During the months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and other Asian targets, the United States was driven from the Philippines, the British surrendered Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, French Indochina fell, and the Dutch lost the East Indies.
This dire threat led to the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, where Japanese and U.S. Navy carrier forces fought to a tactical draw, resulting in a strategic victory, albeit temporary, for the United States and its allies. The Battle of the Coral Sea was also important for the subsequent Battle of Midway, which occurred the following month, as it diminished Japanese carrier forces available for the attack on Midway.
The Japanese also landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in May 1942, and there they began to build an airfield.
The location of this new Japanese airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal was a serious threat to the security of Australia and New Zealand. So, the United States, as a matter of great urgency and despite not being fully prepared to go on the offensive in the Pacific theater, conducted its first amphibious landing of the war. The 1st MarDiv landed on Guadalcanal on the morning of 7 August 1942 and secured the Japanese airfield under construction without difficulty.
However, holding this airfield—to become Henderson Field—over the next six months was one of the most contested campaigns in the entire Pacific war. The high stakes fight for control of Guadalcanal, along with the surrounding waters and airspace of the Solomon Sea, was an important turning point in the Pacific War. Ultimately, the U.S. victory at Guadalcanal completely halted further expansion of the Japanese defensive barrier and enabled the Allies to go on the offensive.1
Why did the 1stMarDiv face so little opposition during the first few days on Guadalcanal? It was not just luck, though there was some of that, too. A large part of the answer is provided by MG George C. Kenney in his book Air War in the Pacific.2 Here, Kenney, in a succinct, contemporaneous style, describes the U.S. Army Air Force’s (USAAF) actions against the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, located on the island of New Britain, to coincide with amphibious landing operations on Guadalcanal:
Twenty B-17s flew [from their Australian base] to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea [on 6th August to refuel] and eighteen took off on the big strike on the morning of the 7th August. Twenty Jap fighters intercepted our bombers about twenty-five miles short of the target, but the kids closed up their formation and fought their way to Vunakanau [airfield at Rabaul] where they dropped their bombs in a group pattern that was a real bulls-eye. The Japs still had the same 150 planes lined up wing-tip to wing-tip on both sides of the runway. The [post-strike reconnaissance] pictures looked as though we got at least seventy-five of them, besides setting fire to a lot of gasoline and blowing up a big bomb dump on the edge of the field. In the air combat we shot down eleven of the twenty Jap fighters that participated.3
We lost one B-17 piloted by Captain Harl Pease …. During the combat coming into Rabaul, Pease was on the wing that bore the brunt of the [enemy fighter intercept] attack. By skillful handling of his airplane, in spite of the fact that the bad engine by this time had quit entirely, Pease held his place in the formation and his crew shot down at least three of the Jap fighters. Shortly after he had dropped his bombs on the target, another wave of enemy fighters concentrated their attack on his airplane which they evidently realized was crippled. The B-17 burst into flames and went down. No parachutes were seen to open.4
I recommended Pease for a Medal of Honor; General MacArthur approved and forwarded the recommendation to Washington. The next day, a wire came in from the War Department confirming the award. Carmichael [commanding officer, 19th Bombardment Group and the B-17 flight leader] was given a Distinguished Service Cross, while a number of lesser decorations were awarded to outstanding members of the group.5
The Marines landed at Guadalcanal with practically no opposition. Tulagi was also taken … There was no Jap air interference. Admiral Ghormley wired General MacArthur a congratulatory message on the success of our attack on Vunakanau and the fact that it had broken up the possibility of Jap air interference with his landing in the Solomons. General MacArthur added his congratulations and I sent both messages to the 19th Group with my own.6
During the day [of 7th August], we intercepted several Jap radios which were appeals by the Nips in the Solomons for help from Rabaul air units. The Jap commander at Rabaul replied that he couldn’t do anything for the boy[?] in the Solomons on account of our heavy air raid on his airdrome. The next day [8th August] we intercepted another message which showed that only thirty bombers were serviceable at Vunakanau [post attack]. Jap prisoners, taken at Guadalcanal airdrome (Lunga), confirmed our observation that the day before there were approximately 150 bombers at Vunakanau at the time of our attack.7
Following this highly successful early morning attack on Rabaul on 7 August by the USAAF’s 19th Group, the Japanese hurriedly reconstituted and managed to launch an attack of 27 G4M Betty horizontal bombers that arrived in the Guadalcanal area in the early afternoon. Fortunately, a heavy cloud cover in the target area disrupted these bombers’ aim, and all their bombs fell harmlessly into the waters off Guadalcanal. This flight of Betty bombers was met by eighteen U.S. Navy F4F Wildcat fighters attacking in two waves. A flight of eight Wildcats from the VF-5 squadron based on the aircraft carrier Saratoga attacked first. Then, a second flight of ten Wildcats from VF-6 squadron based on the carrier Enterprise joined the attack. Five Betty bombers fell to Wildcat guns. However, nine of the eighteen Wildcats fell to the seventeen superior-performing A6M Zeroes escorting the Bettys. Some of the downed Wildcat pilots were rescued from the waters off Guadalcanal.8 Later in the afternoon of 7 August, nine D3A Val dive bombers attacked. However, these aircraft managed only one bomb hit—on the aft deck of the destroyer USS Mugford. Again, F4F Wildcat fighters rose from the two USN carriers to shoot down five of the Vals, with the other four ditching during their return to Rabaul. Wildcats also bagged two of the escorting Zeroes.9
The next day, 8 August, the Japanese again sent a horizontal bomber force of 27 Bettys south to Guadalcanal escorted by 15 Zeroes. However, the U.S. Navy was ready. Wildcat fighters again launched from carriers Saratoga and Enterprise to meet this new attack, shooting down 22 of the Bettys while also downing two of the escorting Zeroes. The Bettys did severely damage a U.S. Navy destroyer and sink a transport ship; however, no American aircraft were lost, and no bombs fell on Guadalcanal.10
Clearly, the USAAF’s perfectly timed, preemptive attack on the Japanese redoubt of Rabaul greatly spared the 1stMarDiv and U.S. Navy’s amphibious shipping off-shore Guadalcanal from far larger air attacks. Credit for this major accomplishment goes to MG George Kenney, who foresaw the need for a heavy, early morning surprise attack on Rabaul to coincide with Guadalcanal operations.
Kenney, who had only arrived in Australia the month prior, vigorously assumed command of all Allied air operations in the Southwest Pacific Area theater under GEN Douglas MacArthur and insisted on quickly building up the combat capability of the 19th Bombardment Group. This foresight was crucial to staging a highly effective attack on Rabaul with its large concentration of heavy bombers based on the island of New Britain, located at the northern end of the Solomon Sea.
Of course, the primary credit goes to the courageous 19th Bombardment Group. The eighteen aircrews flew their B-17s without fighter escort all the way to Rabaul and delivered a knockout blow to an enemy air threat. The 19th Group’s surprise attack destroyed or damaged roughly 80 percent of a Japanese bomber force that would have contested amphibious operations at Guadalcanal to a much greater extent.11
Subsequent Japanese air attacks on Guadalcanal were perforce significantly smaller. Indeed, the reduction in Japanese air power caused by this one USAAF attack enabled U.S. Navy fighters protecting Guadalcanal to counter the residual Japanese bomber aircraft that did attack Guadalcanal early on.
As a nod to the 1stMarDiv’s motto of “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy,” one can rightly say that in those first days on Guadalcanal, the 1stMarDiv had very good friends in both the USAAF and U.S. Naval aviation. On those fateful days, they went after the division’s worst enemy in a very big way.
>Col Karch served from 1966 to 1992. A Naval Aviator, he flew the F-4 Phantom II operationally over three decades. He was also a Test Pilot, Advanced Flight Instructor, and a Ground Forward Air Controler with the South Korean Marines in Vietnam.
Notes
1. Wikipedia Editors, “Guadalcanal,” Wikipedia, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal.
2. George Kenney, Air War in the Pacific: The Journal of General George Kenney, Commander of the Fifth U.S. Air Force (N/A: P-47 Press, 2018). George Churchill Kenney (6 August 1889–9 August 1977) was a USAAF general during World War II; he is best known as the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, a position he held between July 1942 and August 1945. He was the first commander of the Air Force Strategic Air Command.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: Random House, 1990).
9. Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11. Ibid. MajGen Kenney was soon promoted to the rank of lieutenant general upon the personal recommendation of MacArthur based on the excellence Kenney displayed in staging the Rabaul raid of 7 August and in subsequent SWPA air operations by the Fifth U.S. Air Force.
To compete globally in the 21st century, the U.S. military must rely on civilian contractors to manage vital logistical systems. However, war does not discriminate between uniformed combatants and civilians. This tragic fact became all too real for the Marines and construction contractors on Wake Island in December 1941. The Battle of Wake Island offers valuable operational and legal lessons for civilian contractors in combat scenarios.
At the outset of World War II, Wake Island was occupied by the understrength 1st Marine Defense Battalion, 46 Pan American (Pan Am) Airline employees operating the commercial runway, and 1,145 engineers contracted by the Navy to develop Wake into an advanced base.1 Hours after Pearl Harbor was attacked—2,000 miles to the East—the first Japanese bombs fell onto the tiny atoll of Wake.2 After two weeks of aerial and naval bombardment, the Japanese finally captured the island on their second amphibious assault.3 The defenders of Wake fought heroically, inflicting over 1,000 casualties, sinking two destroyers, damaging eight other ships, and downing 21 aircraft. The 1942 movie, Wake Island, memorialized the heroism of the Marines but downplayed the role of the civilians.4 However, dozens of civilian volunteers assisted the Marines in preparing defenses and directly engaged the Japanese in combat. Several Marine officers even recommended their attached civilian volunteers for decoration.5
This article examines how the civilians were incorporated into the defense of Wake Island. First, it will examine the command relationship between the Navy and contractors, then analyze how the Marines incorporated the civilians into the fighting, review legal considerations, and recommend lessons learned for contemporary military leaders. These lessons are: Account for combat situations in contracts, incorporate local contractors into combat contingency planning, and educate contractors on how the Law of Armed Conflict affects them.
Military-Civilian Relationship on Wake The Marines and civilians on Wake Island had functionally and legally unique, segregated roles. The first group to permanently occupy Wake was employees of the Pan American commercial airline, which used the atoll as a stop for its seaplane service ferrying passengers and mail to the Philippines. Although Pan Am had Navy approval to operate from Wake, the Navy exercised no control over its operations.6 After the initial assault from the Japanese on 8 December 1941, all but three of the Pan Am employees evacuated Wake on a civilian aircraft.7 The largest contingent on the island was the 1,145 civilian workers under the construction conglomerate, Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases (PNAB), who started arriving on the island in January 1941.8 While PNAB was under contract to the Department of the Navy, the engineers were only legally allowed to perform the construction work according to Contract NOy-4173, which called for the construction of a naval air station.9 As shown in Figure 1 (on the following page), the PNAB workers directly answered to a naval responsible officer-in-charge of the 14th Naval District. However, much like a modern contracting officer representative, the responsible officer-in-charge could only ensure the workers were living up to the terms of the contract, not issue them orders.10 When the Marines of the 1st Defense Battalion, commanded by Maj Devereux, arrived on 19 August 1941, they were under strict orders to keep their activities separated from the civilian workers. In fact, the PNAB civilians were even prohibited from refueling military aircraft, taxing the understrength Marine Battalion even more.11 Navy CDR W.S. Cunningham was the Wake Island commander in charge of both civilians and military personnel, but his role was more like a modern-day garrison commander. CDR Cunningham had no authority to order the civilians into combat, and Maj Devereux was in charge of the defenses overall.12 Despite this strict segregation, a looming war against Japan forced the Marines to bridge this gap.
Figure 1. Command structure on Wake Island, 1941. Full lines represent a direct operational control or tactical control relationship (by modern doctrinal terms), while the dashed line represents coordination for the contractors. (Source: LtCol R.D. Heinl, The Defense of Wake (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps), Appendix V.)Figure 2. Defense installations on Wake Island. (Source: U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums Division–U.S. National Park Service website A MAGNIFICENT FIGHT: Marines in the Battle for Wake Island.)
Civilians in the Defense The Marines at Wake Island incorporated contractor volunteers into both non-combat and direct combat roles. Construction contractors fit more naturally into non-combat roles such as creating earthworks, aiding the wounded, and moving heavy equipment. Maj Devereux praised the efforts of the civilians in this regard, but it was too little, too late. The civilians only deviated from working on the construction stipulated in the contract after Wake was bombed.13 Aside from the more obvious engineering tasks, necessity demanded that the civilian volunteers directly engage in combat. The Marine 1st Defense Battalion only had about a third of its authorized manpower, which meant most of its heavy weapons and fighting positions did not have full crews.14 Figure 2 shows Wake’s defensive strong points and indicates unmanned weapon systems. All too aware of this shortfall, the Marines began training civilian volunteers on heavy weapons three months before the attack.15 Civilian volunteers helped to occupy some but not all of these vital strong points.16 Notably, Sgt Bowsher led an all-civilian crew of 16 volunteers on Battery D’s three-inch naval gun located on the island’s northeastern end.17 To coordinate the civilian volunteers, Maj Devereux coordinated directly with the contracting superintendent, Dan Teeters, a World War I veteran who organized requested civilian work parties.18 Often left out of posters and movies, the civilians on Wake Island who did volunteer to aid the Marines deserve just as much recognition. The Japanese certainly treated them the same.
Legal Considerations Civilians engaging in combat alongside soldiers do so at their own legal risk. Although Japan did sign the 1929 Geneva Convention, the Japanese military became notorious for its mistreatment of prisoners.19 For a modern perspective, the currently in effect Geneva Convention III, ratified in 1949, is best for analyzing the legal status of the fighting contractors on Wake. Geneva Convention III stipulates that civilians accompanying combat forces, such as civil engineers, enjoy the same prisoner of war (POW) status as soldiers. This distinction is important because POWs are entitled to extra rights, such as limits on the type of labor they perform.20 However, if the civilians decide to fight, then only certain criteria grant them POW status. Article 4 states that militias must have a clear commander, have an insignia, must carry arms openly, and must respect the laws and customs of war.21 On Wake, one could argue that the contractor volunteers constituted a militia, but they lacked an official uniform or insignia distinct from the PNAB civilians who did not want to fight. The civilians did have a right to self-defense, but if they were captured after fighting instead of immediately surrendering, then under the Geneva Convention, they would not have to be treated as POWs. Furthermore, the civilian volunteers would not have combatant immunity, meaning they could be charged with murder by the government whose territory any killing took place in. Seeing how Wake Island was a U.S. territory, not surprisingly, no civilian ever saw their day in court. Although helpful for future cases, the Japanese did not weigh these considerations. The Japanese who captured Wake Island treated (and mistreated) all the civilians, even those not participating in the defense, the same as the Marine prisoners of war.22
Conclusion The Marines and civilian defenders of Wake Island still have lessons to teach the force today. As contractors become increasingly enmeshed with soldiers in the modern operating environment, commanders should consider how to manage or even employ them in combat situations.23 First, unlike at Wake, military contracts should have some stipulation on when and how civilians report to commanders in a combat situation. Even if the contractors cannot fight, the commander should be able to keep their accountability. Second, military units should identify which civilians would be willing to assist in combat and provide necessary training. Contingency plans also should have provisions for how the contractors are either employed or protected. Then the commander should leverage the existing civilian chain of command as much as possible. Lastly, civilian contractors should be made fully aware of the legal repercussions if they choose to fight and be provided distinct insignia if they make that resolution. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but as the experiences of Wake proved, the alternative could be worse. Out of the 1,145 contractors on Wake Island in December 1941, 34 were killed in battle, 98 were massacred on the island in 1943, and 114 died in Japanese POW camps.24 Contractors supporting the military cannot always choose if they are suddenly in a combat zone, but they can be more prepared by those who make preparing for war their profession.
>Maj Thomas is an Army Special Forces Officer with several combat deployments to the Middle East. He recently graduated from the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting and is currently serving as a Plans Officer in I Corps.
>>Maj Malapit is a Judge Advocate Officer who deployed to Latvia during her time as an Engineer Officer. She recently earned her LLM from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and is currently serving as the Chief of Justice for the 7th Infantry Division.
Notes
1. Bonita Gilbert, Building for War: The Epic Saga of the Civilian Contractors and Marines of Wake Island in World War 2 (Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2012); and James Devereux, Report on the Defense of Wake Island (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Archives, 1945).
2. Report on the Defense of Wake Island.
3. Ibid.
4. Devereux, The Story of Wake Island (New York: Charter, 1947).
5. Woodrow M Kessler, Battery BReport to LtCol Devereux (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Archives, 1945); and George Kinney, Report to Lt Col. Devereux (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Archives, 1945).
6. Building for War. See specifically, Chapter 2, “Opportunity Knocks.”
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. National Archives, Federal Register Volume 6, Number 21 (Washington, DC: 1941).
10. R.D. Heinl, The Defense of Wake (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, 1947).
11. Report on the Defense of Wake Island.
12. The Defense of Wake.
13. The Story of Wake Island.
14. The Defense of Wake.
15. Building for War.
16. Report on the Defense of Wake Island.
17. Building for War.
18. The Story of Wake Island.
19. Utsumi Aiko, “Japan’s World War II POW Policy: Indifference and Irresponsibility,” The Asia-Pacific Journal May 2005, https://apjjf.org/-Utsumi-Aiko/1790/article.html.
20. Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, Vol. I, Federal Political Department, Bern, Section III, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciii-1949?activeTab=undefined.
21. Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, Vol. I, Federal Political Department, Bern, Section I, Article 4; https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciii-1949?activeTab=undefined.
22. Building for War.
23. Mark F. Cancian, U.S. Military Forces in FY 2020: SOF, Civilians, Contractors, and Nukes (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2019).
24. Building for War. See specifically Appendix II.
Commemoration address for the Combined Action Platoon memorial at Marine Corps Museum We who fought in the villages six decades ago have gathered here to dedicate this memorial to our fallen brothers. We thank LtGen Ron Christmas and MajGen Jim Lukeman for honoring their sacrifice.
Historians remark upon the sheer audacity of the Combined Action Platoon (CAP). In the midst of a war with millions of combatants, twelve-man squads led by sergeants lived and died in villages amongst thousands of Vietnamese. Their mission: drive out the enemy, protect the villagers and train the farmers to defend themselves.1 In theory, those tiny squads, vastly outnumbered and isolated, should have been wiped out. In fact, they succeeded. Of the 209 villages protected by CAPs, not one reverted to enemy control.2 The CAP stands unique in America’s wars, never duplicated before or since.
From 1966 through 1970, across hundreds of hamlets every mosquito-filled night, patrols of about five Marines and five farmers sneaked through the bush, with no night vision or on-call fires. To survive, they relied on stealth, laying down grazing fire, pitching grenades, and pulling back when incoming fire was too intense. Firefights were sudden and short, green and red tracers zipping past like dancing Christmas lights. Afterward, no one ventured into the kill zones. Only the next day might they hear from the villagers about enemy bodies carried off. No CAP ever relaxed. The peril of each night focused every Marine.
During the day, CAP grunts ambled through the hamlets, eating duck eggs and bananas and peanuts, laughing and bartering with the villagers, respected but not feared. The ‘nghia quans’ (the farmers called PFs, or Popular Forces) patrolled and lived side by side with the Marines. Spending month after month inside the same few kilometers, the Marines and villagers came to know one another as human beings, with individual quirks. Six of the CAP Marines in this 1966 photo were killed in the besieged village of Binh Nghia.
The village chief wrote a letter to the parents of Sergeant White, the CAP leader. Here is a direct quote:
To Sgt. J.D. White Family … My name is trao, second village chief working with Sgt. White and Sq. Our people thank him very much, because he is very good man. Every day he is few to sleep he works too much … My people are poor and when they see a marine they very happy. When V.C. come to people, people come to talk to Sgt. Whte so Sgt. White can talk to P.F. and marine to fight V.C. Maybe die … I’ll say a Happy New Year to you. Jod bless you all …. Your friend always, Ho Yan Trao.3
The cost was high. Of the 450,000 Marines who served in Vietnam, three percent were fatalities,4 rising to six percent among the combat battalions. In the CAPs, the fatality rate was above ten percent. The reason was that on average a CAP conducted a thousand patrols in a year. There was no embedded chain of command to ensure these patrols went out, no gunny, no first sergeant, no company commander. Instead, there was peer pressure. There were no nights off. In every CAP, sooner or later death called.
Over five years, 540 CAP Marines were killed, while accounting for 4,900 enemy killed by rifle fire and grenades, with almost no employment of supporting arms.5 You don’t call in fire on the village where you live. Inflicting casualties on the enemy was only a means; the end objective was providing security and training the nghia quans (PFs). The CAPs weren’t interlinked; they were scattered across several thousand kilometers. Each CAP staked out five to seven square kilometers of paddies, shrubs and hooches, then fought to protect it.
The ultimate test of the program came when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched the 1968 TET offensive. In the Marine area in northern I Corps, tens of thousands of NVA left the mountains to assault the cities. To get there, they had to pass through the hamlets guarded by CAP patrols. The CAPs absorbed fully 47% of all the enemy attacks.6 Forewarned through the network of villagers, for eleven straight days the CAPs held firm in daily combat. The NVA found no way through.
At its peak, CAP platoons (squads really) extended across 800 widely scattered hamlets, protecting 500,000 villagers.7 This was accomplished by 2,200 CAP Marines, three percent of the Marine total force. Given that CAP was a force multiplier, why wasn’t it expanded into a countrywide strategy?
The CAP focus upon population protection collided with the directive from the high command in Saigon to search for and destroy the NVA forces in the mountains. To quote from the official Marine history of 1968, “The problem was a lack of a warfighting (overall) strategy. There was no yardstick for measuring the amount of resources dedicated to Mission X vs Mission Y. The CAP was seen as a drain of manpower. In fact, it saved Marine lives.”8
The high command in Saigon opposed the CAP program. Yet no top-level meeting with the subordinate Marine command was ever convened to resolve the conflicting strategies. The top commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, criticized Marine tactics. His command disparaged the CAPs as “too manpower intensive and too slow in pacifying.”9 The command also consulted the British, whose top counterinsurgency expert, Sir Robert Thompson, concluded the opposite. He said CAP was “the best idea I have seen in Vietnam.”10
After our troops left in 1972, Congress slashed aid to the South and forbade all air strikes. In 1975, South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam. Artillery and armor provided by China and the Soviet Union plus massed infantry caused the defeat, not some fantasy about a Marxist revolt in the villages. Quite the opposite. When the North Vietnamese troops poured in, they changed the names of CAP villages, symbolizing their frustration with the farmers who had staunchly resisted. A history of the CAP program in the Military Review magazine concluded, “The Battle for Hue City and the siege at Khe Sanh dominate the literature about the Marines in Vietnam. CAP, however, was the Corps’ greatest innovation during the war.”11
Is the CAP concept useful in the future? My bookdescribing the lives and deaths in a typical CAP, entitled The Village, was deleted from the Commandant’s Reading List because CAP seemed irrelevant. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the tribal and Muslim insular cultures did make it impossible for Marine squads to live inside isolated villages. Unlike in Vietnam, as outsiders (and unbelievers) Americans were not accepted, let alone warned of danger. On the other hand, CAP is relevant for the new antiship mission. Although Marines no longer read about the CAP, the small units training to deploy on remote Filipino islands will need its tactics.
Regardless of where Marines next fight, there will be civilians and local forces. Marines don’t have the manpower to support a stand-alone advisory regiment. We will always seek the support of the local forces. The CAP proved that our infantry squads can adapt on any battlefield, due to the Marine ethos and training.
>Mr. West, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, served in CAP Lima-One in Chulai in 1966. He has written a dozen books about Marines in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. His forthcoming book is entitled:Who Will Fight for Us the Next Time?
4. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2015/april/marines-vietnam-commitment; and https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/vietnam-war0/human-cost.html
6. Weltsch, Michael D (1991). “The Future Role of the Combined Action Program” (PDF). U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 February 2012. That PDF was retrieved 12 December 2007.
>Originally published in the Marine Corps Gazette, February 2016.
Editor’s Note: The authors biography is available in the original edition.
Lieutenant O’Bannon and Marines advancing toward Tripoli. (Image from Merrill L. Bartlett and Jack Sweetman, The U.S. Marine Corps: An Illustrated History, (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD: 2001), 30–31.)
Preface On 7 April 1805, William Eaton, one midshipman, and eight United States Marines under the command of Presley O’Bannon stood at the Egyptian frontier and looked up toward the hills that would take them into hostile territory.1 Accompanying them was a collection of several hundred mercenaries and followers of the exiled ruler of the Barbary State of Tripoli, Hamet Qaramanli. Having crossed 280 miles of desert, the war party still had to advance 180 miles into Tripoli to capture the port city of Derne, the capital of Cyrenaica. In the weeks that followed, Eaton would succeed beyond expectations, earning his place in history. While much has been written about the Barbary Wars—including the Derne victory—discussions on the social dynamics at work in Tripoli largely have been missing. Yet those dynamics, which may be described as “cultural intelligence,” played an important role.2 Failing to understand that is to fail to fully understand the war itself. This article is an attempt to introduce that history as an argument for a greater focus on cultural intelligence in military planning.
“A Country Not Your Own”3 For four years, the United States waged desultory naval combat with Tripoli after its leader, Bey Yusef Qaramanli, declared war on 14 May 1801. The conflict stemmed from a refusal to offer tribute, a dubious scheme where America paid not to have their ships robbed or seized by the Bey’s pirates. In June 1803, a frustrated President Thomas Jefferson authorized a land attack and appointed Eaton, an experienced North African diplomat, as commander (Naval Agent for the Barbary Regencies). As Washington never contemplated sending an army abroad and the few Marines proved inadequate, the need for local forces became critical and the ability to rally fighters to oppose his brother Yusef made Hamet indispensible. Under Eaton, Hamet’s “army” would conduct the first land campaign led by the young United States on a foreign shore.4
On 27 April 1805, some 400 soldiers under Eaton assaulted Derne, defended by twice their number. A charge by a handful proved decisive: the Marines and midshipmen, a company of 26 Greek mercenaries and 24 artillerymen. The fight was a short, if bloody, affair; Eaton suffered a shattered wrist from a musket ball, and two Marines died with another wounded while Hamet emerged unscathed during the subsequent capture of the Governor’s palace. Within three hours, Derne fell and the Stars and Stripes waved for the first time over a distant battlefield. Why was a mixed and meager force under American generalship able to defeat a superior force located deep within their homeland?5 The courage of Eaton and his men won out, but a number of social factors worked to their advantage. Tripoli was riddled with social fissures stemming from the nature of the Barbary States and the local political situation in Tripoli.
In 1805, Ottoman Barbary consisted of the provinces (eyalats) of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Barbary came from the Arab barbar (Berber), describing North Africa’s inhabitants. The term became misleading after the 11th century as the Arabian Banu Hilal tribes migrated across North Africa, halting only at Morocco’s border. Over the course of their migration, they swept away much of the Berber farming population, something that had two lasting effects. The Arabs and the Berbers formed a mixed race and two societies were created, one sedentary, clustered around the remaining coastal cities and farmlands and the other consisting of semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes. This also divided economic life between inland pastoralism with the caravan trade and littoral agriculture linked to sea commerce. The society fractured further with the rise of the Barbary States in the 1500s.6
Around 1505, Hayreddin Barbarossa moved his pirate fleet from the Aegean to Algeria and began raiding European shipping. In the process, he made a great fortune and his forces grew in strength. Simultaneously, the Spanish Reconquista spread into the Maghreb. In 1517, Barbarossa traded submission to Ottoman authority for military aid and Sultan Selim I obliged by sending forces while elevating Barbarossa to beylerbey. In 1551, the Ottomans recaptured Tripoli from the Maltese Knights of Saint John and the Spanish were driven from Tunis in 1574.7
With the crisis averted, the Porte dismissed the beylerbey and divided its holdings into the three eyalats, each ruled by a commander (bey) appointed by the Sultan and, if successful, promoted to pasha. Together with the bey and a Turkish administrative staff, Janissaries were dispatched along with a naval contingent. The three capital ports were turned into fortified bases. Ideally, the eyalats should have been divided into sanjaks (districts headed by sanjak-beys) to solidify control, but Ottoman rule was too tenuous to expand inland. This created additional societal strains as the Turks, Janissaries, and sailors disturbed the status quo. The Ottoman legal tradition also created friction; it followed the Hanafi Sharia while most peoples of the Maghreb adhered to the more conservative Maliki school. Acknowledging the limits of its authority, the Porte never forced the Hanafi system on the local population, but the result heightened the barrier between the governed and those that governed.8
The Janissaries—lifelong soldiers—were also a breed apart. Most had been taken as boys as a “blood tax” on Christians dwelling in Ottoman Europe. Moved to Anatolia, they were reared as soldiers and volunteered or coerced to convert to Islam. Despite these hardships, Janissaries were well paid, held a respected position in society, and were free to elect their own leaders, the deys. Finally, sailors, the most alien and profitable contingent, were able seamen recruited from anywhere and, if not Muslim, became converts. Motivated by the promise of privateering spoils, they were singularly mercenary and of limited loyalty but brought much needed cash to the States. Pirate rule soon reigned.9
The Ottoman conquest ended in the imposition of an alien government that never fully integrated with the people. Tripoli suffered most from these internal disconnects. Because of geography, it had only two enclaves able to support agriculture: the plateau south of the port of Tripoli and the ancient Pentapolis in Cyrenaica with Derne on the eastern extreme. The Bedouin tribes were economically self-sufficient and dominated the rest of the country, allowing them to stand apart from the Bey. This made rule tenuous in the best of times and the war with America did not come during the best of times.10
Tripoli was ostensibly part of the Ottoman Empire, but the power yielded was far from that of the 16th century. When Tripoli was recaptured, the Sublime Porte installed Aga Murad as bey and as an indication of the importance of Tripoli as a naval base, named Admiral (Reis) Turgut the second bey in 1553. For the next half century, Tripoli was ruled directly by the Porte. In 1609, the local Janissaries selected Suleiman Safar as dey who overthrew Bey Ahmad Pasha, and the Porte subsequently acceded to the elected deys as rulers. In late 1709, Bey Halil Pasha died without a successor and over the next two years, Tripoli witnessed five different self-professed governors attempting to take and keep power.11
During this crisis, the Janissaries chose as dey the capable sipahi (cavalry) leader Ahmed Qaramanli. Qaramanli was not a pure-blooded Janissary but a khouloughli (children of soldiers), the descendants of earlier Janissaries who had married into the local elite in Tripoli. In July 1711, Ahmed seized control and the Sublime Porte recognized him as bey and awarded him the rank of pasha. Although he continued to refer to himself as Dey, Ahmed ended the dey elections and the Qaramanli became hereditary leaders. The Qaramanli were able to expand their control into the Fezzan to the south and Cyrenaica to the east. A succession of Qaramanlis ruled effectively for most of the 18th century until the physical decline of the long serving Ali Pasha in the 1790s set in motion an internecine power struggle. The troubles began when Ali designated his eldest son, Hassan, as his successor in 1790.12
In August, Yusef, the youngest son, lured Hassan into the Bey’s harem under the ruse of reconciling their differences. The harem was a refuge whose protections exceeded that of a mosque. Once there, Hassan disarmed as required and greeted his mother. A hiding Yusef then cut him down. Hassan was able to recover his saber and slightly wound Yusef before dying. This murderous outrage threw the country’s leadership into turmoil. Bey Ali refused to recognize Yusef as regent and a civil war erupted with Yusef besieging Ali in the Tripoli fortress during the spring and summer of 1793.13
In early July, Ali died after naming Hamet, the middle son, as bey. Amidst this chaos, the Turks acted. On 29 July 1793, an Ottoman fleet under Ali Benghul arrived in the harbor. He declared himself ruler and both Hamet and Yusef fled to Tunis. Benghul’s rule ended in failure when the brothers, with the assistance of the Dey of Tunis, regained power in 1795. Yusef then pushed aside Hamet, sending him to Derne as Governor of Cyrenaica—an internal exile. Yusef also took Hamet’s family hostage. In fear for his life, Hamet fled first to Tunis and then to Egypt. Yusef sat uneasily on the throne, knowing that the Porte and his brother awaited an opportunity to overthrow him. Those were not his only problems.14
Tripoli was the poorest of the Barbary States and the government’s survival had become dependent on extortion, namely the tribute and wartime privateering policy. Even Yusef acknowledged that reality, stating in 1797 that his aim was to declare war on one nation as soon as he made peace with another. Internal conflicts made matters all the worse. When Americans had paid tribute to avoid trouble, the Barbary silver piaster was interchangeable with the U.S. dollar, except in the case of Tripoli. Yusef had so badly bankrupted Tripoli’s finances that its piaster had been reduced to a small copper coin. By the outbreak of war, one U.S. dollar was trading for 800 Tripolitanian piasters.15
In this environment, the American blockade worked exceptionally well as it affected little outside the Port of Tripoli. There was no hardship in the agricultural regions, a reality equally true for the pastoral tribes and their caravan trade. For the United States, the war became a conflict limited to Yusef and his followers, and the blockade cost Yusef his primary source of income, forcing him to raise taxes, an act that alienated the population under his control. As if the economic and political difficulties were not enough, Yusef could not count on his military for much help as the situation within the ranks of Janissaries and amongst the ships’ crews was nothing short of dire.16
Lt Presley O’Bannon. (Photo credit: Naval History and Heritage Command.)
Tripoli was a feeble military power in the early 1800s. When Yusef declared war on the United States, his navy had seven ocean-going corsairs: 2 frigates, one of 32 and one of 28 guns, plus 5 barks or sloops of 10–18 guns each. The only bright spot was the fleet commander, Admiral Murad, a competent commander who sailed on the seized American vessel Betsy. This compared with 13 corsairs held by Tunis and 18 by Algiers. By the time of the Eaton Expedition, Murad’s diminished fleet was trapped in port and the U.S. Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron under Commodore Samuel Barron containing 6 frigates (220 guns total), 2 brigantines (16 guns each), 3 schooners (12 guns each), and the 10-gun sloop Hornet, sailed offshore.17
The exact size of Tripoli’s Janissary-khouloughli corps during the war is not known. Given its poorness and the fact that Tunis had an army of 6,800 badly trained and equipped soldiers, Tripoli may have been able to field half that force. Further, because Yusef had alienated himself from the Porte, he could not count on Turkish reinforcements. This limited his ability to defend the country from a land attack. By the spring of 1805, excluding fortress cannoneers, the port of Tripoli garrison was approximately 900 sipahi Janissaries with another 90 each at Misurata and Benghazi. Derne had an estimated 800 defenders, both Janissary and untrained local Arab levees.18
Derne was an enclave on a coastal plain and passage into town followed the Roman road that was used by Hadj pilgrims traveling to and from Mecca, providing a source of income and information. The Mediterranean coast ran before Derne roughly from east to west with a sloping point jutting slightly into the sea to the northwest and the sheltered port just to the east. To either side of the open shore that abutted the Derne plain, the beaches were shallow and pinned between sea and rocky cliffs. Rising hills surrounded the plain, starting approximately one and a half miles inland from the coast. In the 1800s, the wadi system that had formed the plain consisted of a seasonally dry riverbed that passed Derne to the southeast and emptied into the port along with the main wadi that passed west of town en route to the sea. It contained an aqueduct system that provided water to Derne and the surrounding fields. By 1805, Derne was known as a fertile region, rich in fruits and grains as well as wax, honey, and butter.19
The population was approximately 7,000 people and represented the social upheavals of the Mediterranean world. Originally a 7th century B.C. Greek settlement, it fared well during Roman times, becoming a bishopric by the 5th century. Following the 7th century Arab conquest, Derne fell into decline and its people were swept up in the Banu Hilal migration during the 11th century. Refugees from Moorish Spain, the moriscos, resettled the abandoned city in the 15th century. As sedentary settlers, communal ties, not Bedouin bloodlines, formed the basis of morisco society. Communities were tied to the farmland, the town, and as it grew, by its quarters that formed de facto sub-tribes. The Bedouins regarded the inhabitants of Derne as outsiders, a people without a tribe, well into the 20th century.20
The Bedouin tribal leaders were more opportunists than adherents of the Qaramanli regime. Their focus was on herding and trading with Derne and the caravans that operated far from the court intrigues in the Port of Tripoli. They acknowledged the Dey’s authority but were disinterested in politics so long as it did not interfere in their livelihoods. The relationship between the town’s community and the Bedouins was one of uneasy tension. This made Derne’s population dependent on the protection of the Dey, to feel the hand of his rule or misrule, and by 1805, their loyalties were divided between the competing Qaramanli heirs.21
In Egypt, Eaton formed an “army” after the Ottoman Viceroy provided a letter of amnesty on 17 December 1804. The letter granted permission for Hamet and Eaton to pass the Turkish garrison without interference during what was in essence an invasion of Tripoli. This was a blow to Yusef who had sent an envoy to the Viceroy with the aim of keeping Hamet in Egypt. The envoy returned to Tripoli and upon hearing of Hamet’s plan, Yusef ordered the dispatch of a Derne relief column, a decision that stretched his army to its limit, leaving only 600 sapahis at the port fortress. The column was augmented by Bedouin horsemen and untrained soldiers from tribes of questionable loyalty and, as Derne was on the pilgrimage route to Mecca, Yusef could not keep the movement secret.22
In February 1805, several hundred Hamet loyalists assembled in the Egyptian desert nearly 300 miles from the frontier. To transport the necessary supplies and weapons, Eaton was forced to hire some 200 camels with drivers from a venal and troublesome Bedouin sheik named Tayyb, who would bring several dozen armed horsemen for protection. This allowed the expedition to travel relatively unmolested and trade with the local tribes for food from the time it departed on 6 March until the 21 April Battle of Derne. The American victory had an immediate and profound impact on the course of the war.23
Yusef immediately sued for peace. The demand for tribute and a $200,000 ransom proposed ironically on 21 April was withdrawn for a new one with three conditions: first, a $60,000 payment; second, the ending of aid to Hamet; and third, the evacuation of Derne. Tribute would end and Yusef also agreed to the release of Hamet’s family upon the return of Derne, but there was a secret provision that allowed him to keep Hamet’s family hostage for four years even if Hamet quit Derne. The American negotiator, Tobias Lear, agreed and the treaty was signed on 4 June and the secret provision, the day following. The war was over.24
The expedition was a marked military success. While achieved by the heroics of those who fought there, it was made possible by Tripoli’s social fissures. Culturally, the bifurcation of the society in the 11th century created the caravan system and made the expedition logistically viable, and the Turkish insertion of foreign coastal colonies deepened fault lines and formed a Bedouin society that would indifferently accept outsiders like Hamet and Eaton. Militarily, Tripoli’s poorness and the limits of the Janissary-khouloughli system put Yusef at a disadvantage. Divided loyalties at Derne also meant that Eaton would be sufficiently strong in relative terms. Victory was not certain but not by the risky undertaking indicated by Eaton’s small numbers. Politically, had Yusef not risen bloodily to power or had Hamet not escaped, the entire enterprise would not have been possible. Yusef’s illegitimate rule in the eyes of the Porte also helped, as demonstrated by the lack of aid for Yusef coupled with the Viceroy’s support of Hamet.25
By themselves, none of these factors ensured success, but together they leveled the battlefield. It was equally true that, had any factorial combination been different, victory at Derne may have proven impossible. The point for military planners is that cultural intelligence or regional knowledge and experience can prove invaluable, and formally integrating cultural intelligence into the planning process can make a difference between success and failure.
Notes
1. The Ottoman’s named provinces for their capital, to avoid confusion; this article uses “Tripoli” to denote the Barbary State of Tripoli. The capital will be referred to as the Port of Tripoli.
2. The author first heard the term “cultural intelligence” in 1993 during a lecture by Gen Anthony Zinni on his experiences during Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.
3. William S. Shaw, The Life of the Late General Eaton (Brookfield, MA: E. Merriam, 1813), 315.
4. Shaw, Eaton, 256; United States Department of the Navy, Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers: Naval Operations including Diplomatic Background, 1785–1807, 450.
5. Shaw, Eaton, 306, 338–340. The ships were the brigantine Argus, schooner Nautilus, and sloop Hornet. Derne was the name used at the time of the battle. Other versions include Darnis (the name given by its Greek founders) and Darnah. Today’s name, Derna, dates from the Roman Era. Its name in Arabic is virtually identical: Dernah.
6. Ramzi Rouighi, “The Berbers of the Arabs,” Studia Islamica, new series, 1, (2011): 81; Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (New York: MJF Books, 1991), 103–104.
7. Hourani, 215. Beylerbey means “commander of commanders.”
8. Hourani, 228; Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, “An Agenda for Research in History: The History of Libya between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, No. 3 (August 1983), 306–307. “Pasha,” pronounced “bashaw” in North Africa, came from the Persian “padishah” roughly meaning “master king.” Within the Sublime Porte, it was a rank superior to Bey, but in the Barbary States, the local title of Dey or Bey was often retained.
9. Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 45–46. The Turks referred to the “blood tax” process as devserme or collection.
10. Chai-lin Pan, “The Population of Libya,” Population Studies 3, no. 1 (June 1949), 101; K.S. McLachlan, “Tripoli and Tripolitania: Conflicts and Cohesion during the Period of the Barbary Corsairs (1551–1850),” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 3, no. 3, Settlement and Conflict in the Mediterranean World (1978), 287.
11. Navy, Documents, Volume 1, 207; see World Statesmen-Libya at http://www.worldstatesmen.org (accessed 29 January 2012).
12. Helen Chapin Metz, editor, Libya: A Country Study (Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987), See “Karamanlis,” paragraph 1. Available at http://countrystudies.us/Libya (accessed 15 January 2012). Ahmed Qaramanli was of Albanian descent.
13. Shaw, Eaton, 339; Richard Tully, A Narrative of a Ten Year Residence in Tripoli in Africa (London: Henry Colburn, 1817), 231–233, passim, 329. Accessed at http://books.google.com, 1 February 2012.
14. Tully, 336–337; Chapin, Libya, see “Karamanlis,” paragraph 2; Richard Zacks, The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 (New York: Hyperion, 2005), 110–111.
17. Navy, Documents, Volume 1, 300, 315, 368; Louis B. Wright and Julia H. Macleod, The First Americans in North Africa: William Eaton’s Struggle for a Vigorous Policy Against the Barbary Pirates, 1799–1805 (New York: Princeton University Press, 1945), 89; Joshua E. London, Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2005), 191. Murad, a convert to Islam, had been born as Peter Lisle in Scotland. The USS Enterprise took the 14-gun corsair Tripoli out of action on 1 August 1801.
18. Shaw, Eaton, 98, 330, 335–336, 348. Misurata is also known as Misrata or Misratah. The composition of the Derne forces was not cited. To crush a similar rebellion by his son in 1817, Yusef deployed fewer than 500 Janissaries (See Della Cella’s Narrative, 8).
19. Hourani, 480–481; Shaw, Eaton, 306; Paola Della Cella, Narrative of an Expedition from Tripoli in Barbary to the Western Frontiers of Egypt in 1817, translated by Anthony Aufrere (London: John & Arthur Arch, 1822), 176, available at http://books.google.com (accessed 28 January 2012); John W. Norie, New Piloting Directions for the Mediterranean Sea (London: J. W. Norie, 1831), 338. Accessed at http://books.google.com/books (accessed 23 January 2012).
20. Della Cella, 177; R.G. Goodchild, “Mapping Roman Libya,” The Geographical Journal,Volume 118, No. 2 (June 1952), 143, 150; Hourani, 106; Vladimir Peniakoff, Popski’s Private Army: A Legendary Commander’s True Story of World War II Commando Combat (New York: Bantam Books, 1950), 106.
21. McLachlan, 292; Shaw, Eaton, 337, 348, 358.
22. Shaw, Eaton, 283, 293; Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801–1805 (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 267; Shaw, Eaton, 306, 348, 358.
23. Shaw, Eaton, 311, 316–317, 326–327, 336; Navy, Documents, Volume 5; for examples of difficulties associated with Tayyb, see 405, 456, and 470–472.
24. Navy, Documents, Volume 6, 1, 81–82. The ransom was for the safe return of the crew of the USS Philadelphia that had been taken prisoner after the ship ran afoul of a reef off the port of Tripoli on 31 October 1803.
