First to Fight

The U.S. Marines in World War I

Oscar E. Gilbert, Romain V. Cansière

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781612005096
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

"An amazingly detailed account of the American Expeditionary Force at Belleau Wood in 1918" from the authors of Tanks in Hell ( Books Monthly ). "Retreat, hell! We just got here!" The words of Capt. Lloyd Williams at Belleau Wood in June 1918 entered United States Marine Corps legend, and the Marine brigade's actions there—along with the censor's failure to take out the name of the brigade in the battle reports—made the Corps famous. The Marines went to war as part of the American Expeditionary Force, bitterly resented by the Army and Gen. Pershing. The Army tried to use them solely as labor troops and replacements, but the German spring offensive of 1918 forced the issue. The French begged Pershing to commit his partially trained men, and two untested American divisions, supported by British and French units, were thrown into the path of five German divisions. Three horrific weeks later, the Marines held the entirety of Belleau Wood. The Marines then fought in the almost-forgotten Blanc Mont Ridge Offensive in October, as well as in every well-known AEF action until the end of the war. This book looks at all the operations of the Marine Corps in World War I, covers the activities of both ground and air units, and considers the units that supported the Marine brigade. It examines how, during the war years, the Marine Corps changed from a small organization of naval security detachments to an elite land combat force. "The goal of revealing the thoughts and actions of individual soldiers in battle is achieved admirably here." — The Journal of America's Military Past

CHAPTER I

Background to War

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON

For most of its early institutional history the United States Marine Corps filled many of the functions of the British Royal Marines upon which it was patterned: shipboard and naval security, and providing skilled manpower to strengthen naval landing parties. Yet almost from its inception the Corps had been forced by circumstance to function as infantry in land warfare. The most notable examples were in the Battle of Bladensberg in defense of Washington against a British raid in August 1814, and in a raid on the British camp on the night of December 23/24, 1814 prior to the decisive Battle of New Orleans.

When the United States became a colonial power in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, the Marines found themselves thrust into a new role as America’s “colonial infantry” and “the State Department’s troops” The Corps almost never fielded any force larger than a company, the primary exception being Huntington’s Battalion in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. (Typically operating as extemporized numbered companies, the Corps did not even have a system for naming larger formations—hence the name.)1

Another role stemmed from the Navy’s adoption of concepts presented in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, when the Navy began development of a battleship navy appropriate to a global power. Germany was then perceived as the main potential foe, with a need to defend the new and extraordinarily important Panama Canal then under construction. In the aftermath of the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War an aggressively expansionist Japan suddenly emerged as a potential threat to America’s Pacific possessions.

Relatively safe behind the Atlantic and Pacific moats, America maintained a sizeable navy. But most Americans were immigrants or immediate descendants of European immigrants who held strong distrust of standing armies that in Europe had all too often been used to subjugate the population. In 1914 the tiny US Army was 5% the size of France’s army, 9% the size of Germany’s.

As early as 1900 the Navy General Board and the Secretary of the Navy ordered the Marine Corps to establish an Advanced Base Force of Marines primarily to secure bases in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (the approaches to the Panama Canal) against attack.

In 1903 the new Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, established the Joint Board as a planning body to coordinate between the Navy and Army. The Army quickly expressed opposition to the advanced base defense role, with no intent to seize or defend naval bases. Congress had also appropriated funds for a large battle fleet but only a limited number of support vessels, fueling the need for a capability to capture and defend the necessary bases. Over the following decades the Marine Corps would struggle to establish an expeditionary force in the face of bureaucratic foes and a stingy Congress.

The first real test of the Corps’ new expeditionary force capabilities came in 1914. Mexico was in the grip of revolution. Conspirators connected to General Victoriano Huerta assassinated the new president, Francisco Madera, Madera’s brother, and the Vice-President, and seized the reins of power. Known as El Chacal (“The Jackal”) or El Usurpador (“The Usurper”), Huerta’s brutal regime was based on oppression of the people, if necessary by violence.

Instability in Mexico was threatening both the global oil supply and access to the new Panama Canal. President Woodrow Wilson was also something of a moral crusader, and he lifted an arms embargo against the Constitutionalist forces in an attempt to force Huerta from power. (In 1914 Mexico was the third largest exporter of oil. Though it produced only 7% of the global supply, several major European nations were heavily dependent upon Mexican production.) Wilson continued to ratchet up the pressure on Huerta, stationing a Marine Corps regiment under Colonel John Lejeune offshore, and resurrecting Army plans for a land invasion. Tensions grew when Mexican forces detained a few American sailors in Tampico. The sailors were quickly released and an apology offered, but Huerta balked at the terms of the demanded apology.

On April 18, 1914, the American consul in Veracruz reported that a German ship with 200 modern machine guns and fifteen million rounds of ammunition to support the Huerta regime would soon dock there. The Germans still wished to establish an alliance with Mexico that would also further their influence in Central America and the Caribbean. Veracruz was, not coincidentally, also Mexico’s primary shipping port for crude oil.

For Wilson, it was the last straw. The Navy began to hurriedly concentrate a force off Veracruz.

Still seeking appeasement, Huerta ordered his troops not to resist an American landing, but the local commander had already sent soldiers to the docks, armed the local militia, and even released and armed prisoners from the jail. The naval landing force was quickly pinned down, but the Marines—more accustomed to such fighting—took to the rooftops to eliminate the snipers that formed the main resistance.

Captain Frederick M. “Fritz” Wise who had suffered under the Corps’ slow peacetime advancement for fifteen years, seeing extensive expeditionary and sea service, as well as combat in the Boxer Rebellion, arrived on the second day of the fighting; he commented that “All the Advance Base business on which we had been drilling and maneuvering for months had been dropped. We were plain infantry now.”

The Marine reinforcements were instructed to systematically clear the city block by block. The process was not greatly different from that in the twenty-first century. “Each company was allotted a city block [wide swath] with orders to comb it from the water front straight through to the inland edge of the town, disarming all Mexicans we found, confiscating all arms. When one block was finished we were to wait until each company had cleaned up its block, and then advance all together on the next block. We started.

“We found the blocks were built solid. Walls flush with the streets. Patios inside. Flat roofs. We started with the first house. The heavy wooden doors were locked and barred. Marines with sledge hammers were ready. We smashed the doors and went in.

“Not a shot was fired at us. We never found an armed Mexican. We did find a few old rifles and pistols. We picked them up and went along. It took us most of the afternoon.”

Other landing parties had been in the town since early morning, and “Here and there we encountered parties of them. Our men were under orders not to shoot without a target. Others weren’t under quite so rigid discipline. All over the town around us wild shooting was going on all afternoon. It was the damnedest mêlée I ever saw in my life.” Members of other patrols warned them that few Mexicans were being encountered, but they “also warned us to be awfully careful about American sailors—they would shoot at anything.” Wise was later told that a surgeon reported that “out of the nineteen Americans killed at Vera Cruz, thirteen deaths were due to wild shooting by our own people.”

Clearing one house Wise went onto the roof, and “suddenly I heard bullets whizzing all around me. The plaster on that parapet flew on both sides of me. I flopped. The shooting continued. It was a miracle I wasn’t hit. From where I lay I could see a group of American sailors on the roof of a high building which I took to be the Diligencia. Evidently they took me for a Mexican sniper.” Wise slithered along behind the parapet until he was able to drop back through the roof’s trapdoor into the building and send a runner to ask the sailors to please not shoot at them. That night one of Wise’s NCOs was killed by a sailor.

By the next day there were three Marine regiments in the city, and later Army units arrived and began the task of fortifying the small city. Both sides settled into an uneasy truce.2

By April 22 the landing parties and naval gunfire had subdued any organized resistance. At War Department request, a Marine brigade—infantry and artillery—under Lejeune remained to police the city for eight months while American and Mexican negotiators argued. The conflict simply sputtered out, and in July 1914 Huerta resigned his office and went into exile.

The performance of American forces had in general been less than sterling, but the press gave heavy coverage to the Marines, virtually ignoring the sailors of the landing force. The exercise demonstrated that the Corps could quickly organize a regimental-scale expeditionary force by combing available troops from base security personnel, ships’ guards, and a core of an advanced base force, all transported aboard naval vessels.

The Corps continued to struggle with the problems of growth from the nuclei of shipboard detachments, and the separate numbered companies that constituted most of the Corps’ manpower was an artifact of that system. In October 1916 the 49th Company—a typical unit—disembarked from the battleship USS Nebraska at Portsmouth, Virginia, to begin a seven-month stint as a guard company. Plagued by rapid turnover of officers and senior NCOs as men were transferred to and from other duties in the expanding Corps, the company languished. Absorbing large numbers of recruits from among the crews of vessels impounded by the United States, the company quickly became known as a sort of “foreign legion”, with many recruits who did not speak English. As for practical field training—there was none.3

President Wilson was determined to avoid entanglement in the European war that erupted in August 1914. As Germany grew increasingly isolated and beleaguered, she turned to unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1915, and the sinking of the passenger liners SS Lusitania and SS Arabic with heavy loss of life (among them American citizens) were the most egregious incidents. Still Wilson resisted, narrowly winning re-election in November 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.”

Imperial Germany’s foreign policy was rather ham-fisted, and the worst provocation by far was the so-called Zimmermann telegram. Confident in the security of German diplomatic codes, in January 1917 the German Foreign Secretary wired instructions to the German ambassador in Mexico City. The cable was intercepted and decoded by the British:

FROM 2nd from London #5747

We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call to the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. Signed, ZIMMERMANN.4

The United States began interning German vessels in February 1917, but the British delayed showing the telegram to Wilson until February 24. Wilson was already exasperated by Germany’s refusal to end unrestricted submarine warfare, and the clear German disinterest in ending the war by negotiation. The Zimmermann telegram was one provocation too many, but still Wilson vacillated. On April 2 he finally asked Congress for a declaration of war.

When war was eventually declared the Navy was the service best prepared for it as it had been the primary guarantor of American neutrality behind its Atlantic moat.

The Mexican intervention provided some limited combat experience for many future Army officers from John Pershing and George C. Marshall, to Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. The tiny American Army, though potentially one of the most formidable in the world, would require many months to mobilize and train into a capable combat force.

The Marine Corps, dragged along by the Navy’s insistence upon the advanced base force role, and with a demonstrated capability to quickly mobilize a land combat force and transport it overseas, suddenly found itself thrust into a new land combat role that would alter its future forever.

CHAPTER 2

Making Marines

The first day I was at camp I was afraid I was going to die. The next two weeks my sole fear was that I wasn’t going to die. And after that I knew I’d never die because I’d become so hard that nothing could kill me.

ANONYMOUS MARINE1

For most of its institutional history the Marines trained recruits in a very different fashion from national armies.

Armies traditionally trained recruits by immersion in the unit in which they would serve. The recruit was assigned to a unit, and the officers and NCOs of the unit would whip him into shape by whatever means thought necessary. The same officers and NCOs would lead him into battle and the soldier—though he might be transferred between units and sub-units (less often than for officers and senior NCOs)—strongly identified with the unit. This was the case with the Regular US Army.

In the pressure of building a large organization for war, the US Army actually developed three armies. There was the old, pre-war Regular Army, made up of proud regiments that could trace their lineage back more than a century. These units recruited on a nationwide basis. The new National Army—regionally recruited or conscripted men—was organized into newly created units, with men trained in the same manner. The National Guard consisted of pre-war state militias, controlled by the governors of the various states and absorbed into the National Army in time of war. Though many Guard units had long and sometimes distinguished histories, officers were far too often selected and promoted on the basis of political connections rather than professional ability. Training—usually on scheduled drill days and in summer encampments—often consisted of socializing and skylarking about the countryside.

The Marine Corps had traditionally recruited and trained in very small numbers, chiefly individuals who volunteered from port cities or through local advertisement in places like post offices.

All too many recruits were indigents or the scrapings of port cities, seeking “three hots and a cot.” The individual recruit was sent for a brief period of training at places like the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where most of his training was in basic skills like drill, dress, and rifle marksmanship. The individual’s advanced training in skills like naval gunnery (in that era Marines manned the secondary batteries on battleships and cruisers) was conducted on the job within his assigned unit.

The enormous expansion of the Corps following the passage of the 1916 Naval Appropriations Act necessitated major changes in the way the Corps recruited and trained. The Act provided for an active-duty strength of 597 officers and 14,981 men; the President could increase the strength to 693 officers and 17,400 enlisted by executive order, which he promptly did on March 26. In August Congress authorized the creation of a Naval Reserve of unlimited strength, to include a Marine Corps Reserve. The Marine Corps Reserve would eventually incorporate women Marines, and inactive personnel. The total strength of the Reserve at war’s end was 277 women; 463 officers of whom 360 were newly commissioned second lieutenants; 33 warrant officers and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Authors’ Preface
• 1 Background to War
• 2 Making Marines
• 3 Over There
• 4 Into the Lines—Les Eparges
• 5 Belleau Wood
• 6 Replacements
• 7 The Sick, the Wounded, and the Dead
• 8 Soissons
• 9 The Women Marines
• 10 St. Mihiel
• 11 Always on the Job: The Atlantic Fleet and Foreign Interventions
• 12 Blanc Mont Ridge
• 13 Marine Aviation
• 14 Meuse-Argonne
• 15 Victory and Occupation
• 16 Aftermath
• Appendix: Equipment and Weapons
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Plate section