The Life of Lauchheimer: The Man Behind the Corps’ Top Shooting Trophy

This month, the Marine Corps’ top shooters will gather at Marine Corps Base Quantico to compete for the Lauchheimer Trophy—the award for the highest aggregate rifle and pistol score at the Championship Match. Who was Lauchheimer, and why is the Marine Corps’ most prized shooting trophy named after him?

Charles Henry Lauchheimer was born on Sept. 22, 1859, the fifth of Meyer and Babeth Lauchheimer’s nine children. His parents had immigrated from Bavaria to Baltimore, Md., where his father cofounded a successful clothing manufacturing company. The family worshiped at the city’s Oheb Shalom synagogue.

In June 1877, Lauchheimer graduated from Baltimore City College, a public secondary school. He won a Peabody Prize and a $50 cash award for finishing fifth in his class. That summer, Congress­man Thomas Swann of Baltimore held competitive examinations to select his West Point and Naval Academy nominees. Swann limited the competition to Balti­more City College students and graduates. Among six applicants vying for the nomi­nation, Lauchheimer emerged victorious.

Lauchheimer performed well at the academy, graduating in the top fourth of the class of 1881. He was popular with his fellow cadet midshipmen, as Naval Academy students were then known. In his second year, he and several class­mates had been restricted to the Naval Academy’s yard due to disciplinary infractions, depriving them of Saturday afternoon off-base liberty. In response, they sewed bedsheets together to create an enormous banner on which they wrote, “Give us liberty or give us death.” They displayed their makeshift protest sign on the front of their barracks, facing the superintendent’s quarters. The ringleader of that prank was Lauchheimer. Years later, he was elected the president of his alumni class.

When Lauchheimer attended the Naval Academy, the cadet midshipman training program lasted six years. The final two years were spent at sea. Lauchheimer was assigned to USS Richmond, the Asiatic Station’s flagship, for most of his tour. In June 1883, the class of 1881 re­turned to Annapolis to take a final ex­amination. In the era of a constricted Navy, commis­sions were available for only 23 of the 86 test takers. The final examination re­­sults elevated Lauch­heimer to 14th in his class. Preferring the Marine Corps to the Navy, he re­quested and received one of 10 available Marine commissions. Lauchheimer and nine of his classmates became the first Naval Academy graduates to serve as Marine Corps officers.

Second Lieutenant Lauchheimer re­ceived his Marine Corps officer in­doctrination at the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Marine Barracks. There, he and his newly commissioned classmates fell under the tutelage of Colonel Charles Heywood. The tall, imposing colonel was a Civil War veteran who went on to become the Marine Corps’ ninth Commandant.

Lauchheimer assumed command of USS Ossipee’s 28-member Marine guard at Philadelphia’s League Island Navy Yard. On ship, they patrolled the Suez Canal and the Western Pacific. During the cruise’s second year, Lauchheimer suffered a severe bout of typhoid fever, which he attributed to the drinking water in Nagasaki, Japan. He spent 70 days on the sick list.

The highlight of the old wooden sloop’s Asian cruise occurred in August 1886. Tensions were building on the Korean peninsula amid fear of Chinese inter­vention. When a Chinese gunboat es­corted six troop transports into the Korean port of Chemulpo, the U.S. Minister Resident and Consul General in Seoul telegraphed Ossipee’s captain, imploring him to send “a guard of 20 men to protect the Legation.” The fol­low­ing afternoon, Lauchheimer led Ossipee’s Marine guard from the ship’s berth in Chemulpo to the U.S. legation in Seoul. There, the Marines provided security until reboarding Ossipee four days later, the perceived crisis having passed.

The original 50-pound bronze plaque that Lauchheimer’s siblings donated to the Marine Corps has been remounted twice to accommodate more name­plates for the annual winners. (LCpl Joaquín Carlos Dela Torre, USMC)

After Ossipee returned to the United States, the Marine Corps selected Lauch­heimer for advanced military training. He attended the Naval Torpedo School in Newport, R.I., in the summer of 1887, and after completing the three-month program, he studied at the Naval War College, then only in its third year.
When he reported to his next duty station at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., he decided to leave the Marine Corps—but then changed his mind after almost a year of leave. Eight months into that leave period, he wrote to his Naval Academy classmates that he “found the atmosphere of civil life [to be] frigid.” He returned to duty, promoted to first lieutenant, and, in 1890, began a 16-month tour commanding USS Enterprise’s Ma­rine guard. Following that shipboard assignment, Lauchheimer spent five months on recruiting duty, looking for a few good men in his hometown of Baltimore. His career took a pivotal turn when he reported for duty in the office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy (OJAG) in March 1892.

In October, he enrolled in Columbian University’s law school (since renamed George Washington University Law School). Classes started at 1800, allowing him to attend while still working at OJAG in the nearby State, War, and Navy Build­ing (now known as the Eisenhower Ex­ecu­tive Office Building). When Lauc­heimer completed the two-year program, he received an honorable mention for best examination for the Bachelor of Laws degree.
Lauchheimer would spend the rest of his Marine Corps career as a staff off­icer, and with the aid of his law edu­cation, he excelled as a judge advocate. His litiga­tion work in both court-mar­tial and civil­ian courts won accolades. The Government Printing Office pub­lished two editions of a procedural guide that he prepared for naval courts and boards. At the Naval War College, he also delivered well-received lectures that were published in the U.S. Naval Institute’s profes­sional journal, Proceedings.

Starting in 1899, Lauchheimer ex­per­­ienced a meteoric rise in rank, jump­ing from first lieutenant to colonel in just six years. During his seventh year at OJAG, he underwent a rigorous two-day promotion examination. Following a medical exam, he was tested on admin­istration, field engineering, minor tactics, military law and infantry fire discipline. On the examination’s second day, he conducted a parade and drill practical exercise followed by oral examinations in artillery mechanical maneuvers, small arm firing regulations and naval gunnery. Lauchheimer passed the examination. He did best in military law, obtaining a perfect score. Probably reflecting his extended time away from troop handling, his lowest score was in drill regulation.

The 12th Commandant, MajGen George Barnett, fires a Lewis gun at the Marine Corps Rifle Range in Winthrop, Md., 1917. Barnett and Lauchheimer were close friends and Naval Academy classmates. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Lauchheimer was promoted to captain in February 1899. He did not serve as an O-3 for long. On March 3, the Senate confirmed President McKinley’s nomina­tion of Lauchheimer to become the as­sistant adjutant and inspector of the Ma­rine Corps with the rank of major. Writing in his Naval Academy class newsletter, he explained that his new duties included “being Inspector of Target Practice of the Marine Corps, having charge of this entire subject throughout the Corps.”

The first officer to hold the position of Inspector of Target Practice, Lauchheimer strove to improve Marine marksmanship. He oversaw the construction and up­grading of live-fire ranges. He also fostered the Marine Corps’ competitive marksmanship program. After joining the National Rifle Association’s board of directors in 1900, Lauchheimer super­vised Marine Corps teams in shooting competitions.

In 1901, Lauchheimer entered a Marine team in a match at an international rifle meet in Sea Girt, N.J. The Marines finished sixth of 11 teams. The following year, the Marines scored sixth of nine in two of the meet’s team matches. Despite being bested by five National Guard teams, the Marines took solace in having beaten the Army for the first time in a team marksmanship competition. Lauch­heimer’s best shooter was then-Second Lieutenant Thomas Holcomb, who in 1936 would become the 17th Com­man­dant of the Marine Corps. Holcomb won a $5 prize for finishing seventh overall in the meet’s President Match. Lauch­heimer required the lieu­tenant to re­linquish the prize money to the U.S. Treasury because he won it while per­forming duties at government expense.

In what must have been a bittersweet moment, when Lauchheimer was pro­moted to lieutenant colonel on March 23, 1903, his duties as Inspector of Target Prac­tice were transferred to a junior of­fi­cer. Lauchheimer had significantly boosted the Marine Corps’ marksmanship program during his four years in that role.

As a lieutenant colonel, he was dis­patched to Manila to establish the office of Adjutant and Inspector of the Marine Corps in the Far East. He also assisted the Attorney General of the Philippines in legal matters involving the Navy Department. Lauchheimer returned to Washington in December 1904 after a year abroad and was soon promoted to colonel, replacing the Adjutant and Inspector of the Marine Corps’ upon his retirement…

However, following his meteoric rise, Lauchheimer suffered a career setback in 1910. He and the Commandant, Major General George F. Elliott, repeatedly clashed, leading to a court of inquiry. The court faulted both Elliott and Lauch­­heimer for the imbroglio. As pun­ish­ment, the Taft administration transferred Lauch­heimer to Manila. Just a few months from mandatory retirement age, Elliott was allowed to remain as Commandant.

Lauchheimer did not sulk. He actively executed his duties, inspecting various Marine Corps units and facilities in the Philippines. He also won praise for rec­om­mending security improvements at the U.S. legation in Beijing after in­spect­ing that facility. His fellow officers dem­onstrated the esteem in which they held Lauchheimer by electing him pres­ident of the Army and Navy Club of Manila.

Charles H. Lauchheimer served as a brigadier general from Sept. 8, 1916, until his death on Jan. 4, 1921. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Lauchheimer’s supporters back in the United States mounted a lobbying effort to restore him to his previous position. As a result of that campaign, the Taft ad­­ministration reassigned Lauchheimer from the Philippines to San Francisco in November 1911. His transfer to the West Coast did not mollify Lauchheimer’s champions, who maintained pressure to reinstate him as Adjutant and Inspector of the Marine Corps. In the presidential election year of 1912, Taft relented. Lauchheimer returned to Headquarters Marine Corps and resumed his duties there in October. By then, Elliott had long since retired, having been replaced as Commandant by the undistinguished but politically well-connected William P. Biddle. Taft badly lost his November 1912 reelection bid, finishing behind both the victor Woodrow Wilson and former President Theodore Roosevelt.

Little more than a year after Lauch­heimer’s return to Headquarters Marine Corps, the Army and Navy Club of Wash­ington bestowed the signal honor of electing him as its president. A month later, Lauchheimer’s career received a major boost when his Naval Academy classmate and close friend George Barnett became the 12th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Lauchheimer’s responsibilities grew under Barnett. He assumed control of Marine Corps recruiting and sat on several boards determining Marine Corps policy.

Lauchheimer had thoroughly re­habi­li­tated his career by 1916, when an opportunity arose for further ad­vancement. Following the deaths of 124 Americans and 1,071 others in the German U-boat sinking of RMS Lusitania, President Wilson sought to expand the U.S. Navy. The result was the Naval Act of 1916. The statute authorized the production of 156 new Navy vessels. The Marine Corps shared in the largess: the act created the Marine Corps Reserve and authorized the President to greatly expand the Marine Corps’ size. Most significantly for Lauchheimer personally, the statute created seven new Marine Corps brigadier general billets. One was reserved for the senior officer in the Adjutant and Inspector’s Department. President Wilson chose Lauchheimer for that position. The Senate confirmed the nomination the day after receiving it. On Sept. 8, 1916, Wilson signed the commission appointing Lauchheimer as the first Jewish general officer in United States Marine Corps history.

Less than seven months later, the Uni­ted States entered World War I. The Marine Corps expanded more than five­fold during the war and Lauchheimer was the officer in charge of filling the ranks. His recruiting effort was remark­ably successful. Declining to accept draft­­ees, the Marine Corps positioned itself as an elite all-volunteer force. By the war’s end, the Marine Corps had received 239,274 applications for 60,189 openings. Commandant Barnett lauded Lauch­hei­mer’s oversight of the recruiting campaign.

Capt Chris Scott hoists the Lauchheimer Trophy at the 2022 Marine Corps Marks­manship Awards Ceremony at MCB Quantico, Va., April 11, 2022. (Cpl Mitchell Johnson, USMC)

The Wilson administration recognized Lauchheimer’s exceptional performance of wartime duties with the Distinguished Service Medal. Unfortunately, that medal was awarded posthumously. After com­pleting a West Coast inspection tour, the 59-year-old Lauchheimer suffered a severe stroke in July 1919. Following a coma, he suffered paralysis, and he re­ained hospitalized until dying from another stroke on Jan. 14, 1920.

Lauchheimer’s siblings sought to commemorate his Marine Corps service by establishing a shooting medal in his honor. Commandant MajGen Barnett enthusiastically endorsed the idea, noting that Lauchheimer had been “instrumental in establishing the present system of target practice in the Marine Corps which has placed the Corps, as you know, in the first ranks of the shooters of the United States today.” When John Archer Lejeune replaced Barnett as Commandant on June 30, 1920, he continued to work with Lauchheimer’s family to establish the commemorative shooting award. The result was a bronze relief trophy depicting Marines advancing in battle. Above the battle scene are the words, “The Lauchheimer Trophy for Annual Competition in Small Arms Firing.” Below the battle scene is the inscription: “Presented to the United States Marine Corps by the Family of Brig. Gen. Charles Lauchheimer.” The original 50-pound trophy included 14 small shields on which to engrave the annual winners’ names. The Lauchheimer family also paid to cut the die for a badge to be presented to each year’s top three competitors.

When they presented the trophy to the Marine Corps, Lauchheimer’s siblings explained that they donated it “as a means of keeping his name before the Marine Corps, to which he devoted his life, and for which he felt a love, affection and loyalty so well known to all his comrades and associates.” Commandant Lejeune replied that the trophy’s commemoration of “the distinguished services rendered by your brother, the late Brigadier-General Charles H. Lauchheimer, will forever enhance its value to every Marine.”
The first Lauchheimer Trophy competi­tion was held in 1921. Over the past century, the original brass plaque has been remounted twice to accommodate more nameplates for the annual win­ners. The trophy’s presentation to the Championship Match’s top shooter in April will once again honor Charles H. Lauchheimer’s role in developing Marines’ marksmanship prowess.

Author’s Bio: Colonel Dwight H. Sullivan, USMCR (Ret), is a civilian at­torney in the DOD Office of General Counsel 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.”

A Shared Hardball History: Pre-World War II Marines, Japanese Were Friendly Foes on the Diamond

In August of 2021, the Japanese na­tional baseball team won the gold medal in the Olympic Games. They defeated the United States 2-0 at Yoko­hama Stadium, in the same city where Japanese and American baseball teams squared off against each other for the first time more than a century ago. The two countries have a long, shared history of baseball. Because Marines have been stationed across the globe, they found themselves in a position to take part in these international baseball games, which many people hoped would foster goodwill and promote peace between the two rising superpowers of the early 20th century.

The United States’ global influence expanded rapidly on the heels of the Civil War. One of the main exports that fol­lowed was baseball, which exploded in popularity domestically during the war. Americans took the game to far-ranging outposts, playing it among them­selves to relieve boredom, and planting its seeds in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Japan—all places where baseball is still very popular today. Major General John A. LeJeune bragged, “Everywhere we go, we leave them bas­ball.” This notion is somewhat true, but the truth is a little more complicated. For instance, Cuba had already had a profes­sional baseball league for two decades by the time the Marines showed up dur­ing the Spanish-American War in 1898. In fact, Spain had tried to suppress base­ball because it was rivaling bullfighting as the most popular sport on the island. It was American and Canadian mission­aries who spread the game well before the U.S. Marines showed up to play.

American businessmen also took the game of baseball with them as a rec­rea­tional pursuit, but for the most part, they had no interest in expanding the game outside of their enclaves. The missionaries wanted to include a form of physical edu­cation in their foreign schools and often introduced the sport to local students as a form of exercise. Many believed that they were teaching American-style values to their students, and that would help them to become “civilized.” In China and Japan, baseball would become very popular by the end of the 19th century.

In treaty ports such as Yokohama, foreign athletic clubs catered to European and American members. Rugby, cricket, and baseball were popular pastimes among the inhabitants of the foreign settlements. The Yokohama Athletic Club, founded in 1868, was initially almost exclusively British. Over time, Americans supplanted the British, and baseball sup­planted cricket as the most popular sport played at the club by the late 1880s. Ac­cording to Donald Roden, author of the article “Baseball and the Quest for Na­tional Dignity in Meiji, Japan, published in The American Historical Review, Ameri­cans living in Japan used baseball as a way to express their national identity.

The Shanghai Race Course was not only where many sporting events took place, it was also a major hub for military activity. (Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

Sports clubs in treaty cities restricted access to Japanese athletes. They could not participate in the sporting events, but they were hired to maintain the grounds  on which the games were played. Despite the pro­hibi­tion, a Japanese baseball team from Ichiko University challenged the Ameri­can baseball team in Yokohama in 1891, but the Americans declined. Un­deterred, the Ichiko side continued to challenge the Americans. Because of the restric­tions, the Americans declined for nearly five years before finally relenting. They agreed to play, and the May 23, 1896, game was a lopsided and embar­rassing defeat for the Americans. The students of Ichiko trounced the Ameri­cans 29-4. On June 5, the Americans agreed to another game, hoping to avenge the loss. The team bolstered their roster by using extra players from the U.S. Navy vessels in Yokohama Harbor. These efforts did not achieve their desired re­sults, and the Americans suffered a sim­ilar humiliation, suffering a 32-9 defeat. A third game eventually went the Ameri­cans’ way after they pulled more ringers off of the newly arrived USS Olympia, according to Roden.

At this point, baseball’s popularity exploded in Japan. Roden recognized that Americans in Yokohama played baseball to maintain their identity as Ameri­cans, viewing it as a rugged, in­di­vidual­ist sport, while the Japanese players found that baseball aligned with their collectivist ideals. They felt the team sport was better suited to underpin collectivism than individual sports like judo. Baseball took on whatever ideal the players needed it to take. Americans saw their turn at the plate as an expression of their independent nature, as man-to-man combat. Japanese players saw their turn at the plate as an opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the good of the team.

Japan, like America, started an age of expansion towards the end of the 19th century. When the Japanese Navy crushed the Russian Navy in the 1905 Battle of Tsushima, the western powers took notice. The Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war changed the military dynamic in Asia, and the United States began to view Japan as a potential adversary. Both nations wanted to keep a foothold in the Pacific Ocean, securing islands to use as bases to re-coal their fleets. War with Japan seemed like a very real possibility after Japan’s annihilation of the Russian fleet.

Because baseball had become so pop­ular in Japan, both the United States and Japan thought that college and all-star tours of each other’s countries would foster a sense of goodwill and enhance the chance for peace. Baseball seemed like a good way for the countries’ young men to meet, compete peaceably and foster good diplomatic relationships. These tours started in 1905, when Waseda University’s baseball team toured the United States and lasted through the 1930s. The most notable of these was the 1934 American all-star tour of Japan, which featured superstars like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

The USS Olympia baseball team was one of the first teams to play against a Japanese team in Yokohama. (Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

Marines also played baseball against Japanese teams nearly until the United States entered World War II. In 1910, Waseda University played a series of 24 games in Hawaii against local civilian teams, U.S. Army teams, a U.S. Navy team and the Marines. Waseda won 11 of their games, including two games out of three against the Marines. This would be the first of many games be­tween Waseda and the Marines over the next 23 years, the most high profile of which was a 1927 game in Quantico, Va., with Japanese Ambassador Tsuneo Matsudaira and Commandant John A. Lejeune in attendance.

Waseda University was a frequent op­ponent of the Marines in China as well. It was in China that the Marines and Japanese teams faced off against each other the most often. Both countries en­joyed equal footing in the international settlements in the Chinese concessions, and both countries used baseball as an opportunity to exhibit national pride.

There were two areas of China where Marines regularly played sports. The first was in North China and included the cities of Peking and Tientsin. The Marines of the Legation Guard joined the North China League, a baseball league composed of the American and Japanese businessmen of the foreign settlements in those cities, and the 15th Infantry, a U.S. Army unit in Tientsin. Occasionally, the teams of visiting U.S. Navy ships joined in. The earliest games were in the 1910s, and they continued until the onset of WW II.

The second area was Shanghai. In 1927, a civil war in China was about to erupt. The Marines sent the 3rd Brigade, under the command of then-Brigadier General Smedley Butler, to Tientsin and Shanghai to protect the international settlements there. Much of the brigade went to Tientsin, and they formed a base­ball team that joined the North China League.

The 4th Marines went to Shanghai and stayed there until 1941. They found that the city was rife with sporting competi­tions, including polo, soccer, rugby, ten­nis, bowling and baseball leagues. The American and British civilian population living in the international settlement made dozens of sports fields. The city boasted five YMCAs, one of which catered exclusively to the U.S. military personnel. There were several baseball fields in Shanghai but the most well-kept was at the Shanghai Race Course. The race course itself tended to be a major hub of sports and military activity. Since the 4th Marines’ billeting was dispersed through the city, the track’s infield was a place they could drill and pass in re­view. The facilities included a grandstand, a baseball diamond, tennis courts, cricket pitches, several soccer and rugby pitches, and tees and greens to play golf shoe­horned in between everything else. Chinese laborers meticulously maintained the race course; its baseball diamond was one of the best in the world.

Shanghai’s thriving sports atmosphere benefited the Marines’ physical condition­ing, but some commanders did not see it that way. One Marine officer lamented the fact that duty in the city was making his troops soft—the infrastructure did not allow the Marines to practice field problems, and they had to perform forced marches through the city streets early in the morning before commuters choked them off. Marines drilled and paraded through the well-maintained infield of the Shanghai Race Course and the Columbia Country Club, some of the only training spaces available to them. The commander wanted his units to rotate through the Philippines, where they could do proper military activities in a harsh environment to toughen up.

MajGen John A. Lejeune, right, and Japanese Ambassador Tsuneo Matsu­daira, center, attended the 1927 base­ball game in Quantico, Va., between the Marines and Waseda University. The game would later be considered one of the most high-profile games ever played between Japan and the Marine Corps team. (Courtesy of National Archives)

Due to the lack of regular military train­ing, the 4th Marines in Shanghai were a perennial baseball powerhouse playing through the Shanghai baseball matrix. The teams in the league generally con­sisted of civilian businessmen and gov­ern­ment officials called the Amateurs and U.S. Sailors anchored on the Man of War Row on the Huangpu River or the Yangtze River Patrol. Some years, the 4th Marines fielded a regiment-wide team. Other years, each battalion and the headquarters fielded their own teams. And some years included Japanese and Chinese civilians. The league was quite multinational.

The Peking Marines unsuccessfully attempted a goodwill tour of Japan in 1925. In 1930, the 4th Marines managed to tour the country, where they were welcomed by throngs of cheering fans. They played 14 games against college and corporate teams and won 10 of them. Leatherneck published an account of the tour in January 1931. The 4th Marines failed in an attempt to tour the country again the following year.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese col­leges and high schools toured China, playing games against Japanese and American baseball teams. Year after year, the Marines played against touring Japa­nese universities like Waseda, Keio, Meiji, Tokyo, the Saga Commercial School, and others. The visiting Japanese students usually gave the Marine teams a tough time. They used Japanese baseballs (slight­ly smaller than American ones), hired local Japanese umpires, and let the Japanese team set the ground rules. They usually played at the Hongkew Park dia­mond, which was in the Japanese defense sector of Shanghai. The games had an air of mutual respect and cordiality. Ma­rines in China talked every year of how exciting the visiting colleges were be­cause of their remarkable style of play.

In July 1936, the Golden Dolphins, one of Japan’s first professional baseball teams, traveled to Shanghai to play base­ball. They planned to play the 4th Marines, American civilians and the Japa­nese civilian baseball teams in a best two-out-of-three style tournament. They handily defeated each team in succession and won without the need to play the third game. The Americans made an all-star team of Marines and civilians, which the Golden Dolphins beat as well. The North China Herald reported that the professional side was going to travel to Tientsin to play another game against the Marines there, but no record of that game was reported in the English newspapers of China.

The May 1936 cover of Walla Walla magazine celebrated the return of the baseball season. Despite the con­flict between China and Japan, Marines still played against Japanese college teams. (Courtesy of Marine Corps His­tory Division)

The Meiji University team visited in the summer of 1937 and beat the Marines twice, the American civilians twice, and the local Japanese civilians once. They then beat an all-star team of Marines and civilians 10-0. The visiting team sent a letter of appreciation to the Marines for the spirit of their play, which they pub­lished in the July 31, 1937, edition of Walla Walla. The visit from Meiji was one of the last times Japanese universities sent teams on tours to China, because the Second Sino-Japanese War began to erupt through the country.

Not for the first time that decade, Ma­rines watched firsthand as China and Japan edged closer to war. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, and hostility be­tween the two nations boiled over. In late January 1932 the Japanese military sta­tioned in Shanghai attacked Chinese army units in the district of Chapei. Ma­rines took defensive positions along the Soochow Creek, which separated their de­fense sector from Chapei. They watched as Japan burned the district in the two-month-long battle. A Japanese bomber, operating from an aircraft carrier off the Chinese coast, bombed a cotton mill, injuring a few Marines who were billeted there.

The Japanese attack on Chapei ended in March. Though many of the Marines felt he base­ball season, and that summer at least two Japanese college teams visited. Those were the Saga Higher Community College and Ritsumeikan College. The 1932 Shanghai league included a team of Japanese businessmen and a U.S. Army team from the 31st Infantry Regiment, which deployed to the city during the crisis to reinforce the Marines.

But in late summer of 1937, Japan took a more aggressive posture in China. Fight­ing once again erupted in Shanghai, and the Japanese fought to drive the Chinese military away from the city. In October, the North China Star reported that a Golden Dolphin pitcher who the previous year had embarrassed the teams of Shanghai, identified only as “Matsu­moto,” joined the Japanese Army and was sent back to China, where he was killed in action.

Relations between the Japanese and American governments rapidly un­raveled. The Marines were ordered to keep the armed non-American units out of their sector by any means neces­sary. After several months of intense fight­ing, the Japanese succeeded in ex­pelling the Chi­nese fighting forces from Shanghai and acted more bellig­erently toward the other countries of the inter­national settlement. They attempted to bring armed troops into the American defense sector, where Marines resisted their ploys to conduct armed patrols there. In December 1937, the Japanese bombed the USS Panay (PR-5), of the Yangtze River Patrol. The bombing killed three U.S. Sailors and wounded dozens more. President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered a military re­prisal against Japan, but the isolationist stance of the United States pervaded. Eventually, the Japanese government apologized and paid for the damage done to the ship.

After the fighting of the previous year, the 1938 Shanghai baseball league con­sisted of three Marine teams and one team of American amateurs. Gone was the cooperative atmosphere from earlier years. The Second Sino-Japanese war raged through the country, and it looked like war was imminent in Europe. The foreign military contingents evacuated Shanghai, leaving the Marines in an in­creasingly vulnerable position. The base­ball league in Shanghai survived through the 1941 season, but only American teams entered the competition in the final three years.

A screenshot from a film of a post-war game played between Ma­rines and a Japanese military team in oc­cupied China. Japan withdrew from the sport until its surrender at the end of World War II. (Courtesy of University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collection)

International baseball lasted a little longer in Peking and Tientsin. Between 1929 and 1938, the only Marine Corps team in North China was the one put together by the Legation Guard. In 1938, the 15th Infantry left Tienstin, and the Marines took over their compound. They fielded a second team, used the 15th Infantry’s Can Do Field and joined the North China League.

In 1939, Marines faced off against a baseball team from the Japanese Embassy, winning 6-4. In the summer of 1940, the Marines played one final baseball game against a Japanese military team. They used a rubber baseball, as the leather-cov­ered baseballs were becoming hard for the Japanese government to supply. The Japanese team beat the Marines 14-1, but in consolation, the Marines were treated to libations at the Japanese club after the game. The camaraderie of the baseball teams in 1940s China was one of the last times the two countries would be on good terms until well after WW II. At least three of the Marines who played in the final July game later ended up as prisoners of war.

During WW II, the sport endured do­mes­tically—America always has base­ball. Japan was forced to withdraw from the sport until their eventual surrender. Baseball returned to the Japanese popu­lace after the war as a way to regain nor­mal­cy. It seems fitting that the two na­tions are still facing off—and that Japan won its gold-medal game in Yokohama, where the games between the two coun­tries began.

Author’s bio: Kater Miller is a curator at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and has been working at the museum for 12 years. He served in the Marine Corps from 2001-2005 as an aviation ordnanceman.

Protecting the Way: Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos A. Ruiz: A Committed, Engaged Leader of Marines

On Nov. 29, 2023, I had the oppor­tunity to interview Sergeant Major Carlos A. Ruiz, the re­cently appointed 20th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, at his office in the Pentagon. I looked forward to our con­versation, as I knew little about him beyond his official bio and hoped to understand what kind of Marine and leader he is. I arrived prepared with questions focusing on the current state of the Corps, and where we are headed. To my surprise, the interview kicked off with a series of questions directed at me. The Sergeant Major wanted to know about my time on active duty and my time since in the civilian world. He asked about my wife, my children, and how my work life balances time for them. He even concerned himself with how much traffic I encountered on the way and if I found a parking spot. One question he posed proved most difficult, and I still wrestle with my answer.

“How long did it take you to find your way?”

As we progressed onto other topics, I realized his questions were no accident or mere pleasantries. They were a reflec­tion of his personal journey through 30 years wearing the uniform and a genuine concern for individual Marines. I understood that some of the items I desired to ask him might simply be distractions from what is truly important in his eyes. The Sergeant Major’s philosophy on life and definition of his new role, however, remains focused on helping Marines find their way and preserving the way of the institution amidst a never-ending tide of change.

He first reflected on the many mentors throughout his career who helped him find his way in the Corps. The Sergeant Major was born in Mexico and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Fresh out of boot camp in 1993 as a brand-new Marine warehouse clerk, Ruiz missed his flight to Okinawa after boot camp, leaving him UA to his first duty station in the fleet. The Sergeant Major laughed as he remembered this cringe-worthy entrance into the Corps, recogniz­ing the importance of others pointing him in the right direction and setting him up for success.

“It’s the ability of others to make you focus on what is in front of you, and to see the potential in you,” he said. “I’m just glad that happened for me, that someone said, ‘you are more than this. You can do something else.’ That happened for me constantly. At every rank along the way, there was always somebody to touch me and say, ‘move this way.’ I have been very lucky.”

U.S Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, Sergeant Major of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces South joins Marines from 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, Fox Company, 4th Marine Division at Riley, Kansas on June 22, 2022. Exercise Gunslinger 22 is a joint Kansas Air National Guard and U.S. Marine Corps exercise designed to increase joint aircraft control and training for potential real world contingencies. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Ryan Schmid)

Fittingly, the first mentor to come to his mind was the first NCO he encountered in the fleet once he finally arrived in Okinawa. A Marine named Sergeant Tukes helped Ruiz push beyond his dismal start and taught him what the right path could look like.

“Sgt Tukes was an infantryman who couldn’t reenlist in the infantry. At that time, the Marine Corps was very small, so he reenlisted with a new MOS of warehousing. He was like a fish out of water, but Sgt Tukes and his NCOs were my entire world. When you’re young, there’s no first sergeant. There’s no battal­ion commander. You see them every once in a while, but my world was with Sgt Tukes. He was the person who looked like, walked like what I imagined a Ma­rine should be like. Everything that was promised at some point in my enlistment period was right there in front of me.”

A machine-gunner by trade, Tukes led his section of warehouse clerks like a machine-gun section and ensured they believed that in Sgt Tukes’ world, every Marine was truly a rifleman. Ruiz and the other junior Marines fought for a spot on the machine-gun team to spend more time with their sergeant. They loved to hate him on their routine hikes across the island, watching in awe as he remained on his feet pacing back and forth during breaks, forcing them to drink water and recite general orders or machine-gun data.

“That was a great experience for me,” Ruiz remembered. “I was sold. When you have someone like that, then you spend the rest of your career trying to be Sgt Tukes for someone else. If I can just get others to feel what I felt, I think that’s the hook.”

Three decades have passed since his time with Sgt Tukes, with opportunity and accomplishment at each stop along the way. Ruiz spent three years on re­cruit­ing duty early in his career, and later four years as a drill instructor. To this day, his time as the Drill Instructor School’s chief instructor remains one of his proudest accomplishments. He deployed to Kuwait in January 2003, pushing north to Iraq that March with the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His first experience with an infantry battalion in combat came as the company first sergeant with Lima Company, 3/4, while deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. In addition to his duties as the company first sergeant, Ruiz served as the Shock Trauma Platoon Commander, helping evacuate wounded Marines from the front line to medical care. He completed a second tour in support of Operation Enduring Freedom before receiving orders to Inspector-Instructor Staff.

He returned to the infantry in 2013 on his first assignment as a newly minted sergeant major, serving with 3rd Battal­ion, 5th Marines. He served in various assignments through the last decade, most recently holding dual roles as the Command Senior Enlisted Leader for both Marine Corps Forces Reserve (MARFORRES) and Marine Corps Forces South (MARFORSOUTH).
Ruiz took over his current role in August 2023. He accepted the responsi­bility with characteristic joy and humility.

“There was no plan for this, there was no plan to be this!” SgtMaj Ruiz said. “The jubilation I felt when I found out I had been selected to be Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, though, was no different from the way I felt when I was selected for lance corporal. And then again for corporal, and again at every rank. It was terrifying. I’m thinking, ‘wait, you think I can be a corporal?’ But someone said, ‘yes, you can.’ The fear of letting others down drives you to work, prepare, and to really listen to what the force and the environment is telling you.”

Earlier in his career, SgtMaj Carlos Ruiz served four years as a drill instructor at MCRD San Diego, Calif.,, then progressed as the chief instructor of drill instructor school. (Courtesy of SgtMaj Carlos Ruiz, USMC)

SgtMaj Ruiz defined his role as a representative and voice for all Marines, officer and enlisted, on all institutional programs and how the Marine Corps is preparing for the future.

“What’s bigger,” he added, “I am the one person that must deliver to the indi­vidual on the promise of what it was going to be like to be a Marine. The prom­ise we made to each Marine and their families. The promise that we made to the American people, that who we say we are, we are. If we are not moving in that direction and doing the things that are synonymous with being a Marine, I think that’s where I belong the most.”

Force Design 2030 initiated a rapid sequence of changes across the force. Now, several years into its implementation, Ruiz made clear his take on the future.

“General Smith came in and told us to get rid of the, ‘2030.’ When you look at what the threat is today, we needed to change. Sometimes we have a habit of going head on into a brick wall over and over and over again, and the environment is compelling us to change. General Berger got us on the right path, and Gen­eral Smith continues with that, he’s just saying change faster. Take all the plat­forms and whatever fancy things we are buying, put them in the hands of the M­arines, and they’ll come back to us and tell us how to better employ it. All the technology is good, because we need to give an advantage to our Marines, but it is the human being that we continue to invest in. We can keep investing in tech­nology, but Force Design 2030 is not designing a way out of the culture of what a Marine is. We are not redesigning that. We are just making it more lethal.”

In addition to fielding all the new gear, Marines across the fleet experienced the changes to training, MOSs, unit sizes and deployment strategies. Heavy financial investments have already been made to modernize equipment and training for fighting the next war dispersed across the Indo-Pacific.
“I don’t think we will ever finish chang­ing,” Ruiz said. “I think the moment we think that we have arrived and are finished changing, someone is going to kick our ass.”

Through all the changes, the Sergeant Major admonishes the entire Marine community to remain focused on who we are. While the changes taking place might alter the direction and outlook of the Corps as an institution, and raise concerns and controversy, they do not change the identity of Marines.

Ruiz’s time with the instructor cadre remains one of his proudest accomplishments. (Courtesy of SgtMaj Carlos Ruiz, USMC)

“Even the worst critics who might spend all year shooting at my target, on Nov. 10, they’re not,” he reflected. “There is an expectation of the veteran commu­nity for us to be better than they were. I think it’s my job to find a better way to communicate that we are. This generation is not only meeting the standard of 10 years ago but elevating that standard for the next fight. You can get distracted by what’s on the news or the political en­vironment or whatever is going on today, but if you go to Twentynine Palms right now, there is still a Range 400 happening. The Marines are still as fit. They’re still as sweaty, stinking, carrying everything they have to carry, and they’re still run­ning towards the objective. They’re still closing in on the last 300 meters and ac­complishing the mission. They’re a little smarter and a little faster. They call it, ‘innovation’ today. It’s a fancy word, but it’s still the Marine way. Getting the job done and a culture of winning has not changed. I want to evolve, but I want to protect that culture.”

To help accomplish this goal, Ruiz frequently relies on social media to con­nect with Marines and the veteran com­mu­nity. His message of transparency and positivity has proven successful and trusted. In one example at the end of October 2023, when the Commandant experienced a heart attack and was hospi­talized, the Corps chose to officially share this news through SgtMaj Ruiz. His be­lief in the power of social media comes tempered with the understanding that each content creator’s motivation will dictate the positive or negative impact of their message.

“On social media today, there are a lot of very serious Marines at all ranks with professional accounts who are trying to mentor. They see a need, and they use these platforms as a way to fill a gap and spread information like steel sharpening steel. I say, ‘yes please! Give me more!’ I engage on social media because you can’t get to know me or what I think by reading an ALMAR, MARADMIN, or a letter from the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. I can’t be everywhere at once, so I try to use social media to show Marines that it’s OK to smile, it’s OK to be happy when it’s time to be happy, and serious when it’s time to be serious, to be transparent as best as I can. What I don’t appreciate about social media is when the uniform is used to deliver something motivated by instant gratification, looking for likes or views. If you could imagine yourself 10 years from today talking about your service and someone pulled up these videos, I want you to do that before you hit post. It may gratify whatever that itch is today, but it doesn’t age well. I would ask those Marines with a foothold on social media to just think and use it for good. What do you want to be thought of our brand?”

U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, speaks with staff noncommissioned officers with 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, Feb. 6, 2024. During his visit, Ruiz met with SNCOs from 5th Marines to discuss different aspects of improving quality of life. Ruiz regularly engages with Marines across the Corps to gain deeper insights and understanding, leveraging his experience from over 30 years of service, including combat tours, drill instructor duty, and recruiter roles. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Juan Torres)

His views on the importance of trans­parency are bolstered by his experience as a recruiter early in his career, and the understanding that transparency remains the key ingredient to the Corps success in recruiting. Last fiscal year, the Marine Corps succeeded as the only branch of service, other than the comparatively small Space Force, to achieve its targeted recruiting numbers. This proved a re­mark­able accomplishment in the current climate and speaks directly to the enor­mous effort of Marine recruiters. Across the board, they exceeded their target of more than 33,000 non-prior-service enlistments in FY23. The Space Force, by contrast, achieved its recruitment goal of less than 500.

“Imagine having a job where 99 per­cent of people tell you ‘no’ every day, and you’re just searching for that one ‘yes.’ All the credit goes to the recruiters. They’re the ones working the extra hours and driving the extra miles. We recruit and retain at the rate we do because our recruiters are pretty transparent about what we’re going to do to you. Somehow, that transparency is rewarded by interest. This is still one of the very few places in America where there is still a rite of passage, and that’s attractive. Our part, then, is if we are not who our recruiters say we are; professional, disciplined, lethal; then we cannot recruit.”

In addition to recruitment, retention emerged during the interview as another key focus today. Several Talent Manage­ment programs within the Force Design structure have cut through red tape, making it easier for Marines to reenlist. Marines with specific skill sets, such as cyber security certificates, can more easily enlist directly into those types of MOSs. Rules regarding families with both spouses on active duty have changed so that families cannot be split between separate duty stations unless a General Officer approves the decision. Other checks and gates have been implemented for certain family situations in an effort to keep Marines and their families con­nected to their support system and to each other.

“The institution will always come first, and some things we won’t be able to make perfect for everyone, but we are trying,” Ruiz stated. “The point is, it’s a signal to our people that we are making steps to understand their situation.”
The Sergeant Major focused on the total force when discussing retention, both active and reserve Marines. He credited his time as the sergeant major of MARFORRES with illuminating the full value of the reserve component and the important role it plays in the overall mission of the Marine Corps. For Marines set on leaving active duty once their contract is up, career planners are working hard to show them how re­maining in uniform with the reserve can benefit them, as well as the Corps.

Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, the 20th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, visited Recruiting Sub Station Savannah to meet with recruiters and lead them in physical fitness exercises at the unit’s monthly poolee function. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Dakota Dodd)

“From very early on it’s a fight for talent to stay, and a fight for where [to stay],” Ruiz said. “It’s OK to go active or reserve. Service is service, and I just want access to you when it’s time.”

In view of the total force, Ruiz in­cluded the veteran community, placing immeas­ur­able value on what these Ma­rines add. As the number of active Marines with combat experience dwindles, specifically at the ranks of sergeant and below, Ma­rine veterans increasingly represent the sole source of knowledge and perspective on this all-important topic.

“I need the veteran community,” he said. “Not just to stand on the sidelines, but to engage with the active community. I remember as a young sergeant in Ser­geant’s Course at Twentynine Palms, Colonel Mitchell Paige, Medal of Honor recipient, came to tell us his story. No one in the room was breathing. He spoke about the night and when it was over, the bodies around his machine gun, and I was just in awe. I imagine experiences like that have happened frequently over the last 248 years. The wise leaders will find time to bring in those veterans to talk to their Marines. We need it. What we get from them in that 45-minute con­versation, we can’t duplicate in days of PME.
There’s only one of me, but there’s a lot of veterans out there who care. I think I owe from my billet a lot more engage­ment to the veteran community to bring them in, to help them understand the en­vironment of where we are at and what the threat is, and how much we need their help. We are all in it. If you ever wore the uniform of a Marine, it takes all of us to make the Marine Corps who we say we are.”

When you hear the Sergeant Major speak in person or through social media, his concern for preserving the Marine Corps way rings genuine. His commit­ment to individual Marines comes through with a positive and refreshing message. Like Sgt Tukes did for him three decades ago, SgtMaj Ruiz still believes that any Marine can be a powerful influence and help someone else find their way in the Corps.

“This is what I have been trying to get through to the Marine Corps; you don’t have to wait until you’re older to be excited about being a Marine. You don’t have to wait until you’re out the service and you start looking back and think, ‘this was a good time in my life.’ I don’t want you to wait until then. I want you to wake up in the morning and make a choice that you can have that impact today.”

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.

Lejeune: A Leader Ahead of His Time

Ask any Marine who among the pantheon of notable and illustrious Marines between World War I and World War II were most responsible for the Corps becoming the premier amphibious assault force in the world during the Second World War and many names would be mentioned: The iconoclastic Major Earl “Pete” Ellis, whose ideas and assumptions, according to authors Jetek A. Isley and Philip Crowl, “became the keystone of Marine Corps strategic plans for a Pacific War;” Major General Commandant John H. Russell (1934-1936), who author Merrill Bartlett said “guided the development of amphibious doctrine, preparing the Marine Corps for its major contribution in World War II;” and Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, who played key roles in the development of the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT) and the ubiquitous Higgins Boat as a young officer.

But John A. Lejeune, Major General Commandant from July 1920 to March 1929, may not be on many Marines’ short list of those Marines most responsible for transforming the Marine Corps into an amphibious assault force that had the capability of taking islands such as Tarawa and Iwo Jima in World War II. It is not that Marines are unfamiliar with Lejeune. Indeed, Lejeune, referred to as the “Greatest of All Leathernecks,” is well-known not only for his 1921 Birthday Message that is read annually but also for several other key accomplishments. He founded the Marine Corps Association in 1913, the Marine Corps League in 1923 and “created the Marine Corps Institute.” And, of course, Camp Lejeune is named after him. But most Marines may not be aware of Lejeune’s crucial role in setting the Marine Corps on the path to becoming the world’s premier amphibious assault force it would become, and the nation needed, in World War II.

In the first two decades of the 20th Century, the Marine Corps’ primary mission was to provide the Navy with an Advanced Base Force (ABF) to seize undefended or lightly defended islands in the Pacific as part of War Plan Orange (WPO). WPO was the Navy’s strategy for advancing across the Central Pacific to relieve the Philippines, fight and (presumably) win a modern-day Jutland against the Imperial Japanese Navy in the western Pacific; followed by blockading the Japanese Home Islands, leading to a complete United States victory. However, the Marine Corps Lejeune took over in 1920, while having the ABF in its force structure, was focused on the “Banana Wars,” not on supporting WPO. Lejeune would change that, ensuring the Marine Corps could survive as a separate service because it had a unique mission within the overall military establishment. Lejeune’s reforms and efforts during his nine-year tenure as Commandant laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Fleet Marine Force in 1933 and the publication of the “Tentative Manual for Landing Operations” in 1934; both of which undergirded the development of the capability to conduct opposed amphibious landings.

A group of Marine officers confer, circa 1919. Marine Corps Schools developed by MajGen Lejeune in the 1920s taught new officers how to fight modern wars with a combined arms approach. (USMC)

Background
Following the American victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. Navy needed bases between the newly acquired Philippine Islands and Hawaii to provide sheltered anchorages for their warships to use to replenish their coal supply if and when they were required to conduct a westward advance to relieve the archipelago from a Japanese blockade. “The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its Theory, And Its Practice In The Pacific” by Jeter A. Isely and Dr. Philip A. Crowl, originally published in 1951 and republished by Pickle Partners Publishing in 2016, has this to say:

“Shortly after the conclusion of the Spanish-American War the attention of high naval planners was turned toward the problem of building a permanent force capable of seizing and holding advanced bases to be employed by the fleet in the prosecution of naval war in distant waters. Up to that time the duties of the Marine Corps had been limited largely to supplying marine detachments to vessels of the fleet and furnishing guards for navy yards, except during wartime when units of the Corps had actually participated in minor landings. The relatively easy victory over Spain did not conceal the fact that the fleet was incapable of sustained operations even in waters as close as those of Cuba, and the projection of American power far into the Pacific as a result of Commodore George Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay made the problem of acquiring bases even more acute … shortly after the war the General Board of the Navy, impressed by recent events … determined to set up a permanent advance-base force within the naval establishment. It was axiomatic that warships powered by steam were tied to their bases by the distance of their steaming radii and, since it was impracticable to maintain permanent bases in all parts of the world where the fleet might conceivably engage in action, it would be inevitably necessary in wartime to seize temporary bases against opposition if necessary. Defense of such bases once seized was an inseparable problem. The Marine Corps, an organization consisting of ground troops but with naval experience and under naval authority, was the obvious solution to the difficulty. Immediately tentative steps were taken to prepare the Corps for this new line of activity.”

Though preliminary steps were taken in 1901, the Marine Corps did not officially establish the Advanced Base Force until 1913. “Although the germs [sic] of later amphibious training my be found in this early advance base activity, it is clear that the great weight of the emphasis was not on offensive landing operations,” Isely and Crowl also wrote. “In fact, there is little resemblance between this early concept of the main function of the Marine Corps and its subsequent role as a military organization specially trained for amphibious assaults against enemy shores. Although in theory the advance-base force was supposed to be prepared to seize as well as defend bases, in practice all of the training concentrated on the defense.”

The Marines Central America primarily functioned as an infantry force and con­ducted river patrols and air patrols while deployed there. Lejeune wanted to shift the Corps’ focus to strengthening its amphibious assault capa­bilities for future conflicts. (USMC)

Even then, World War I and the “Banana Wars” conspired to keep the Advanced Base Force from being front and center in Marine Corps thinking. World War I was a seminal moment in the history of the Marine Corps because the Corps went from primarily “supplying Marine detachments to vessels of the fleet and furnishing guards for navy yards” as Isely and Crowl state, to gaining the ability to fight on the most modern and intense battlefield imaginable. The Marine Corps’ ability to field a brigade that could go toe-to-toe with the Germany Army (and its attendant “First to Fight” publicity) shifted the Marine Corps, both substantively and in the public’s mind, to moving beyond only providing ships’ detachments and being colonial infantry, to being an elite conventional fighting force; an image that would be cemented in World War II.

But the Banana Wars, which started before World War I, persisted during World War I and continued post-war, was the Marine Corps’ conscious primary focus when Lejeune became Commandant. What Lejeune foresaw and most didn’t, was that the colonial infantry role was not a viable mission for the Marine Corps long-term because opposition was growing against American intervention; which ultimately led to President Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in 1933, “a policy of nonintervention in local affairs, applying specifically to Latin America.” He would be successful in his endeavor to wean the Marine Corps from the primacy of the colonial infantry role and put the Marine Corps on a trajectory to be an amphibious assault force, but only after overcoming deep-seated opposition within the Corps.

The Marine Corps’ Future:
Colonial Infantry or Advanced Base Force?
Joseph Simon, author of “The Greatest Leatherneck of All Leathernecks: John Archer Lejeune and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps,” writes “… by early 1920, the ABF—developed over the last 20 years—was in limbo, unable to support the Navy’s challenge in the western Pacific. In effect, the Marine Corps had returned to its old mission of providing troops for expeditionary and occupation duty in Haiti and Santo Domingo, acting as colonial infantry. Visionary Marines who supported the Navy’s new mission in War Plan Orange did not want to return to the past but did not have the power to establish amphibious assault as the [Corps’] new wartime mission.”

Marines had been fulfilling the colonial infantry role for the first two decades of the 20th century; indeed, “they had accumulated enough experience to write and publish “The Small Wars Manual” in 1921. (Author’s note: Originally called “The Strategy and Tactics of Small Wars” when published in 1921; renamed “Small War Operations” in 1935; then renamed the “Small Wars Manual” in the 1940 revision, the title by which it is known today.)

Many Marines enjoyed being deployed to Central and South America. They lived like kings while serving in exotic lands—or what Americans perceived to be exotic lands; the reality never seemed to live up to the fantasy. Fighting natives in the jungle promoted a swashbuckling image of Marines and was an inducement to young men who sought adventure. The Banana Wars provided great leadership opportunities for junior officers who would patrol for days with their only contact with higher headquarters being a radio carried on a pack animal that had to be assembled at the end of each day’s patrol. Marine officers had real-world opportunities to employ small unit tactics against the local insurgents; gaining experience that only comes with actual combat. According to one of his biographers, the legendary Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller looked back on his experience serving in Haiti in late 1919 and the early 1920s, as a watershed moment in his career:

“It was not until years later that Puller realized the full richness of his Haitian experience, and the value of its lessons in soldiering and hand-to-hand combat—he had fought 40 actions,” writes Burke Davis in “Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller.”

An amphibious tractor heads for the beach on Tinian, July 1944. Lejeune’s focus on amphibious assault helped set the Corps on the path to becoming a premier amphibious force. (USMC)

“He had not only been bloodied; the guerrilla combat had been almost continuous, most of it introduced by ambush on the trail. Puller had stood up well under this strain, and had come to trust his own physical prowess and ability to lead men under fire. He had discovered that native troops could become superb soldiers. He had developed his instinctive talent for using terrain in battle, and learned the lessons of jungle fighting … Despite his youth, he was one of the most seasoned combat officers in the Corps.”
The greatest and most senior champion for continuing to emphasize the colonial infantry role in the Marine Corps was an Old Corps legend—Brigadier General Smedley “Old Gimlet Eye” Butler. Butler owed his career advancement as much to his father, the highly influential Senator Thomas Butler, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, as much as to his service as a Marine fighting in the Banana Wars at Guantanamo Bay, the Philippines (three times), China, the Panamanian Isthmus, Nicaragua, Veracruz, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

“[A] highly decorated Marine officer with little formal education beyond high school, [Butler] had won two Medals of Honor and believed in the egalitarian warrior ideal. Butler supported the [Corps’] old mission, was ambivalent about the amphibious mission, and believed that the Marine Corps performed better when separated from the Navy,” according to “The Greatest of All Leathernecks.”

The difference in Lejeune’s outlook and Butler’s is the result of their different experiences as senior officers. Like practically every other Marine, Lejeune fought in the Banana Wars, but he commanded a brigade and then a division in conventional, high-intensity combat on the Western Front. Butler’s career was in essence, from the beginning to the end, fighting in the Banana Wars except for deploying to France with the 13th Marines and then commanding the personnel depot at Brest at the very end of World War I. Butler’s focus was on the Marine Corps’ celebrated past that was going away and Lejeune’s focus was on positioning the Marine Corps for the future. If that was not enough, Butler who “believed that the Marine Corps performed better when separated from the Navy,” would have had trouble working in harness with the Navy to seize and defend advance bases where coordination between the two services was crucial. (Author’s note: Butler would later write “War is a Racket,” a book that repudiated his service in the Banana Wars.)

Fortunately, Butler was sidelined in the middle of Lejeune’s tenure as Commandant when Butler temporarily left active-duty service to be the director of the department of Public Safety for Philadelphia. While Butler wasn’t the only Marine who opposed Lejeune’s desire to move away from the colonial infantry role, he was the most senior and vocal. With him out of the way, Lejeune’s reforms could move forward unimpeded.

Lejeune’s Reforms
There are numerous things Lejeune did to improve conditions in the Marine Corps and, as Simon says, “to make the Marine Corps the most efficient military organization in the world.” Lejeune provided enlisted Marines with opportunities to learn a trade through vocational programs; reorganized recruiting service to ensure the Marine Corps was enlisting only the highest quality recruits, and worked diligently to economize and cut costs, earning Lejeune goodwill with Congress. Lejeune also “defined the relationship between officers and their men as ‘that of teacher and scholar’” and “promoted the Corps as an institution that uplifted young men’s lives mentally, physically, and morally.”

Several of Lejeune’s reforms directly led to the Marine Corps developing into the amphibious assault force it became after his tenure. While Lejeune did not remake the Marine Corps into the amphibious assault force that would become its hallmark, he laid the groundwork for that to be the case.

Marines come ashore after landing on Tinian in 1944. (USMC)

Advanced Base Force Becomes Marine Expeditionary Force
Perhaps the most important of Lejeune’s reforms was to rename the Advanced Base Force (ABF) the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF). (Author’s note: In this context, “Marine Expeditionary Force” is a term meaning the available Marine forces on either the East and West Coasts available for deployment [one MEF on each coast]; not what Marines today know as an MEF.) As Simon writes in “The Greatest of All Leathernecks,” “ABF operations [were] of a defensive nature” and authors Jetek Isely and Philip Crowl state in “The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War” that “The advance-base force was in actuality little more than an embryo coastal artillery unit.” According to author Joseph Alexander in his book “Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious Battles in the Central Pacific,” the name change speaks to the offensive and more comprehensive mission of providing the fleet with “specially trained and equipped amphibious forces able to fight their way ashore.” “As of 1925 [a MEF] consisted of infantry, artillery, auxiliary troops such as engineers, signal, gas, tank and aviation units, all of them equipped and trained for service with the fleet.”

According to historian Alexander, Lejeune lobbied hard for the Navy to integrate the new MEF into the fleet.

“Lejeune understood that the future of the Marine Corps lay with the Navy and worked diligently to bring the Navy and Marine Corps closer together … Lejeune recommended to the Navy that the MEF become an integral part of the fleet, convinced the special board of policy of the Navy’s General Board that the MEF was essential to the fleet for conducting ship-to-shore operations, updated the pamphlet Joint Action of the Army and Navy (1927) to officially establish the [Corps’] role as the first to seize advanced bases in amphibious operations… .

“Again in 1926, Lejeune recommended that the MEF become a part of the fleet. He wrote to the CNO that ‘in order to clarify terminology, it is recommended that the Marine Expeditionary Force or Advanced Base Force,’ which would serve with the fleet … be designated, ‘Marine Corps Force, U.S. Fleet.’ ” Unfortunately, at this time the Navy was not prepared to recognize the MEF as part of the fleet.

“While Lejeune had only limited success in converting the Navy to his viewpoint, he succeeded in inspiring younger progressive leaders in the Marine Corps and Navy as to the importance of the new mission, a challenge that motivated these men to adopt and refine the mission of amphibious assault in the 1930s and 1940s.”

The MEF was the precursor to the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) and the transitional step between the defensive-oriented ABF and the offensive-oriented FMF capable of amphibious assaults against the most strongly fortified positions in World War II.

A colorized version of an aerial view of the amphibious assault on Tinian, circa 1944. (USMC)

Marine Corps Schools
If the MEF provided the intermediate force structure step between the ABF and the FMF, Marine Corps Schools (MCS), established by Lejeune in 1921, would be the institution most responsible for providing the intellectual underpinning for the Marine Corps’ ability to assume the amphibious assault role as its own. According to Alexander, “one of Lejeune’s greatest and most enduring contributions to the Corps was the establishment of the MCS. As Commandant, Lejeune saw a great need for more in-depth military training for officers in order to modernize the Corps … Based on his own experience, Lejeune knew that the average Marine officer received minimal formal military training.

However, in the beginning, MCS did not focus on amphibious warfare. According to Alexander, Lejeune’s “original intent in developing the MCS in the early 1920s was to utilize his experiences in the world war to teach new officers and recruits infantry tactics and how to fight a modern war using a combined-arms approach. This approach stressed greater firepower by combining infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft in the attack against a powerful enemy. Although this focus remained until the mid-1920s, it later became clear that Lejeune wanted to use the combined-arms approach for amphibious operations.”

As stated in “The Greatest of All Leathernecks” by Simon, the original focus of MCS was to teach “how to fight a modern war.” But after Marine officers learned the basics of combined arms on land, the MCS would transition to focusing on the amphibious assault.
“Lessons learned from the study of Gallipoli became part of the Marine Corps—Navy maneuvers of 1924 and 1925. In the early 1930s, Brigadier General James C. Breckinridge, head of the MCS, significantly increased the study of the failed Dardanelles operations. The Gallipoli amphibious disaster became a key part in the study of landing operations and helped develop the landmark ‘Tentative Landing Manual’ of 1934.”

Usually, the establishment of the MEF in 1933 and the publication of “Tentative Landing Operations Manual” in 1934, are considered separate events. But there was a relationship between them that is often overlooked. Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr., USMC (Ret) says it best in his essay “The U.S. Marine Corps: Author of Modern Amphibious Warfare” in “amphibious thinkers produced the Fleet Marine Force; this unique unit in turn gave body and substance to the doctrinal theories of its creators; and the interaction of the two combined in substantial measure to make possible the victorious beachheads of World War Two.”

MajGen George Barnett, the 12th Commandant of the Marine Corps, and MajGen John Lejeune, the 13th CMC, along with staff members, taken in 1920. (USMC)

Other Reforms
There were three other reforms Lejeune did that still serve the Marine Corps today. According to Simon, based upon Lejeune’s experience in command of the Army’s 2nd Division in France, he adopted the French Army’s G-1/G-2/G-3/G-4 staff system for “independent field commands of brigade size or larger” streamlining and making staff functions more efficient.

Second, Simon writes that “Lejeune pioneered the modern use of air power in the Caribbean occupations … For the first time, Marine aircraft provided direct air support to small infantry units on the ground fighting rebels in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.” Lastly, the Butler-directed reenactments of Civil War battles in the early 1920s, would on the face of it, be nothing more than “a reproduction in pageantry form of the Civil War battle at that place, as little would be gained by either officers or men as regards lessons of a military nature.” While true to a greater or lesser extent, especially early on, Lejeune saw these reenactments as valuable training opportunities. They got the Marines into the field under wartime conditions and tested equipment “under service conditions.”

Conclusion
During his nine-year tenure as Major General Commandant, Lejeune did not transform the Marine Corps from a colonial infantry force into an amphibious assault force. Lejeune set the Corps on the trajectory to becoming the world’s premier amphibious force by moving the Marine Corps’ focus away from the colonial infantry role; changing the name of the ABF to MEF and expanding its focus; and establishing MCS, which would in a few short years after Lejeune’s tenure, write the “Tentative Landing Operations Manual.”

As Simon writes in “The Greatest Leatherneck of All”: “Lejeune’s great­est legacy to the Marine Corps of the 1930s—and even to the Corps of today—was his capability as a strategic leader in providing direction, purpose, and identity. Lejeune could envision the near future and… [could] convince the Navy Department and the Joint Army and Navy Board that his vision for the Marine Corps was realistic. Lejeune established for the Marines “their own separate and very distinct culture and identity.” Perhaps Lejeune’s greatest strength was his ability to anticipate future conflicts and prepare the corps to successfully deal with them—specifically, a likely war in the Pacific. Lejeune made the visionary decisions that changed the culture of the Marine Corps and laid the foundation for the development of amphibious warfare that established the standards realized during World War II and after.”
Major General Commandant John Archer Lejeune was indeed, “The Greatest of all Leathernecks.”

Author’s bio: Maj Skip Crawley, USMCR (Ret), was an infantry officer in 1st Battalion, 7th Marines during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. He has had numerous book reviews published in Marine Corps Gazette. This is his first article for Leatherneck.

A Furious Fight: An Artillery Marine’s Account of the Assault on Iwo Jima

Editor’s note: The following story is an excerpt from the book “The Rifle 2: Back to the Battlefield” by Andrew Biggio. When Biggio returned from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he had questions about the cost of war, so he decided to ask those who knew the answer—World War II veterans. Marines like John Trezza, whose story we published here, told Biggio about the complexities of life after combat. The book can be purchased at https://amzn.to/47lUNs2. You can listen to a few in-depth conversations I had with Biggio on the Marine Corps Association podcast, “Scuttlebutt,” www.mca-marines.org/scuttlebutt.

The sounds of explosions and distant gunfire were fierce. There was no such thing as a break during D-day on Iwo Jima, and since there was no rear echelon, the battle raged everywhere. The call for fire missions was constant, but the men of “Fox” Battery, 2nd Battalion, 13th Marines, had no choice; they had to pause. “Our guns were red-hot. If we put another shell in through the cannon, we risked killing our whole gun crew,” John Trezza told me.

John Trezza stared at his 75mm how­itzer. It was glowing red. You could have cooked hamburgers for the whole com­pany on it. If another shell was placed into the artillery piece it could detonate. The Marines from his battery had just run a hundred shells through it in a short period of time. The Japanese had em­place­ments everywhere on Iwo. There was no end in sight to the calls for fire missions. They were facing an entrenched enemy estimated to be over 20,000 strong.

Casualty collection points and rendez­vous areas developed behind the artillery units on Feb. 19, 1945, throughout the day. Wave after wave of Marines landed, and those who were supposed to be in re­serve found themselves hitting the island midday on D-day instead of in the following days, as they’d initially sup­posed would occur.

Packs and supplies of those killed on the island began to pile up behind Fox Battery. Then one pack arrived that seemed to hush the sounds of distant gunfire as the Marines passed it around. Written in black ink on a piece of gear attached to the pack was the name “BASILONE.” The Marines of Fox Battery studied it in disbelief.

“When it got to me I couldn’t look at it,” said John, as he sat on a couch 77 years later. He was still emotional about the Italian-American war hero from New Jersey who had been killed in action. The two had much in common. They were both Italians, both Jersey boys, both Marines, and most of all, both proud Americans. John Basilone was admired by the whole Marine Corps after his actions on Guadalcanal, actions which had earned him the Medal of Honor.

A Marine’s view while approaching Iwo Jima, February 1945. Eighteen-year-old John Trezza fought on Iwo Jima with the 5th Marine Division. (USMC)

“Before we left Hawaii, I got the chance to meet him. We all looked up to him. He didn’t have to go back into combat. He had a ticket to stay home forever and sell war bonds. He wanted to be with the Marines and he died doing so,” John added. It was amazing to see the profound impact Gunnery Sergeant Basilone still had on his Marines nearly eight decades later. These Marines were not 18 years old anymore. Here was 96-year-old man still upset as he remembered the loss of a Marine Corps icon. This was deep ad­mira­tion. No propaganda could accom­plish this. Gunny Basilone was truly a legend.

Back on Iwo Jima, an 18-year-old John Trezza couldn’t look at his fallen hero’s empty pack. It would be admitting that Basilone was really gone, and that the Japanese could kill anyone. Yet John’s turmoil over seeing Basilone’s gear was soon interrupted. It was time to start shelling again. The infantry depended on it.

John’s fatigues were powdery white, his uniform crusted by the salt from the ocean in which he had been submerged only hours before. His landing on the beach had been anything but pleasant. For all the Marines of the 5th Division, it had been hectic.

The entire 5th Marine Division was created for the purpose of taking Iwo Jima. It was the first time the Marine Corps developed such a unit with one island as its objective. John trained on Camp Tarawa in Hawaii for six months, then loaded onto the troop transport ship. It was there he met Medal of Honor re­cipient John Basilone. They and the other Marines aboard spent 38 days on the ship, heading generally west. After landing, the two would never meet again, yet John would never forget him. Iwo Jima affected the lives of all Marines who took part for generations to come.

Marines take shelter on the first terrace above the beach at Iwo Jima shortly after landing. (USMC)

After a long month of zigzagging through the Pacific, the 5thMarDiv an­chored near the island of Saipan. The Marines took to the decks of the transport ships. “We would watch the B-29s take off to do their bombing runs. It seemed like there was one taking off every mi­nute,” John said. This activity gave the Marines something to occupy their time, and the young men crowded the decks to view the mighty Army Air Corps fly away to strike Japan.

What they didn’t yet know was that those same B-29s were most likely be­ing used in an attempt to prevent the on­slaught that lay ahead for the 5thMarDiv. But aerial carpet bombing of the volcanic island of Iwo Jima proved to be unsuc­cessful. Saying the Japanese were a “well-entrenched enemy” was an under­statement. Their tunnels, caves, pillboxes, and artillery emplacements remained for the most part unscathed despite American bombing raids. Anything that could be moved was wheeled or pushed into a tunnel or cave. The only advantage the bombings gained for the invading Ma­rines was to provide defilades for cover. Other than that, Iwo Jima was like every other island, a smoky flaming mess with thousands of Japanese soldiers at the ready.

After a few days the ships left Saipan, destined for their final stop: Iwo Jima. “It was Feb. 19, a Monday morning, I’ll never forget it,” John said, shaking his head.

Before the sun rose, Marines were pushing their way through chow lines in the ship’s mess hall. It was noisy and hectic, and adrenaline was high. The first waves of Marines made their way to the bottoms of their ships. The ship carrying John’s unit was an LCT (landing craft tank). Stored inside the ship’s hull were amphibious tracs and DUKW (pro­nounced “duck”) boats that could be launched from the bow once the ramp opened. Overhead, fighter planes soared, providing covering fire for the first waves of Marines heading for the beach. The landing crafts and amphibious vehicles of this first wave chopped forward in the ocean until they reached the black sand.

A discarded LVT sits abandoned on the shoreline. Marines disembarked and headed into battle once the boats hit the beach during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. (USMC)

“The first wave was unopposed. The Japanese wanted them to make their way inland to a certain point before opening up on them,” John explained.

“Which wave were you?” I asked.

“Third wave,” he replied. “All hell broke loose on the second wave.”
It was John’s turn to load onto the DUKW boat. “There were four of us. A Coast Guard guy was driving it,” he recalled.

The DUKW is a boat with wheels ex­tending underneath it. It does not travel fast on water, as John and the other Ma­rines quickly found out.
John recalled the frightening ordeal. “We were drenched with water within minutes of leaving the ramp of the big ship. Mortar shells were landing on each side of us.”

Landing crafts were also taking direct hits not far from John’s DUKW. The ocean seemed to be crowded with burn­ing, scuttled landing crafts. The immense enemy fire, now concentrated on the beach and ocean, was causing a traffic jam for incoming waves of troops. The Coast Guard skipper in charge of John’s DUKW boat couldn’t find a place to land on his designated area of the beach.

The beach was littered with vehicles and Marines. The pileup was proving to be deadly and prevented reinforcements from coming ashore. The DUKW boats’ skippers were all having trouble finding openings, and when they did they risked running over Marines already present and bogged down by enemy fire.

The Coast Guard skipper of John’s DUKW boat had to work fast. He pow­ered the boat to the far left of the designated area. “He led us right into a cove,” John said.

The DUKW boat full of scared Marines made its way into the natural opening. As it pulled into the cove the Marines began to jump off the sides.

“I jumped off the back and nearly drowned.” Unbeknownst to John, the water here was significantly over his head. In a sheer panic, he unslung his rifle from his body. His M1 Garand sank to the bottom of the ocean. Stripping himself of his gear, John rose to the surface, gasping for air. The DUKW boat was still within arm’s reach.

“I grabbed hold of it and climbed back on,” he recalled. The incident still left John feeling short of breath 77 years later.

John boarded the boat again. “I had no helmet, no weapon, no nothing!” The DUKW boat spun about, trying to find a spot where John and the others could place their feet. The skipper was able to locate solid earth for John to step out on. John waited for the thumbs-up, then was off.

“I ran as fast as I could to the beach. When I looked up I saw a 300-foot cliff. ‘Should I go up there?’ I thought. ‘What’s on the other side?’ I figured I would go back to where I was supposed to land first, Red Beach One.”

Marines haul an ammunition cart onto the beach during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. (USMC)

John began to follow the beach farther down before making his advance inland. “I was running around bareback, with no equipment whatsoever!” John was practically shouting as he related this to me in his living room. The extreme cir­cumstances of his landing had lost none of their shock value over the years.

Nervous and unarmed, John scurried along the black sand. “I got to Red Beach 1 and there was still no possible way to get in. I don’t know how all those guys got into that little pass,” John said. Red Beach 1 was blockaded with vehicles, bodies, and equipment. There was no way around it. “That’s when I decided to go to Red Beach 3.”

John ran further along the sand toward Red Beach 3. At this beach a weaponless John observed a set of makeshift stairs that ran along the cliffs. “They must have been built by the Japanese. There were a couple hundred stairs and they ran all the way up.” This pathway seemed the only way to link up with his unit. He began to crawl up the side of the stairs.

“All the way to the top there were dead Marines along the stairs. They were slumped over and all appeared to be shot through the head and face. They each had just a small trickle of blood running from between their eyes.”

The bodies of Marines who had at­tempted to ascend the stairs were scattered over the hillside. They were the victims of earlier waves, and John gazed at each one as he climbed around them, the lifeless bodies serving as markers the higher he climbed.

“Every one of those guys I saw dead …. ” John had to pause. The memory of the fallen Marines still haunted him. “Every one of those guys, my heart went out to them.” Nearly 80 years later, the tears still came.

What happened when you got to the top of the stairs?” I asked.

“Then I found my outfit!” John said, a smile on his face. Reuniting with his field artillery battalion was obviously a much happier memory. “Right then and there I found my guys.”

 

Marine casualties are carried away from the frontlines on Iwo Jima. (USMC)

Fox Battery was set up not far from the summit of the cliff John had climbed. Their guns had been dragged into po­sition in the earlier two waves.

“The first man I saw was a forward observer from my battery, a lieutenant. I didn’t want him to know I didn’t have a rifle, so at this point I’m still trying to look for a weapon. I didn’t look long before we had our first fire mission.”
John’s attempt to arm himself would have to wait. The 75 mm howitzers were ready to fire.

“I lost count how many shells we fired. The forward observer was giving us coordinates all day, and at night we shot illumination rounds. By day two we were running out of ammunition.”

John’s battery was doing a historic job grunts of the 5th Marine Division.
At night, however, things got weird. An unknown voice called out to them. “Fox Battery, where are you? Fox Battery, where are you?” The voice seemed to come from far in the distance. “We found that so strange. We were taught never to call out to one another in the night. So we hid low behind our guns and ignored it.”

John believes it was Japanese soldiers testing to see if they could infiltrate. Some Marines and forward observers had gone missing. There was no way to tell if they had been tortured or killed for information by the Japanese.
“The next day, day three, we totally ran out of ammunition for our howitzers,” John said. The Marines of Fox Battery made multiple runs to and from the beach trying to track down any ammo they might find for their guns.
The less they fired, the less protection the infantry had. As an artillery man, you were the king of battle and often the hand of God. It was artillery that could knock down rows of banzai charges.

Ammunition finally reached the beach­head, and men ushered rounds to Fox Battery’s position. The new high-explo­sive shells had arrived just in time. Enemy counterbattery fire was incoming.

“Luckily we had a time-fire radar. We could adjust quickly and knock them out.”
By day seven, Fox Battery’s position was known to the enemy. The Japanese zeroed in. Enemy counterbattery poured in faster than John and his gun crew could adjust. Finally their ability to return fire ceased altogether when an enemy shell exploded to their left. The Japanese artil­lery blew John and the other Marines off their howitzer like rag dolls.

Stunned and temporarily deaf in both ears, John lay facedown in the dirt. Other Marines were scattered around. They slowly attempted to get up and get back to the gun. John found he could not bounce back like the others. As they sat him up, he looked down below his belt line. There was smoke coming from his groin. He had a large hole in his pants. He was hit.

“I placed my hand in my pants. I was hit right by my family jewels,” he said quietly.

John was bleeding heavily. As the men shouted for a corpsman, the roar of other artillery pieces firing drowned their screams for help. John tried to staunch the blood loss from his groin, but soon passed out.

Courtesy of Andrew Biggio

“When I gained consciousness, I was in a tent hospital. I looked down at my groin. I could see they did a good job fixing me up, and I passed back out.”

It was a relief for a 19-year-old boy to know he still had his penis and testicles. Still under a considerable amount of morphine, John was transported to a hospital ship offshore for more re­habilitation. While John was out of the fight, the battle for Iwo Jima raged on.

“Dealing with my injuries was some delicate stuff. You could put three or four fingers into my wound,” John ex­plained. He would spend the next five months recovering in hospitals both in Guam and Hawaii.

John was ultimately satis­fied with the healing process. He could have lost his man­hood on Iwo Jima. Thanks to surgeons, he was able to have a normal life and create a family.

“I came home and later joined the sheriff’s depart­ment on May 1, 1950. I retired in 1978.” John retired as the deputy warden of the Essex County Jail in New Jersey. In the prison system he would run into other Marines who had chosen to go down a dif­ferent road after the Battle of Iwo Jima. “It makes you think if the war contributed to the behavior of some Marines after their return home from combat.”

John had a point. Like many others, he and I both had chosen law enforcement after the Marines. By doing so we were at times con­fronted with the fact that some Marines chose crime.

As I placed the rifle into its case, I believed my time with John had come to an end. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“Well, I got a long drive back to Boston.”

“You aren’t going anywhere until you have some of my meatballs!”

John hobbled over to the kitchen and turned on the burners on the stove to warm up a pot. A few minutes later, he was off-loading giant meatballs on a plate for me.

I knew I had a long drive from New Jersey to Boston ahead of me, but I sat down with the Italian-American Marine. I bit into one of the meatballs he had made, and he told me I couldn’t leave until I was finished with my meal.
I can honestly say they were the best damn meatballs I ever had.

Author’s bio: Andrew Biggio is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is currently serving as a Massachusetts police officer and is the president of the nonprofit Boston’s Wounded Vet Run. “The Rifle II” is his sec­ond book.

Showing Her Mettle: Olympic Hopeful Goes Full Speed as Marine, Bobsledder

By the time Captain Riley Tejcek was 7 years old, her father, John, knew he was raising a tough kid.

Tejcek sported a Power Rangers watch at the time, and like many children her age, was learning how to ride a bicycle. After her first fall onto the pavement, Riley said something that left her dad incredulous.

“She looks at me and says, ‘Dad, would the Power Rangers quit?’ I’m not quitting,” John recalled. “She gets back up on her bike and says, ‘let’s go.’ I am laughing inside, and I’m like, ‘oh my God, what kind of reaction was that?’ ”

Two decades later, the 2021 Female Marine Athlete of the Year and U.S. national team bobsledder is using that determination to try and accomplish what no other active-duty female Marine has done: qualify for the U.S. Winter Olym­pics team. Capt Tejcek wants to show the next generation of leathernecks that it’s possible to use your athleticism, desire and skill for something bigger while still serving your country.

“Being the first in anything is cool, but I want to normalize that,” Tejcek said of her dream of qualifying for the 2026 Winter Games. “Every Marine is a tactical athlete. Every Marine is an athlete, period, in the way we train.”

U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Riley Tejcek, a supply officer with the Amphibious Warfare School, a native of Carmel, Indiana, signs autographs and talks with others about her experiences during her careers at the Commissary on Marine Corps Base Quantico. Tejcek will be the first female Marine to participate in the Olympics for bobsledding. Her Olympic debut is set to be in the 2023-2024 season. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jeffery Stevens)

While she is training for the Games, Tejcek hopes to use her charisma and success on the sled and turn it into a future billet with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. Along the way, she hopes to inspire more females to become Marines—and eventually officers. Since donning the red, white and blue of Team USA, Tejcek has documented her life as an Olympic hopeful and as a Marine on social media. That includes producing a variety of short videos on Instagram, where she has garnered nearly 50,000 followers.

“I don’t know of a better example for young females to emulate than Riley,” wrote Colonel Jason Graul, the deputy director of the Expeditionary Warfare School and Tejcek’s commanding officer at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. “We are proud to have her in our ranks and serve beside her. She is serving her country, and we are excited to see her [possibly] represent our country in the Olympics.”

Toughness Taking Root
Growing up in suburban Indianapolis, Ind., Tejcek was not always the most talented kid on her athletic teams but worked extremely hard to achieve suc­cess in every sport she played, said John, who played minor league baseball.

And Tejcek’s parents did their best to engender her competitive streak, whether it was epic games of Uno with the family or weekly spelling tests.
Tejcek eventually earned a softball scholarship to George Washington Uni­ver­sity, helping the Colonials to their first-ever Atlantic-10 Conference title in 2019. At the same time she was scooping up ground balls, she was training to be­come a Marine through the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Course program. It took meeting a Marine recruiter during her fresh­man year to consider a career in the Corps.

Marines are “tactical athletes” according to Capt Tejcek, who changes up her training during the fall and winter months to meet the rigorous physical demands of competitive bobsledding. (Courtesy of Capt Riley Tejcek, USMC)

“I loved everything he had to say,” said Tejcek, whose grandfathers served in the Corps and Army, respectively. “I was like a kid in a candy shop, my eyes were wide open. [He said], you can be a leader. And not only that, you can be a female leader … You can be part of the fewer, the prouder. You can do that and make a difference for people.”

And John saw his daughter’s toughness continue to blossom while she was in college. While the two were participating in a 13-mile overnight Go-Ruck event in Washington, D.C., John broke his ankle when he accidentally stepped in a hole in the sand near the Potomac River. Tejcek was leading her group and started crying when she saw her dad’s condition, knowing he couldn’t finish.
Her cadre of Marines saw her reaction and began questioning whether she had what it took to be in charge, said John. But she wiped the tears away and led her team to the finish line early that morning. Seeing her finish at the Pentagon was a relationship-changing moment for John and his daughter and a glimpse into what Tejcek would become as a Marine.

“She’s worn out to s–t but she’s still going,” John said. “… If that wasn’t the best analogy, [that] you don’t need your dad to push you or motivate you. You’re on your own. In fact, you’re motivating me now.”

Riley Tejcek, pictured with her parents, was commissioned in 2019 after graduating from George Washington Uni­versity in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of John Tejcek)

After graduating from college, Tejcek was commissioned in 2019 and was as­signed to Camp Pendleton as a logistics officer with Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 39, Marine Aircraft Group 39, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Like many of her peers, she was hoping to get deployed. However, her billet kept her out of any overseas action. And due to COVID-19 restrictions, she couldn’t satisfy her com­petitive urge by playing on the Marine Corps softball team.

“I said, ‘what am I waking up for? What am I training for?’” said Tejcek after learning she would not be deployed. “The PFT and CFT twice a year wasn’t enough for me, especially as a competitor.”

Meeting Olympic bobsledding medal­ist Elana Meyers Taylor, who also played softball at George Washington, quickly quelled Tejcek’s restlessness. Soon after­wards, Tejcek made a tape of her athletic resume for the U.S. National Team selec­tion committee. That led to a tryout in Colorado in the fall of 2020 as the pilot of a two-woman bobsled.

John volunteered to be her brakeman for her tryout since she didn’t have a part­ner yet. On her second trip down the course, they flipped the sled, leaving John bruised and a little wobbly. Instead of calling it quits, Tejcek found a new brake­man from the track crew assembled there and was able to complete her third and final run in flawless fashion, said John.

Living Her Dream
Once she made the U.S. team, Tejcek knew she needed to get stronger if she wanted to be successful on the inter­national stage. When she first began train­ing three years ago, Tejcek weighed just 150 pounds, significantly lighter than most of her counterparts. In order to muscle the nearly 300-pound sled, she bulks up 20 pounds each winter and then cuts weight in the spring to fulfill her PFT and CFT requirements as a Marine.

Tejcek also has to juggle her year-round commitments at Quantico in order to find time to train. That includes traveling up to Lake Placid, N.Y., for training and competition and flying across North America and Europe to compete in the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation series.

(Courtesy of Capt Riley Tejcek, USMC)

Since the Marine Corps does not sponsor prospective Olympic athletes, Tejcek is always looking for ways to pay for her training. In 2022, she was fortunate enough to come into some unexpected funding after landing a spot on the game­show “Lingo.” In typical Tejcek fashion, she and her mother, Ann-Marie, decided to take on the challenge, practicing for hours online from their respective homes. Their hard work paid off as they took home more than $90,000 in prize money, which covered her training and travel costs for 2023. Last fall, she acquired a new sponsor AMETEK, an American-based international designer and manu­facturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices.

“No organization in the United States is more revered for excellence than the United States Marine Corps and no com­petition has a more longstanding legacy than the Olympics,” said Jason Marshall, AMETEK Director of Business Development for its Fluid Analysis Com­panies. “As an organization who has de­manded results for its investors for over 94 years, AMETEK couldn’t conceive of a more flesh-and-blood example of ex­cellence than Riley Tejcek.”

Thanks to a successful 2023-2024 cam­paign, Tejcek has qualified for the two-woman bobsled competition in this month’s World Cup at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run in Lake Placid. Last November, Tejcek finished third in the North American Cup event at Lake Placid with teammate Emily Renna and placed fourth at Park City, Utah, a month later with teammate Macy Tarlton.

Tejcek has also found time in 2023 to stump for the Marine Corps. Last May, she participated in the WeCoach conven­tion in Denver thanks to the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. MCRC formed a partnership with WeCoach in hopes that coaches from around the country can influence their athletes to join the Corps when their playing days are over. The partnership also encourages more inclusion in the military, including promoting more females into leadership positions.

“Our demographic, we aren’t hitting that mark,” Tejcek said. “We have women I’ve met in the Marine Corps that are some of the most solid people I have ever met. But I know that there are more. I know that we are not getting some of that talent. Personally, I don’t think these people know [about the Corps].”
In addition to her engagement with WeCoach, Tejcek spent some of her free time in Park City last December visiting with Marine poolees as well as at a Christian school where she and her teammate spoke about bobsledding and her Christian faith. A few weeks later, she served as the Grand Marshal of the Military Bowl, held annually in Annapolis, Md.

With more than two years until the Games, Tejcek recognizes a lot can hap­pen that can get her off track. She has already fought through a foot fracture from overuse that left her unable to train for three weeks last fall. She also knows her competitors will always have more time to devote to the sport because of her commitment to the Corps. But these are just obstacles, not excuses to quit, said Riley, who is writing a book entitled “If You Can Dream It, Be It.”

“The book is about a little girl with the task of figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up,” Tejcek said. “She inter­views key people in her life, to include her grandfather who was a Ma­rine, and is pressured from outside society to pick one career. In the end, she realizes you can do and be whatever you want, so she decides to be a Marine, professional athlete, pageant winner and author.”

“[Tejcek] has accomplished more in the past couple years than most will do in a lifetime,” said Col Graul. “She has done this on top of her normal assigned duties.”

Author’s bio: Kipp Hanley is the deputy editor for Leatherneck. The award-win­ning journalist has covered a variety of topics in his career including the military, government, edu­cation, business and sports.

Creating Leaders and Leathernecks: Young Marines Program Focuses on Community Service, Citizenship

Pyramid Rock Young Marines Commanding Officer LtCol John DiGiovanni, right, marches to the front during a graduation ceremony for Young Marine Recruit Platoon 2-14. (Courtesy of Young Marines)

The philosophy of the Young Ma­rines still resonates with today’s youth—64 years after the organization’s inception. In the last decade-plus, numerous Young Marines have gone on to serve in the Marine Corps, crediting their time participating in the leadership building nonprofit as the reason for serving their nation.

Lance Corporal Macie Ross was a Division Young Marine of the Year in 2019 and later, the honor graduate of her boot camp platoon. Currently serving as a combat photographer at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., Ross said her military career has been influenced by the time she spent in the Young Marines.

“Young Marines is a one-of-a-kind type of program,” Ross said. “They teach us to honor our veterans, help our communities, and to become a better version of yourself. We learn core values—leadership, teamwork, and discipline—which transfer to anything you do in your future.”
Volunteerism and community service is at the heart of the Young Marines program. From a young age, the youth participants are exposed to events and experiences where they honor veterans and volunteer their time in their community. Young Marines participate in color guards, veteran appreciation events, community events, assist at food pantries and soup kitchens, help other nonprofit organizations and teach drug prevention and resistance classes in schools and religious organizations. Many units have created events that bring their communities together and raise awareness for the needs of their specific community.

The last few years have seen Young Marines participate in disaster response cleanups from tornadoes in Tennessee to hurricanes in Florida. Toys for Tots is a major element of community service in partnership with the Marine Corps League. Youth members helping other youth makes an amazing impression on the members.

Young Marines support Veterans Day and Memorial Day events around the country, visiting veterans in homes, mailing out cards, and helping pack gift boxes. At the national level, the Young Marines program supports the national Memorial Day parade in Washington, D.C., helping carry all the parade banners and other parade elements as needed.

Some of the other more notable annual events that Young Marines take part in include the Navajo Code Talker Day in Window Rock, Ariz., and the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Parade in Hawaii. In Arizona, Young Marines perform community service projects, participate in the parades and ceremonies and support the Code Talkers and their families where requested. A plankowner of the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Parade, Young Marine units across the country fundraise to come to Hawaii in December to be a part of the remembrance activities and the parade. They complete a community service project (usually a beach cleanup at MCB Kaneohe), perform their own memorial service at the Cemetery of the Pacific and support the annual parade by carrying banners and all the parade balloons.

LCpl Macie Ross. (Courtesy of Young Marines)
National Executive Director of Young Marines, Col William “Bill” Davis, USMC (Ret), far left, and LCpl Macie Ross, right, with Young Marines at the National Leadership Academy. (Courtesy of Young Marines)
LCpl Macie Ross, a Marine combat photographer, speaks with members of Young Marines of the LCpl Caleb J. Powers unit. The Young Marines teach today’s youth valuable leader­ship skills. (Courtesy of Young Marines)

At the end of each year, Young Marines support Wreaths Across America at national cemeteries across the country. These events have introduced Young Marines to veterans from World War II to the present, giving them firsthand knowledge of the service and sacrifices made on behalf of our country and others around the world. They have learned history from those who were there, including Hershel “Woody” Williams, who explained firsthand about the landings on Iwo Jima; Thomas Begay, who talked about becoming a Code Talker; and Pearl Harbor survivor Jack Holder, who talked about watching the enemy aircraft descend on them. These are lessons they will never forget.
“Although Young Marines is not an official recruiting program for the military, you are surrounded by Marines and veterans,” said Ross. “Their stories and attitudes towards the Marine Corps definitely influenced me into looking into the Corps. The Young Marines program also allowed me to explore my passion for photography through a public affairs … course that I was able to attend. All of the people I met and the opportunities I had in this program is why I am a United States Marine.”

The Young Marines program began when a group of fathers wanted to encourage their children to be good citizens and role models for other youth. Many of these parents had served in the Marine Corps and wanted to use the values and experiences they had adopted from their time in service to make the world a better place. So, in 1959, the first Young Marines joined the program in Waterbury, Conn., where the Brass City Detachment of the Marine Corps League (MCL) took a huge interest in the program and has been a staunch supporter ever since.

In 1965 a member of the MCL Valley Detachment in Connecticut raised more than $5,000 to fly an entire Young Marine unit to the MCL National Convention in Kansas City, Mo., where the MCL adopted the Young Marines as its national youth program. Though originally chartered as a subsidiary organization of the MCL, the program grew exponentially. In 1980, the Young Marines branched off and became its own entity, with its own national non-profit 501(c) (3) status as a youth education and service program.

SgtMaj Carlos A. Ruiz, the 20th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, meets with members of the Potomac River Young Marines unit at the Pentagon in December 2023. The Young Marines were there to accept the Fulcrum Shield Award for excellence in youth anti-drug programs. (Courtesy of Young Marines)

In the 1990s, Young Marines was competitively selected as the youth drug demand reduction (DDR) program for the Marine Corps, when each military service was tasked to have a similar program. Young Marines has continued and expanded the DDR mission to this day. In 2014, the Young Marines took its DDR efforts to the next level by launching a successful program called Closing the Gate on Drugs. The word “gate” links to “gateway drugs” which are tobacco, marijuana, prescription medication, inhalants, and alcohol.
This drug prevention and resistance program remains a positive, flourishing piece of the Young Marines program that has steered tens of thousands of young people away from drugs. Each Young Marine receives a minimum of 12 hours of DDR education and training each year to include using peer to peer education. Young Marines are consistently going out into their communities and sharing information about why it is important to live a healthy, drug-free lifestyle.

Young Marines start their leadership journey at entry-level recruit instruction. They learn the fundamentals of leading through drill and other opportunities to take the lead in daily activities or service events. As leadership is so important to the program, the Young Marines hold three specific leadership schools with a designated curriculum: Junior Leadership School or JLS, Senior Leadership School (SLS) and Advanced Leadership School (ALS). Successful completion of leadership schools is a requirement for promotion.

There is a National Leadership Academy that is typically held in the summer over a two-week period. Young Marines must qualify to attend and then learn strategies and skills that they take back to their units to put into use.
“Having had so much practice with bearing and drill really helped me make it through boot camp and thrive,” said Lance Corporal Abbigail Waters, who was the 2020-2021 National Young Marine of the Year and is now an aircraft mechanic at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. “My time in the Young Marines helped to set me up as I grew into the adult I am today by teaching me how to think and make decisions for myself. Another great benefit is that I had many experiences working with a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds. It’s no different in the Marine Corps, there are people from so many different backgrounds and knowing how to work with anyone has helped me significantly.”

LCpl Abbigail Waters. (Courtesy of Young Marines)
Before becoming an aircraft mechanic at MCAS Miramar, LCpl Abbigail Waters was in the Young Marines program and was the 2020-2021 National Young Marine of the Year. (Courtesy of Young Marines)

Surveys of Young Marine alumni show that more than 30% of Young Marines choose to serve in our nation’s military services. The next largest employment choices from that survey are first re­sponders and teachers. Whatever they choose to do with their lives, Young Ma­rines find themselves in high demand due to the solid personal qualities learned in this program.

Now a Border Patrol Agent for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Devin Lewis was a Young Marine before enlisting in the Marine Corps where he served as an engineer heavy equipment operator at Combat Logistics Battalion 5 (CLB-5) at Camp Pendleton from 2010-2015. Lewis said his time in the Young Marines helped give him a leg up when he went into the Corps.

“I already knew that I was going to be a Marine because I was third generation, but the Young Marines program better prepared me for my military service. The program helped me to come out of my bubble. I was a very shy kid, and the program was instrumental in making me more outspoken and not afraid to be a leader. The Young Marines is the only youth organization that I can think of that gives the opportunities it does. No other youth organizations rival the Young Marines when it comes to leadership, teamwork, and discipline. All three core values were important to me. I still use the Young Marines and the Marine Corps core values to this day; they help to remind me who I am and who I want to be.”

Lewis still carries on the Young Marine attitude of giving back and serving.
“I continue to volunteer with the Young Marines program,” Lewis said. “I was a Unit Commander of the Lewis & Clark Young Marines in Vancouver, Wash., from 2017-2022, and I am now the Arizona Grand Canyon Regiment Commander … I look at it this way, the Young Marines gave me so many opportunities that I would have never had. So now that I am an adult, I want to give those same opportunities that I had back to the youth of today.”

Participants with the Young Marines program collect debris during a beach cleanup at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Dec. 2, 2022, in commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (LCpl Chandler Stacy, USMC)
The Rhode Island National Guard hosted members of the Young Marines for an orientation and open house on Camp Fogarty. These Young Marines traversed an obstacle course, set up a rope bridge, and received an orientation flight in a Blackhawk helicopter. (Sgt Terry Rajsombath, USMC)

Staff Sergeant Joseph Harding was a Young Marine with the Mid Cumberland Young Marines in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., from 2010 to 2016. He is still involved with the Young Marines as an adult volunteer with the Fall River Young Marine unit in Fall River, Mass., and previously, with the Cherry Point Young Marine unit in Havelock, N.C. Harding said he had many mentors from the Corps during his time as a Young Marine.

“These Marines taught us what it meant to truly be a Marine,” Harding said. “Being a Marine is about selfless service, giving back, steadfast commitment to our nation and its people, and that you are a Marine for life. This resonates with me daily. I wake up each day, knowing the shoes these gentlemen, and thousands of other Marines, have left are hard to fill. However, I do my best to live up to their legacy to honor their selfless service, steadfast commitment to our nation and its people, and to embody ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine.’ ”
The Young Marines is always looking to add youth mentors to the program. If you are interested in volunteering as an adult or have a young relative you think would benefit from the program, please visit www.YoungMarines.org.

Former Young Marines unit commander Devin Lewis, left, with Logan Nelson, the 2018 Young Ma­rine of the Year. (Courtesy of Young Marines)
Devin Lewis participated in the Young Marines program before joining the Corps. Even after leaving active duty, Lewis continues to volun­teer for the Young Marines program as the Arizona Grand Canyon Regiment Commander. (Courtesy of Young Marines)
Devin Lewis enlisted in the Marine Corps and was a heavy equipment operator with CLB-5 at Camp Pendleton, Calif. He now serves as a Border Patrol Agent for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (Courtesy of Young Marines)

Author’s bio: Abra Hogarth is the director of strategic communications for the Young Marines and has worked in the communications field for over 25 years. She has a communications degree from George Mason University and has been writing articles and short stories her whole life.

Trapped: Marine Tankers Come to the Rescue on Iwo Jima

Marines with Co C, 5th Tank Battalion walk across the sands of Iwo Jima’s Red Beach. Third platoon, led by 2ndLt Leonard Blake, joined the fight on Iwo Jima in support of 2nd Bn, 28th Marines. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)

The moment the bow doors opened, and the ramp dropped on LSM-44, Company C’s tanks from the 5th Tank Battalion were on the move into the gritty black sand of Iwo Jima’s Red Beach 2. There had been six tanks aboard—a mix of Headquarters’ and 2nd and 3rd Platoons’—and they had been called on at 11:48 a.m. to hit the beach in support of 1st Battalion, 28th Marines. Co C turned right as they dis­embarked, following the beachmaster’s directions to the safest egress point. How­ever, the loose volcanic sand wreaked havoc on the tank tracks, and one of 3rd Plt’s tanks threw a track as they headed up the beach. They were under mortar fire almost immediately, but the rise in the beach protected the crews from direct fire enough to enable them to dismount, drop their tanks’ wading stacks and remove any waterproofing that might hinder them in the fight.

Co C, split evenly between LSM-43, -44 and -46, landed with 14 tanks, one tank dozer, two flame tanks and an M32 Recovery Vehicle. The company broke down into the Head­quarters Plt with two tanks and the dozer, four line platoons with three tanks each, and two attached flame tanks, to be used wherever they were most needed. Second Lieutenant Leonard Blake from Pennsylvania led 3rd Plt. His three tanks, “Jeannie,” “Killer” and “Lucky,” were all brand-new M4A3 Shermans, the Marine Corps’ new standard tank which was making its combat debut on Iwo Jima. Jeannie, driven by 19-year-old Corporal Leighton Willhite, would be the first from LSM-44 on the beach.
Issued to the battalion in October 1944, the new tank had better armor protection, better and safer internal ammunition stowage, and a gas-powered Ford V-8 engine that replaced the M4A2’s twin diesel. In addition to these improvements, each company in the 5th Tank Battalion utilized materials on hand in Hawaii to better defend against Japanese magnetic and shaped charge antitank mines that had been encountered in previous cam­paigns. Co C’s report outlines the basic modifications: “2-inch planking with a 2-inch air space between planks and hull were placed on sides of tanks. Drivers hatches had a frame welded to them which was covered with chicken wire. The hatches on the turret and the area around them had 10 penny nails welded to them so that they resembled a ‘bed of nails.’ ”

Wooden planks were also mounted on the suspension, and corrugated sheet metal, cut into jagged patterns, was nailed to the upper edges of the hull-mounted planks, making it difficult and hazardous for enemy infantry to grab or climb onto the tank. The upper surface of the tank’s hull was also covered in sandbags, held in place by chicken wire, to further deter magnetic mines from adhering flush to the hull.

Co C’s mission was to support the 28th Marine Regiment’s drive westward across the island to the western beaches before turning south and heading for the most significant terrain feature on the island: Mount Suribachi, code-named “Hot Rocks.” With the infantry landing almost three hours prior to the tanks’ arrival, they had already gained a foothold, with 1st Battalion, 28th Marines, leading the way and 2nd Bn deployed east of them, oriented to the south and Suribachi. The tanks were a welcome sight as they crested the beach and entered the fray.

Tank number 31 “Killer” leads a group of Marines from 1/28 against Japanese positions on Hill 362. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
2ndLt Leonard Sokol assigned to 2nd Bn, 28th Marines, stands in front of Lt Blake’s tank “Jeannie,” on March 1, 1945. Sokol would be killed in combat two days later on Nishi Ridge.
(Photo courtesy of National Archives)

The tanks’ 75 mm guns gave the 28th Marines a significant increase in fire­power and a better means for taking out bunkers and machine-gun nests. Each tank carried 100 rounds of ammunition: 60 rounds of high-explosive M48; 30 rounds of armor-piercing, capped-tracer M61; and 10 rounds of white phosphorus. While the armor-piercing round did give Co C’s crews the ability to penetrate con­crete bunkers, it was the M48 high-explo­sive rounds that would see the highest rate of consumption in the assault on Suribachi.
With the whole company ashore, Co C’s commander, Captain Edward Nelson, found the command post and spoke to the first sergeant, who was the senior surviving man. According to Nelson, Marines of the 1/28 had reached their objective “but were pinned down and receiving heavy casualties from pillboxes and block houses bypassed in the attack.”

He and the 1st Sgt agreed that the entire Tank Co would eliminate any enemy positions between the command post and the front lines. However, immediately after moving out, the tank column came under fire from a hidden 47mm antitank gun. Four tanks were hit before the gun was destroyed. Two of those tanks re­ceived penetrations through the front face of the turret on the right side of the gun shield.

In 3rd Plt, Sergeant Donald North’s tank, Killer, took two 47mm antitank rounds through the front of his turret, badly wounding him and his gunner. They were lucky, though, because their tank was still functional, and they drove back to the assembly area where they could be tended to.

Moving the wounded out of harm’s way was critical. Because there was minimal cover anywhere on the island, crews using the tank’s upper hatches were exposed to enemy sniper and artillery fire; climbing onto a tank to get a wounded crew out was almost impossible. It was suicide to leave the tank through the upper hatches. As a result, all ingress and egress on the battalion’s tanks was routed through the bottom hatch for the entire campaign. Wounded crews in an immobilized tank would either have to be taken out through the bottom hatch or wait for a recovery vehicle to move the tank to a safer area.

Armed with a Thompson submachine gun, Lt Blake clears the side of the “Lucky,” while Cpl Leighton Willhite keeps an eye out for the enemy.

North and his gunner were on their way to a hospital ship by the next morning, while Killer was repaired by battalion maintenance. Since the tank had not burned, the armor was not compromised and could be repaired. The 47mm shell holes were patched, the fire control was repaired, and Killer returned to the front lines with a new commander and gunner two days later, bringing 3rd Plt back to full strength.

Over the next three days, 3rd Plt would be on Co C’s right flank, supporting land­­ing team 128’s advance on Mount Suri­bachi, firing high explosives at targets on the mountain’s slopes. By noon on D+4, Co C was sent back to the bivouac area for refueling, re-arming and main­tenance. One of 3rd Plt’s most intense actions came on March 1, when they were in support of 1st Bn, 28th Marines during the assault on Hill 362. Blake’s three tanks approached a cave complex on the western side of Iwo Jima and attempted to engage Japanese forces. Platoon Ser­geant Robert McIntire’s tank, Lucky, was in the lead, with Jeannie behind and to the right. Killer and the flamethrower tank “Torch” followed closely behind. As they advanced, McIntire sighted a cave with several Japanese soldiers in it and moved his tank to engage. However, what he didn’t see was the Japanese ma­chine-gun emplacement dug into the ground ahead of his tank. When the tank drove over it, the roof collapsed, trapping the tank and its crew.

As the tank nosed down into the hole, Japanese infantry swarmed out and onto the tank. Blake quickly grabbed the tank commander’s override and slewed his tank’s turret to engage the enemy infan­try. Its coaxial .30-caliber machine gun killed a number of the Japanese soldiers climbing on McIntire’s tank, but he and his crew were still trapped inside. They couldn’t go out the bottom hatch because it would open right into the pillbox of more enemy soldiers. With the potential for Japanese soldiers on top of the tank or waiting just outside, hidden from Blake’s view, McIntire realized his crew had no place to go. Grabbing the radio mike, McIntire called Blake for help.

Blake realized the only way to get McIntire and his crew out was to go over to the tank, climb on top, and let them know it was safe to come out. He turned to his crew and asked for two volunteers to accompany him and attempt the rescue. While initially no one volunteered, Cor­poral Willhite grabbed his .45 and said, “I’ll go with you, Lieutenant.”

The pair cautiously made their way over to the disabled tank, Blake moving left toward the rear of the tank and Willhite covering him. Neither knew how many Japanese soldiers were on the far side of the tank. A burst from Blake’s Thompson killed three soldiers as he rounded the corner. Willhite covered him as Blake then climbed up onto the tank’s hull and banged on the driver’s hatch.
“Two Japanese came out of nowhere with their rifles and bayonets,” Willhite recalled. “I shot them, but I don’t know if I killed them.” McIntire and his four Marines climbed out of the tank and rallied at its rear with Blake’s crew. They removed the gun’s breechblock and the critical radio components before aban­don­ing the tank.

After safely extracting the crew trapped inside the “Lucky,” Lt Blake and PltSgt Robert McIntire devise a plan to safely remove both crews from the combat zone. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)

Meanwhile, Torch, their accompanying flame tank, moved up to cover the crew’s extraction. According to Torch’s com­mander, “The [enemy] dived into a shell hole and [that] is where they met their doom with our flame.” McIntire’s crew piled into Killer and Jeannie as the pla­toon pulled back to safety. McIntire took over as the commander of Killer, and 3rd Plt operated with two tanks until Lucky could be recovered. Because of the inten­sity of combat in the area—and the sever­ity of how deeply Lucky was stuck in the hole—it would be a full three days before the tank was retrieved.

Third Plt and Co C continued to support both the 28th and 26th Marines as they pushed north on Iwo Jima’s west side. Three weeks after rescuing McIntire, Blake’s platoon was called upon to de­stroy an abandoned Co A tank so the Japanese couldn’t get any information from it. As they neared the target, Blake’s tank hit a mine, breaking the track and immobilizing them. His gunner quickly fired upon the abandoned tank, setting it ablaze, while another 3rd Plt tank crew hooked up their tow cables and prepared to pull Jeannie to safety. As they were leaving the area, a Japanese infantryman threw a satchel charge under the engine, knocking it out but not stopping the two tanks from making it back to friendly territory.

The battle officially ended five days later. After the battle, the entire 5th Ma­rine Division returned to Hawaii for re­fitting and training for the invasion of Japan. The 5th Tank Battalion turned in their tanks to the depot on Oahu for maintenance and refurbishment. Blake and Willhite received the Silver Star and Bronze Star, respectively, for their heroic actions on Iwo Jima.

Flamethrower tanks provided assault support for Marines on the field during the heat of battle against enemy forces. (USMC)
Many tanks like “Lucky” were put out of action on the first days of battle on Iwo Jima. (USCG)

The after-action reviews from both 4th and 5th Tank Battalions, which had used the POA-CWS-H1 flame tanks like Torch, were unan­imous in their comments that more flame tanks were required. The 4th and 5th Marine Division comments echoed those sentiments, and as a result, 72 tanks were pulled from existing stocks on Oahu to be converted into the new POA-CWS-H5 flame­thrower tank. This new variant was built on the existing M4A3, but unlike the eight POA-CWS-H1 tanks used on Iwo Jima, the new H5 mounted a flame­thrower coaxially with the main gun. This was intended to give Marine tank crews the ability to engage with both the 75mm cannon and the flame thrower.

Jeannie was the 50th tank selected for this con­version, so in August 1945, the ammunition stowage bins under the turret floor were removed and two massive napalm storage tanks were added. The ammunition capacity for the main gun was reduced by 60%, retaining roughly 40 rounds. She would be ready for combat by the end of the month, but fortunately there would be no need for her further combat service.

Jeannie—or M4A3 serial number 49617—then returned to the States and made her way to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., where an attempt was made in the 1970s to preserve her. But because of a lack of funding, she was moved off into the woods in one of the 2nd Tank Battalion’s training areas, where she remained until being rediscovered in 2000 and shipped to the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., the following year. The tank remained in storage until 2020 when, due to a reduction in storage buildings, it was sent out on loan to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz., where it currently sits. A curatorial visit by museum staff in June of 2023 identified the weld scarring patterns on the turret roof as unique to the 5th Tank Bn on Iwo Jima, and from there, research into the 5th Tank Bn and this tank’s history was underway.

“Jeannie,” 3rd Platoon’s Tank 30, is currently located at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz. The National Museum of the Marine Corps is working on a restoration plan for the tank.

Author’s bio: Jonathan Bernstein is the arms and armor curator for the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Pre­viously he was the director/curator of the Air Defense Artillery Museum. Bernstein began his museum career in 1991 at the USS Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum and has served in nu­merous museum roles since then. He was an Army aviation officer, flying AH-64A and D Apache attack helicopters with the 1-1-4th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion, PA NG from 2006-2012. He has published a number of books and articles on military and aviation history. He is the 2023 winner of the Marine Corps Heri­tage Foundation Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award.

Enemy in the Wire: The Fight for Survival on LZ Russell

A CH-53 helicopter resupplies 105mm ammunition to the gun pits of Hotel Battery, 3/12, stationed at LZ Russell. (Photo by LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)

Dusk settled over the hilltop on Feb. 24, 1969. Lance Corporal Patrick “Mac” McWilliams examined the Marines assigned to him for listening post (LP) duty. All of them were green, recently arrived in country and shuttled out for their first stint in the bush. Mac’s four months in Vietnam made him an old salt in their eyes, with experience to help keep them alive. He previously spent time on the hill, and already acquainted himself with the menacing jungle beyond the perimeter. The grunts were exhausted from patrols over the last few days. Some in the company treated LP duty with complacency, despite the inherent danger being isolated outside the wire. Mac resolved to teach the new guys cor­rectly. He passed out grenades and trip flares and performed final checks. The four-man team proceeded down a finger, beyond the final defensive web of wire and into enemy territory.

Mac found a spot 100 yards into the jungle and set up the radio. Private First Class Dennis Gardner moved farther ahead to set up a trip flare across a trail.
“If that thing goes off, we need some­one to throw the first grenade,” Mac said.
“I used to play quarterback,” Gardner told him. “I’ll do it.”

For Mac and numerous other veterans from “Echo” Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, their return to guard duty on the hill 10 days earlier proved appre­hensive and unwelcome. In November 1968, their platoon scaled the mountain­side to carve a remote base out of the Viet­namese jungle. They strung together C4 explosives and blew down trees in the rough shape of a landing zone (LZ). Helicopters lifted in heavy moving equip­ment to finish off the stumps and flatten the crest. Marines dug fighting holes and constructed bunkers out of old ammo boxes while more chop­pers off­loaded a battery of 105mm howitzers into newly constructed gun pits. The position, named LZ Russell, became the newest fire support base in a nexus of interlocking artillery. Multiple hilltops similar to Russell blanketed the jungle, covering infantry operations along the Demilita­rized Zone (DMZ). Since Russell’s estab­lishment, nearly 300 Marines continuous­ly occupied the hill. Mac’s platoon de­parted to fight in other battles along Mutter’s Ridge and near Con Thien short­ly after the artillery pieces arrived. They returned to Russell for their turn on guard duty less than three months later.

An aerial view of the main landing zone at LZ Russell, with several howitzer gun pits extending down the finger of land. Note the sandbagged paths and bunkers built into the steep hill on either side of the flattened top. (LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)

Six guns from “Hotel” Battery, 3/12, occupied the crest. They presented an attractive target for North Vietnamese Army (NVA) fire. The base sat in the remote northwestern corner of South Vietnam, a stone’s throw away from the DMZ and within view of the Laotian border. Daily ground operations in the vicinity generated fire missions around the clock. In the month of January 1969, the three 105mm batteries of 3/12 fired nearly 30,000 rounds. Totals from later months that year reached closer to 40,000 rounds.
Three gun pits surrounded the main LZ at the summit. The remaining three stretched out down a long finger protrud­ing east. The entire position lay exposed to enemy view. Enemy soldiers probed the grunt perimeter and fired mortars sporadically around the hill, mapping out Marine positions and registering their fires. By the end of February, platoons from Companies E and F, 2/4, and one platoon from Co K, 3/4, defended Russell’s perimeter around Hotel Battery.

Shortly after midnight on Feb. 25, a fire mission crackled to life from the radio. Fire Support Base (FSB) Neville, located just 5 miles west, called urgently for help. The voice on the other end reported the news most dreaded by Marines on an isolated hill; NVA sappers penetrated the wire and overran the base. Hotel Battery sprang to action. All six guns opened fire on pre-registered targets surrounding Neville. For three hours, the battery pounded Neville’s entire perim­eter, firing over 300 rounds of high ex­plosives or illumination. The artillerymen endured the work, many without even knowing what was happening on the nearby out­post. To them, it was just another midnight fire mission.

The roaring howitzers kept Mac and his Marines awake at the LP. They rotated through radio watch as the hours passed and tried to sleep. Around 4 a.m., the fire mission ceased and the jungle fell quiet. Before their ears adjusted to the silence, without any warning, mortar rounds impacted behind them inside the perimeter at the top of the hill. Mac, Gardner, and the others bolted upright and clinched their rifles. A chorus of small arms fire punctuated the space between explosions. The Marines under­stood, without a doubt, that NVA soldiers broke through the perimeter and were already overrunning LZ Russell, even under their own mortar fire.

Marines from Hotel Battery 3/12, fire their 105mm howitzer from LZ Russell. Around-the-clock missions kept the artillerymen busy, firing thousands of rounds per month. (USMC)
Cpl Alvin Winchell in his bunker, constructed of dirt-filled artillery ammo boxes, at LZ Russell. Winchell was one of numerous Marines from 2/4 that carved Russell out of the jungle in November 1968, then returned to guard the hill in February 1969. For his actions the night the LZ was overrun, Winchell received a Bronze Star with combat “V.” (Courtesy of Alvin Winchell)

Mac tried to raise the command post (CP) but received no reply. He ordered the others to grab their gear and move out. He figured their original position had been spotted and set up again near a large fallen tree. Gardner hit the deck, sheltered behind the uprooted base. The trip flare he placed earlier in the night suddenly ignited down the trail in front of him. A blinding light illuminated numerous NVA moving up the hill. Gardner pulled the pin on his grenade, cocked his arm back, and let it fly. The perfect toss landed on the trail and exploded amongst an enemy group. More unseen NVA opened fire in the LP’s direction. The four Marines fired rapidly at sounds of movement in the surrounding jungle. Heavy impacts from a .50-caliber machine gun threw up dirt in mini explosions all around them. With nowhere to run and no one to help, the LP stayed put and fought for their lives. They were not alone in their plight, as the sounds of battle from the hilltop increased in a terrifying pitch.

Lance Corporal Bruce Brinke stood radio watch in the platoon CP bunker, having checked in with the LP throughout the night. When the howitzers ceased fire, the “Thoomp, thoomp, thoomp,” of mortars in the distance resonated soon after. The first explosion struck right outside the bunker, with a second scoring a direct hit. Brinke and the other Marines inside dove for cover as explosions en­veloped the hill. He landed halfway through the door of another adjacent room inside the bunker. A satchel charge flew through the open bunker door, falling next to Brinke’s platoon commander, Second Lieutenant William Hunt. The bunker erupted in a ball of fire. Shrapnel ripped a large gash through Brinke’s leg, but the wall of the adjacent room pro­tected his upper half. He tried to move as the bunker burned and collapsed around him. In the chaos, he discovered the remains of Hunt, who absorbed much of the blast and died instantly.

Another Marine assisted Brinke outside the burning structure. As they exited, muzzle flashes pierced the darkness within inches of Brinke’s face. An NVA sapper waited outside against the bunker wall within arm’s reach. He unloaded on Brinke and his companion as they walked out. The two Marines fell back, hitting the ground outside the doorway. Miraculously, Brinke suffered only one gunshot in the arm near his shoulder. The other Marine was hit once in his leg. The enemy soldier scampered off to find his next victims, believing the two Marines were dead. Brinke lay bleeding from his wounds, waiting for another enemy to find him and finish the job.

LZ Russell occupied an exposed hilltop in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam. It sat less than 4 miles from the DMZ along the border with North Vietnam and within view of the Laotian border to the west. (Photo by LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)
Marines from 2/4 fire an 81mm mortar from LZ Russell. Note how the hill disappears steeply downward just beyond the parapet wall, with the jungle nearby marking the edge of the perimeter. (USMC)

Corporal Alvin Winchell took shelter in a fighting hole with his squad as the mortars impacted. A bunker nearby sud­denly exploded and collapsed, burying six Marines inside. In the flashes of light, Winchell saw NVA sappers advancing up the hill under the fire of their own mortars. Some of the enemy carried no weapons, but cradled explosive satchel charges in their arms and tossed them in each Marine bunker they passed. Winchell’s platoon sergeant ordered him to move his squad down the hill to a breach in the wire where sappers streamed through. Winchell gathered his machine gun team and sprinted toward a bunker near the breach. He set up the gun on the roof and scanned for targets.

“You could only see shadows in the dark until somebody popped up a flare,” Winchell remembered. “You don’t know if it’s a Marine or NVA, but it was just like ants coming up that hill.”

The machine-gun team opened fire on the shadows swarming from the jungle. The rattle of violence filled the air behind Winchell as the NVA overran LZ Russell and the battle devolved into utter chaos. Wounded and dying men screamed for help. American and Vietnamese weapons chattered back and forth. Darkness veiled the horrifying realities of hand-to-hand combat from a broader view. Through this phase of intensely personal killing, every Marine on the hill experienced his own unique version of the battle, and cemented in their minds the memories that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Numerous stories from the savage fighting that night later emerged. The overwhelming volume of simultaneous events, the darkness and the unmitigated confusion shrouded the details. Many of the Marines who inspired their legend are now gone. To many more, Feb. 25, 1969, remains a night too painful to discuss, even 55 years later. The stories that have come to light illuminate the ferocity of the battle, and how the actions of individual Marines across the hill turned the tide against the enemy.

GySgt Pedro Balignasay, Company Gunny for E/2/4, at LZ Russell. A three-war veteran and legend in his own time, he received a Silver Star for his actions on Feb. 25, 1969. (Courtesy of Robert Skeels)
In a glimpse from one Hotel Battery gun pit on LZ Russell, a friendly airstrike explodes on a nearby hill. NVA occupied the jungle surrounding LZ Russell, routinely harassing the Marines with mortars and small arms fire. (LtCol Charles Perriguey)

As Brinke lay on the ground, after being blown up and shot outside his bunker, Gunnery Sergeant Pedro Balignasay eventually passed by. By this point in his career, Balignasay earned renown as an old breed legend of the Corps. The Marines affectionately referred to him as, “Gunny Huk,” in honor of his Filipino roots. Born in the Philippines in 1927, Balignasay immigrated to the U.S. and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served in WW II, Korea, and saw three combat deployments in Vietnam before he retired in 1973. He was widely known by the grunts of 2/4 for his weapon of choice, carried at all times; a Filipino bolo knife.

“Hey Gunny Huk! Can you help me?” Brinke cried. “I need to get up!”
Balignasay approached. He held his bolo knife in one hand and a shotgun in the other. He hastily triaged Brinke and saw that he would survive, and he lay in a covered position.

“Sorry Marine, I can’t do anything more for you. I gotta go kill some NVA.”
Balignasay’s Silver Star citation de­scribes multiple times he was wounded that night as he roamed the hill directing uninjured Marines or helping move the wounded to cover. It alludes to his in­strumental role in, “killing numerous enemy and successfully defending their position.” At least five of these enemy reportedly fell victim to Gunny Huk’s beloved bolo.

LCpl Rick Davis in his bunker at LZ Russell. Davis took shelter in his bunker during the initial onslaught of Feb. 25, 1969, before exiting and discovering his gun pit overrun by NVA. (Courtesy of Rick Davis)
Capt Albert Hill, Company Commander of E/2/4, at LZ Russell. He was one of many Marines intimately involved in the hand-to-hand fight over the hill on Feb. 25, 1969. For his actions, Hill received a Silver Star. (Courtesy of Bob Skeels)

Captain Albert Hill, the Echo Co Commander, survived the initial barrage of mortars and satchel charges and entered the hand-to-hand clash over the hill. At one point, Hill pulled the pin on a grenade to hurl at an enemy. At that very moment, another NVA sapper rushed him. Hill locked into mortal combat, the live grenade still clutched in his hand. Unable to let go, lest he blow himself up alongside the sapper, Hill prevailed over his foe and used the grenade like a rock in his hand to bludgeon the enemy to death. Like Balignasay, Hill received a Silver Star for his role in defending the hill.

LCpl Rick Davis served as an artillery­man with Hotel Battery. His reinforced bunker withstood multiple direct hits during mortar barrage, and a thick wool blanket hung across the doorway de­flected satchel charges tossed by NVA sappers. The bombs detonated outside, disorienting the Marines, but leaving them unharmed. Davis searched the bunk­er for a rifle as an NVA officer boldly barked out orders from somewhere nearby. Davis and the other Marines pushed through the doorway with rifles ready. They killed several NVA outside their bunker as they moved a short dis­tance over the parapet into their gun pit.

The enemy soldier shouting orders stood on the parapet wall. Davis fired several rounds into him. Another Marine shoot­ing from the opposite direction fired into the soldier at the same time, and he fell dead. The Marines arranged in a small defensive position around the gun. Wounded men called out for help all around them. Amidst the explosions, gun fire, and hand-to-hand combat, Davis set out with the others to rescue them. They recovered several Marines, some lying wounded around their gun pits, others partially buried inside the collapsed bunkers.

Typical bunkers constructed at LZ Russell and dug into the hillside. Tragically, numerous Marines died in bunkers such as these as NVA sappers demolished them with satchel charges once they penetrated the wire. (LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)

When not preoccupied with beating back the NVA sappers, many like Davis undertook the enormous effort of saving the lives of their fellow Marines. Doc Rich Woy, a corpsman assigned to Brinke’s 3rd platoon, found Brinke lying outside the bunker door where he fell. Woy bandaged his wounds before pro­ceed­ing onto other patients.

“I could see Doc Woy working on one guy up by a mortar pit behind us,” said Winchell, recalling a scene from memory as his squad held the line. “Doc had a tube in his throat trying to keep him alive.”

Woy survived the same satchel charge that killed Hunt and wounded Brinke in the CP bunker. He extricated another platoon corpsman from the CP and moved him to safety near Winchell’s squad. From there, he worked his way up and down the hill treating wounded Marines. Eventually, he remained at the LZ triaging and loading critical patients on medevac choppers. For his tireless work, Woy received a Silver Star.

Many of the wounded lay trapped in bunkers, collapsed from the onslaught of satchel charges. Private Michael Harvey, a radio operator with 2/4, discovered two partially buried Marines. He worked feverishly removing the heavy debris. A bullet pierced a nearby fuel drum, lighting it on fire. Without hesitation, Harvey threw himself across the wounded Marines as the drum exploded. His body shielded them from the resulting fireball. He died as a result of the injuries he sustained. For his incredible actions, Harvey was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

Private First Class William Castillo, a mortarman with 2/4, freed several Ma­rines from a bunker destroyed in the initial moments of the attack, then single-handedly returned to firing his mortar. Incoming rounds blew him off the tube twice, but he got up and returned each time to continue firing. When another bunker exploded and started burning, Castillo ran to the entryway and pressed ahead through a thick cloud of black smoke rolling out the door. He discovered five Marines inside, blinded by the smoke and in shock. Castillo led all five outside to safety. He survived the night, and for his heroic actions, received the Navy Cross.

Looking up from a position down the hillside, a CH-46 prepares to land on top of LZ Russell. (LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)

Winchell remained with his squad on the perimeter mowing down sappers as they appeared from the jungle. For his courage and leadership over his squad through the battle, Winchell received a Bronze Star with combat “V.” He heard a scream for help up the hill behind him. He moved toward the voice and found the severely wounded corpsman moved to safety by Doc Woy. In excruciating pain, the corpsman instructed Winchell to grab two morphine syrettes from his bag and inject them into his buttocks. Winchell administered the medication, then rubbed his finger in the Doc’s blood and drew a “M” on his forehead. A new and deafening roar of explosions suddenly split Winchell’s ears and lit up the jungle around him. Friendly artillery fire, similar to the barrage Hotel Battery provided for FSB Neville earlier in the night, began raining down.

“It sounded like a freight train coming in,” Winchell recalled. “They rang the hill all around the perimeter. Some landed inside. I looked at the corpsman and told him, ‘I think we’re f—ked.’ ”

Mac, Gardner and the others on the LP willed their bodies into the dirt through the barrage. Still outside the wire, they lay directly under the intended impact zone.

“It was raining hell fire!” said Gardner. “Arty was landing all around us. The ground shook, the darkness lit up, and shrapnel was flying from the explosions striking the trees. All we could do was hug the ground and hope a round didn’t land on top of us!”

After what seemed an eternity, dawn broke mercifully over the hilltop. The friendly barrage ceased, and the fight for LZ Russell trailed off. The only NVA remaining inside the wire lay dead. The rest vanished back into the jungle. The morning revealed the battle’s horrific aftermath. The enemy successfully dis­abled three of the six howitzers. Bunkers around the hill crumbled in ruins with screaming Marines trapped inside. American and Vietnamese bodies lay intermingled in a grotesque spectacle attesting to the savage combat. Unidentifi­able body parts littered the hill, remnants of the many satchel charges employed by the sappers with devastating effect.

A view of Marines entering the wire at LZ Russell, taken in the summer of 1969 after the base was overrun on Feb. 25. (LtCol Charles Perriguey, USMCR)

This headline ran in Stars and Stripes within a week after the attack, succinctly describing the horror the Marines faced.

Miraculously, the four Marines on LP duty survived the night unscathed. They remained outside the wire waiting per­mis­sion to reenter friendly lines, lest they be mistaken as enemy and gunned down. Their anxiety soared as they sat in the quiet jungle. The peace was broken by a lone Marine somewhere nearby up the hill, calling out to God for help. Finally, they received the all clear.

The body of an NVA sapper shot through the head greeted them as they passed through the wire. Almost imme­diately, Mac directed the others toward a collapsed bunker to retrieve the body of a Marine buried inside. Gardner dis­covered the bunker was his own, which he shared with three others. They moved sand bags and ammo boxes to create an entrance. Inside, Gardner found the re­mains of another Marine from his squad who was up for LP duty the previous night, but Gardner went in his place. He suffered the initial onslaught of survivor’s guilt as he dug the Marine out and dragged the body up the hill to the LZ for evac­uation. His squad mate was the first dead body Gardner had ever touched. After­wards, Gardner and the others continued from bunker to bunker carrying dead Marines to the top of the hill.

The LZ shrank as bodies collected near the crest. Dead Marines were lined up awaiting their turn for evacuation, with dead NVA stacked nearby. Marines and corpsman triaged the wounded for evacuation as helicopters trickled down through a thick haze that settled over the hill. Twenty-nine Marines and Navy corpsmen were dead. Nearly 80 more were wounded. Those who remained piled the enemy dead high on a cargo net in an unsuccessful attempt to lift them from the hill under the belly of a helicopter. Finally, Marines were forced to toss the bodies over the steepest side of the hill to be burned. The helicopter squadrons stretched thin as they simultaneously evacuated casualties from LZ Russell and the fight at FSB Neville, where 14 died and almost 30 were wounded. In one night between the two hills, the price paid by the Marines and Navy corpsmen defending them amounted to 43 killed, and over 100 wounded.

Taken after dawn on the morning of Feb. 25, 1969, two Marines observe the body of a dead NVA soldier left inside the wire. These Marines and many other survivors endured the monumental task of evacuating their dead and wounded, removing the NVA bodies, and rebuilding LZ Russell to fight again. (Courtesy of Alvin Winchell)

In the weeks following Feb. 25, the infantry platoons that guarded the hill moved on quickly. In typical grunt fashion, no significant period of rest or reflection could be afforded. The Marines moved on to other hilltops, other jungles, other battles. For many, the experience at LZ Russell stood out as a defining moment of their time in combat and would forever dominate their dreams. In contrast, many artillerymen of Hotel Battery remained at LZ Russell through the spring and summer of 1969, daily reliving the fight they had all survived.
“I never slept after that night,” said Rick Davis, who remained on the hill with Hotel Battery for several months after the attack. “I just never would have put it past the NVA to come back and try to finish off the rest of us. We got resupply of some new guns, new ammo, new people. There was a lot of work to do.”

Some Marines, like LCpl Ken Heins, spent nearly their entire 13-month deployment on the hill. During the battle, Heins was blown up inside his bunker and trapped after he blacked out. He came to after daybreak when Marines entered the ruins and rescued him. Other Marines inside with him reported that NVA soldiers had entered the bunker during the night and stolen items off them as they played dead. Miraculously unwounded, Heins stayed on the hill and helped rebuild some of the bunkers where his friends were killed or maimed. The artillerymen started carrying loaded rifles and grenades to defend themselves at a moment’s notice, rather than relying solely on the grunts for protection. The NVA continued probing the lines and firing sporadically into the perimeter, but another assault like the night of Feb. 25 never materialized.

The battery fired thousands of rounds per month as the year wore on, staying busier than they had ever been. At one point, the work so thoroughly exhausted Heins that he slept uninterrupted through the awe-inspiring and earth-quaking devastation wrought by a nearby B-52 “arc light” bombing run. In September, the fire missions unexpectedly came to an abrupt and definitive halt. The Marines received orders to vacate the hill and destroy the base. Reasoning behind the decision failed to disseminate through the ranks. To a Marine like Heins, after spending his entire deployment on the hill, surviving the February assault, and grieving the friends he’d lost there, the abandonment of LZ Russell made all of it feel like a tragic waste.

Hotel Battery prepared their guns and equipment to be hauled out. Engineers rigged explosives to all the bunkers and piled high the extra powder bags, fuel, ammo, and any other gear condemned to destruction. They drenched everything with gasoline in preparation for the great conflagration that would render the hill­top useless to the NVA. On Sept. 21, Heins loaded the last of his gear onto a helicopter and climbed aboard. LZ Russell shrank beneath him as the chopper ascended. Without warning, a massive explosion detonated on the LZ. Heins felt and heard the “BOOM” over the sound of the heli­copter. A mushroom cloud expanded into the sky.

“Holy shit!” he yelled. “They just blew the hill up! They didn’t leave us much time to get the hell out of the way!”

When the chopper landed, Heins learned the explosion happened pre­maturely, and by accident. Reportedly, a Vietnamese Kit Carson Scout on the LZ flicked a burning cigarette butt into a pile of powder bags. The powder ignited, sparking a monumental chain of explo­sions. Two Marines and two Kit Carson Scouts perished. Numerous others were severely wounded. One Marine, PFC James W. Jackson Jr., was evacuated to a hospital in Quang Tri alongside the other wounded, but somehow mysterious­ly vanished from the emergency room. Investigators never discovered any evi­dence or sign of him, and to this day, Jackson is listed as missing in action, presumed dead. The victims of Sept. 21, 1969, marked the tragic ending to the existence of LZ Russell.

Survivors fought to move on from the battle. Other veterans from Vietnam or later wars who endured similarly horrific events are the only ones who can truly understand the struggle these men en­dured. They fought for a return to normal life. They fought for their families and fought for themselves. Today, even five and a half decades later, they still face the demons of LZ Russell on a daily basis. Tragically, a few of these veterans ended their own lives, becoming the last victims claimed by the long-forgotten hill.

“There are veterans from LZ Russell all around the country, and they are all wounded,” reflected Rick Davis. “They’ve been wounded for a lot of years, and everybody is on a mission to help everybody else. Everyone saw what happened that night in 100 different ways and has been affected differently. There have been divorces, people getting fired and losing everything they have, people getting sick, committing suicide, families left with questions. There was a lot of stuff going on, and it was a mess. Somebody had to pay the price for what happened that night. We’ve been paying it ever since.”

In the late 1990s, a Marine from Hotel Battery named Skip Poindexter published a website in memory of LZ Russell. The site evolved into a repository of photo­graphs and written memories of veterans who spent time on the hill. In August 2000, the LZ Russell Association was officially founded, with Heins as pres­ident. The organization scheduled the first reunion of LZ Russell veterans in Las Vegas. Marines gathered from around the country. For some, the initial excite­ment faded quickly as they sat face to face with other veterans, some of whom they had not seen since Feb. 25, 1969.

For years, they buried memories that they hesitated to unearth. Old animosities between the artillery battery and the infantry units reared. The Marines spent their lives after Vietnam refusing to speak of the events with people who could never understand them, and now suddenly faced the only ones who could. After a time, and with enough alcohol, the tension dissipated. The Marines pieced together the puzzle of the battle, filling in gaps for each other that had bothered them for years. More reunions took place, aiding greatly in the healing process. For numerous veterans of LZ Russell, how­ever, attending the reunions and the pas­sage of time remains inadequate, and they refuse to discuss the battle to this day.

Heins returned to Vietnam on several occasions in the years after the war. On five different trips, he scaled the old hill back to the top where LZ Russell once stood.

“Personally, I feel like half of me died up there.”

In this sentiment, Heins is not alone. On two of his trips to the hill, Heins took with him the ashes of other LZ Russell survivors to spread on the hill. Their final wishes were to be reunited with their brothers lost there, and the part of their youth that never returned home.

“It is with you, my friend,
who died so long ago
with a gasp and eyes rolled back.
So why can’t I feel?
Because my presence is not present.
My presence is with you…
I’m searching, searching for you.
Let me touch ‘The Wall’ where your name is,
and recall the face and the voice with a silly grin.
Let me reach out and touch you,
instead of a black granite slab.
I’m searching for you, and searching for me.”
(Poem by Dennis Gardner).

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.

A Self-Imposed Charter: Marines Take the Initiative to Record their Own Histories

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Marines bear the responsibility of honoring and preserving our heritage. We are instilled with the significance of our history from the moment we set foot on the yellow footprints. The qualities that define Ma­rines and differentiate us from the rest of the military are derived from many timeless examples set across the past 250 years.

To capture the spirit of this heritage, organizations like the USMC History Division are charged with recording, pre­serving, safeguarding, and disseminating volumes on the cumulative experience of Marines. While these official histories magnificently document the Corps’ achieve­ments, the sheer volume of in­for­mation available leaves the work incomplete.

Every Marine possesses a story worth telling. Individuals from each Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) create a unique slice of Marine Corps history, in many cases known only to those involved in that community. The stories from these niches energize and animate the details of an official history, describing not only what happened, but illuminating what it was like to be there. As time progresses, much of this history will only be passed on through individuals or groups who take it upon themselves to do so.

For one group of Marines representing an eliminated MOS, this self-imposed charter is not taken lightly. The veterans of the USMC Vietnam Tankers Association (VTA) are setting the example for other groups or individuals exploring options to preserve their own history.

The VTA launched its historical pres­er­vation efforts in 1998, even before the organization’s incorporation. Volume one, issue one of the VTA’s signature pub­lication, “Sponson Box,” was mailed out as a one-page document advertising an upcoming reunion for the 30th an­niversary of the Tet Offensive. It listed the names of the tank officers killed in action in Vietnam from 1st and 3rd Tank Battalions.

The VTA began as a chapter of a broad­er organization, the Marine Corps Tankers Association (MCTA). At the time of the newsletter’s publication, World War II or Korean War tankers filled out the MCTA. As the veterans from Vietnam neared retirement and watched their children grow families of their own, many found a renewed desire to connect with their buddies from the war. The first “Sponson Box” call went out and the group planted roots. In 1999, the USMC VTA was established as a non­profit organization.

The VTA eventually separated from the MCTA as its own entity, allowing it the freedom to financially support its own activities and priorities. While many of the veterans retained membership with the MCTA, the new association flourished. Any Marine of any MOS who served with a tank or Ontos battalion in Vietnam was eligible to join. Membership peaked at over 500 members around 10 years after the association was established. Today, some 400 veterans retain VTA membership. These include tankers, mechanics, various support MOSs, and even several infantry Marines who did not serve directly under a tank battalion, but credit tanks with keeping them alive through their time in country.

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USCMC VTA President John Wear, right, inspects an M48 “Patton” tank at Fort Benning, Ga., in 2018. (Photo courtesy of USMC VTA)

VTA events focus on a structured ef­fort and purpose, described in the as­sociation’s motto: “Ensuring our legacy through reunion, renewal, and remem­brance.” Individual members passionately carry out the spirit of this creed through their financial support and avid partici­pation in the group’s events and historical programs. The VTA’s methods of ensur­ing that legacy and preserving their his­tory evolved significantly since the first volume of the “Sponson Box” was mailed out 25 years ago.

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Member stories from the VTA’s newsletter, the “Sponson Box,” are compiled into four volumes titled “Forgotten Tracks.” These books are currently housed in various collections, such as the Library of Congress. Photo courtesy of Kyle Watts.“Sponson Box” remains the flagship publication of the VTA, and a hallmark of their historical program. Published four times a year, the magazine spans 48 pages with history, humor, association news and upcoming events. Individual Marines share their stories from Vietnam within its pages, affording them both a lasting place to see their work printed, and an audience that will understand and respond to them in the following issue. Hundreds of stories, otherwise told only in conversation around a reunion table, have been recorded and are publicly avail­able through the VTA website. Some Marines like Ben Cole have written nu­merous times for the “Sponson Box.” Cole served with Company A, 3rd Tank Battalion in Vietnam. He carried a cam­era throughout his time in combat and captured many stunning images. The newsletter provided a space for Cole to share some of his photographs with the people who would best relate to them, and explain the background stories.

Member stories from the “Sponson Box” were eventually clipped from the publication and reproduced as stand-alone books. So many writings existed from past issues that four full volumes were necessary to house them. Titled, “Forgotten Tracks: Stories from Marine Tankers in Vietnam,” each of the four books are currently included in the Library of Congress, the Texas Tech University Vietnam Center and Archive, and the Alfred M. Gray Marine Corps Research Center.

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Wally Young, center, and other VTA members had the opportunity to drive their beloved tanks once again in 2022 at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois, Wyo. Courtesy of National Museum of Military Vehicles.

In 2014, the VTA added one of its most popular and widely recognized historical programs. A local news agency attended the reunion that year in San Antonio, Texas, to record the stories of veterans from the area. The recordings grew in popularity and the agency included association members from other locations. From then on, the VTA hired a professional videographer to attend each reunion and expand their video library. At their most recent reunion in Colorado Springs, Colo., during Sep­tember 2023, VTA members recorded an additional 17 interviews to be added to the collection. These included tankers and other Marines such as infantryman Gil Hernandez. Hernandez served in Vietnam with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines. He suffered severe wounds and was nearly killed while riding on a tank, and credits the tankers with saving his life. He is an active VTA member and has attended three reunions.

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Young Marines from the local Pikes Peak region joined VTA members at multiple points throughout the 2023 reunion, including serving as the honor guard at the farewell banquet on the final night of the gathering. Clayton Price.
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Peter Ritch, left, and John Wear at the 2015 reunion in Washington, D.C. Ritch served as a board member for the VTA and played a critical role in its history program. Ritch passed away in September 2021. (Photo by Richard Carmer)

Even before the addition of interviews recorded in Colorado, the VTA YouTube channel boasts impressive numbers. As of September 2023, the channel contained 91 videos with more than 1,100 subscrib­ers. Over 400,000 viewers from 40 dif­ferent countries have spent more than 85,000 hours watching the interviews. The videos offer a unique glimpse inside the stories, allowing viewers to see the veteran in action, and hear the candid stories in his own words.

For the veterans who have no desire to write and do not wish to be on camera, VTA member Frank “Tree” Remkiewicz created a third venue for capturing their stories. In 2020, Remkiewicz recorded the first episode of the podcast, “Tracking Our History.”

“We’ve got over 30 podcast episodes now, and almost every one of these guys has never written a story or recorded a video,” said John Wear, the VTA pres­ident for the last 18 years. “Frank figured out that these guys know they can’t write or don’t want to, and that they don’t want to go on camera. But you get them on the telephone, and they can’t shut their mouth. All they need to do is talk.”

The expansive historical program main­tained and operated by the VTA came about over a long period of time and through the tireless efforts of many VTA leaders. The commitment of one man, however, helped the project progress to its current extent. Peter Ritch, a former platoon commander with Company B, 3rd Tank Battalion during 1968 and 1969, took the lead for the VTA in organizing the historical program. He played a key role in curating “Sponson Box” stories for the four volumes of “Forgotten Tracks.” He initiated the video oral history pro­gram and coordinated its execution at each reunion. Sadly, Ritch passed away in September 2021, but his impact on the program endures. His voice is heard from behind the camera as the interviewer in many videos, and he took part in a group recording in 2015, sharing his experience in a larger event.

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VTA members and other reunion guests ride an M48 “Patton” tank at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in 2022. Courtesy of National Museum of Military Vehicles.

An important piece of the legacy to be preserved by the VTA comes not just from being tankers, but from being Ma­rines. Like many USMC veterans, VTA members hold their time in the Corps as a defining feature of their lives, and share that passion with younger generations. At the most recent reunion in Colorado, for example, youths from the local Young Marines organization joined in at numer­ous points. One evening, 15 Young Ma­rines, ranging in age from 10 to 18, spent several hours at the hotel reception area with VTA members asking what it was like to be a tanker and fight in Vietnam. The older veterans explained in many different ways what it meant to them to be a tanker, but more importantly, what it meant to wear the uniform of a United States Marine.

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Peter Ritch, far left, served as the interviewer behind the camera on numerous occasions, helping develop the impressive library of oral histories created and maintained by the VTA. Richard Carmer.

With the removal of tanks from the Corps, an end date now exists in the lineage of Marine tankers. For the vet­erans of the VTA, the change highlights the significance of their work and the importance of passing the torch onto the generation of tankers who came after them.

“Most of the younger tanker veterans from Desert Storm or the Global War on Terror are still at the age where they are highly interested in their families and their careers,” said John Wear. “The MCTA is recruiting and trying to get more interest in attending their reunions, but it is a struggle.”

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VTA member Bob Peavey conducts the “Fallen Heroes” presentation at the 2019 reunion in Seattle, Wash. At every reunion, Peavey creates a presentation detailing the life of a tanker killed in action in Vietnam. These stories include commentary from surviving family members, when possible, and leave a profound impression on the viewers at each occasion. Richard Carmer.

As younger veterans reach the age where reflection and communion take on a greater importance, groups like the MCTA will be present to give them a forum to reconnect. Hopefully, the path laid down by the VTA will both inspire these Marines to share their own stories, and show them how to successfully do so. For other groups of Marines who feel their stories have not been adequately told, the VTA’s example proves that, while it may be tough, and it may take time and prodding, recording your own history will have a lasting impact.

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Peter Ritch, Robert Skeels, Harold Riensche, and Mike Bolenbaugh discuss their viewpoints on the tank retriever ambush of March 24, 1969. For his heroic actions that day, Riensche received the Navy Cross. Courtesy of USMC VTA.
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The VTA reunion group gathered at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois, Wyo., in 2022. Courtesy of USMC VTA.
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John Wear, left, and Bruce Van Apeldoorn Sr., an executive director on the VTA board, at the 2023 reunion in Colorado Springs, Colo. Clayton Price.

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.

Blurred Boundaries: The Front Lines and The Homefront

On Oct. 6, 1862, The New York Times ran a short article wedged in the corner of a page in their daily paper titled “Antietam Reproduced.” The Battle of Antietam had occurred a few weeks before and had resulted in the worst casualty numbers the war had seen thus far. It would be the bloodiest single day of combat for the U.S. military until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Photographer Alexander Gardner and his assistants rushed to Sharpsburg, Md., to capture the aftermath of the conflict. The photographs they produced showed the state of the battlefield before the Confederate dead were removed. Soon afterward, Mathew Brady, a photographer who worked closely with Gardner during the war, displayed these photographs for public viewing in his personal studio in New York City. “If our readers wish to know the horrors of the battle-field,” said The New York Times, “let them go to Brady’s Gallery, and see the fearful reproductions which he has on exhibition, and for sale.”

This marked a major step forward in the way the civilian population interacted with the Civil War. For possibly the first time, the public was exposed to “all the literal repulsiveness of [the] nature” of combat, and they witnessed “the naked corpses of our dead soldiers side by side in the quiet impassiveness of rest. Blackened faces, distorted features, expressions most agonizing, and details of absolute verity.” The article goes on to praise the enterprise, perseverance and courage of these artists, noting that the photographs could “teach us a lesson which it is well for us to learn.” However, it is left up to the reader to decide what conclusion should be drawn from these gruesome images—from the effects of combat on the human body. But given that the anonymous author wasn’t writing from one of the bloody campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley or from the ranks of the Army of the Potomac, it is safe to assume the collective “us” he refers to is the civilian population far from the front lines. He drives this point home when he pairs the images of the soldiers killed in action with that of the throngs of people walking down Broadway in New York City. The author imagines that “they would jostle less carelessly down the great thoroughfare, saunter less at their ease, were a few dripping bodies fresh from the field, laid along the pavement.” This is his attempt to force a collision between the battlefield and the homefront in the mind of the reader, to merge the two spheres and bring the horrors of war to the civilian mind.

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Recruit Isaiah Holloman (above) and other recruits with Platoon 3084, Co I, 3rd Recruit Training Bn (right) pose for boot camp photos during training on Parris Island, Sept. 5, 2013. Cpl Caitlin Brink, USMC
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Cpl Caitlin Brink, USMC

The term “homefront” is relatively new, first appearing around World War I in various bond drive literature and other campaigns that encouraged civilians to support the war effort and the courageous men who were fighting at the front. It grew in popularity during World War II when similar sentiments helped drive industry to support war efforts while much of the manpower was fighting abroad. But it is a concept that feels, at best, tenuous in the 21st century. If there ever was a distinction between the homefront and the front lines of war, that chasm appears to be shrinking—or may not have ever existed in the first place. This blurring of boundaries is in large part due to the proliferation of photography, videography and social media in our increasingly digital age.

Photography occupies a unique place in military culture. We still rely on it heavily to reinforce our ideal of what the military should be. Anyone who has been through Parris Island in the last 30 years knows this phenomenon all too well. There are photographers at every major training event, from the moment you step off the bus and onto the yellow footprints to the eagle, globe and anchor ceremony when you are first given the title of Marine. The quintessential dress blues photo taken near the end of boot camp doesn’t include the infamous blue coat at all but rather a modified vest (more bulletproof vest than dress coat) that is quickly switched from recruit to recruit as they move in front of the camera, assembly line style. Outside of the military, there are any number of websites, that offer full-size cardboard cutout photographs to temporarily take the place of your loved one while they are deployed abroad. For an additional $20, you can add a customized text bubble. This style of photography is in some ways a far cry from Gardner’s wet plates of bloated corpses on major battlefields of the American Civil War. Yet in other ways, it is the exact type of evolution one might expect as photography became more accessible to the masses, as well as easier and more financially reasonable to produce.

Photography has long been an inte­gral part of the military experience in war and garrison. From the moment cameras became compact enough to be trans­ported, they found their way onto the battlefields. Roger Fenton documented the Crimean War in 1855, less than 30 years after the first still photo was captured by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera. Alexander Gardner was just one of several photographers to document the American Civil War less than 10 years later. While Fenton’s work was largely relegated to the rear and to scenic por­traits of battlefields, the American Civil War offered ample opportunities to cap­ture the grisly effects of combat. In her book on Mathew Brady, Mary Panzer remarked that one of the unique features of Brady’s work as a photographer was that his “photographs allowed viewers to see the war through the eyes of their loved ones. Gardner’s, by contrast, re­vealed the world that those soldiers would never see. Even as early as 1860, it was clear that Brady’s gallery contributed to the changed understanding of American heroes and history.” Still, it wasn’t until World War II that photographers at­tempted true combat photography in earnest.

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“The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” captured by photographer Robert Fenton in 1855 during the Crimean War, shows an empty battlefield littered with cannonballs. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Photographers such as Robert Capa landed on the beaches of Normandy with American forces and took photos as bul­lets ripped past him. These same photos were replicated in painstaking detail for the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan,” which attests to the magnitude a series of photographs can have on the collective conscience of future generations.

And it wasn’t until the Vietnam War that civilians began to experience some­thing closer to the truth during war. The telegraph gave way to the phone, which gave way to cable news, and by the time of American involvement in Vietnam, civilians at home were witnessing the war from their living rooms, night after night, year after year. According to the Library of Congress, 9% of households in 1950 owned a television. That number skyrocketed to 90% by the mid-1960s. The rapid expansion of television owner­ship in the United States meant that the vast majority of the population had access to nightly reports from the war in Viet­nam. This jump forward in communi­cation brought about the abrupt realiza­tion that the distinction between the home­front and the front lines of combat had been punctured.

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During the fighting on Okinawa, Marine Paul Ison dashes “through Death Valley” to a forward point of cover to avoid a hail of enemy machine-gun fire. USMC photo.

This advancement coincides with another major milestone in combat photo­graphy. For perhaps the first time in history, iconic photos of spontaneous moments in the war were exactly that: spontaneous. Whereas public movie theaters had shown carefully orchestrated propaganda reels during World War II, American citizens were witnessing the war in their private spaces in a way that hadn’t happened before. This advance­ment played a major role in shaping the public perception of the conflict. It is not difficult to see the ubiquitous smartphone as an extension of a loved one’s eyes in the ever-increasing digital age, especially when considering the events of Afghani­stan and the United States’ withdrawal. Obviously, the real, physical dangers will always pose their most immediate threat to those located on the front lines of the action. But the distinction between the two has become muddled and blurred in a way that will change the way we see war.

TSgt Heber D. Maxwell, chief cameraman of the 3rd Amphibious Corps, captures live footage of Marine aviators on Guadalcanal with the Mitchell camera. TSgt Dave Looney, USMC.
An overhead view of Japanese RADM Shigematsu Sakaibara, center right, signing documents for the surrender of Wake Island into U.S. hands on board USS Levy (DE-162) on Sept. 4, 1945. Among the Marines and Sailors witnessing the signing are BGen Lawson H.M. Sanderson, center left, the commanding officer of the 4th Marine Air Wing (MAW), who signed the document for the United States. USMC photo.
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CBS news commentator Walter Cronkite prepares to cover the Marine advance into Hue City, Feb. 20, 1968, for television audiences, allowing civilians at home a look into war on the front lines. Cpl M.J. Smedley, USMC.
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During Operation Desert Storm, an M60A1 Marine tank with Task Force Papa Bear moves through a battlefield darkened by burning oil wells, which have blocked all sunlight in the area. LtCol Charles H. Cureton, USMC.

A similar and wider-reaching parallel can be made between smartphone own­er­ship and social media usage in the 21st century. According to the Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans own a smartphone, which has jumped from 35% less than 10 years ago. Seventy-two percent of Americans use some type of social media, which has grown from 5% when they first began tracking this figure in 2005. These figures reflect a broad population that is using this technology daily. It indicates a deep saturation that affects how we witness the world.

Author Susan Sontag viewed photog­raphy as the most democratic of all the arts. In her estimation, “photography is the only major art in which professional training and years of experience do not confer an insuperable advantage over the untrained and inexperienced.” The proliferation of social media use only makes this idea truer. Censorship by these various applications remains a contested and ongoing conversation, but it stands to reason that it has never been easier for a single individual to voice an opinion or broadcast an event. Sontag wrote that “there is a peculiar heroism abroad in the world since the invention of cameras: the heroism of vision. Photography opened up a new model of freelance activity—allowing each person to display a certain unique, avid sensibility.”

This unique sensibility she describes has never been more acutely felt in the mind of the American public than with the recent events of the drawdown in Afghanistan. It has only increased in the intervening decades between Vietnam and the global war on terror. Individuals now have the ability to broadcast instantly without the backing of any major network or government. There is a colossal amount of power in this. We are no longer bound by major network corporations or pub­lications. The gatekeepers have all been removed.

In August of 2021, the United States ended its 20-year war in the Middle East in an event that was watched in real-time all over the world. The poorly executed exit resulted in mass confusion and hysteria. There were many casualties in the course of several days, including many of our allies who risked their own lives to help the United States. The Taliban followed closely on the heels of the U.S. military and took back cities in hours that had taken U.S. forces years to cap­ture. Anyone with a stable Wi-Fi con­nection could watch in real-time as overcrowded airplanes took off from the airport in Kabul, dropping Afghan citi­zens clinging to the outside of the aircraft to their deaths. The parallels to the photo­graphs of people falling from the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks were remarked on ad nauseam, as were the chilling similarities to photos of the fall of Saigon in 1975 which, when placed side by side, look almost identical.

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Vietnamese refugees from Saigon board a CH-53 Sea Stallion during an evacuation after the city fell. GySgt D.L. Shearer, USMC.
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Afghan civilians line up and wait with their belongings to board U.S. aircraft during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 24, 2021. Sgt Samuel Ruiz, USMC.

This collective reaction suggests that the compiled recorded history of war has had a lasting effect on the American psyche. It is no longer possible to fully separate the horrors of the front lines from the safety of the homefront. The idea that there was ever any real separa­tion was probably closer to an illusion, one that we have collectively engaged in for the last century. What we are exper­iencing today in the hyper-realistic and immediate realm of social media has been a long time coming. When one watches the footage captured in Afghanistan on smartphones held by everyday citizens and noncombatant civilians, it is hard to think back to a more fully realized, vir­tual viewing gallery like the one Mathew Brady established during his career. Of course, those who are physically sep­arated from the battlefield, whether it be by hundreds of miles or large bodies of water, will always be safe in the physical sense. But it stands to reason that bearing witness, however distant, is a form of participation. If we are participants, we are in some way complicit.

There’s a moment in Jess Walter’s novel “The Zero,” published in 2006, in which a New York Police Department detective named Paul who responded to the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks remarks, “Sometimes I wish we’d just gone to a bar that morning and watched the whole thing on CNN. You know what I mean? I envy people who watched it on TV. They got to see the whole thing. People ask me what it was like and I honestly don’t know. Sometimes, I think the people who watched it on TV saw more than we did. It’s like, the further away you were from this thing, the more sense it made. Hell, I still feel like I have no idea what even happened. No matter how many times I tell the story, it still makes no sense to me. You know?” Paul feels unable to accurately process what really happened to him, with the wider implication that somehow the events captured from a distance are more real than having been there in the moment itself.

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GySgt Ryan P. Shane runs into enemy fire on a street in Fallujah to pull a wounded comrade to safety, Nov. 9, 2004. Cpl Joel A. Chaverri, USMC.
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This photo captures a mine clearing line charge detonating while Marines with 1st Combat Engineer Battalion conduct a clearing operation on Route 611 during Operation Outlaw Wraith in Sangin District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Dec. 4, 2010. Cpl John McCall, USMC.

This moment lends even greater weight to the idea of media and the rapid transfer of this information holding more validity in the collective American conscience because of its ability to spread a particular narrative to a wide audience. It is a scene that perfectly captures what French phi­losopher Jean Baudrillard refers to as “the image as simulacra,” wherein the representation of reality (e.g., news foot­age of the terrorist attacks) contains more truth than having experienced the event in person—and therefore becomes reality. Social media use is only going to continue to grow and, with it, the re­sponsibility for that usage. We can no longer rest on the idea of being on a homefront while we witness the events of war as they occur in the palms of our hands.

The likelihood of increased conflict abroad has only grown since the with­drawal of American forces from Afghani­stan. Less than a year after people wit­nessed the chaos and horror at Hamid Karzai International Airport, they were able to witness actual trench warfare unlike anything that has been seen since WW I from footage captured on GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets of Ukrainian soldiers and Western volun­teers. In October 2023, I watched one in­dependent journalist livestream incom­ing rockets from Gaza as convoys of Israel Defense Forces troops passed him along a highway in Israel. He remarked on how he was hoping to capture as many interviews as possible within the narrow time constraint he had for being on the ground in country. He was using paid time off from his full-time job as a special ed teacher to be there. The era of distinct, easily identifiable divides between the homefront and the front lines is a thing of the past if it ever really existed at all. In the book “On Photography,” Sontag likened the camera to a firearm, writing, “one that’s as automated as possible, ready to spring.” If the camera is a fire­arm, then social media is a nuclear warhead. With growing instability and conflict on the rise all over the world, civilians will have to reckon with whether their voyeurism is just benign spectator­ship or something closer to a type of participation that we are only just begin­ning to understand.

Author’s bio: Michael Jerome Plunkett is a writer from Long Island. He served in the Marine Corps, and after working in the financial industry for Fidelity Investments and Morgan Stanley for several years, began pursuing writing as a career. He leads the Patrol Base Abbate Book Club and is the host of the LitWar Podcast.

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Marines who were present during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport looked after children who had been separated from their families amidst the chaos. Sgt Samuel Ruiz, USMC.
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During Urban Advanced Naval Technologies exercise 2018, Marines with “Kilo” Co, 3rd Bn, 4th Marine, 1stMarDiv look at a smartphone with Beartooth radio capabilities, which allow them to talk, text and see teammates on a map without requiring cellular service or Wi-Fi, March 21, 2018. LCpl Robert Alejandre, USMC.