Archives: Leatherneck Magazines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would nod or say, “Yes.”

They would ask, “Where?”

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

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

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

These four simple words broke my heart every time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Marine Corps Association is proud to present the Leatherneck Writing Contest in addition to providing awards for writing contests all across the Marine Corps.

DEADLINE: March 31

PRIZES

1st Place: $1,000 + an engraved plaque
2nd Place: $750 + an engraved plaque
3rd Place: $500 + an engraved plaque

TOPIC

Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, and the Chosin Reservoir have been recognized as the Corps’ three touchstone battles. These battles define the Marine Corps’ ethos and legacy of valor and battlefield victory against all odds; they represent the standards of bravery and grit that all Marines measure themselves by. As the Corps celebrates its 250th Birthday, write about what other battle deserves to be recognized among the touchstone battles.

DETAILS

• Maximum 2000 words
• Must include contact information: grade, name, unit, SNOIC/OIC, author’s bio, mailing address, email, and phone number
• Submit electronically to [email protected] in Microsoft Word Format
• Sponsored by Colonel Charles Michaels, USMC (Ret)

To access the submission form, visit https://www.mca-marines.org/writing-contests-awards/leatherneck-writing-contest/.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of such threads is the web of destiny woven.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

A secret agent can’t win a war all by himself but Archibald Gillespie tried to do it. He was a Marine. The horseman knew he was being followed. An animal perception, sharpened by loneliness and fear, told the Marine Corps lieutenant that the Indians were close on his trail. Unless he could reach Fremont’s camp by nightfall, he knew that his scalp would be passed around a Modoc campfire.

Gillespie’s scalp was not expendable. In 17 years of Marine Corps action, he had risked his neck hundreds of times. This time there was more to lose than his life. He was a confidential agent of President James K. Polk. The information he carried might decide the destiny of California.

Gillespie checked his pistols, estimated the strength left in his winded horse. The sun was low over the pines. He knew that he had two hours at the most. Then something whispered at his left ear, and a slim arrow quivered in a tree beside him. Gillespie spurred his horse and thundered through the forest.

This was Spring 1846. Seven months had passed and 8,000 miles had been covered since Gillespie had sat in the White House listening to the President’s instructions. The precise, clean-shaven Polk was concerned with one thing alone—Manifest Destiny—and moral issues didn’t enter into it. Polk wanted California. At that time California was a province of Mexico and included all of Nevada, half the state of Utah and part of Arizona. Four nations were fighting a cold war for this territorial plum: Great Britain with a good chance, France and Russia with slim chances and the United States in the golden seat. Mexico, the patsy, was taking a siesta.

There was no organized spy system then. Communications were too slow. Polk was depending on two men. One, John C. Fremont of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, operated in the California territory apparently to make maps but was actually a spy and an agent provaca­teur. The other man, Thomas O. Larkin, was American consul at Monterey.

Gillespie was dealt in on the game simply because he was a fighting ad­ven­tur­er. Polk needed a messenger—someone smart enough and tough enough to travel through several thousand miles of hostile territory and get through in one piece.
Gillespie had fought all his life. His parents in Pennsylvania had christened him Archibald, and he had left a trail of skinned noses and split lips when the boys ribbed him about it. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1828 as a private. The pay: $6 a month. In four years, he literally fought his way up to second lieutenant, which position paid the hand­some salary of $25 a month. In those days, promotions were almost impossible; they were awarded only for extraordinary heroism. No details are available as to how Gillespie made first lieutenant. He saw action on half a dozen ships and fought in the Indian Wars.

The Marine looked like a fighter. He had enormous hands, the sloping shoulders of a hitter and a tall rangy frame. A superb horseman and excellent shot, he was as equally at home with six gun and saber as he was with his two fists.

“You’ll get through,” said Polk. “If anybody can … .”
When Gillespie left the White House, the conquest of California began. Gillespie, dressed in civvies with the secret documents pinned inside his shirt, boarded a ship for Vera Cruz, Mexico. (Of course, the Panama Canal didn’t exist in those days. Ships bound for the Pacific rounded Cape Horn.)

He traveled overland by horse to Mexico City where he nearly lost his life. The Mexican Army had overthrown the government. The officers had launched a victory celebration on an ocean of tequila. They were betting on war with the Gringos and on Great Britain’s sup­port. (The Mexican ambassador had left Washington on the day of the Texas annexation.) The Mexican officers were laying bets on the cowardice of the Yanquis. To prove it, they rioted through the streets, ripping down the signs of the American merchants, and taking pot shots at any stray American businessmen they could find. Gillespie was disguised as an American businessman.

He left Mexico City faster than he’d arrived—unwounded. As soon as he had reached comparative safety, Gillespie memorized the documents he carried and built a small fire with them. If he died, the secret would go to the grave with him.
He worked his way across Mexico in spite of bandits, soldiery and hostile civilians. At Mazatlan he boarded the USS Cyane, sailed to Honolulu, and from there back to Monterey.

The first part of his mission had taken six months. He delivered the message to Thomas Larkin and shoved off immedi­ately for Yerba Buena (San Francisco) in search of Fremont.
There were all sorts of wild rumors floating around the country. Every tattered settler gave information, about Fremont and the Indians. There was talk that the Mexicans had stirred up the Indians to make war on the Americans. Gillespie rode on.

The Indians picked up his trail in Southern Oregon and stalked him at a leisurely pace, waiting for him to relax his guard, but the wary Gillespie didn’t sleep. The war party could have fallen on him in a body at any time, but they chose to wait.
Gillespie killed his horse in the ride to escape them. Just as the sun disappeared behind the trees on his third day without sleep, Gillespie reached the shore of Big Klamath Lake. A man stepped from be­hind the trees, palm held outward. Gillespie held his fire. It was Kit Carson, famed Indian fighter and advance scout for Fremont.

Gillespie’s message must have been good because Fremont and the scouts had a celebration that night. In the excitement and hullabaloo, Fremont neglected to post a guard. Even Kit Carson went to sleep with his rifle unloaded.

While the camp slept, the Modocs crept quietly upon them and split the skulls of the two men lying beside Gillespie. It was a good fight, lasting through the night and until noon the next day. Fremont and Gillespie, now second in command, trailed the Indians, killed the Modoc chieftain and most of the raiding party.

For a month, the two secret agents were a sore spot to the Navy which was trying to remain neutral until war was officially declared. Fremont and Gillespie went through California, systematically cap­tur­ing towns, fighting guerrillas, Indians, anybody who wanted a fight. Some historians say that Gillespie and Fremont were in on the birth of the Bear Flag Republic at Sonoma. (The revolutionists took over Sonoma and established a “New Texas” in California. They needed a flag. A woman sacrificed her underwear, a would-be artist painted a bear on it “that looked like a hog,” and a petticoat waved over a new republic.) The bear flag lasted less than a month, folding when the news of war reached the West Coast.

Gillespie and Fremont were now heart­ily embraced by Commodore Robert O. Stockton. Gillespie was promoted to captain and Fremont to major. With this promotion, Gillespie became the trouble shooter for the Pacific forces. He had been in hot water for a long time but it reached the boiling point in a few weeks.

Gillespie took part in most of the land­­ing operations at San Francisco, Monte­rey, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and San Diego. In two months, California had been con­quered. All known enemy forces had either laid down their arms or had been dispersed. Mexican General Castro had taken to the hills. Even the Mexican gov­ernment admitted that California was lost.

Gillespie was left in charge of San Diego with only 48 men. Gen Castro pre­pared to take the town, but Gillespie organized the settlers into a militia and showed so much strength that Castro took to his heels. This feat of holding a town in hostile territory with a handful of men snowed everybody. A week later Gillespie was in charge of Los Angeles as military commander of all Southern California while Fremont and Stockton shoved off for San Francisco where the Walla Walla Indians were reported to be on the warpath. He was allowed more men for this venture, 59 in all.

Los Angeles was a center of the Spanish population, with a proud citizenry who resented Gillespie. They had buried their silver in the hills and expected the usual treatment accorded a conquered people.

Some historians accuse Gillespie of being a petty tyrant. He established cur­fews and ordinances that irritated the people. His men, untrained roughnecks, mustered into the Navy for a short term, increased resentment. They promptly tried to drink up all the wine and aguardiente in the area—and there was plenty of it.

But the real cause of the revolt against Gillespie was the $20,000 that he had drawn from the U.S. Congress for mil­itary expenditures. As soon as the natives learned of this hunk of dough, they be­came fiery patriots. A group of adventur­ers led by Cervula Varela plotted to seize the garrison and the money.

Then Gillespie cracked down. He promptly arrested everyone who looked suspicious. He made his men snap-to. But when he looked at the proud American flag flying over his compound, he grew uneasy. The water supply was low. Provi­sions were depleted. Ammunition was short. Before Gillespie could alleviate the situation, the first attack came.

Gillespie’s men drove them back easily, and that merely increased the bitterness against him. The natives dreamed about the $20,000. Jose Maria Flores, the big shot in that area since Castro had retired from the neighborhood, heard about it and took charge. A force of 400 gathered around Flores; they unearthed the cannon which Castro had hidden in the hills and laid systematic siege to Gillespie’s command.

There was no hope for Gillespie but he wouldn’t give up. He had a few aban­doned guns which had been spiked. He drilled out the spikes, mounted them on ox carts, and improvised ammunition for them. He had never run away from a fight, and he’d be damned if he’d run away from this one.

Flores’ force grew by the hour as more patriotic Mexicans heard of the money in Gillespie’s hands. Flores met Gillespie under a flag of truce and demanded un­conditional surrender on the 25th of August. The terms of surrender were no good. Flores wanted Gillespie to lay down his arms and walk out where he could easily be shot down. Gillespie told him what he could do with his offer and warned Flores that he’d fight to the death. The Mexicans hesitated. Gillespie sent a messenger to Stockton, but there was no hope that reinforcements would arrive in time to save him.

Meanwhile Captain Watson, with 25 volunteers, rode down from the north to break the siege. He was immediately cap­tured. Gillespie’s officers and men per­suaded him to make terms. Finally with the greatest bitterness he would ever know, Gillespie exchanged prisoners, agreed to a surrender with “full honors of war” and hauled down the American flag.
That flag never left his possession in the months that followed.

It was his responsibility. He felt that he had brought dishonor to himself and to his country. He marched to San Pedro with his men, and when he learned that the Mexicans were planning to violate their agreement, he set his men aboard the Vandalia at San Pedro where they would be safe.

There was an immediate attempt to recapture Los Angeles after Captain Mervine of the Savannah arrived at San Pedro. Gillespie and his men took part in it, but the Mexicans with artillery and horses hammered away at the foot soldiers. When the Americans retired, Gillespie offered to stay in San Pedro, but Capt Mervine refused. Enough lives had been lost.

Meanwhile San Diego had been be­sieged. Gillespie was transferred there and was successful in breaking the siege. Stockton was making plans for the re­capture of Los Angeles but at this point, word was received that Colonel Stephen W. Kearney and his so-called “Army of the West” had arrived at Warner’s Pass about 50 miles east of San Diego. Some­one had to reach him in time to prevent an ambush.

Gillespie, of course, drew the assign­ment. With 26 of his ragged volunteers, he met Kearney at Warner’s Hot Springs on Dec. 5. The “Army,” consisting of less than 100 dragoons and eight officers and scouts, had marched overland from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It included the rugged Kit Carson, who got around about as much as Gillespie.

An ambush had been laid for Kearney, forming at San Pasqual, later taking posi­tions in a narrow valley behind a stream. The Mexicans were superbly mounted, armed with muskets, sabers and vicious willow lances. Their leader Dolores Higuera, “El Guero,” drew Kearney’s dra­goons into a disastrous charge by a clever fake retreat. Kearney’s horses were in no shape for a sustained gallop, and after they had strung out over several hundred yards, the Mexicans wheeled and swept back toward them. The en­gage­ment was short and bloody. In five minutes, 18 of Kearney’s men were killed, and many more were wounded.
Gillespie arrived as the Mexicans attacked. He drew his saber, spurred his horse, and drove into the thick of it. “Hold men,” he bellowed. “For God’s sake rally. Show a front. Face them.” El Guero, attracted by the loud cries, attacked Gillespie from the side and drove his bloodstained willow lance through the Marine’s cheek.

Gillespie hit the ground, fully con­scious, his face a mass of blood. He lay still, feigning death, while El Guero took his horse, saddle and even the beautiful serape lying beside the Marine. The Army of the West, now reduced to one third of its original strength was probably the most tattered, ill-fed detachment that the United States has ever mustered under her colors.
Gillespie bore a charmed life. He took part later in the overland march to Los Angeles. He led repeated charges in the battle of San Gabriel and was wounded again. He tied rags around his wounded legs and rode on to fight heroically in the Battle of La Mesa.

In January 1848, the Marine limped to the center of the plaza in Los Angeles. He carried a flag, now spotted with his own blood, but the same Stars and Stripes he had been forced to haul down four months before. He attached it to the hal­yards, gave a command, and watched Old Glory ride to the top of the mast.
That moment was his reward.

Three weeks later James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill. In the stampede that followed, Gillespie was forgotten. He earned no fame; only two history books mention his name. He stayed in the Corps until 1854, earned the title of brevet major and remained in the West until his death in San Francisco in 1871.

Executive Editor’s note: We bring you this article to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, considered one of the Marine Corps’ touchstone battles. See page 44 to read about Harlon Block, one of the Marines who helped raise the second flag on Iwo Jima.

Robert Floyd Pounders was not the type to shrink from a chal­lenge. The self-described “scrawny country boy” refused to stay on the family farm in Pinson, Ala., while his friends went into military service. In February 1943, he presented himself at a Birmingham recruiting office, desperate to join any service that would take him—but only the Marine Corps would accept this colorblind, underweight and under­age recruit. Floyd was only 16 years old when he enlisted, but boot camp at San Diego, machine gun school at Camp Elliott and infantry training at Camp Pendleton had a transformative effect. “Aided by good food and a strict sche­dule, I gained 42 pounds, and I don’t think you could have called me fat,” he recalled. “I felt I could whip my weight in wildcats.”

As a member of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, Private Pounders crewed a heavy machine gun at the battle of Roi-Namur and carried a Browning Automatic Rifle on Saipan and Tinian. He completed three campaigns in just seven months, coming through virtually unscathed with a combat meritorious promotion to corporal and a letter of commendation for brave and efficient service. In the fall of 1944, at the ripe old age of 18, Floyd Pounders was leading a four-man fire team in a rifle platoon, training at Camp Maui and speculating about what lay ahead. Some of his buddies thought their next stop would be Japan itself—a most unwelcome prospect after facing die-hard Japanese fighters and desperate civilians in the Mariana Islands.

One morning in November, Floyd learned that his regiment was seeking volunteers for a new “Scouts and Snipers” platoon. “I don’t remember how anxious I was to volunteer, but I did anyway,” he said. “I knew that the training had to be different from the training we were doing in the rifle company.” There was another attraction for a veteran line infantryman: “I knew from experience that considering the type of fighting the Marines did, the scouting part would be minimal.” Perhaps he could pick up some new, interesting skills—and increase his chances of surviving the war. Corporal Pounders put in his name and became one of the first volunteers accepted for the platoon.

Marine Corps training for specialist “scouts and snipers” had a rough start in the World War II era. Despite the dem­onstrated value of highly trained sharpshooters in the Great War, oppor­tunities to improve on these advantages were subject to “the ebb and flow of the general pre-war indecision with regard to adopting new equipment and training personnel,” and proper evaluations of equipment and training did not begin until late 1940. The result, notes historian Peter Senich, was that on Dec. 7, 1941, “the Marine Corps was not prepared to field or equip snipers.” Nearly a year passed before dedicated training facilities could accept significant numbers of students.

Combat experiences shaped the train­ing regimen. Dismayed at the poor qual­ity of Marine patrolling on Guadalcanal, Lieutenant Colonel William J. “Wild Bill” Whaling established an on-island training program. Hand-picked volun­teers spent a few weeks with the “Whal­ing Unit” learning marksmanship and fieldcraft, stalking, laying ambushes and gathering intelligence. They were most effective when operating semi-auto­nomously in teams of two or three, de­ploying as needed to solve tricky tactical problems. Tarawa provided another stark lesson: a scout-sniper platoon could be used as shock troops, but not without prohibitively high casualties among highly trained, hard-to-replace special­ists.

On Saipan, the 4th Marine Division’s recon company had to parcel out its scout-snipers as replacements for other units, negating their combat effectiveness. The division’s report on the operation recom­mended adding a scout-sniper platoon to every infantry regiment.

First Lieutenant William T. Holder of Carbondale, Ill., took charge of the 24th Marines’ scout snipers. Described as “a little man who looked almost too young to be an officer,” the 22-year-old Bill Holder knew how to fight with every inch of his 5’6” frame.

As a junior platoon leader at Roi-Namur, he helped rally his company (F/2/24) when an exploding ammunition dump caused heavy casualties and stalled the advance. He was slammed to the ground by an artillery shell shortly after landing on Saipan, but “although painfully wounded … brilliantly led his platoon during the entire operation.” Holder’s performance earned him the Silver Star and the Purple Heart, and Fox Co was sorry to lose such “a darn good, fair, and courageous leader.”

Enthusiasm for the project was low. “They didn’t get all that many volunteers,” admitted Pounders. At the first roll call on Nov. 19, 1944, the scout-sniper platoon mustered Holder and eight enlisted men. Floyd Pounders was there with a buddy from “Baker” Company: Private First Class Charles C. DeCelles, a Gros Ventre youth from Montana commended for service on Saipan. Cpl Ben Bernal served through three battles with K/3/24; Cpl Loren T. Doerner had the same pedigree with the 4th Tank Battalion. Both wore the Purple Heart. Sergeant Ralph L. Jones was the recipient of a Silver Star for manning a mounted machine gun at Roi-Namur, and the corpsman, Hospital Apprentice 1st Class Charles “Pills” Littlefield, earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for treating wounded men under fire.

While lacking combat exper­ience, the other two volunteers at least had some advanced in­fantry training. Private Frederick J. McCarthy of South Portland, Maine, was a skilled BARman despite having only a few months in uniform. The other, PFC Frank Hatch, was coming up on two years in the Ma­rines. As the third-best shot in his recruit platoon, Hatch qualified for the “Expert” medal—“less than a dozen of us made it”—and a promotion to PFC immediately after graduation. He became a coach at the Parris Island rifle range, but the job wasn’t to his liking. “Didn’t study, didn’t advance, didn’t stay,” he said. “It was off to the Pacific to be a replacement in the 4th Marine Division.” Hatch landed in the machine-gun platoon of C/1/24 but “never did like the idea of a machine gun. I would rather connect with one bullet than spray an area with many.”

Volunteering for a sniper outfit was a no-brainer. With no more volunteers coming from the regiment, Holder turned to the 17th Replacement Draft. PFC Jack Stearn recalled sitting in an outdoor auditorium when “a lieutenant jumped on stage and said he was looking for volunteer scouts.” He received a mixture of volunteers and “voluntolds” from the group of mostly spring 1944 inductees. Stearn, one of the Marines “recommended” by a company commander, was the only one with com­bat experience. A pre-war Army enlistee, he earned a commission and served as a shore party officer on the beaches of Sicily. After multiple run-ins with a cer­tain major, First Lieutenant Stearn re­signed his commission and returned to civilian life, only to enlist in the Marine Corps one week later. He was impressed by the “higher standard, tough agenda, higher expectations [and] stern dis­cipline,” and “felt 10 feet tall the day I graduated from boot camp.”

With the platoon up to strength, Holder assigned roles to his 30 Marines. Ser­geants James D. Huff and Harry F. McFall Jr., former drill instructors, were ap­pointed platoon sergeant and platoon guide, respectively. PFC Stearn was good with maps, so Holder tapped him as a runner and radioman. Sergeant Jones took charge of 1 Squad, while the senior corporal, 18-year-old Floyd Pounders, led 2 Squad. Each squad had two groups of five men: a leader, a sniper, a rifleman/spotter, and a BAR gunner and assistant. Snipers like PFC Hatch were promised M1903 rifles with telescopic sights—as soon as any were available. They would have to make do with the M1 Garand for now.

The platoon trained separately from the rest of their regiment, practicing everything from the basics of scouting, patrolling and reconnaissance to the more complicated tasks of counter-sniping and mopping up bypassed fortifications. Holder scheduled a week-long field exer­cise, which doubled as an enjoyable goat-hunting trip through the Maui backcountry. Unfortunately, the hunt resulted in the platoon’s first casualty when a Marine was accidentally shot in the face. “I remember us carrying him on a stretcher, a bandage wound around his cheeks and head, and his eyes looking up at us,” said Hatch. A few weeks later, most of the platoon would have given anything to trade places with their injured friend.

Two last-minute additions joined the scout snipers at the very end of December—PFC Anthony J. Ranfos and Sergeant Elmer G. Smith, both combat veterans—and in mid-January, the entire 4th Marine Division embarked for Operation Detachment. The long trip was mostly unremarkable, except for the red-letter day when the snipers finally received their scoped rifles. “This was a hell of a time to get them,” Hatch said.“They needed sighting in. [I would] toss something overboard, let it float off, and shoot at it, someone beside me telling me where the bullet hit, and adjust the sights accordingly.” He couldn’t dial the weapon in precisely but figured “when we landed, I would get more practice.”

Pounders was far less flippant: when he saw topographic maps of Iwo Jima and realized it was only 600 miles from Japan, “the fear really set in and I realized that this would probably be one of the toughest battles that we had experienced. Until now the trip had been training, schooling, lounging, and eating well, but now all of a sudden things had to get serious and for real.”

As reserves, the platoon spent the better part of Feb. 19, 1945, watching the battle from the decks of USS Bayfield (APA-33). Hatch, new to combat, thought the whole spectacle “a pretty good show” until Bayfield began receiving badly wounded Marines. The less-experienced men kept up their confidence on the boat ride to the beach. PFC Stearn played “The Marines’ Hymn” on an ocarina, and Private Robert F. Ragland declared, “We’ll go through ’em like sugar through a tin horn.” Cpl Pounders thought differently. “Sgt Jones, myself, and Sgt McFall were the first ones off the landing craft,” he remembered. “I had been this route before, so I knew we must get away from the boat as soon as possible. I had no trouble getting my squad to follow me … but some of the guys who were last to get off said one of the [LCVP] gunners was hit.”

The first look at Iwo was grim. “My first sight as I climbed the beach was a vehicle like an open tank [an LVT], someone hanging half in, half out—dead,” said Hatch. Pounders noticed “more than the usual number of bodies and parts of bodies laying around … We ran past an amphibious tank with one of its tracks blown off. The vehicle was on its side. With so many bodies around, we couldn’t tell if any of them were killed when the amphib was hit.” The scout-snipers quickly dug in on a beach “white hot with artillery and mortar fire. The air was a spray of sand and jagged, mur­derous chunks of shattered shell frag­ments.” To PFC Stearn, “it seemed as if I was in a madhouse.”

At first, the scout sniper platoon functioned as intended: “running er­rands, locating lost units, and filling in gaps in the lines,” according to Pounders. They posted security around the CP at night, carried stretchers and collected identification tags from fallen Marines. Sergeant McFall led the platoon’s first successful reconnaissance patrol to caves overlooking the airfield. On their way to draw rations, Corporal Bernal and Private Carl F. Rothrock spotted two enemy soldiers in a cave and dispatched both in less than a minute. They also suffered their first combat casualties: corpsman “Pills” Littlefield on D+1, and Sgt Elmer Smith on D+2.

On one memorable night, a lone Japa­nese airplane dropped two bombs on the platoon. The first bomb, a dud, landed 4 feet from Hatch—a nasty shock when he awoke in the morning—but the other exploded near PFC Stearn’s group, caving in their foxhole. Stearn and Ranfos dug their way out, then checked on the third occupant, PFC LaRue L. Stevenson. “We saw his feet sticking out of the sand,” Stearn recalled. When we finally got him out, we laughed like crazy. Stevens was just sputtering and raising hell.” Hanging around the CP felt like sitting on a bull’s-eye. The platoon’s “restlessness and nervousness” increased, and a teenaged BARman was evacuated due to “war neurosis.”

Orders to move up toward the line felt almost like a blessing. The route led through “a broken area of death traps, blasted holes, undermined with winding labyrinths of caves,” in the words of SP3c Bryce Walton, a correspondent covering the platoon for Leatherneck magazine. At night, the island itself worked on their nerves. “They came to know the meaning of fear,” Walton continued, “fear of the unknown. The nightmare terrain, the bent dwarf trees and jumbles of rock seemed to take on life.” The Japanese were always watching. “We were hunting for snipers, and the mortars were following us,” Cpl Bernal said. “One of the mortars got me.” His long combat career was over. The same blast nicked Pvt Ragland’s leg. “Just a scratch,” he declared and continued his patrol.

Toward evening on Feb. 24, the platoon received orders to plug a dangerously wide gap between K/3/24 and E/2/25. As they moved up in a skirmish line, Japanese fire erupted all around.
“It seemed as if they were shooting from everywhere,” PFC Stearn recalled. “I zigged but didn’t zag, and seconds later felt as if I had been hit with a sledge­hammer. I grabbed my shoulder trying to stop the blood that was pouring out.” Sergeant Huff bandaged Stearn and ordered him back to the aid station—which meant running the gauntlet the other way. A sword-wielding Japanese offi­cer tried to slash at Stearn, but a quick-shooting PFC William S. North knocked Stearn to the ground, finished off the officer, then picked up his wounded buddy and ran like hell as mortars began dropping around them. Stearn survived, but his misfortune was a preview of what lay ahead.

Filling holes in the line was expected of the scout-snipers—but intended as a temporary assignment, terminating when another infantry unit took over. On the morning of Feb. 25, however, no reinforcements arrived. Instead, Holder learned that his platoon was expected to attack alongside the rifle companies. The men were tired from hours of night fighting, and although heavily armed, frontal attacks against fortifications were not part of their training. Orders were orders, and at 9:30 a.m., Holder led his platoon toward a sharp cliff a few hundred yards away.

They walked into a perfect killing field. “There was no more vegetation for cover because planes and artillery had already destroyed it,” remembered Pounders. “As we broke out into the open, all hell broke loose.” Lieutenant Holder was first to fall, blood streaming from a severe head wound. Sergeant Huff suddenly found himself in command. Ragland and Rothrock were dangerously exposed, gamely firing back at invisible enemies. Huff motioned them to a nearby crater as Sgt Ralph Jones withstood the withering crossfire to cover his buddies.

“After the three were down out of imminent danger, Jones sent a last round at the side of the cliff,” reported Walton. “Then he spun around as a return hail of machine gun fire found him.” The 1 Squad leader was dead before he hit the ground.

Huff knew at least three scout-snipers were down, but had nothing on the others. Ragland leaped into the next shell hole, landing beside Bill North and Private Edward Rindfleish Jr. North was already dead, and Rindfleish’s right arm hung useless, the bones shattered. Sgt McFall tumbled in, dragging a stunned Private John E. Sessinger. After getting the wounded men out of harm’s way, McFall and Ragland sprinted back to Huff with the casualty report. McFall brought some good news: 2 squad was taking cover in a large shell hole, mostly intact. The attack was clearly failing, and the rifle companies on the flanks were falling back to reorganize. Huff decided to follow suit—but first he had to extricate his pinned platoon.

PFC Hatch was sniping at firing ports when he got the word to withdraw. He tumbled into a hole with three other Ma­rines, almost impaling himself on their fixed bayonets. One man, nerves strained to the breaking point, urged everyone to jump and run at once. “Guess he hoped the others, not him, would be the ones to be shot at,” Hatch commented sourly. When nobody moved, the frightened Marine began repeating Hail Marys. “I countered with ‘yea, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death.’ ” Somehow, the group made it back to relative safety.

Over in 2 Squad’s hole, Pounders was using a combat veteran’s common sense: “As far as I was concerned, we had to wait for a break or some help.” He was unmoved by McFall’s mutterings of “some­one ought to DO something,” or the sergeant’s decision to leave the hole, firing a Tommy gun at invisible enemies hundreds of yards away. When McFall’s SMG stopped, Pounders assumed he was dead. The corporal scouted a route back to their starting point, waited for the fire to die down, and led his men back with only one additional casualty. As he tried spotting positions for Sgt Huff, Pounders evidently missed seeing McFall—still alive and busy with the radio, delivering unwelcome news. The attack would resume at 1:30 p.m.

Huff did his best to even the odds, helping reestablish a machine-gun posi­tion and coordinating with the nearest company CP. An enemy bullet grazed his side as “the Japanese seemed to know another advance was gathering and were intensifying their fire.” Then a Japanese machine gun stitched across the position, and Huff cried “I’m hit!” McFall went to his aid, but the enemy was waiting. “Ragland tried to yell as he saw little puffs of dust and splintered rock run along the ground toward McFall,” wrote Walton. “Then the path of bullets traveled across the small of McFall’s back. The sergeant raised up, mumbling something towards the Japanese lines, and fell backward, firing his Tommy gun blindly.” Huff’s poncho and field glasses blunted the bullet; he was not hurt but felt sick to his stomach that McFall “died trying to save him because of a wound he didn’t even have.”

The second attack angled to the right, avoiding the open ground. Huff’s men crept cautiously through the scarred, blasted area, finding the bodies of friends along the way. One man in Pounders’ platoon stumbled into a shell hole with a dead Marine. “His mind snapped,” said Pounders, “he was crying and hanging on to me with a death grip. I can still hear him saying, ‘Floyd, you’ll be killed if you go back.’ He also kept saying he had killed the dead Marine, but he couldn’t have—he was dead long before we came up to the shell hole.” Pounders guided the broken man back to the aid station.

Finally, the scout snipers found a few deep holes in which to spend the night. “The first night up here, they had occupied 10 foxholes,” wrote Walton. “Now they did well to fill up three.” Only nine of the 32 men who landed on Iwo were left to hold the line. The dead included Sergeants Jones and McFall, PFC North, and Private Arling F. Derhammer; PFC Ranfos died of wounds three days later. Seven were evacuated with bloody wounds; five more suffered the effects of blast concussion or “war neurosis.” Frank Hatch maintained his composure all day but lost it when he realized how many friends were gone. “Boy, did I cry and cry,” he recalled. “They thought I was going to crack up.”

After Feb. 25, the ruined platoon “was used in perimeter defense of the CP until near the end of the operation.” All of the survivors were suffering shock to some degree; their recollections of the follow­ing weeks are somewhat jumbled and contradictory, a blur of mop-up missions, filling holes in the line, helping wounded Marines and searching Japanese bodies. On March 15, a front-line outfit actually requested a counter-sniper mission. Pounders collected Hatch, who was thrilled to have live targets in his sights at last, and Private Marion W. “Buddy” Saucerman with a BAR for protection. The trio crept up a small hill overlooking Japanese territory and watched their foes moving supplies into a cave. One un­for­tunate soldier carried his heavy buckets into Hatch’s crosshairs. “Hatch fired,” Pounders said.

“The [enemy] threw up both arms, his buckets went tumbling, and he grabbed the cheeks of his buttocks and ran into the cave.” Hatch chambered another round and Pounders cheered, “You hit him in the ass!”

As the scouts climbed down to check their handiwork, a Japanese machine gun opened fire on Saucerman. “I heard the snapping of bullets, and he went down in a heap, a bullet across the back of one hand opening a furrow half and inch or more deep, and one leg busted up so the foot was facing the opposite direction it should,” said Hatch. “I was in shock, and others had to grab me and pull me down.” Saucerman and the redoubtable Private Ragland were evacuated, becoming the platoon’s last casualties.

Floyd Pounders had one more sorrow­ful task to complete before leaving the island. Graves Registration accounted for every fallen scout sniper save one: Sergeant Harry McFall. “It seemed I was the only person who knew where McFall was killed and could remember how to get back to that point,” Pounders said. He led a collection party back to the battlefield of Feb. 25 and quickly found the fallen Marine. “He was on his back. Someone had cut all his pockets and removed his watch, dog tags, and all the identification he had on him. Scavenger hunters! They had taken everything ex­cept his clothes.” After lying unburied for 20 days, McFall’s body hardly looked human.

“The only way I could be sure it was Sgt McFall was by the type of clothes he was wearing and that he was in the same place he had fallen earlier,” Pounders said. “His clothes also had laundry marks to identify him.”

In their first and only campaign, the Scout Sniper Platoon, 24th Marines, suffered nearly 80% casualties. They received little recognition, individually or as a unit, for their sacrifices: a few Bronze Stars, many Purple Hearts, and the May 1945 Leatherneck article “To­ward the Ridge” by Bryce Walton. The survivors, though, never forgot their role at Iwo Jima.

“Sometimes I felt that we were real workhorses, and then at others, I felt that we were just a few to add to the total number necessary to take a place like Iwo,” Pounders wrote. “Every man there was a hero as far as I’m concerned. No matter what his job was, he helped secure the island, and that was what we were sent to do. If you lived to write about it, well … that was something else.”

Author’s note: Frank Charles Hatch died on March 16, 1989, followed by Robert Floyd Pounders Jr., on March 18, 2020. The last surviving 24th Marines Scout Sniper, Marion Wayne Saucerman, passed away on May 2, 2023, at the age of 97.
The author wishes to thank Joseph Hatch for providing the memoirs of Frank Hatch and Floyd Pounders and for his invaluable assistance with this article.

Author’s bio: Geoffrey W. Roecker is a researcher and writer based in upstate New York. His extensive writings on the World War II history of 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, is available online at www.1-24thmarines.com. Roecker is the author of “Leaving Mac Behind: The Lost Marines of Guadal­canal” and advocates for the return of missing personnel at www.missingmarines.com.