History Pgs. 32-65
10/9/06
5:24 PM
Page 48
THE MARINES
“SKILLED WATERMEN AND JUNGLE FIGHTERS, TOO”
Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps
(The Interwar Years, 1919-1941)
Smedley Butler led Marines and sailors in an assault on Fort Riviere that effectively ended the Caco rebellion in Haiti during one of the “Banana Wars.” Unpopular at home, they helped forge a new generation of Marine Corps officers and NCOs. Fort Riviere, Haiti – 1915, Colonel Donna J. Neary, USMCR (Ret.), 1989, oil on canvas.
T
he Marines returned from Europe after World War I to national acclaim for their sacrifices and valor. Yet the Corps would soon be in dire straits because they still lacked a unique warfighting mission, a distinctive role that would satisfy national security interests without unduly competing with the Army. In the doldrums ahead, a shadowy prophet would illuminate the path – the brilliant and doomed Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis. In the immediate postwar years, when most Marines envisioned their future role simply as renewed service in another continental campaign, Pete Ellis perceived a radically different naval mission. Ellis foresaw a major war in the Pacific with Japan and projected the use of Marines as amphibious shock troops to forcibly seize advanced naval bases along the island stepping-stones leading to Japan. Then came the nine-year commandancy of John Lejeune in the 1920s. Very much akin to his nineteenthcentury predecessor Archibald Henderson, Lejeune managed to return the Corps to its naval roots and ensure his officers and NCOs gained meaningful combat experience around the world. Lejeune proposed the principal future focus of his fighting men as “a mobile Marine Corps force adequate to conduct offensive land operations against hostile Naval
bases.” The key distinguishing word in this concept: offensive. At Lejeune’s insistence, the Navy and Marines conducted experimental fleet landing exercises in the Caribbean in the winter of 1923-1924. The results were not pretty. Offensive landing operations turned out to demand the solution of significant problems that Marines were far from ready to handle. These involved command and control, communications, fire support, and – desperately – the challenge of moving men and their major weapons ashore. Lejeune was hamstrung in conducting further amphibious tests in his tenure because he had virtually no field forces left at home. The Marine Corps, reduced to less than one third of its WWI strength, became heavily committed for years in “limited wars” in Haiti (19131934), the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and Nicaragua (1926-1933). These were the so-called “Banana Wars,” unpopular at home and among the native populations. The fighting, small in scale, savage in execution, was ugly and relentless. The no-quarter fighting in these nasty little undeclared jungle wars had as their sole undisputed reward the training and hardening of many superb Marine officers who would command significant forces in the Pacific War to come.
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