The Marines are Establishing a Beachhead for Needed Change by David Ignatius

Political Crossfire The Marines are Establishing a Beachhead for Needed Change at the Pentagon

By David Ignatius

When Gen. David H. Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, announced a radical new plan in 2019 to remake his service, many Marines figuratively rolled their eyes. For a combat force proud of its traditions, change can sometimes seem like the enemy.

Two and a half years later, Berger actually appears to have pulled much of it off. The Marine Corps is smaller and more agile, it has disposed of all of its tanks and many of its artillery pieces, and it looks like a force of the future, not the past. The era of counterinsurgency wars, along with the doctrine and equipment to support them, is over for the Marines.

Resistance to change was “less than I thought it would be,” Berger told me in an interview last month at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif. The key, he said, has been to take the money and people freed up by discarding old systems and invest in new capabilities that can combat a modern, high-tech rival such as China.

“We cannot afford to retain outdated policies, doctrine, organizations, or force development strategies,” Berger wrote in his 2019 “Commandant’s Planning Guidance.” The heroic tradition of Marines storming faraway beaches from a few big amphibious assault ships was “illogical,” Berger wrote, “given the growth of adversary precision strike capabilities.”

For a Pentagon that has been agonizingly slow to shed legacy weapons systems – such as aircraft carrier task forces and fighter jet wings – Berger’s rethink of the Marine Corps has been encouraging. It’s one thing to demand change but quite another to make it happen over inevitable objections from Congress, defense contractors, and the military’s own implacable bureaucracy.

To assess what Berger’s makeover looks like in practice, I talked with some of his senior commanders. They tell a similar story – of getting rid of venerable old systems to make way for newer ones that are small, elusive, and sometimes unmanned.

Maj. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the commander of the 2nd Marine Division, illustrates the transition. His division fought in the bloody amphibious assaults across the Pacific in World War II, at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Tinian, and Okinawa. They were in the first wave of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and fought in the bitter battle of Fallujah. The division motto is “Follow Me,” right out of a John Wayne war movie.

So, what does change look like for this fabled division, based at the legendary Camp Lejeune in North Carolina? First, the division shrank, from 18,000 Marines to 15,000. It lost two artillery batteries. It shed the heavy bridging and engineering units that had constructed forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. It gave up a tank battalion, losing 44 M1A1 tanks and the Marines who had made tank warfare their specialty.

“Why would I want a tank, when I can kill a tank with a loitering [drone] munition?” Donovan bluntly asks. The challenge, he says, was providing a “transition with honor” for Marines who had devoted their careers to tank warfare. The division helped them find new jobs, transfer to Army tank units, or retire.

How has the Marine Corps rebuilt its combat capabilities using different weapons and doctrine? I talked with Brig. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson, the commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va., and a deputy, Brig. Gen. Eric Austin, who is director of capabilities development. (Both were nominated in December by President Biden for a second star.)

Watson described a future Marine Corps with a very different footprint. Rather than sailing toward beachheads in big amphibious assault ships, the Marines of the future will be deployed forward, in smaller, more agile, harder-to-find units. Because China can easily target “stand-off” units stationed far from potential conflict, these will be “stand-in” forces that, says Watson, will be “operating persistently forward.”

If a conflict seemed imminent with China, say, these future Marines could move quickly from their forward bases to seize maritime choke points. They would operate closely with allies, such as Japan, with which the Marines just staged a big exercise called Resolute Dragon 21, and Australia, where Marines are based in Darwin on the northern coast.

The warfighting lab envisions littoral brigades that can operate quickly and stealthily, with many Marines replaced by unmanned systems – and using electronic-warfare tools that can hide the Marines’ presence and find the adversary. “This is the biggest change in 70 years for the Marine Corps, but we’re still the Marines,” says Austin.

Berger has forced the Marine Corps to learn a new vocabulary, and his best commanders speak the language of change with passion. But truly reinventing a combat force won’t be easy, and some of the new “standin” concepts sound to me nearly as vulnerable to a high-tech adversary as the old ones. Still, for a Pentagon where inertia has too often been a way of life, the Marines are showing overdue signs of movement.

Forgotten Her es Pool and Abrams

Top Tankers During World War II

By Avi Heiligman

Tank ace Lafayette Pool Pool receiving the Order of the Legion of Honor in France in 1946 Creighton Abrams with President Nixon during the Vietnam War

One of the most feared weapons in the Nazi arsenal during World War II were their Panzer tanks. The Tiger I and Tiger II heavy tanks and the Panzer III, Panzer IV and Panzer V Panther medium tanks were the workhorses for the German army. As the war progressed, the Allies began to realize that these tanks had vulnerabilities – but so did their own tanks. This led to epic tank battles during the war like the Battle of Kursk. Western Allies also had success against the Nazi tanks, but since the M4 Sherman had many problems, it was up to the skills of the tank commanders to use them effectively.

M-4 Sherman medium tanks were a mainstay in the American Army during World War II. While American manufacturers built other heavy tanks that proved to better on the battlefield, the Sherman was cheap to produce in large numbers. Close to 50,000 rolled off the production lines, and, coordinating with planes, they were able to defeat the German Army that had better but less weapons. When one Sherman tank was hit, another just took its place, and these proved to be the decisive factor after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The only thing stopping General George Patton and his tanks from driving into Germany during the fall of 1944 was the lack of gasoline reaching the frontlines.

Sergeant Lafayette Pool from Texas is known as the American tank ace of aces. A few months before the United States entered the war Pool joined the army and was assigned to the 3rd Armored Division. Noted for his effective training tactics, he was offered a commission but refused so he could stay close to his men on the frontlines. The 3rd Armored Division was deployed in September less rifle on June 29, 1944. His second tank lasted two and a half weeks before friendly fire from a P-38 fighter put it out of action. Both times the crew was able to bail out without major casualties. On September 19, while fighting on the Siegfried Line, Pool’s Sherman was hit twice by a German Panther, and the second round tipped the Sherman into a ditch. The driver was killed by the Panther’s round, and Pool was thrown from the Sher-

The only thing stopping General George Patton and his tanks from driving into Germany during the fall of 1944 was the lack of gasoline reaching the frontlines.

1943 in preparation for the invasion of France.

Pool was with the 3rd Platoon of Company I, 32nd Armored Regiment of the division, and during fighting from June to September 1944, he commanded three different M4A1 Sherman tanks. His crew remained basically the same throughout the battles, but his first tank barely lasted a week. It was hit by a round from a German anti-tank Panzerfaust recoilman’s hatch. The injuries to Pool were so great that his leg had to be amputated, and he wasn’t able to fight for the rest of the war.

During his 80 days in battle, Pool destroyed over 350 vehicles including 12 tanks, captured 250 German soldiers, and eliminated over 1,000 more soldiers. In his first engagement with the enemy, his Sherman, nicknamed “In the Mood,” destroyed three German vehicles and took out 70 enemy fighters. “The Texas Tanker,” as he was soon called, had an excellent crew, and together they were able to detect and destroy targets in the dark (this was decades before night vision technology was available). One on occasion, they had driven into an area that was being used to stage elements from the 2nd Panzer Division. Pool knocked out at least four enemy vehicles and two German tanks during the chaotic battle.

For his bravery in battle, Pool’s awards included the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, French Croix de Guerre with Bronze Star and the Belgium Fourragere.

General George Patton was known as one of the best tank commanders in history but even according to him, “I’m supposed to be the best tank commander in the Army, but I have one peer – Abe Abrams. He’s the world champion.”

Creighton “Abe” Abrams was a graduate of West Point and served with the 1st Cavalry Division before transferring to the 1st Armored Division in 1940. During World War II, he was with the 4th Armored Division and held several positions including commanding the 37th Tank Battalion and Combat Command B. Patton had Abram’s battalion as a spearhead for his 3rd Army and was one of the lead-

A Sherman tank in battle Creighton Abrams on top of his command tank A M1 Abrams tank, named after the tanker ace

ing elements that broke through the German lines surrounding the 101st Division at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

One of the reasons Abrams was so successful using the Sherman over his German counterparts was that he made the most of the Sherman’s advantages. The Sherman was faster and had a greater speed than the German Tigers or Panthers, which, for most commanders, wasn’t enough to offset the German’s range, accuracy, and better armor. Tankers in Abram’s unit recalled him being up on the frontlines in the thick of the toughest battles in his tank nicknamed Thunderbolt shooting as fast as the Sherman would allow.

During the tank Battle of Arracourt in September 1944 in France, Abram’s 37th Battalion lost 14 Shermans while knocking out a whopping 55 Panther and Tiger tanks. At the breakthrough at the Bulge, a correspondent reported that with the first elements to make contact with the surrounded 101st “Colonel Abrams rode through – a short stocky man with sharp features – already a legendary figure in this war.” In 1980, the army named its newest main battle tank the M1 Abrams after the tank hero.

It takes a fully trained and experienced crew to man a tank successfully, and then there were those who could use an inferior tank to their great advantage. Pool and Abrams were just two of these fearless tankers from World War II. While tanks aren’t used in battle as much as they once were, these heroes bravely fought for our freedom and deserve to be remembered.

Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com.