MARINE CORPS HISTORY

Marine Corps History

     Most of the time in boot camp we spent handling weapons and sweating and running and yelling. But we had classroom lectures, too. One subject taken most seriously by our trainers was History and Traditions of the Marine Corps. 

     We learned that the Marine Corps was older than the country we served, having been founded in 1775, the year before the Declaration of Independence, at Tun’s Tavern, in Philadelphia. Mostly, we learned about Marine battles and heroes, like Lt. Presley O'Bannon, who led a detachment overland through what was thought to be impassable desert to surprise from behind a pirate garrison that had been impregnable because it was on a high seacliff and had complete control of its approaches. O'Bannon and his men made history by taking the fortress after all other attempts had failed, and got a line - "to the shores of Tripoli" - added to the Marines' Hymn. 

     We learned about First Sergeant Dan Daly, who got his boys to charge into heavy firing during the Battle of Belleau Wood in World War I by growling "Come on, you sons o' bitches, do you want to live forever?" Marines were so ferocious in that war, we were told, that the Germans nicknamed us "Teufelhunden," or “devildogs.” There was Smedley Butler, hero of countless engagements in Haiti and Nicaragua and China, the only Marine besides Dan Daly ever to win two Medals of Honor. There was perhaps the most legendary Marine of all, Lewis B. Puller, winner of five Navy Crosses, the nation's second highest award for military heroism. "Chesty" Puller, like many officers of the generation that was to lead the Marines in WWII in the Pacific, learned his trade and made his reputation fighting "bandits" in Nicaragua in the 1920's. Then he achieved the status of legend on Guadalcanal fighting against the Japanese in World War II, and led the First Marine Regiment's historic withdrawal from Chinese encirclement at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. ("Retreat, hell. We're just attacking in the opposite direction.") Sometimes at night, when we were lying at attention in our racks and the Duty Drill Instructor was about to order "lights out," he'd have us shout in chorus, "Goodnight, Chesty, wherever you are." The disrespect involved in recruits calling a retired Lieutenant General by his nickname was forgiven; this was a higher form of respect. 

     The names of the battles became our mantra: Guadalcanal, Tarawa (where Gunny Rogers' older brother had been killed), Peleliu, Saipan, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. And the men: O'Bannon, Daly, Butler, Puller, Manila John Basilone... and there was David M. Shoup, the Colonel who had the bad luck to be assigned as commanding officer of forces ashore at Tarawa, when some planning snafu had sent the assault waves, first in amphibious vehicles and then wading, into chestdeep water, wave after wave across an open lagoon into the teeth of interlocking machinegun and artillery and mortar fire. Shoup, seriously wounded on the beach and with the issue in grave doubt, staying at it, all those men not quitting when almost any human would have quit, carrying the day, taking Tarawa, that shitty little chunk of Betio atoll, writing its name in history forever. Shoup now wore four stars and was Commandant of the Marine Corps, our highest officer except for the President of the United States, who didn't really count because he was a civilian. These, we were taught, were the breed of men in whose footsteps we had asked to follow. Only the best would do. 

     The Marine Corps motto was "Semper Fidelis": Always Faithful. This signified more than duty to God and country. We heard it over and over. The simplest expression of this faithfulness was Gunny Rogers' “Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die.” It meant that we were to believe, without question, in who we were as Marines, in the non-coms and officers who gave us our orders, in those orders themselves, in the reasons for those orders, in the national leaders who gave them. 

     It meant, to judge by the symbols and trappings and language that accompanied the motto's presentation to us, and interpreted its meaning for us, that being a Marine was at its core a holy thing, that the mission was holy, therefore worthy of those two attributes normally reserved for religion: it was beyond question (indeed, beyond our ability to understand), and it was worth dying for.

     Sundays we'd be marched to, and into, the base chapel. A man would take the podium, a chaplain in ceremonial robe. He wore rank insignia on the right point of his shirt collar, indicating its seniority over the small gold cross on the left collar point. The placement of these two small pieces of metal on the chaplain's body showed how much distance we placed between the holy and the warlike: about three inches if the collar was buttoned, slightly more if open.

     The chaplain stood in the focal point where the very shape of the building directed the attention of all who entered: in front of the altar, which was in front of the huge cross on the wall behind him, and directly beneath the huge eagle, globe and anchor that is the emblem of the United States Marine Corps.

     We sat on command (“Ready, Seats!”), and listened. We were told that our work as Marines was blessed because we fought for a righteous nation. Quotations from the Bible proved this. 

     We stood on command, and sang: "Onward Christian Soldiers," the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." We grinned as we sang the second verse of the "Marines' Hymn" (what other service calls its anthem a hymn?):

If the Ar-my and the Na-a-vy

ever look on Heaven's scenes,

they will find the streets are guar-ar-ded

by United States Marines.

And we prayed our own Rifleman's Prayer:

     Dear God, my Father, through thy Son

     Hear the prayer of a warrior son

     Give my eyes a vision keen

     To see the thing that must be seen

     A steady hand I ask of thee

     The feel of wind on land or sea

     Let me not ever careless be

     Of life or limb or liberty      

    For Justice sake a quiet heart

     And grace and strength to do my part

     To God and Country, Home and Corps

     Let me be faithful evermore

                                   Amen

     The "why" was somebody else's job. If we as combat men got to wondering what we were fighting for, we'd die sooner rather than later. We had to trust that the men whose job it was to figure that out would do their jobs as well as we must do ours.

     Semper Fidelis was shortened, among Marines, to "Semper Fi." They told us we would be hearing, and saying, "Semper Fi" for the rest of our lives. That was truer than we knew, though they didn't mention the layers of irony that would attend its use, by some of us, in years to come. 

     There was a whole canon of lore. Salt and pepper and sugar and ketchup were "sidearms." Rumors were "scuttlebutt," so named because a scuttlebutt was a drinking fountain, which was where a lot of rumors got passed. We (once we became Marines, should we be so lucky) were called "jarheads" because of our haircuts, and "leathernecks" because of the high leather collars worn by shipboard Marines in the times when Marines were still used to board enemy ships during naval engagements. The collars were worn to shield against cutlass blows, and were progenitors of the high buttoned collar of the modern day dress blue tunic. The wide crimson stripe down the blue trouser legs of that uniform, the stripe which could only be worn by officers and noncommissioned officers, was a commemoration of the blood shed by Marine officers and NCO's at the Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican-American war. 

     It would be twenty years and more before I learned the darker side of some of those stories.