot one guy with the 240 standing in the front doorway of the hospital only 20 or 30 meters away,” Schuller said. “It was very obvious that guy was dead in this life and the next. I vividly remember thinking, ‘oh wow, this machine-gun works,’ like it was an epiphany. Kind of like the first time I ever jumped out of an airplane and the chute opened, I remember yelling out, ‘wow! I can’t be­lieve it worked!’ ”

The gun kept working. Enemy fire broke under Schuller’s relentless barrage. Still, rounds struck the humvee all around Schuller and kicked up dirt in the street around Corbin and Mayer as they re­covered casualties. At one point as Mayer worked on a casualty next Schuller’s humvee, an insurgent appeared in the window directly behind him.

“Get down!” Schuller screamed.

He opened fire just a few feet over Mayer’s head, cutting down the enemy soldier.

For nearly 45 minutes, Corbin and Mayer sprinted around the ambush site filling the 7-ton with dead and wounded. Childress assisted while zeroing out the radios and sensitive equipment in each vehicle and recovering weapons and gear. Schuller burned through more than 1,500 rounds. When the machine gun ammo ran dry, he resorted solely to his M16. When that ammo ran out, he pulled his pistol, dropping at least one insurgent on the street.

Throughout the engagement, Mayer remained focused on getting back to Graham. The humvee burned and ex­ploded over and over again with rounds cooking off inside as Mayer worked with Corbin to rescue other Marines. At one point, a tanker told Mayer to get one of the humvees out of his way so the tank could move into position and lead them out of the area. The destroyed vehicle was barely operational, but Mayer lurched it forward against a wall.

When he stepped out of the driver’s seat, he found Aaron Cepeda’s body lying next to the humvee. Childress arrived and helped recover Cepeda’s body. Like Mayer, at some point through the ambush, Childress attempted to pull Graham from his location near the burning humvee. Already wounded with shrapnel across his face, neck, and right side, a bullet tore through his left leg as Childress leaned over Graham. By the time all remaining dead or wounded were loaded into the 7-ton, recovering Graham seemed nearly impossible.
Schuller and Kalinowski finally abandoned their humvee and loaded into the 7-ton. Corbin hopped back in the driver’s seat. He activated an emergency air compressor to keep the ties inflated enough to limp the 7-ton out of the kill zone.

Another quick reaction force speed­ing south from the dam entered Haditha less than 1,000 meters away. Mayer begged Corbin to stop for one final at­tempt to recover Graham. With numerous wounded aboard, including one Marine with tourniquets on both legs and Watkins bleeding out through a gaping hole in his chest, the Marines pressed on. They passed their rescue column on the way out of Haditha and pinpointed Graham’s location at the ambush site. The relief force fought their way into the ambush site and recovered his body. The three destroyed humvees remained.

When the 7-ton stopped inside the dam, a sea of Marines enveloped the bed. Out of 16 Marines on the patrol, 11 were wounded or killed. Rescuers threw Mayer and Kalinowski onto the same medevac chopper. A zipped body bag lay near their feet. Neither knew who it contained, or who else may have died. Until that mo­ment, both believed each other perished in the ambush. They arrived at Charlie Surgical in Al Asad where staff members efficiently stripped the Marines and checked them for holes. With additional wounded already arrived and more in­coming, all hands stood on deck. They lined the hallways, heads swiveling and mouths agape as Mayer and Kalinowski rolled past. Mayer noticed two nurses weeping in each other’s arms. He looked toward Kalinowski.

“What the hell are they crying about?”

“I think us buddy.”

Childress flew out on the same chopper as Watkins. Despite shrapnel wounds across his face, neck and legs, and a gun­shot wound, Childress remained un­fazed. Now, he continued minimizing his injuries in the presence of his gravely wounded platoon sergeant.

“I don’t know how Watkins didn’t die,” he remembered. “I mean somebody blew him up and shot him at the same time, then he sat in the back of that 7-ton stuff­ing gauze into his own open-cavity wound. How did he live and breathe through that? He’s a machine. When our Blackhawk got to the hospital and they took us inside, I could see him starting to fade. When we got into the same room, I heard his monitor flatline. I freaked out. They shocked him and brought him back, but he died for a split second there in the hospital.”

Corbin’s swift actions in scooping Watkins off the ground and returning him to the relative safety of the 7-ton played a key role in Watkins’ survival. Indeed, Corbin made more than five trips back and forth through the ambush site carrying, dragging, or assisting casualties back to his vehicle. Miraculously, he remained uninjured.

Mayer stuck by Corbin’s side for the re­mainder of the ambush once they met up, surviving the hail of gunfire in addition to walking away from the initial blast. He spent two weeks at the hospital in Al Asad before returning to Corbin, Schuller, and the few other Marines remaining from the original MAP 7 group.

“When I got back to the dam, the pla­toon was all gone,” Mayer said. “They had already gotten a shipment of combat replacements, a batch of 19-year-olds straight out of God knows where, and they were already out there patrolling again with Jeff and Todd. My little cu­bicle of a room at the dam was Mike Marzano, Aaron Cepeda, me and Sgt Watkins. I got back and they were all gone. I was staring at two empty racks, those guys were dead. The one above mine, that guy was hit a bunch of times and he’s gone. I spent like a week in the dark smoking cigarettes with their ghosts until the platoon finally got back and Jeff came and found me.”

SSgt Brady named Mayer as Watkins’ replacement for platoon sergeant. He and Schuller took the lead for the remainder of the deployment conducting operations and raising their new replacements. Their experience on May 7 dictated their every decision for the remaining five months of the deployment.

The ambush served as a catalyst for a marked turn toward chaos in Haditha. Violence escalated through the summer and on Aug. 1, six Marine Scout Snipers were overrun and killed in their hide on the outskirts of the city. Operation Quick Strike was launched by 3/25 in response. Two days later at the outset of the oper­ation, an AAV struck an IED just outside the city, killing 14 Marines and an Iraqi interpreter loaded inside. The tragedy marked the start of a three-day period in which the battalion suffered 19 KIA. By the time Mayer, Schuller and Corbin rotated out of Iraq with the rest of the battalion in September, 3/25 suffered 48 total killed and more than 150 wounded.

The ambush on May 7 endures today as a defining event for the Marines who experienced it, though it can hardly be found as more than a footnote in broader histories of the war. The personal awards that emerged reinforce its significance. Mayer received a Navy Commendation Medal with combat “V” for his actions, while Childress received a Bronze Star with “V.” For his outstanding courage and dedication remaining in the turret and suppressing the ambush, Schuller received a Silver Star. For his actions mov­ing repeatedly around the kill zone and rescuing his fellow Marines, Corbin received the Navy Cross. Today, the sur­vivors serve their families, communities, and some still the Corps on active duty, guided by the lasting impressions de­veloped in the wake of the attack.

“That incident has kept the reality of what we do as Marines at the front of my mind,” Schuller reflected. Today, he serves on the training staff of Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twenty­nine Palms, Calif., preparing Ma­rines for deployment. “All I think about every day while we’re training Marines is ‘are we getting mentally and physically prepared to win wars.’ In my mind, that should be our priority; to win wars and bring our brothers and sisters home.”

“This thing has completely changed us,” Mayer reflected. “Jeff and I used to say, ‘don’t let this thing define us. If we’re still talking about this 10 years from now, I want you to punch me.’ Yet here we are 20 years later. No matter what we do, these 45 minutes in May back when we were kids defined us and always will. Everything we do now is on behalf of those guys who didn’t make it. That’s the driving force. Lance Graham is dead, and so is Mike Marzano, Aaron Cepeda, and Jeff Wiener. So are 44 other of our buddies in the battalion, not to mention everyone else in that war. Those four guys I knew personally, and they were so much better than us. Far be it from me to waste my bonus life feeling bad for myself or being an asshole. They don’t get that choice.

“We are much older men in a much dif­ferent place in our lives, but a lot of us have not processed our shit in the right way. A lot of us are still struggling, and that breaks my heart. You can’t just bring everyone to the right place, you have to seek it out yourself. I’ve found different ways to process my shit by exposing it, talking about it, and working through it, but I still don’t exactly know what my shit is. This story, weaving together dis­jointed strands into a solitary rope, illu­minates the truth of what actually hap­pened to us, maybe for the first time, because those of us who were there will ta­lk about anything but, and the truth is the last gate between us and the peace we all seek.”

Author’s bio: Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-2013. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.

The month-long battle for Belleau Wood in June 1918 during World War I rightly commands a prom­inent place in Marine Corps history. After all, the fighting there on the first day alone claimed more Marines than in all of America’s previous wars and conflicts involving Marines combined. Among its many accomplishments at Belleau Wood, the Marine Corps broke new ground, organizationally, when for the first time in its 143-year existence it fielded a bri­gade to fight alongside the U.S. Army in a protracted ground campaign. What makes this fact particularly significant is that the Marine Corps’ chief role two decades earlier was providing nothing more than small detachments to guard naval ships and stations.

In a message commemorating its 80th anniversary, the 31st Commandant Gen­eral Charles C. Krulak anointed Belleau Wood the transitional event in the Marine Corps history, placing it above Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Inchon. He was not alone in assigning Belleau Wood the honor of being “the birthplace of the modern-day Marine Corps.” Military historian Agostino von Hassell called the battle “the foundation” of today’s Marine Corps, as did renown Marine Corps historian Joseph Alexander, who added, “the mod­ern Marine Corps… may have been “born” in Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern in 1775, but it was bred in the wheat fields and underbrush of Belleau Wood in 1918.”

While Belleau Wood was indeed a bench­mark event in every respect, does it best exemplify the modern Marine Corps? Or are there other battles in the service’s nearly 250-year history that might be more reflective of today’s Ma­rines? Although this article neither ques­tions Belleau Wood’s rightful place in Marine Corps history nor seeks to dimin­ish the unparalleled heroism or the many lessons learned, it does, however, argue the Marines’ role in the 1898 naval cam­paign against Cuba during the Spanish-American War is arguably more rep­resentative of the modern Marine Corps.

Origins
The modern Marine Corps’ birth has its origins in America’s rise to western regional hegemony beginning in 1823, necessitating a more active U.S. Navy and, eventually, a renewed purpose for its Marines. The primary policy guiding U.S. national interests and security at that time was the Monroe Doctrine aimed at blocking European powers from interfering in the western hemisphere. Speaking before Congress, President James Monroe declared “any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portions of this Hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

Concurrent with America’s new­found regional dominance was its growing industrial might. Following decades of neglect and civil war, the Navy entered into an era of intellectual and operational reform. American sea power doctrine manifested itself in a ‘new’ Navy and a transition from wooden wind-driven ships to armored coal-fueled battleships and cruisers. Coal and steel gave way to ships capable of displacing greater dis­tances at faster speeds. This challenge, however, was keeping large quantities of coal accessible to the fleet while at sea.

The Navy’s brightest junior- and mid-grade officers at the Naval War Col­lege, established in 1884 to study the service’s new mission and role in America’s ex­panding national interests, recommended acquiring and even seizing territory in the Caribbean, the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippine Islands and creating coal­ing stations for the squadrons escorting U.S. commerce ships. This ad­vanced base concept coincided with Navy Command­ers Theodorus B.M. Mason’s and Bowman H. McCalla’s earlier notion that the Navy’s future lay in landing tactics and oper­ations. Long-time Marine Corps historian Jack S. Shulimson noted in “The Marine Corps Search for a Mis­sion, 1880-1989” that the Navy’s core intellectuals at the college “ex­plored avenues of naval strategy that would obviously require landing forces, in all probability Marine landing forces.” One such intellectual was Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, who offered that Marines serve as the “backbone of any force landing on the enemy’s coast.”

Dress Rehearsal
Simultaneous to ongoing naval reforms was a separatist uprising in Panama (then part of Columbia) in 1885, threatening the 40-mile long cross-isthmus railway connecting the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and American efforts to construct the Panama Canal. The potential impact on the American economy and regional stability prompted U.S. President Grover Cleveland to order a naval expeditionary force from North Atlantic Squadron to proceed to the Caribbean and, if neces­sary, land Marines to secure the railway and restore order. Commander McCalla assumed command of the naval force assembling at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Upon his initial inspection, McCalla sent a request for additional Marines to Navy Secretary William Whitney. The request centered on his desire to avoid assigning sailors to shore tasks. Landing parties dating from the American Revolu­tion were often a mix of sailors and Ma­rines. During both the Mexican-Ameri­can War and the American Civil War, however, the Marine Corps augmented its sea-going detachments with additional Marines from other naval stations to prevent this practice. In the case of Panama, McCalla, like the Marine Corps, wanted few, if any, Sailors ashore and to maintain naval readiness and each ship’s at-sea functions. Pulling from the Marine Barracks at Boston, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, Ma­rine Corps Commandant Colonel Charles G. McCawley ordered Major Charles Heywood to organize a 549-man brigade.

On April 27, the Marine brigade landed in Panama. In addition to serving as a quick reaction force, the Marines patrolled the hills and small towns scattered along the railway and canal routes and per­formed various policing duties. Following the expedition, McCalla was critical of the Marines in his report to the Secretary Whitney titled “Report of Commander McCalla upon the Naval Expedition to the Isthmus of Panama, April 1885.” In his report, McCalla assessed the Marines lacked training in basic infantry tactics and handling of machine guns and artil­lery. To remedy these shortfalls, he rec­ommended Colonel McCawley mandate training in both areas.

Most notable was his recommendation that the Marine Corps form, equip and train permanent expeditionary units for use “in future naval operations.” The Navy could then ferry these units in transports traveling alongside its battleships and use in naval expeditions. McCawley, however, declined McCalla’s advice for fear that refocusing the Marine Corps would leave it vulnerable to an Army obsessed with absorbing the smaller naval service. The idea nonetheless garnered attention within the Navy Department. Regardless, the Panama expedition was a clear indication that Marines would serve a vastly different role in future naval expeditions.

War with Spain
While the Panama expedition dem­onstrated America’s intent to carry out the Monroe Doctrine, it first real test came in 1895 after Spanish atrocities against Cuban revolutionaries pushed U.S. President William McKinley to con­template an all-out invasion to liberate the island. He decided instead to anchor USS Maine in Havana Harbor as a show of force. On the evening of Feb. 15, 1898, an explosion sank Maine, killing 253 officers and enlisted men, including dozens of Marines. After the U.S. de­clared war on Spain, the Navy Department responded by recommending to McKinley a series of naval actions primarily to cripple the Spanish fleet, but also to buy the U.S. Army time to mobilize an in­vasion and occupation force. In the in­terim, the Navy would oversee the block­ade of Cuban ports and bombard en­trapped Spanish naval and ground forces.

“The greatest necessity” to prosecuting this plan was the availability of coal.
Secretary of the Navy John D. Long and Major General Charles Heywood, now the Commandant of the Marine Corps testified be­fore the Committee on Naval Affairs on March 11 for an end-strength increase in anticipation of a war. Although the increase, at least originally, was for ad­ditional seagoing detachments, attention shifted to providing Marines for the ad­vanced base concept under review by the Navy Department. On April 16, Long ordered Heywood to organize and equip a battalion for immediate duty with Admiral William T. Sampson’s North Atlantic Fleet and action against Spain. Like the Panama expedition, Heywood sourced 623 Marines from East Coast naval stations to form the First Marine Battalion’s five infantry companies and an artillery battery under Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Huntington, the Ma­rine Barracks Brooklyn’s commanding officer.

Huntington embarked the preponder­ance of his battalion on the transport ship USS Panther on April 22 pre-loaded with food, water, pioneering equipment, search­lights, medical supplies and am­munition. A second transport, USS Resolute arrived to take on the remaining Marines, but required structural modifi­ca­tions. While Resolute underwent mod­ification, Panther joined Sampson’s fleet off Virginia before sailing to the naval station at Key West, Fla., where he off­loaded the Marines and their provisions. The Marines underwent marksmanship training and a tactical field exercise until Resolute arrived.

On the morning of June 7, the Key West naval station commander received a telegram from Washington, D.C., order­ing him to “Send the Marine Battalion at once to [Admiral] Sampson without waiting for the Army.” The battalion, at least initially, would be the American main effort in a war plan involving a blockade of the Spanish naval fleet anchored at Santiago de Cuba on the island’s southeastern coast. The purpose of the blockade was to prevent the Spanish fleet’s interference with the 5th Army Corps’ movement to Cuba and subsequent operations. Located 90 miles from Cuba, Key West housed the closet coaling station. To prevent providing too visible a naval target for the Spanish fleet arriv­ing from Europe, planners suggested an advanced base on the island’s eastern-most tip roughly 50 miles east of Santiago at Guantanamo Bay. Planners assigned the 1st Marine Battalion the mission of establishing the advanced base. Assigned the mission to oversee the landing at Guantanamo Bay by Sampson was none other than Commander McCalla.

An Advanced Base Blueprint
The 1st Marine Battalion’s actions in Cuba are a matter of official record. Jerry Roberts’ “Marines in Battle: Guantanamo Bay, 10 June–9 August 1898” and Jack Shulimson and David E. Kelly’s “Marines in the Spanish-American War: 1895-1899: Anthology and Annotated Bibliog­ra­phy” are two invaluable sources re­counting the Marine landing and sub­sequent operations in Cuba. Suffice to say, Sampson’s prosecution of the naval campaign against Spanish forces would not have been possible without Marines.

For two months, the Marines not only defended their advanced base, aptly named Camp McCalla, against successive Spanish ground attacks, but they ex­panded the base’s perimeter by seizing the high ground at Cuzco Well with the assistance of naval gunfire. The Marines’ presence along with nearly 1,000 Cuban fighters held a Spanish force of up to 7,000 soldiers in place in anticipation of continued counterattacks, possibly chang­ing the outcome of the fighting at Santiago and the campaign.

During the blockade and a dozen other actions in and around Cuba, Sampson’s fleet of more than 100 ships participated in the naval campaign against the Spanish Navy, of which many used Guantanamo Bay to refuel, as an assembly area or for safe refuge. The advanced base played a major role in the subsequent land cam­paign to secure the island and other Span­ish territories, as well. A week after the Spanish surrender of Santiago, more than 16,000 soldiers under U.S. Army General Nelson A. Miles used Guantanamo Bay as the staging area and jumping-off point for the invasion of Puerto Rico some 500 miles to the east of Cuba on July 21.

Before the fighting in Puerto Rico was over and the Spain-American War ended, the 1st Battalion were back in America less six Marines who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Another nine endured wounds from enemy fire. Sergeant John Quick would earn the Medal of Honor for his actions at Cuzco Well. Two offi­cers, Captain George F. Elliott and First Lieutenant Wendell C. Neville, rose to become Commandant of the Marine Corps and were instrumental in keeping Ma­rines on board ships and engaged in naval warfare. Their experiences at Guantanamo Bay certainly influenced them.

A mere two years later, in 1900, the Navy Department commissioned the General Board of the Navy to keep the Navy, and the Marine Corps, looking forward. One of its inaugural acts was assigning the Marine Corps the official responsibility of further developing the advanced base concept. In summary, the board directed the Marines to stand up a coastal and naval base defense force for the purposes of establishing both mobile and fixed bases in the event of major naval or landing operations. Relying only upon the Navy, the mission was the first recognized U.S. joint-service task force and gave the Marine Corps near-complete autonomy and operational independence.

Between 1903 and 1921, the Marine Corps introduced sweeping innovations to the concept. The advanced base force would evolve into the Fleet Marine Force, while the concept and mission itself would become the basis for the amphibious doctrine developed throughout the 1920s and 1930s and which the Marines ex­ecuted throughout the Pacific theater of World War II from 1942 to 1945. Al­though there was a need for Marines in Europe during World War I and the 4th Marine Brigade’s performance brought about a positive change in how most viewed the service, it does not diminish the fact that Belleau Wood diverted the Marine Corps away from its primary mission. Worse yet was that employing Marines in a protracted land campaign gave the Army a stronger platform to argue for a smaller Marine Corps, a limited function and, in 1946, its outright abolishment.

Conclusion
The aforementioned argument is not a new one. Accomplished Ma­rine Corps historian Robert D. Heinl reasoned in his 1962 “Soldiers of the Sea: The U.S. Marine Corps, 1775-1962” that “by action and not by theory, Colonel Huntington’s fleet landing force had set a pattern for employment of U.S. Marines, which would still stand more than a half century and three wars later.” Similarly, historian Trevor K. Plante contends the Marines at Guantanamo Bay “… dis­played some­thing future [M]arines would take pride in—the ability to be called and respond at a moment’s notice.

That the Marines organized a battal­ion-size force and conducted an amphib­ious landing on a foreign shore with little-to-no notice is an exceptional ac­complishment in and of itself. Doing this without an amphibious doctrine or having practiced the tactics and techniques further validates the significance of the Guantanamo Bay landing and seizure. What is more is the Marines accomplished this nearly 20 years to the day that their successors charged into German ma­chine-gun fire traversing the wheatfields outside Belleau Wood. Yet, to some, the mission of seizing an advanced base is somehow less reflective of the modern Marine Corps and its mission, which unequivocal­ly requires seizing expe­ditionary advanced bases for naval operations. Belleau Wood’s rightful prom­inence aside, per­haps it is time to put the Marines’ actions at Guantanamo Bay in the proper per­spective and as the modern Marine Corps birth as a naval expeditionary force in readiness.

Author’s bio: Dr. Nevgloski is the former director of the Marine Corps History Division. Before becoming the Marine Corps’ history chief in 2019, he was the History Division’s Edwin N. McClellan Research Fellow from 2017 to 2019, and a U.S. Marine from 1989 to 2017.

Executive Editor’s note: I was contacted by Robert Roth, a Marine who served in Vietnam. He sent me an essay he wrote about how he felt when he learned that the South Vietnamese Army had disintegrated. After reading it, I knew Leatherneck had to publish his piece, as it’s something that I think will resonate with Marines of all eras.

It was a night of pain, and the pain started in my eyes. I reached town at the worst possible time, just as night fell. After weeks in the desert, Eilat’s blinding, merciless lights burned my eyes raw. I kept my gaze towards the ground but still had to squint. Equally painful, a cacophony of traffic, music and voices assaulted me, pounded upon my ear drums. Being surrounded by people, so many of them, added to my discomfort. Still, they gave me room. No one was jostling me. Years later, reading about Vietnam vets going off to the Northwoods to get away, it occurred to me that during that time I may have been suffering through a similar though much milder phase.

I had come to Israel attempting to make it my home. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. South Florida had spoiled me. Growing up, the Everglades, with its wonders and adventures, was a short ride west. Gor­geous beaches were a short ride east, and beyond them lay the coral reefs I loved. The Florida Keys to the south were a longer ride, yet worth every mile.

I had traveled enough throughout Israel to know that it held no place that could make me forget South Florida. That is, until I ventured south of Eilat. When the Israelis captured Sinai during the Six Day War, almost the entire peninsula lay ignored and unspoiled. Its barren pastel mountains were surrounded by the Red Sea’s crystal waters, with a shoreline of coral reefs as gorgeous as any in the world. The Israelis had done the hard work of making it habitable in just a few scattered places, without destroying Sinai’s beauty as a whole. Roaming its deserts and mountains, I wandered back into biblical times, and even farther, into the eons that preceded them. In Sinai I had found a place I could spend the rest of my life.

The year was 1975. I was in limbo wait­ing to go into the Israeli Army. My induction could be weeks, months or even a year away. I had returned to Sinai to look for work, any kind of work, just so I could live there. I found a construction job at the southern tip of the peninsula. It proved all too temporary. Soon after the work ran out, so did my money. I headed north, desperate to find another job in Sinai before reaching Eilat. I failed. Every mile closer had left me more jaded.

Eilat was a place where I did not want to be. It had once served the same purpose as Australia: the judge would ask the defendant, “Jail or Eilat?” That was years previous, but Eilat still functioned as a clogged drain. It caught and stopped the southward flow of Israel’s less desirables. It also caught the world’s hippie, hash-smoking remnants of the ’60s. People were easy to meet. Friends were easy to make. Yet you never really knew who your friends were. Travelers to Eilat often did so on someone else’s passport. The more experienced of them carried a choice of passports. In those years, Israel was crawling with Vietnam vets, especially Marines and Green Berets. Yet I never met one in Eilat. That said something about the place.

Passing through Eilat on the way to Sinai, I had run into a friend from a kibbutz, a fellow volunteer. He was now tending bar at a local nightclub. When I told him of my plans, he said to check back with him if I didn’t find work in Sinai. He could probably get me on as a dishwasher. Now to someone else with a college degree, that might have sounded like an insult. Not to me. I had done dirtier jobs. Besides, I did not intend to make dishwashing my life’s work. If necessary, it would be my Plan B, a means to get enough cash for a return to Sinai for some more job hunting.

My mood had lightened some by the time I reached the nightclub and saw my friend’s smile. He went to ask his boss about the dishwashing job. The smile was gone when he returned. “No dice but check back with me in a week.” So much for Plan B.

I left my friend without mentioning that the few bucks I had would not last even close to a week. Again the lights assaulted me. Plan B’s failure hit me too. Luckily, I had a Plan C—Eilat’s “Slave Market.” It was a street corner where you could stand and usually get a long day’s work for short pay. I had done this before, and it hadn’t killed me. Still, I was depressed about not getting the dishwashing job, and to a degree that seems ridiculous looking back.

Israelis are news junkies. Their ad­diction is contagious. The first thing most of them do in the morning is turn on the radio to hear what new lethal dangers their tiny country faces, or, worse yet, what tragedies had befallen it during the night. In Sinai, I had gone without news for weeks, so I headed for a magazine stand. The lights around the stand were repellently bright. I forced my eyes open just enough to pick out an Israeli paper and Time magazine. I hated Time because of its snide anti-Israel slant. But Newsweek was even worse. I reached into my pocket and took out my money. When I saw how much I had left, I returned the Israeli paper to its rack. Time would provide more world news, especially about the States.

I headed for the plaza below to find a quiet place with just enough light to read the magazine. The newsstand was separated from the plaza by a dozen steps. About two steps down, I glanced at the magazine’s cover. It showed a map of South Vietnam and a caption indicating that the northern part of the country had fallen to the communists. I didn’t get dizzy. I doubt I got weak in the knees. Yet the shock put me on my ass, literally. I found myself sitting near the top of the steps, with one hand hanging from the round iron railing that ran down their center. I was in a daze, and from something I had known would happen. Yet it had shocked me all the same. People on my left were going up the steps. People on my right were going down them. They must have thought I was on drugs or drunk. Oblivious, I sat in the middle of the stairs, reading, mesmerized, as people paraded up and down at my sides.

There are a few things I still remember about the article. The first and least im­portant was some optimistic American idiot quoted as saying the complete rout of the South Vietnamese Army was prob­ably a good thing. Now these soldiers, many of whom had abandoned their rifles and their uniforms, could regroup and defend Saigon. More importantly, I remember the article’s tone of surprise about the thousands and thousands of Vietnamese civilians who, along with the soldiers, fled the advancing communists in a panic. These were the same civilians the media had wanted you to believe were sympathetic to the communists. Yet the thing I remember most, the thing that hit me the hardest, was a simple picture of a communist soldier standing in Da Nang as if he owned it. Da Nang, a city that we Marines had “owned,” or thought we had owned, had somehow fallen to the communists.

I finished the entire article sitting on those busy steps. When I stood to go down them, I had no idea where I was headed. It did not occur to me to get some­thing to eat, or a beer, or to find a place to sleep. No, I was thinking about the debacle now taking place in Vietnam, and all the misery and loss of life that had led up to it. These thoughts and visions were enough to break my heart—far more than enough—and not for the first time.

A thing that still baffles me is the literal­ly staggering impact that article had on me. And I had yet to see those last choppers evacuating desperate people from that rooftop while leaving so many even more desperate ones behind. How could I be so shocked and saddened by an outcome I had thought inevitable?

You see, after the last combat Marine had left Vietnam, after we had forced the South Vietnamese to sign a ceasefire with the North Vietnamese that just about sealed their fate, yet before we had cut off the supplies that might have, however doubtfully, saved them, I had returned to Vietnam as a civilian. I had my reasons, yet they weren’t necessarily the ones I gave myself. The real reasons we do things can get complicated, sometimes too complicated to understand. People who claim they went to Vietnam out of patriotism or fled to Canada to protest the war may be fooling themselves, yet they are not fooling me. Decisions as consequential as these are never so pure and simple.

Still, I believe the main, vague reason I returned to Vietnam for a few weeks was for one last look before the apocalypse.

I returned accompanied by the guilty feeling that we were abandoning the South Vietnamese to their fate, and that their fate would be tragic. Admittedly, I had no desire to see the shedding of even one more drop of American blood.

We had suffered, bled and lost too much already. Still, the Vietnamese had bled and lost much more. I felt guilty about running out on these people, many of them brave, decent and trusting of us.

Once back, I remember standing in line for a small plane to take me from Da Nang to Huế. Two Army officers in front of me were discussing the ceasefire. It was holding surprisingly well. One officer ran off a list of all the places where it was being kept. He ended the list by saying, “Of course, they’re still going at it in the Arizona.” Of course. The Arizona was a free-fire zone that I and the rest of the 5th Marines knew well. To me, it seemed impossible that any ceasefire would ever take hold in the Arizona Territory. No, it seemed more likely that the Arizona would nurture the flame that would eventually consume the entire country.

I had returned to Vietnam with trepida­tions that the people would resent my presence. I would be an American travel­ing alone, not alongside other Marines with M16s at the ready. I might end up a target for their anger at being abandoned. These fears proved groundless. I talked to so many of them on that trip back. Though confused and fearful and sad, they were courteous and friendly. This made me feel good and bad at the same time. More than discomfiting, it made me feel helpless. My strongest memory of those days was something they said. It will stay with me until the day I die. They said it at least three, possibly four times, using almost the exact same words every time.
They would look at me and ask, “You were a soldier here?”

I would nod or say, “Yes.”

They would ask, “Where?”

I would tell them a few of the places I had been. This would answer the literal question, and also the unasked question behind it. Where I had been would tell them who I was, that I was a Marine. Finding this out, they didn’t call me

“Murderer!” or “Psychopath!” or “War criminal!” or “Baby killer!”

No, they looked me right in the eye and said softly, thoughtfully, “Marines, good people, Marines.”

These four simple words broke my heart every time.

Author’s bio: Robert Roth is the author of “Sand in the Wind,” a Vietnam War-era novel, and “Berserkley.” Roth en­listed in the Marine Corps in 1969 after graduating from the University of Florida. He served as a rifleman in Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Using his GI Bill benefits, he added a BA from the Uni­versity of California at Berkeley and an MA from Stanford. Beginning in 1975, he served almost 10 years in a mechanized infantry unit of Israeli Army reserves. In the 1982 Lebanon War, he completed four reserve duty tours in-country. These included the original invasion and the Siege of Beirut.

When I think of a Marine recruiter, I am immediately transported to an unfamiliar couch in a flawless office. Motivational posters adorn the walls in an orderly fashion, their tactful propaganda impossible to miss. The thickest book I’ve ever seen is on a coffee table before me, squared and centered in dignified solitude. The Corps’ official seal protrudes brilliantly em­blazoned on the cover, juxtaposed against a black title and camouflage hardback. It is a work of history, weathered and revered like a minister’s treasured scripture.

The recruiter sits in a chair on the op­posite side of the table. His superbly dis­ciplined uniform gleams with rainbow rows of ribbons on his chest and a blood-red stripe down the seam of his trousers. He wears confidence and charisma like a sleeve of tattoos. Sweat drips down my spine as I consider how many people he has killed. Ten for each ribbon, perhaps? Fifteen if it bears a star? My God, what must a “V” signify? I dare not ask. Un­doubtedly, this warrior could slit my throat with nothing more than the knife edge pressed into his khaki shirt sleeve. How many pages of that historical tome must be dedicated to him?

One by one, he arranges a series of small plastic tags on the table. He takes his time, silently inviting me to consider them individually. Each tag is engraved with benefits the Corps has to offer, pre­sumably valued by any prospective candidate bold enough to enter their office. Individual words capture my at­tention: courage, challenge, discipline, direction. They stir something inside me as I consider my future. The recruiter isn’t offering a chance to discuss the benefits he has to sell. He’s offering a glimpse inside his Marine Corps mindset; a taste of the intrinsic motivations driving anyone who believes they have what it takes to earn the eagle, globe and anchor. Do I?

Fast forward through my time on active duty, my admiration of Marine recruiters remained unaltered. Stigmas and ster­eotypes persisted, though, de­picting an austere and exacting persona of the job. For anyone familiar with Ma­rine re­cruiters, the images we conjure paint a wholly inadequate picture, por­traying mere snapshots in time. The stereotypes, while accurate in some re­spects, prove dreadfully limited in their ability to capture the entirety of a recruiter’s criti­cal role. What we do not see is everything that led to the scenes we evoke, and everything that comes after, to success­fully ship a person off to boot camp. What we do not feel is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that Marine recruiters experience as they fight and win their battles, day in and day out.

“There is no better visible example of our disciplined warriors than our recruiters,” stated General Eric M. Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps, in an address to members of the U.S. Senate in April 2024. “We send our very best to recruiting … We value the mission, not only for the immediate results of recruiting the best fighting force for our nation, but also for the professional development and leadership that such rigorous duty instills in a Marine leader.”

Recruiting could be reasonably argued as the most rigorous of Special Duty As­signments (SDAs) a Marine can receive. Marine drill instructors, combat instruc­ors and embassy security guards fill out the remaining SDA duties.

More than 4,000 Marine recruiters are currently serving in every community of the Uni­ted States. This number represents nearly two thirds of the total number of SDA billets available across every duty. While each SDA presents its own set of chal­lenges, Marines on recruiting face an unending and often uncontrollable stream of obstacles to creatively overcome.

“We ask recruiters to do more, and they deliver,” said Sergeant Major Carlos A. Ruiz, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, during a recent Leatherneck in­terview. “They had to work the extra hours. They had to drive further. They did the work … Just imagine having a job where 99 people tell you ‘no’ every day, and you’re just searching for that one ‘yes.’ ”

In his Senate address, Gen Smith rec­ognized some of the modern hurdles re­cruiters face, citing “labor market chal­lenges, historic lows in qualification rates and lower propensities to join.”

“Nonetheless, we do not ask young men and women to join us, and we do not promise them an easy life. Instead, we challenge them to try out for and earn the privilege to wear the eagle, globe, and anchor.”

Marine recruiters have achieved their accession goals every fiscal year since 1994. Recruiting has always been a hard-fought victory, but the past several years have witnessed Marines waging a her­culean struggle against a myriad of com­plicating factors. Indeed, today one might view a Marine wearing the Marine Corps Recruiting Ribbon similarly to the im­mediate veneration we bestow on those bearing a Combat Action Ribbon. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 created a completely unique set of hardships—one of the most impactful was restricted access to schools.

Even after the bans and barriers were lifted, recruiters encountered the same scarred and harsh new environment we all felt upon venturing back out into the world. Relationships erased by the pandemic years needed rebuilding. Face-to-face and public speaking skills, supplanted by text and social media, needed relearning. Whether through the rising of a new gen­eration, the inward focusing during the pandemic, the end of the Global War on Terror, or whatever other factors may have existed, the population eligible for mil­itary service displayed a waning interest in joining.

Recruiters confronted another mon­umental difficulty in 2022: the advent of Military Health System (MHS) Genesis. This new system rolled out Department of Defense-wide with the intent of stream­lining a candidate’s medical qualification process, tying directly into civilian med­ical records systems.

“While it enhances efficiency and tran­sparency by consolidating applicants’ medical histories, it has also created chal­lenges,” said Major Michael Siani, Com­manding Officer of Recruiting Sta­tion (RS) Dallas, Texas. “Recruiters face de­lays due to extensive medical reviews and increased disqualifications stemming from previously unreported conditions. This has raised the importance of thorough applicant screening and counseling upfront.”

The end state of MHS Genesis aims to create a more medically ready force with reduced future attrition. Recruiters operating within the system’s guidelines today, however, are confronting the “his­toric lows” mentioned by the Com­m­andant in medically qualified candidates. Pro­spective applicants, along with their re­cruiters, frequently endure months of waiting while the military bureaucracy churns through backlog of medical waivers. To remain successful, recruiters adapt by setting realistic expectations for their applicants and planning well in advance.

Through all of this, Marine recruiters must successfully attract qualified can­didates, not only in competition with the other branches of service, but also in competition with the civilian world. Numerous companies across a variety of industries revamped the benefits they offered in the wake of the pandemic while enduring their own setbacks in hiring and retention. Many positions are now remote, higher paying and with flexible options for lateral and upward mobility. Even the Post 9/11 GI Bill, a staple benefit of military service, has been rendered commonplace by companies offering competitive tuition assistance and college education benefits.

Other branches of service stumbled in the face of so much adversity. During FY2022, the Marine Corps persisted as the only branch to meet its recruiting goal, barely surpassing the target of more than 28,600 new enlistments. Again in FY2023, the Corps prevailed while others faltered, surpassing the goal of more than 33,300 new Marines. As a point of comparison, the U.S. Space Force ended that year as the only other branch to meet its recruitment goal of less than 500. The Army, Navy and Air Force adjusted standards, adopted incentives, and even offered tens of thousands of dollars in sign on bonuses. The changes failed to achieve the expected results. In the end, the Marines’ success boiled down to its absolutely tenacious recruiters who would not lie down and refused to quit, while upholding the Marine standard.

Generally speaking, during the course of a recruiter’s standard 36-month tour, each is expected to contract an average of two candidates per month. In other words, an average of two soon-to-be Ma­rines, called “poolees,” must be com­plete­ly through the application process and waiting for their ship date to boot camp. Poolees can take an average of 50 to 60 days from the time they begin the ap­plication process to the day they ship out, assuming they are not disqualified for any reason at any point along the way. To achieve the numbers each recruiter is required to achieve across a range of categories like gender or education level, recruiters must cultivate a large grouping of committed applicants, all at different stages of the process. To discover and amass their group, recruiters must engage with an even larger portion of the population.

The men and women on recruiting duty vary as greatly in background and mil­itary occupational Specialty (MOS) as the vastly different communities they canvass. New recruiters first travel to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Calif., for Basic Recruiters Course, a 35-day school teaching the fundamental tools of the trade. In addition to communi­cation and presentation skills and USMC prod­uct and procedural knowledge, the course emphasizes the Marines’ core values and success through being a Ma­rine first, then a recruiter.

Graduates earn the 8411 Marine Recruiter MOS and deploy to their assigned district. Marine Corps Recruiting Command conducts extensive demographic research into each region, strategically placing recruiters in locations with the highest probability of success. The Recruiting Sub-Stations (RSSs) in which Marines can land might include the most densely packed urban centers of Los Angeles, Dallas or New York, or the most sparsely populated plains of Kansas, Nebraska or Wyoming.

Many Marines volunteer for the assign­ment or are selected for the duty as a pivotal resume experience and steppingstone for future career advancement. According to the Commandant’s Senate address, a quarter of the Marine Corps’ flag officers were recruiters at some point in their career. Gen Smith served on recruiting duty earlier in his career, as did SgtMaj Ruiz. The most successful recruiters have the opportunity to volunteer for an even larger role within the field, that of an 8412 career recruiter. Career recruiters typically hold the rank of staff sergeant and above and remain on recruiting for the rest of their time on active duty. Less than 600 of these exist within the Marine Corps. They are identified in the field by their unique gold name tags worn on their right breast.

“8412’s are truly the gatekeepers and the standard bearers within the com­munity,” said Lieutenant Colonel Tyler B. Folan, who as a major served as the commanding officer of RS Denver, Colo., from 2021 through 2024. “They are the ones passing on the successful traits, making sure the society remains true. But they are also the subject matter experts, understanding the tactics needed to close with and win.”

RS Denver, one of eight subordinate stations in the 9th Marine Corps District, offers a perfect representation of a broad geographical spectrum. During Folan’s tenure, 40 to 50 recruiters manned 13 separate RSSs across the states of Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska. The largest of these sub- stations included areas such as Colorado Springs, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where six Marines covered the city. Four RSSs covered Denver and its surrounding suburbs. By contrast, only seven Marines operated in the entire state of Wyoming.

“Recruiting is such a rewarding job because you’re the ambassador of our Corps that everyone is looking for,” Folan said. “You could be working in very isolated areas that, especially during COVID, may not have seen Marines in weeks, months, or years. It’s humbling because our recruiters are the face of the Marine Corps. They have to do right at all times, be resilient, and have a winning mindset that ensures our Corps tradition of success continues.”

Recruiters master their assigned com­munity and penetrate it like a savvy beat cop. They develop key relationships and learn the streets. Local high schools gen­erate the bulk of a recruiter’s ap­plicants and conversations. This target population is rightfully shielded by a host of “in­fluencers”; parents, teachers, guidance counselors, football coaches, etc. A re­cruiter’s primary struggle is to overcome the perception that the community’s youth are merely a number he must achieve. Influencers routinely terminate initial phone calls with a “no,” “no thanks,” “he’s all set,” or simply a word­less “click” on the other end. Some berate the recruiters or use profanity-laced insults. The tools each Marine brings from Basic Recruiters Course guide them in their practice, but in the end, success boils down to each individual finding his or her own way to personally connect with the people. The most successful of these men and women integrate them­selves so thoroughly into their com­munities that they secure not only the influencers’ trust but cement the Marine Corps as the first choice and only viable option for military service.

Each fiscal year, Marines across the nation compete for recognition as Re­cruiter of the Year. Competition is stiff, even within each RS. Gunnery Sergeant Eduardo Villalobos, for example, stood out last year from RS Orange County, Calif., earning the rare distinction as a “centurion,” a recruiter who successfully contracted 100 men and women into the Corps. The achievement helped Villalobos earn Recruiter of the Year for his RS. Each RS submits their top recruiter to compete against the others in their district. Each district then competes for the top spot in each region, either east or west. Finally, the winning Marines from each region go head-to-head for the highest distinction as Recruiter of the Year for the entire nation.

Staff Sergeant Tyler J. Hoffman won out as the top performer for RS Dallas, Texas, the 8th Marine Corps District, and over every other Marine submitted from the western region, achieving the outstanding recognition as the national runner up. Hoffman entered recruiting in 2022 after five years on active duty as a small arms repairman. Working out of RSS Mckinney, Hoffman established himself as a dependable leader, con­sistently caring for each person he en­listed, and was meritoriously promoted to staff sergeant. Hoffman volunteered for recruiting despite the stigmas that existed regarding the assignment.

“There’s nothing easy about the Marine Corps, but I didn’t join to do something easy,” Hoffman said. “Recruiting has definitely been the most difficult duty I’ve had, but it’s something I’ve always pushed to be the best at and that has kept motivating me. For me personally, the biggest challenge I had was learning about time management when I first got on this duty. It feels like you have 1,000 things to do every day, and there’s only 24 hours. You have to accomplish those things while finding the time to give back to your family as well.”

Gunnery Sergeant Emmanuel F. Santos, assigned to RS Springfield, Mass., earned the prestigious honor as the nation’s Recruiter of the Year for FY2024. Santos arrived on recruiting as a sergeant, working out of RSS Waterbury, Conn. Promotion to staff sergeant arrived shortly after assuming his role, and a meritorious promotion to gunny less than one year after that. Fast approaching the end of his 36-month tour, Santos is preparing to return to the fleet as a staff non-commissioned officer within his Motor Transport MOS.

“Talking to civilians, some of the things they say or do, you really have to hold your tongue,” he stated, reflecting on his recruiting tour. “You have to hop off the pedestal and see them eye to eye and allow them to say certain things. This experience gave me a lot of patience, but it also humanized me a lot. It took me away from the “oorah” motivated devil dog society where I almost forgot I was a person. I truly believe once I get back to the fleet, along with the patience, I’ll be able to handle situations a lot more professionally and dig down to the roots of the problem. I’ll be able to swallow my ego and talk to my subordinates the same way I talk to my peers or my supervisors.”

According to Santos, the greatest chal­lenge he faced throughout his time as a recruiter has been applicants’ failing scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). Medical waivers wrought by MHS Genesis also caused hiccups in the process, but ASVAB scores delayed many of his prospects. In three years, Santos developed files on nearly 500 applicants who sat with him and began the enlistment process. Out of that number, only 97 successfully left for boot camp, many of the remaining number derailed by the entrance exam. Credit can be heaped not only on the recruiters for their work, but also on some of the youth today in their relentless pursuit of military service. One of the 97 poolees Santos enlisted began the process under a prior recruiter. Over the course of more than a year, he failed the ASVAB six times before finally passing under Santos’ mentorship and heading off to boot camp. He is now a successful United States Marine.

Recruiters like Santos and Hoffman take the initiative to sway the outcome of every contributing factor, even those seemingly beyond their control like medical waivers and failing test scores. Both have spent hours working in their local schools conducting youth fitness programs, providing career seminars to give teachers a break from lectures, attending Parent Teacher Association meetings and helping with community service projects.

“To have that good relationship with the schools you have to give and expect nothing in return,” Santos said. “You have to show them you’re not just here to take from them. There aren’t many schools where that’s an easy thing to accomplish but establishing that presence is very important. When they know you are genuine, if someone even mentions the word ‘military,’ you are the first recruiter they think of. Establish yourself as the recruiter to go to and, in their eyes, there is no other branch.”

“When I go talk to individuals, I want them to know who Staff Sergeant Hoffman is,” Hoffman echoed. “I want them to know that I’m the Marine.”

The most adept recruiters accomplish the feat of integrating into their com­munity and earning influencers’ trust over the first year or so of their tour. The end of this time frame also coincides with the beginning of a continuous stream of former poolees, now Marines, returning home on leave after boot camp. Newly transformed and more motivated than ever, these individuals provide a further boost to a recruiter’s community status and an influx of referrals from friends who witness their transformation and are interested to know how that experience might look for themselves.

“The most rewarding thing is seeing the end goal after they enlist,” said Hoffman. “I have individuals who have never run before in their life and fail the initial strength test. Working with them and training with them to get passing scores, seeing them go to boot camp and come home after 13 weeks and seeing that transformation; those are definitely the most rewarding moments, and I look forward to those, seeing the lives I have helped change and impacted.”

To impact a life is a lofty goal, idealistic or unrealistic for many jobs one might perform. Recruiters do not have this problem. Anyone who has earned the title of “Marine” understands exactly how that decision impacted the trajectory of their life. Recruiters, like missionaries, shine their gospel light to the ends of the nation, inspiring men and women to serve and setting them down the path.

“It has been an honor to help these kids and be a part of their success story,” Santos added. “It is absolutely crazy what some of them have had to go through at such a young age. Some of their stories have put me to tears right in front of them. One of the hardest things is when the process doesn’t go well, and they can’t join. They’ve been through so much and they still get disqualified, whether by medical or not passing the ASVAB or whatever the case. But, it still gives me a chance to be part of their lives and help them out, whether that be by helping them into a different branch or just being here for them as a person to have their back.”

Santos reflected on the highlight of his time in recruiting, creating a new path for one youth to follow. Driving down the same street his recruiting office was on, Santos noticed a teenager standing along the side of the road in the pouring rain holding a bag full of aluminum cans. Santos pulled over next to the teen, identified himself as a recruiter, and asked the youth to come with him to the office.

“He just dropped the bag and got in the car. I asked him how old he was, and he said 19. I asked him, ‘Why are you selling cans? What’s really going on here?’ He told me his mom sold their house and left him homeless. He was now living with his father, who was a drug addict. I said, ‘I’m going to ask you one question. If you allow me, can I help you become a United States Marine and get the hell out of here?’ He just said, ‘you can try, but I doubt it.’ ”

Santos drove to the office and ad­ministered a practice ASVAB. The teen passed with an excellent score. They proceeded to a storage shed where the teen lived with his father to retrieve his social security card and birth certificate. Over the next three weeks, Santos arranged all the paperwork, testing and medical screening. He purchased new clothes for the teen to travel to the Military Entrance Processing Center, where he was deemed medically qualified. The very next day, Santos shook the young man’s hand a final time as he departed for bootcamp.

“After that moment, I 100% thought to myself if this whole recruiting thing goes to crap, that moment right there will be one I treasure forever.”

The Corps’ successful recruiting cam­paign in FY2024, combined with historic retention numbers of first-term Marines, enabled 600 poolees awaiting bootcamp in 2024 to start in 2025, thus boosting FY25’s accession numbers before the fiscal year even began. The Marines on recruiting will not allow this as an op­portunity to breathe or be complacent, however. The Marine Corps mindset was planted within them since they first engaged their recruiter long ago, ce­mented through their transformational experience in bootcamp, and matured through years in the fleet. The spirit forged in places like Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, or Hue compels today’s warfighters in the same way to seize and exploit the initiative.

No matter what challenges the future may hold, Marine recruiters will continue winning. They execute their duty with pride in their awesome responsibility, enduring whatever hardships or busy work can be thrown at them for the honor of shepherding new Marines into the fold. Every civilian who walks through their door is looking for a new way. The recruiter illustrates for them the world of possibilities available, if they are willing to put in the work.

“Recruiting duty, for me, dealt more with the human being side of things,” SgtMaj Ruiz reflected. “That part of the job is pretty awesome. You open doors for people to come through. They can do with the opportunity what they will, it’s up to them. The obstacles are still just as tall for people to make of it what they will, but the point is you open up the door, for some people, to change the entire dynamic of their family history. I am a naturalized citizen, born in Mexico. A recruiter opened the door for me.”

When I think of a Marine recruiter, I am immediately transported to an unsettled and aimless life, stalled in my past and ambivalent about my future. The recruiter sits opposite of me confidently smiling. I have no idea what I want in life, but I know I want whatever he has. I hope desperately that somewhere locked inside of me I have what it takes. Something tells me this Marine holds the key.

Author’s bio: Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-13. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.

Artist’s bio: Maj C.J. Baumann is the logistics officer for 8th Marine Corps District in Fort Worth, Texas. He holds the FMOS of 4606 (combat artist) where he con­tributes to historical documentation ef­forts of the Marine Corps Combat Art Program under the National Museum of the Marine Corps. He has created art­work for the 24th and 26th MEU, MARSOC and TBS. He created the official portrait for 38th CMC.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the January 1939 issue of Leatherneck Magazine.

It was a hot July day in 1862. Aboard the battle-wrecked Galena, the Marine Guard stood at attention. Bugles shrilled their flourishes, and the cheers of the soldiers at Harrison’s Landing could be heard above the brazen notes. The seamen froze in rigid blue ranks.

But there were great gaps in the formation, for, less than two months ago, Rebel shore batteries had swept away nearly half of the crew. Forty percent casualties in a four-hour fight! That ordeal was indelibly stamped on the faces of the survivors lined up to welcome the visiting dignitaries aboard.
Apart from the others were three men. Corporal John Mackie, commanding the Marine guard, stood flanked by two seamen. He stiffened perceptibly, with flushed face and eyes glinting with pride. A tall, gaunt man stepped away from the visitors and extended his hand to the Marine corporal. They smiled.

The rest of the visitors were smiling too. Admiral Louis Goldsborough positively beamed. His lost gunboats had been found. He had been worried about those four ships inconceivably swallowed up in the narrow confines of the James River. No one seemed to know where they were—except the enemy.

The Battle of Drewry’s Bluff
“On to Richmond!’” was the cry of the North. And General George McClellan, to appease it, maneuvered his army like pawns on the chessboard of war. Now he was ready to strike at the Confederate capital. Goldsborough dispatched ships from Hampton Roads to assist the troops and to open the James River for the passage of supplies. In response to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles’ orders to “push all the boats you can spare up James River, even to Richmond,” Galena, Port Royal, Aroostook, and Naugatuck cleared Hampton Roads—and then vanished.

The disappearance of the ships caused sleepless nights. The Navy Department wanted to know where they were, and Goldsborough, replying on May 13, reported that they had been last heard from on the 11th, somewhere in James River, about 25 miles from City Point. McClellan was apprehensive too, for he depended on those warships to aid him.

On May 15, he wrote to the Secretary of War to say, “I have heard nothing of the James River gunboats.” But on the following day he added, “A contraband just in reports that he heard an officer of the Confederate Army say our gunboats had reached within 8 miles of Richmond.” So, apparently, they weren’t lost at all. The Confederates knew where they were.

It is not surprising that the Confederates did know, for the Yankee guns had blasted Rebel river fortifications into silence. Aboard Galena, Mackie and his dozen men were kept busy, engaging the Confederate sharpshooters in a moving rifle duel. Every foot of the fleet’s progress was contested. Arriving at City Point, they found the place burned and abandoned by the defenders.

On May 13, the gallant little Monitor joined the other ships, and the flotilla continued up the James. The banks began pressing in on them as the river grew narrower, and as Mackie afterwards said, “crooked as a ram’s horn, with very high banks, heavily wooded on both sides, from which the fleet was constantly being fired on by Confederate sharpshooters hidden in the underbrush.”

About 8 miles below Richmond their progress was halted abruptly by sunken ships and submerged piles. The obstructions could not be cleared, for on Drewry’s Bluff a battery of 10 guns frowned down to command the situation. There was nothing to do but fight; so the ships formed for action. They were in single line, with Galena leading and only 100 yards from the fort. The Marines were engaged in sniping at gunners even before Captain John Rodgers gave the command to fire.

Galena opened first, but her guns couldn’t be raised sufficiently. It would have required an elevation of nearly 35 degrees to reach the Rebel batteries almost above them. Then the Confederate guns went into action and the plunging fire just about blasted the ships out of the water. The fleet dropped back to an effective range and anchored.

Then the fight began in earnest. It was the final defense before Richmond, and the gray-clad gunners had been ordered to stick to the last man. All guns that could be brought to bear were in action and the battle raged in wild fury. The fire from the fort began to weaken. But Monitor had already fallen back, and the unarmored Yankee ships were badly smashed and in danger of destruction. So they moved about 1,000 yards down the river and left Galena to engage the enemy practically alone.

Suddenly, the Rebel fire increased and more riflemen ap­peared on the parapets. The crew from the Confederate ironclad Merrimac had been rushed down from Richmond to reinforce the Rebel strong point. The cannonading increased into a nightmare of violence. Galena shivered under the impact. Her six boats were smashed, and her stack resembled some strange, fantastic sieve. Great holes gaped in her sides, and her red, slippery decks were littered with broken spars and timbers. A shot struck the quarter-deck wheel, and it disappeared in an eruption of splinters.

A gunner raced up from the magazine and breathlessly reported to Rodgers that only five rounds of fixed ammunition remained. “Send it up as long as it will last,” replied the captain, “and then we will use solid shot.”
“Aye, aye, sir! snapped the gunner. He started to return below. An 8-inch shot screamed down and tore him to pieces. Four other men were killed and several wounded by the same projectile. Scarcely had its echo died away when a shell exploded on the deck in the midst of a group of men. A powder monkey in the act of passing a shell was hit and the thing went off in his hands. Long afterward, when the red horror had lifted from his memory, Mackie said: “Twelve men of the Marine Guard under my command and I were at the ports, taking care of sharpshooters on the opposite bank, and I barely escaped being struck by a 10-inch shot.”

“As soon as the smoke cleared away a terrible sight was revealed to my eyes: the entire after division was down and the deck covered with dead and dying men. Without losing a moment, however, I called out to the men that here was a chance for them, ordering them to clear away the dead and wounded and get the guns in shape. Splinters were swept from the guns, and sand thrown on the deck, which was slippery with human blood, and in an instant the heavy 100-pounder Parrot rifle and two 9-inch Dahlgren guns were ready and at work upon the fort. Our first shot blew up one of the casemates and dismounted one of the guns that had been destroying the ship.”

With Galena splintering about them, those Marines fought their guns like maniacs. A hostile shell ripped through into the boiler room. Another set fire to the ship, and the crew stamped out the blaze amid a torrent of shells. Finally, after four hours of combat, Rodgers realized he could not force past the Rebel batteries. So Galena limped out of range.

Torn from stem to stern, with 132 holes in her; with her port guns shored up to keep them from tumbling into the coal bunkers, the gallant little ironclad withdrew. Such bravery could not go unrecognized. That is why, two months later, a group of dignitaries climbed aboard and were amazed that Galena still floated. That is why Mackie stood between Quartermaster Jeremiah Regan and Fireman Charles Kenyon, outstanding heroes of the day, to receive credit for his bravery. Welles was there, and Admiral Goldsborough; Rodgers and the tall, gaunt, weary looking man who held out his hand toward Mackie.

“These, Mr. President,” said Rodgers, “are the young heroes of the battle.”
The tired eyes of President Abraham Lincoln smiled as he shook the hand of each man. Then he turned to Welles and directed that all three were to be awarded the Medal of Honor. This instance is probably the only time a president of the United States personally, and upon his own initiative, recommended the bestowal of this decoration.

A signal honor indeed! And for Mackie, it was a double honor for he became the first United States Marine ever to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Of such threads is the web of destiny woven.

Executive Editor’s note: This article exemplifies the bravery of a small band of Marines as the U.S. was entering its most turbulent time as a nation. While technically, this fits into the time period we covered in our February issue, the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 served as a precursor to a bloody fight to preserve the Union less than two years later. See page 28 for more about Marines during the Civil War.

The fight was over in less than three minutes. When the gun smoke cleared, one Marine lay dead and another lay critically wounded. Standing in shock around them were 10 safe and unscathed hostages. The failed seizure of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry also left 10 insurgents dead and seven more taken as prisoners. The sudden flash of deadly violence on Oct. 18, 1859, put an end to an attempted insurrection and brought the nation one step closer to the bloodiest war in its short history. Like many monumental moments in America’s story, the outcome depended on little more than the courage and readiness of a few Marines.

Send the Marines
A cool, autumn breeze rustled through the foliage of the stately White Oaks. The old trees stood tall like sentries around the periphery of the Marine barracks. The oldest post in the then-84-year-old Marine Corps, sat perched at the corner of 8th and I Streets in Washington D.C. The Marine detachment stationed there consisted of young men whose sea service had taken them to faraway tropical scenes like Brazil, Panama and Paraguay according to Jon-Erik Gilot’s article “Private Luke Glenn: The Unlikely Celebrity of Harpers Ferry.” But on that fateful October morning, the leathernecks would be needed much closer to home.

Among the Marines at “8th and I” was First Lieutenant Israel Greene. Already a pioneer of Marine artillery, Greene was the senior officer on deck that Monday morning and was thus in charge of the roughly 100 Marines there. Greene was making his way across the Washington Navy Yard—clad in his blue uniform, complete with a ceremonial saber—when a frantic messenger came hurrying toward him.

Chief Clerk Walsh of the U.S. Navy, running and out of breath, brought the alarming news that a violent insurrection was taking root in the small river cross­roads of Harpers Ferry, Va. The insur­gents—led by abolitionist and federal fugitive John “Osawatomie” Brown, of Bleeding Kansas fame—were striving to seize the town’s federal armory.

Twenty-four hours after firing their first shot, Brown’s band of raiders were now embattled with the townspeople and members of the local militia. The local response was able to fix Brown’s raiders in a small fire engine house on the edge of the armory grounds, but a dangerous standoff devolved into a precarious hostage situation. The skirmishing be­tween Brown’s men and the armed locals had already left six citizens killed (including the town’s mayor) and eight wounded. The nation needed a rapid response of trained professionals to quash the uprising before it could escalate into a full-scale rebellion. Greene’s detachment of Marines—65 miles away—were ready to answer the call.

A Train Bound for Glory
Less than three hours after news of the turmoil arrived in Washington, D.C., 86 Marines boarded the 3 o’clock train for Harpers Ferry. Greene counted his men as they boarded, ensuring each man was properly dressed and armed for whatever might meet them in the mountains of western Virginia.

His men were clothed in sky-blue trousers and jackets and were equipped with U.S. Model 1842 smoothbore muskets. (Executive Editor’s note: See the February issue of Leatherneck to learn more about the M1842.) The design of the nearly 10-pound firearm was already two decades old, but the Marines of “8th and I” didn’t mind carrying the aged weapons. They were capable of hitting three targets a minute at distances beyond 300 yards. The leathernecks were also fond of the weapon for another reason: it came with a 17.5-inch bayonet with a thick, triangular blade. With the bayonet attached, the firearm transformed into a six-and-a-half-foot spear. It was a barbaric weapon, better suited for ancient Hoplites than 19th-century marksmen, but the Marines would soon be putting them to use in close quarters. Greene also brought two 12-pounder Howitzers to their rendezvous with history—just in case things got out of hand.

Among the Marines aboard, was a young private by the name of Luke Quinn. The train ferrying the men to the mountains was filled with that same electric anticipation that has permeated troop transports since before Myrmidons waited in the holds of their ships to hit the shores of Troy. While most of the Marines were “exhilarated with excitement” about what awaited them at the end of the line, Quinn’s thoughts were likely elsewhere.

At just 23 years old, Quinn had already squeezed a lot out of life. He immigrated to the United States from Ireland when he was 9 years old. He joined the Marines when he was eligible and served for four years. He previously served aboard the USS Perry and the USS St. Lawrence. Now, in mid-October, as the passenger train rumbled west through Maryland, Quinn was only weeks from leaving the military.

Nearing the end of his enlistment and having honorably served the country that gave him a new life, the promise of opportunity was at his fingertips. But Quinn would not live to see another dawn.

The Arsenal
Harpers Ferry sits nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers con­verge before flowing southeast toward Wash­ington. A small town existed there since the 1730s, when a ferry was first estab­lished to help travelers cross the large waterways. In 1783, Thomas Jefferson passed through the town and famously remarked at its beauty. He claimed the view alone was worth a voyage across the Atlantic.

The combination of the surrounding mountains (which created a natural defense for the site) and unlimited access to hydropower made Harpers Ferry an ideal location to forge weapons. In 1799, construction began on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The site expanded, eventually becoming the second-largest supplier of arms to the U.S. Army. By the time the Marines were headed for Harpers Ferry, the armory employed more than 400 people and had already produced more than 600,000 firearms. But while the sur­rounding mountains protected the town, they also offered Brown’s raiders con­ceal­ment. Brown believed Harpers Ferry was the perfect place to begin his re­bellion as it could also equip an army of freed slaves and abolitionists he hoped would materialize.

Roughly an hour after departing from Washington, the Marines arrived in Sandy Point Junction, just a mile outside Harpers Ferry. There, Greene and his men rendezvoused with Robert E. Lee, who was still a colonel in the U.S. Army. Lee was on leave in Arlington when news of the raid reached Washington and was dispatched to meet Greene in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry to take charge as the ranking officer. Lee arrived at Sandy Point Junction unarmed and clad in civilian clothes. He was accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart.

After a brief discussion with Lee, Greene led his men toward the armory. They arrived roughly an hour before mid­night and entered the armory grounds through the back gate under the cover of darkness. Once in position, the Marines dispersed the drunk and bloodthirsty militiamen, then quietly went about set­ting a cordon around the fire engine house. Their orders for the night were simple: no one gets in or out.

Three Minutes of Fury
As sunrise turned the peaceful waters of the Potomac a shimmering gold and illuminated the 300-foot vertical face of nearby Maryland Heights, the Marines were alert, poised, and ready for the impending violence.
During the night, none of the men in Brown’s company, nor any of their 10 hostages, attempted to escape and break through the cordon. The previous day’s casualties left no doubt in the minds of the Marines that Brown and his men were willing to spill blood for their cause. Lee tried to end the conflict peacefully and ordered Stuart to negotiate with Brown under a white flag. When parleying proved futile, the operation was turned over to the Marines.

Stuart waved his feathered cap, signal­ing to the waiting Marines that negotiations had failed. Immediately, several Marines armed with sledgehammers advanced to the barricaded doors of the small building. The double doors were bolted with steel nails, tied closed with rope, and braced by the two fire engines inside. Brown and his men opened fire through the makeshift embrasures carved out of the doors. The Marines were undeterred.

For several minutes, the hammer-wielding Marines braved Brown’s fire and attacked the doors. The effort was unsuccessful, and Greene called his men back. He reassessed the situation and directed his men to use a nearby ladder as a battering ram. A dozen Marines slung their weapons, grabbed the makeshift ram, and sprinted for the doors. The first attempt failed. Undaunted, the Marines backed up and tried again. This time, their efforts paid off. A piece of the heavy door stove in, leaving a hole just large enough for one man to squeeze through. Seizing the opportunity, Greene drew his saber and crawled into the breach. Behind him followed Quinn.
Inside the cluttered and gun smoke-filled building, Greene rose to his feet, looking for a target.

“There’s Osawatomie!” shouted one of the hostages, pointing to Brown, who was crouched beside one of the engines with his carbine in hand. Brown fired, mortally striking Quinn in the abdomen. Greene pounced before Brown could fire again. The young lieutenant slashed Brown across the neck, sending the fugitive to the ground. The aggressive lieutenant then thrust his sword into Brown’s chest, but the thin blade bent double. Greene drew the now-bent sword high into the air and slammed the hilt down onto Brown’s head. As Greene beat Brown into submission, more Marines poured through the breach and into the chaotic scene. Stepping over the wounded and still-screaming Quinn, Pvt Matthew Ruppert moved into the fray. He was immediately shot in the face. Behind him, more Marines flowed through the hole like an unstoppable blue wave.

Two Marines quickly bayoneted and killed one raider who was cowering under a fire engine. Another Marine disarmed a raider near the building’s far wall, then pinned the man against the stone with his 17.5-inch blade, killing him. Before all the leathernecks began stabbing the now-surrendering combatants, Greene ordered them to take prisoners. In less than three minutes, the fighting was over. All the surviving raiders inside were captured and the hostages were freed without further incident.

Rushing Like Tigers
In the days following the rescue, Greene and a small detachment escorted John Brown to nearby Charles Town to be handed over to law enforcement. Less than two months later, Brown was hanged, making him the first American to be executed for treason. His final words—which he penned in a letter to his wife on the day of his execution—proved prophetic.

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”
Just a year and a half after Brown’s ominous words, the country was ripped in half by the Civil War. Among those who died to mend that fissure and preserve the Union were 148 United States Marines, leaving Quinn’s sacrifice to fade into obscurity.

Quinn’s body was left in an unmarked grave on the western heights above town, where it remained for 68 years. Then, in 1927, a few Harpers Ferry residents attempted to locate Quinn’s resting place. Relying solely on oral tradition, the residents began to exhume a section of St. Peter’s cemetery. Six feet down, they uncovered a partial skeleton; the bones were wrapped in pieces of blue wool adorned with Marine Corps’ buttons.

Quinn was given a headstone and reburied in St. Peter’s cemetery. In 2012, Marine Corps League Detachment No. 1143 erected a small stone memorial and a flagpole at Quinn’s grave. For more than 160 years, his body has remained in that remote plot in the mountains, forever hallowing the ground that overlooks the historic river crossing.

Twenty-six years after the raid, Greene wrote fondly of the way Quinn and the other Marines boldly followed him into the engine house. “My only thought was to capture, or, if necessary, kill, the insur­gents,” he wrote. “[My Marines] came rush­ing in like Tigers, as a storming assault is not a play-day sport.”

The Marines were not the only ones present that day who were satisfied with the execution of their duties. In a letter to the adjutant general, Robert E. Lee recalled the professionalism and courage of the Marine detachment as documented by Bernard C. Nulty in “United States Marines at Harper’s Ferry and in the Civil War.”

“I must also ask to express my entire commendation of the conduct of the detachment of Marines, who were at all times ready and prompt in the execution of any duty.”

Two years after the raid in Harpers Ferry, Lee traded in his blue uniform for Confederate gray to wage war against the United States.

Author’s bio: Mac Caltrider enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2009 and served with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines until 2014. Caltrider has since written for various online and print publications, including Coffee or Die Magazine, Free Range American, and Leatherneck. He was the 2023 and 2024 recipient of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s Master Sergeant Tom Bartlett Award. He is also the author of “Double Knot,” a memoir about his service in Afghanistan. Caltrider currently teaches English in Baltimore, Md.

Two men lay prone in the Maryland countryside, shouldering Spring­field rifles. Each fired a spotting round at a target 200 yards away. The younger man, wearing a Marine Corps uniform, scored a four. To his right was a distinguished gentleman clad in natty civilian attire, a derby atop his silver hair. His first shot hit the bull’s-eye for a score of five. Each man fired another five rounds—all bull’s-eyes.

The date was May 16, 1910. The uni­formed Marine was Gunnery Sergeant Peter S. Lund. Born and raised in Denmark, Lund spent most of his 21-year Marine Corps career as a rifle team member, coach and instructor. Although he was a crack shot, Lund was no straight arrow. In 1907, a general court-martial had convicted him of unauthorized absence—one of several offenses for which he was disciplined during his two decades in the Corps. The shooter in civilian clothes was Major General George F. Elliott, the 10th Commandant of the Marine Corps. The two had just placed Marine Corps Rifle Range, Winthrop, Md., into commission.

Located 30 miles south of Washington, D.C., the range was Elliott’s brainchild. The Commandant had a combat Marine’s appreciation of accurate rifle fire. As a captain, he led two companies of Marines augmented by Cuban insurrectos at the Battle of Cuzco Well—a victory that secured the Americans’ presence at Guantanamo Bay at the Spanish-Ameri­can War’s outset. Elliott was recognized for “eminent and conspicuous conduct under fire” during the operation. The following year, he distinguished himself in combat in the Philippines. Just days after becoming Commandant in 1903, he led a Marine Corps expedition to help stabilize Central America following Panama’s declaration of independence from Colombia. Elliott is the only Com­mandant since Archibald Henderson to command an expeditionary force in the field. Later in his commandancy, Elliott successfully fought off a proposal to transfer the Marine Corps to the Army.

In his 1907 annual report, Elliott ob­served that the Marine Corps “suffers from lack of rifle ranges.” He explained that most Marine posts “are in the vicinity of large cities, the surrounding territory of which is thickly settled. The long range and great penetration of the rifle now used, and the longer range and greater penetration of the rifle soon to be issued, make the location of ranges a problem of great difficulty.” Establishing a model rifle range in rural southern Maryland was part of Elliott’s solution.

The Navy’s Ordnance Department gave the Marine Corps 1,100 acres on a peninsula jutting into the Potomac River just south of the Indian Head Naval Proving Ground. In 1909, Elliott dispatched a small task force to transform the wooded parcel into a functioning rifle range. Those Marines operated under the leadership of Captain William C. Harllee.

Harllee was one of the Marine Corps’ most capable, colorful and controversial officers of the early 20th century. After being kicked out of both The Citadel and West Point for excessive disciplinary infractions, he enlisted in the Army. He quickly rose to first sergeant, winning accolades for his performance in combat during the Philippine-American War. He was commissioned as a Marine Corps second lieutenant in February 1900. Later that year, Harllee led Marines in combat during the Boxer Rebellion, including participating in the Allied assault on Beijing. But the disciplinary problems that got him expelled from The Citadel and West Point soon reemerged. While assigned in the Philippines as a first lieutenant, Harllee was convicted by a general court-martial and suspended from duty for six months for repeatedly striking a Filipino with a cane. During that same tour, he was suspended from duty for seven days for countermanding his superior’s orders, placed under arrest for 10 days for disrespect toward his com­manding officer and suspended from duty for 10 days for engaging in “ungentlemanly behavior.”

Harllee salvaged his Marine Corps career during a successful tour in Hawaii from 1904 to 1906. There, he supervised the construction of a rifle range on an abandoned cattle ranch. After assign­ments in California, South Carolina and Cuba, Harllee became the Marine Corps rifle team’s captain in 1908. The team thrived under his direction. Harllee was not an elite shooter; he could not calm his nervous energy on the firing line. But he excelled as a teacher and coach. So when Elliott decided to establish a model rifle range in southern Maryland, he tapped Harllee to lead the effort.

Harllee built the range on a shoestring budget. He, two other officers and about 40 enlisted Marines spent the winter of 1909-1910 living in tents and rough-hewn log cabins as they transformed the wooded and marshy landscape into a fully functional rifle range. Marines experienced in carpentry, plumbing and mechanics were detailed to complete the facility’s infrastructure. To save money, the Marines planted a garden and grew their own produce.

The result was a shooting complex with a variety of firing lines from 200 to 1,000 yards. A hill behind the butts provided a natural backstop. Nevertheless, in July 1910, Harllee received a complaint that a nearby resident was grazed by a stray round from the range. An investigation revealed that bullets were ricocheting off large rocks behind targets near the range’s outer edge. Harllee had the hill behind the butts bulldozed and rocks removed to abate that threat to public safety.

The installation’s original name was “U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Range, Stump Neck, Chickamuxen Post-Office, Md.” Soon after opening, the range was renamed in honor of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Beekman Winthrop. A blue-blooded descendant of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop held a series of offices under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His appointment as governor of Puerto Rico at age 29 led to his nickname, “Boy Governor.” He also had served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury before becoming Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1909.

East Coast Marine barracks from Philadelphia to South Carolina trained at Winthrop. In 1912, roughly 1,800 Ma­rines shot at the range, in addition to 200 members of Army, Navy and National Guard rifle teams. Eventually, every Marine recruit from the Eastern Division was sent to Winthrop to learn to shoot. Winthrop also became the base of operations for the Marine Corps’ successful rifle teams. Marine Corporal George W. Farnham won the Individual Military Rifle Shooting Championship of the United States in 1910, while one of his teammates won the prestigious President’s Match at the National Rifle Association’s tournament. In 1911 and 1916, Marines also won the President’s Match. Even more significantly, the Ma­rine Corps won the National Trophy Team Match in 1911 and 1916 while finishing second in 1915.

Winthrop became the Navy’s hub for its East Coast marksmanship training. Ships undergoing overhauls were required to send detachments of two officers and 20 enlisted men to the range. The Navy also established a three-week course at Winthrop to train its small-arms shooting coaches.
Access to the installation was mainly by water. Marines built a wharf along the Potomac to facilitate the movement of personnel and supplies. The Washington Navy Yard’s tug made a five-hour round­trip to the range six days a week. Some personnel arrived at Winthrop by taking a train to Cherry Hill, Va., followed by a short ferry ride across the Potomac. The range at Winthrop operated for eight months of the year. As Marine Corps Commandant Major General William P. Biddle reported in 1913, the southern Maryland weather was considered “too severe” for shooting during winter months. The Potomac sometimes became so choked with ice that it was difficult to reach the facility.

Built beside mosquito-infested marsh­land, Winthrop suffered a malaria out­break in 1911. The Marine Corps used part of a $20,000 appropriation for range upgrades to install screens on the bar­racks’ windows and doors. The next year, no malaria cases were reported at Winthrop.

The Navy soon regretted giving the Marine Corps the tract of land that became the Winthrop range. The Bureau of Ordnance repeatedly complained that the range’s location forced the Indian Head Naval Proving Ground to curtail its gunfire due to the proximity of the range’s housing to the line of fire for Indian Head’s naval 12-inch guns. By autumn 1913, the Navy Department was considering an alternate location for its mid-Atlantic rifle range. But when a large portion of the Marine Corps deployed to Veracruz, Mexico, the following year, relocation planning stalled. Winthrop’s facilities deteriorated as needed repairs were deferred amid uncertainty over the range’s long-term future.

Winthrop annually hosted high school boys from Washington, D.C., for a day of shooting. In 1916, the Marine Corps opened the range to all civilians. They could shoot at Winthrop any day but Sunday. A roundtrip boat ride from Washington cost 25 cents. For another 15 cents, civilians could eat lunch at Winthrop’s mess hall. The Marine Corps covered all other expenses, including supplying the civilians with rifles and ammunition.

During the downriver boat ride, Marine noncommissioned officers provided instruction on shooting and scoring while a Navy doctor gave a crash course in first aid. William Harllee—Winthrop’s first commanding officer—served as the Navy Department’s As­sist­ant Director of Target Practice and Engineer Competitions from 1914 to 1918. Throughout that assignment, he championed inviting civilians to shoot at Winthrop as a military preparedness measure. He admonished visitors: “Never offer any man in the military service a tip. It is offensive, and he will not take it. He esteems it a pleasure to welcome you to Winthrop and to make the shooting game attractive to you.” During the summer of 1916, more than 6,000 civilians shot at the range. Among them was Beekman Winthrop’s successor as Assistant Sec­retary of the Navy: Franklin Delano Roose­velt. In July 1916, Roosevelt hosted a party of dignitaries including Secretary of War Newton Baker on a yacht trip to the range, where the VIPs tested their marksmanship.

The outreach to civilians soon created a controversy. Initially, women were en­couraged to participate in the training. A widely published photograph showed a smiling woman poised to fire a machine-gun at Winthrop as another woman stood beside the weapon. In early May 1916, however, Headquarters Marine Corps banned women from shooting at Winthrop and then barred them from the installation entirely. Those decisions generated considerable resentment among the shooting clubs that regularly visited the range.

The United States’ entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, precluded civilian use of the range that year. In 1914, the Marine Corps had established a “student camp” at Winthrop as a training ground for newly commissioned Marine second lieutenants with no prior military exper­ience. The program ballooned as the Marine Corps brought a huge influx of civilians—many of them prominent college athletes—into its brotherhood of officers at the start of World War I.

Karl S. Day, a future Marine Corps Reserve general officer, was typical of the second lieutenants who arrived at Winthrop in June 1917. He had recently graduated from Ohio State University, where he captained the track team. Day and his fellow lieutenants initially slept on cots in a wooden barracks. “The heat and mosquitos,” Day wrote “are something awful.” Mosquito netting was issued to protect the lieutenants from Winthrop’s ubiquitous bloodsuckers. The range was so overcrowded that in mid-July, the lieutenants’ barracks was converted into a mess hall. The lieutenants moved into four-man tents. Heavy rain followed, dampening the lieutenants’ canvas-covered belongings.

While the lieutenants were at Winthrop, first call sounded at 6 a.m. every day but Sunday, followed by reveille at 6:10 a.m. The newly commissioned officers as­sembled at 6:20 a.m. Breakfast was served from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Training oc­­­cupied the lieutenants until a lunch break from 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and then resumed in the afternoon except on Saturdays. The lieutenants’ training in­cluded classroom instruction, drill, shooting and pulling butts. Dinner was served at 6 p.m. Meals cost the lieutenants $1 a day. They often supplemented their rations by purchasing ice cream cones, pies, chocolate or cakes from the instal­lation’s exchange. Entertainment at the remote facility was limited to movies shown three nights a week. Quarters sounded at 9:45 p.m. and Taps at 10 p.m.

After completing their marksmanship instruction at Winthrop, the lieutenants continued their training at the sprawling new Marine Corps base at Quantico. The Winthrop range soon followed the lieu­tenants across the Potomac. In autumn 1917, the Marine Corps shut down Win­throp, dismantling the facility’s equip­ment and moving it to a newly established range at Quantico.

The Winthrop range was in operation for only seven-and-a-half years. But in that short time, it laid the foundation for the Marine Corps’ marksmanship prowess.

Now known as the Stump Neck Annex, the former site of the Winthrop range is home to the Raymond M. Downey Sr. Responder Training Facility. That complex is named in honor of a New York City Fire Department deputy chief who died while heroically responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Before he was a firefighter, Downey was a Marine. He spent most of his four-year enlistment with 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines.

The Marine Corps’ Chemical Biological Incident Response Force—headquartered nearby at Naval Support Facility Indian Head, Md.—conducts training at the complex named for the fallen firefighter. Marines continue to hone their skills at the site that was once the Winthrop range.

Author’s bio: Colonel Dwight H. Sullivan, USMCR (Ret), is a senior coun­sel at the Air Force Appellate Defense Division, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., and an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University Law School. He is the author of “Capturing Aguinaldo: The Daring Raid to Seize the Philippine President at the Dawn of the American Century.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the April 2005 issue of Leatherneck Magazine. In recognition of Black History Month, Leatherneck is re-publishing the story.

The splashes of bullets in the water and the cresting of puffed bodies in the surf revealed a world turned upside down for the noncombat-designated service and support black Marines thrust precipitously into the first hours of the first day on the cutting edge of the battle which would emblazon itself in military history for its ferocity, heroism and sacrifice.

On that D-day morning of 19 Feb. 1945 on Iwo Jima, Corporal Gene Doughty, a Marine squad leader, pressing his belly into the coarse black sand, swiveled his head to count noses of his 1 st Squad, 1st Platoon, 36th Marine Depot Company.

“They were all flat as rugs with the salt air above them singing with shell splinters,” recalled Doughty. A fellow Marine, Private Wardell Donaldson, his head embedded in the sand, had a bullet hole in his helmet. Surf washed the prone boondockers of many who were hardly ashore.

Into that same fury that morning came additional brother black Marines, members of the 8th Marine Ammunition Co. Both the 36th Marine Depot Co and the 8th Marine Ammo Co were part of the 8th Field Depot, which provided service support for the Third, Fourth and Fifth Marine divisions of V Amphibious Corps (VAC).

These young men were part of a distinctly select group-20,000 vigorous, patriotic Americans known today as Montford Point Marines. During World War II, black Marines were recruited and then trained at a segregated camp, Montford Point Camp, near Jacksonville, N.C. They served in two defense battalions and as combat service support Marines, such as truck drivers, security details, cargo suppliers and ammunition handlers. They were not slated for direct confrontation with the enemy. All officers in the active units were white, as were most of the noncommissioned officers in the beginning.

Doughty, celebrating his 21 st birthday on Iwo Jima with the 36th Marine Depot Co, came to the beach beside the 8th Marine Ammo Co at virtually the same time as assault troops. However, the depot and ammunition forces had to wait for space on the 3,000-yard beachhead. In a few days, the 33d and 34th Marine Depot companies and succeeding elements of 8th Marine Ammo Co entered into no less a conflagration. They’d be protecting, sorting or delivering essentials to troops within earshot.

“But on this spit of a beach, on a lone rock in the open sea,” recalled Doughty, “the enormous swells often picked up landing craft and crashed them bodily ashore.” Ammunition, water tanks, assorted military equipment, rations-all were dumped unceremoniously on the strand. With the crunch of mortars, artillery water spouts and whining shell fragments close enough to startle your ears, black troops, often standing upright, were provisioning the battle.

“They were so young-many 18 to 19 [years old], really. It took great care, and slowly, to ready it all,” added Doughty, “with thanks to those brave Army brothers with the DUKWs [‘ducks’-wheeled amphibious landing craft, all-purpose carriers], and the Pioneers and naval construction battalions [Seabees] with their armored ‘dozers’ and Weasels [small, tracked carriers]. In those first hours, supply was hand to mouth.”

An Army officer, second lieutenant Bruce Jacobs, who was attached to the Army DUKW units, expressed the wonder of how they survived it all. The Army lieutenant celebrated his 20th birthday on the island. A retired major general, he lives in Alexandria, Va.

Sergeant Thomas Hay wood McPhatter of Lumberton, N.C., who also celebrated a birthday on Iwo, plunged headlong into the pandemonium as a section chief in 1st Pit, 8th Marine Ammo Co. “Our unwieldy LST [tank landing ship] forced a keel-grip on the sand,” recalled McPhatter. “But [she] swung to the drumming of the heavy surf. Ammo Marines were soon into her gaping bow to wrestle out the munitions. Japanese big-gun rounds and machine-gun splatters took umbrage.”

Action was continuous. On the second day, 2dLt Francis J. Delapp and CpI oilman Brooks, both from 8th Marine Ammo Co, were wounded. On the third day, Private First Class Sylvester J. Cobb of the company was wounded.

The 34th Depot Co, which landed with the 33d Depot Co on Feb. 24, lost CpI Hubert E. Daverney and Pvt James M. Wilkins, killed on the fire-swept beach. A few days later, Sgt William L. Bowman, PFC Raymond Glenn, Pvt James Hawthorne, PFC William T. Bowen and PFC Henry L. Terry were out of the battle with wounds. In early March. PFC Melvin L. Thomas gave his life and Pvts “J” “B” Saunders and William L. Jackson, all 8th Marine Ammo Co leathernecks, were wounded.

“Why?” asked McPhatter. The answer was simple. There was no shelter, no defilade and no concealment; all operations on Iwo Jima were front line. “Death came from anywhere, to anywhere. Pick any Marine,” said McPhatter, “and you’ll hear high words for our Seabees. They went out of their way to bring water up to us later.”

But the gods of war momentarily turned their backs and “like a lightning stroke, a mortar round or two dropped into the ammunition dump that 8th Ammo was burgeoning,” said McPhatter. “We were in foxholes right beside the dump.” The blowup seemed a fizzle at first, then a great thunder with shrapnel flying every which way.

“We raced away and down to the beach for safety and to assemble what we could,” he explained. “It was a disaster. So much ammo was destroyed. We needed instant supply from Guam and Saipan. The planes were soon [overhead] and [the] munitions [floated down] under brightly colored parachutes [that] the Japanese could see very well. The Japanese potshot at the Marines running helter-skelter anywhere the wind blew the chutes. Things got really intense, kicking up the sand.”

McPhatter ducked momentarily into a gutted bunker, stopped beside a dead Marine “who, no doubt, died only moments before as he held the photographs of his family to his blooded chest. With my helmet I scooped a shelter for my head and promised the Almighty that if he spared me at this moment, I’d dedicate the rest of my life to Him.”

The sergeant kept his word. He entered the ministry, graduating from Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, N.C. Then after being a pastor, he entered the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps, went on to serve in Vietnam, retired as a Navy captain, and holds a doctor of divinity from the Interfaith Theological Center, Atlanta. He’s now a retired Presbyterian minister.

McPhatter’s platoon leader, 2dLt John D’Angelo, now a retired schoolteacher, had high words for the coolness, drive and skill of his men. D’Angelo retired as a Marine captain.

Pvt Roland B. Durden, born in Harlem, N.Y., remembered when the dump blew, but the lump still in his throat is for the cost of the operation after only a few hours ashore. His 34th Marine Depot Co was part of the Graves Registration unit.

“We were day on, day on, day on burying them in long, bulldozed trenches, first wrapped in ponchos, then sheets, and finally nothing at all,” Durden said, “and these were the casualties of only the first days.” Durden retired as assistant general manager of the New York City Transit Authority.

Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Guadalcanal in 1942 while he was a sergeant, was among the dead, recalled Platoon Sergeant Stephen Robinson, later a prominent Illinois attorney, whose detail buried Basilone.

Samuel Saxton, a U.S. Navy steward, was there too, with the goods of war on an LSM, a medium landing ship. “Shell spouts meant God was with us and they were bad shots. I learned of guns concealed behind great steel sliding doors on Suribachi. But-and luckily-the snarling little carrier hornets tempered the enemy gunners’ zeal.”

Saxton joined the Marines later, rose to captain, served in Vietnam, and became a prominent Marine corrections officer, a profession he carried into civilian life with national recognition.

Actually, in early Marine Corps planning, black Marines were not slated for “direct confrontation with the enemy,” save those assigned to the 51st and 52d Defense battalions. The defense battalion role was to protect, and the Marines were combat-trained to do that. But many defense battalions were assigned remote spits in the Pacific that the Japanese didn’t care about. So neither 51 st nor 52d fired a round in anger, although some rounds were fired in frustration. As a historical footnote, the leathernecks of 51st Defense Bn did fire eleven 155 mm rounds to ward off a rumored Japanese submarine near Nanomea Island in the Pacific. However, other black Marines in the notfor-combat service support troops were again and again on the front lines and on invasion beaches to assist the assault forces.

But the Marine Corps plan for black Marines didn’t work all the time-especially around 5:15 in the morning on Iwo Jima, 26 March 1945. “We were security forces for the sleeping airmen, and we were more relaxed now that the islands had been secured for [10] days, but our perimeters were as tight as ever,” explained Doughty. “About 300 enemy, in a last-ditch incursion, slipped down the west side of the island and stormed the bivouacs of Army, Navy, Marine and Air Corps airmen.”

The Japanese were to carry out the dictum of their honored commander, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who stated, “Take 10 Americans with you!” Silent at first, the Japanese slashed the guide ropes of the tents and then slashed the sleeping aviators, many helpless and immobile under the fallen canvas that blanketed them-all in the dark before the dawn.

Hit hard was the Army’s VII Fighter Command. Bivouacked alongside them were the 5th Pioneer Bn and 8th Field Depot, where seasoned veterans were encountered. They blunted the attack in their sector with casualties and high honors.

“Oh, it was well planned,” said Doughty. “[They] came at us from three directions. They wanted maximum confusion and destruction, but because we were in foxholes, combat situated and ready, we were fast to respond. I recall James Whitlock and James Davis [36th Marine Depot Company] rapidly cranking off rounds, flashes on flashes in the dark. They [the Japanese] were bloody with their bayonets and swords. With a little later backlighting, our people could see faint wispy sword-swinging, grenade-sowing figures as they charged us.”

According to the Marine Corps historical pamphlet, “Blacks in the Marine Corps,” written by Henry I. Shaw Jr. and Ralph W. Donnelly, and reprinted by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps in 1988, “The black Marines were in the thick of the fighting.”

Pvt James M. Whitlock and PFC James Davis of the 36th Marine Depot Co each were awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Pvt Miles Worth of the 36th Depot Co was wounded. PFC Harold Smith was killed and CpIs Richard M. Bowen and Warren J. McDaugherty of the 8th Marine Ammo Co were wounded. Sgt McPhatter recalled that one of his Marines, PFC Burnett, first became aware of the Japanese incursion and “began firing to alert everybody.”

The infiltrators attacked with their own as well as American weapons. Forty of the Japanese dead were armed with swords indicating a high percentage were officers or senior noncommissioned officers. LtGen Kuribayashi was not among them. He earlier had committed hara-kiri.

Later, Colonel Leland S. Swindler, who commanded 8th Field Depot during the Iwo Jima operation, lauded the performance of his men, who continued to function in labor parties while in direct contact with the enemy. Proper security prevented their being taken unaware, as they conducted themselves with marked coolness and courage.

Some of the Marine Corps’ early savants had questioned why any robust combat training for labor troops was needed. Such were not the thoughts of the crusty hard-nosed black drill instructors at Montford Point. Take the legendary Gilbert H. “Hashmark” Johnson, who said, “I’m an ogre but fair.” Johnson attained the rank of sergeant major.

Another black DI during the early days at Montford Point, Edgar R. Huff, who also retired as a sergeant major, once stated, “You’ve got to be better than any Marine in New River.”

The door was opened in June 1941 for blacks to serve in all the military forces on orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A year later, the Marine Corps activated the Montford Point Camp, and the Marines were quick to put in charge some shake-hands-with-the-devil black drill instructors such as Johnson and Huff.

Doughty recalled Johnson bellowing at the Montford Point training center. (The camp was later renamed Camp Gilbert H. Johnson in honor of SgtMaj Hashmark Johnson.) “Looking back at my early recruit training, I am ever grateful to its instructors and training personnel,” said Doughty.

Doughty was promoted to sergeant for leadership shortly after the Iwo Jima campaign. He served with occupation forces at Sasebo Naval Base, Japan, was honorably discharged in May 1946 and returned to New York, where he resumed his college education at City College. His career included work as a physical education instructor for the New York City Police Athletic League and as a social investigator for the Department of Social Services. He retired from Sears, Roebuck and Co. as a communication division manager.

Doughty remains close to Marine Corps service organizations. He has been a member of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation for 25 years and served with its board for four years. He also is a life member of the Marine Corps League, 1 st District. He was national president of the Montford Point Marine Associationelected to two separate terms-and currently serves as its national scholarship program director.

General Carl E. Mundy Jr., 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps, addressing a reunion of Montford Point veterans, cited their “guts, determination and boundless drive to succeed and excel.”

Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret), Director Emeritus, Marine Corps History and Museums, added, “Their role on Iwo Jima as well as Saipan, Okinawa and other battlefields made the simple statement: They were Marines and fought as Marines. Their spirit, combat skills, courage and devotion left no question of that.”

Authors note: For their actions as part of the supporting forces of VAC on Iwo Jima, the black Marines earned the Navy Unit Commendation ribbon. The “Navv and Marine Corps Awards Manual, secNAVINST 1650.1″ reads, “To justify this award, the unit must have performed service of a character comparable to that which would merit the award of a Silver Star Medal for heroism or a Legion of Merit for meritorious service to an individual.”

Editor s note: Cy O ‘Brien served as an infantryman in a rifle company in the Third Marine Regiment on Bougainville. He was later a combat correspondent on Guam and Iwo Jima. Following WW II he spent 12 years in the Marine Corps Reserve, retiring as a captain. Cy was first published in Leatherneck in August 1944 and remains a valued contributor.

Editor’s note: This story originally ran in the April 2017 issue of Leatherneck Magazine. 

On Jan. 20, 2017, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ad­ministered the oath of office to President-elect Donald J. Trump, making him the 45th President of the United States. During this culminating moment of the Inauguration ceremony, cheers and applause filled the air as “Hail to the Chief” greeted President Trump for the first time in his new role. Every four years, this occasion results in in a variety of uniquely American experiences—there is the morning worship service with following procession to the U.S. Capitol, the new President’s inaugural address and later, the parade and evening balls. One tradition pervading the entire day, and enhancing all others, is music.

Music has played a central role in the traditions of Inauguration ceremonies for more than 200 years. Many organizations combine to create the atmosphere, but only one has been doing it from the be­ginning. “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, is the oldest active professional music organization in our nation’s history and has played a key role in Inaugurations since the 1800s.

Congress ordered the formation of The United States Marine Band in 1798. Shortly after, the band began performing at White House functions during the ad­ministration of John Adams. The band’s Inauguration debut, however, would not come until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as the country’s third Pres­ident. This being only the fourth ceremony of its type in our nation’s history, many of the current traditions had yet to be developed. There was no parade or ball following the event.

Instead, Jefferson simply took the oath of office inside the Capitol building in front of a crowd that was limited by the size of the room. Jefferson’s inaugural speech marked the end of the occasion. “Hail to the Chief” had not yet been composed, let alone associated with the President. To honor Jefferson as the new Commander in Chief, the Marine Band performed an original piece called “Jefferson’s March,” com­posed specifically for the ceremony.

As the years passed, the Inauguration ceremony traditions developed and the support provided by the Marine Band evolved. The band quickly became a White House staple, and President Jeffer­son is credited with christening the band as “The President’s Own.” Jefferson’s second inauguration in 1805 included the first inaugural parade, and following President James Madison’s swearing-in ceremony, the Marine Band performed at the first inaugural ball in March of 1809. The Marine Band adapted and expanded its role supporting the President through every change and each new precedent included in the ceremony. It has faithfully continued that support on every Inaugura­tion Day since 1801.

The band’s most fundamental inaugural piece, “Hail to the Chief,” did not appear in the ceremony until President Martin Van Buren’s 1837 Inauguration. At the time, the song had existed for more than 20 years, but it had only been directly connected with the President since 1829. At a ceremony celebrating the laying of the cornerstone of the first lock of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the Marine Band had performed the piece to honor President Andrew Jackson as he departed.

Two first ladies, Julia Tyler and Sarah Childress Polk, are primarily responsible for establishing the tradition of honoring the Commander in Chief with this song. They repeatedly requested that the Marine Band perform the song to announce their husbands’ entrances or as a sign of honor during departures. Over time, the music and the title became inseparable, and the Department of Defense established the song as the official musical tribute to the President in 1954.

Outside of Inauguration ceremonies and White House performances, the Ma­rine Band often supports the President around the nation. “The President’s Own” pe­formed at the consecration of Gettys­burg National Cemetery in advance of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address. The band led President Grover Cleveland and a parade of 20,000 people through Manhattan to New York harbor for the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. On Sept. 11, 2002, the Marine Band supported President George W. Bush as he traveled to the Pentagon and ground zero in honor of the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Presidential support by the band in­cludes performing in state funerals as well. In 1963 “The President’s Own” led the funeral procession for John F. Kennedy and more recently, the band marched in the procession for Ronald Reagan’s state funeral in 2004.

Musical requirements around the White House take on many different forms. Holiday events such as the annual Easter egg roll, Fourth of July celebrations, and Christmas tree arrival all include perfor­mances by the Marine Band. A large, fully staffed detachment of the band performs each time the President officially wel­comes a foreign head of state. Garden tours, parties, receptions and many other events all feature music from some varying size element of the band. In all, “The President’s Own” performs upwards of 200 times annually.
Even when not performing in direct support of the President, the band always maintains a full schedule. One of the band’s hallmark traditions is their annual National Concert Tour.

Legendary Marine Band Director John Philip Sousa or­ganized the first concert tour in 1891. As director of the band for more than a decade, Sousa performed with the band in most major cities around the Washing­ton, D.C., area and had previously at­tempted to organize concert tours that would take them across the nation, but was denied because of the band’s already full schedule supporting the White House. Finally given an audience with President Benjamin Harrison, Sousa later quoted the President as saying, “I have thought it over, and believe the country would rather hear you than see me; so you have my permission to go.”

The 1891 tour took the band to 32 dif­ferent cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest. The following year, Sousa extended the tour all the way to the West Coast. In the years following 1892, the band conducted their National Concert Tours, with several multi-year gaps. Many successive events factored into this. Sousa’s own departure from the band, and World War I, the Great Depression and World War II all impacted the band’s ability to perform outside the capital. In 1946, the Marine Band resumed the con­cert tours on an annual basis, and it has held one every year since.

Today, the band’s performances are in such high demand that it cannot tour the entire nation each year. The country is divided into five touring areas, and the band selects a different one each year to visit. The tours last for a month each fall, and concert tickets are free to the public. In 2016, the band went to 30 different cities in 30 days throughout October, traveling through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Performances at Evening Parades are another central tradition of the Marine Band. Held every Friday night during the summer at Marine Barracks Washington, these are, “a showcase for the ceremonial prowess of Marines and the musical eminence of the U.S. Marine Band.” The band, along with the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps and the Silent Drill Platoon, put on an awe-inspiring display in this highly visible and important demonstration of Corps identity.

Despite their busy schedule and wide variety of events, Inauguration Day re­mains one of the most important events for the Marine Band. It is one of very few performances in which the entire 99-piece band is assembled to march and perform together.

Shortly after the election last November, the band began working with the pres­iden­tial transition team and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies to determine how the events of inauguration day would proceed. As details gradually were locked in, the band began its marching and music re­hearsals. Many parts of the ceremony were known from tradition and precedents set by pre­vious Inauguration ceremonies, but much of the ceremony was specific to this day.

The playing members of the band worked together to perfect the variety of musical pieces being played. Rehearsals were conducted with other musicians or groups participating in the ceremony. Drum Major Master Sergeant Duane King conducted marching drills, perfecting the art of synchronizing all 99 members without verbal commands. The non-playing members had much work to do as well—every musician needed a folder containing copies of the different music being performed, and the music needed to be printed on something that would not blow away in the wind or allow the ink to run in the rain. Every tiny detail of execution needed to be thought through in order to enable the band to perform at its required level.

“We have very high expectations for this organization. I expect them to perform at their highest level regardless of the event,” said MSgt King. “There will always be eyes on us, and for many, this is their first glimpse of the Marine Corps and the Marine Band, and we want that to be a great experience.”

A full dress rehearsal was conducted the Sunday before the ceremony. All 152 Marines of the unit had prepared diligently and were ready for the main event to come. “The Inauguration always requires a certain amount of pacing and stamina on the part of the members of the band,” explained Master Gunnery Sergeant Susan Rider, a trumpet player and 20-year veteran of the Marine Band. “I am always so impressed by how the band is able to do its work at the very highest levels no matter what circumstances are presented.” The unit would play a role spanning almost an entire 24-hour period.

Prior to the swearing-in, the Marine Band provided music as a prelude to the ceremony as well as to honor the entrance of dignitaries. The music for this portion of the day was selected by Lieutenant Colonel Jason Fettig, the Marine Band’s director.

“For the entrance of the VIPs, including former Presidents, we try to select titles that have some sort of connection to their background or career,” he said. “Since this is a great American ceremony, I want to try to mirror that in the music that we play.”

Appropriately selected for this prelude were a wide variety of pieces by John Philip Sousa in addition to other classic American tunes such as “National Emblem” by Edwin Eugene Bagley and “Liberty Fanfare” by John Williams.

After the opening remarks and invoca­tion, the ceremony drew to its height at the swearing-in. Vice President-elect Mike Pence took the oath of office and was greeted for the first time with four ruffles and flourishes by the Army Herald Trumpets followed by “Hail Columbia.” The Marine Band plays this song as official honors to the vice president.

The Marine Band followed the vice president’s oath of office with a stirring performance, accompanying the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, of “America, The Beau­tiful.” This marked the seventh time these two organizations have per­formed to­gether for a presidential Inauguration. The earliest combined inaugural performance came in 1965 for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Over the decades, they met again to perform for Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and, most recently in 2001, for George W. Bush.

Next, Chief Justice John Roberts ac­companied President-elect Trump to the podium to administer the oath of office. “Hail to the Chief” followed, again pre­ceded by the ruffles and flourishes. To close the ceremony, the Marine Band performed the national anthem, accom­pany­ing singer Jackie Evancho.

As the new President attended his inaugural luncheon and made his way to the parade review stand in front of the White House, the Marines were already on the move to the next phase of their day. Immediately following the swearing-in, the band picked up and moved to take their place in the parade.

Formed with their full complement, the band was an impressive site. At the head stood Drum Major MSgt King, adorned in his iconic bearskin headpiece, ornate sash, and Malacca cane mace to silently command the unit. The assistant drum major and five Marine Band officers, including the director, were behind the drum major and the remainder of the band followed, all 99 playing members, arranged in nine columns standing 11 rows deep. As soon as the Marines were formed and the President took his place on the review stand, the parade stepped off. The band performed two Sousa classics, “The Thunderer” and “Semper Fidelis,” on the march from the Capitol to the White House.

As they passed the review stand, “The President’s Own” demonstrated to their new Commander in Chief exactly why they have earned that title. “The parade was quite an experience,” said clarinet player Staff Sergeant Parker Gaims. “I felt the weight of the occasion when the band made its final turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, where the presidential reviewing stand was positioned. As we marched up to the stand, I could see the new first family out of the corner of my eye.”

President Trump and the Com­mandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert B. Neller, watched as the seven non-playing members of the band simul­taneously snapped salutes on the Drum Major’s silent command. The playing members performed textbook drill, per­fectly covered, aligned and marching in unison, while playing “The Marines’ Hymn.” In this moment, with the world watching, the Marine Band exemplified the professionalism and perfection our nation expects of the Marine Corps.

The band entered part three of their inaugural support following the parade. That evening, the Marine Band performed at the Salute to the Armed Services Ball. Providing music throughout the evening, the band performed a wide variety of Sousa numbers and other popular Ameri­can pieces.

The Inaugural balls concluded the cere­monies and festivities of the day, but for the Marines, one final performance remained. The band provided musical support for the inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral the next morning. A brass ensemble, conducted by Marine Band Director LtCol Fettig, provided music during the prelude and postlude of the service. During the service, the ensemble accompanied the organ and congregation during the national anthem, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and “America, The Beautiful.”

Celebration, ceremony and tradition always fill Inauguration Day. “It is im­portant for our country to witness and experience this event together every four years,” said MGySgt Rider. Every four years, Jan. 20 marks a unique and historic experience laid out by the nation’s founders, and the United States Marine Band, occupying their place beneath the ceremony platform, is a special witness to and participant in this history.

“For me, it is a huge honor to take part in the Inauguration Ceremony,” said MSgt King. “It is American history, and to be part of the most American of democratic processes, the peaceful transfer of power, is a very special honor.”

The Marines continued their tradition of excellence on this day, honoring Pres­ident Trump, the Marine Corps and our nation. Their flawless performance and preservation of American tradition in this 58th Presidential Inauguration demonstrated to the world why they are “The President’s Own.”