United States Marine Corps

Means of Grace, Hope of Glory

By Robert Barr Smith

They carried no weapons, only holy books and rudimentary vestments, a crucifix or a Star of David and sometimes a little Communion kit. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Combat Fatigue: How Stress in Battle was Felt (and Treated) in WWII

By Duane Schultz

Eugene Sledge knew a thing or two about combat fatigue. It was September 15, 1944, on a tiny spit of land called Peleliu: the Japanese opened up with heavy mortar fire just as the Marines moved off the beach and started inland. Read more

United States Marine Corps

The Battle for Henderson Field: the Harrowing Fight on Guadalcanal

By David A. Johnson

“Colonel, there’s about 3,000 Japs between you and me.” Sergeant Ralph Briggs telephoned the command post of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment at about 9:30 on the night of October 24, 1942, to report what he had just seen. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Blood on the Border: Patton and Pershing’s Punitive Expedition

By Eric Niderost

Lieutenant John P. Lucas of the 13th U.S. Cavalry was sound asleep in a small adobe shack in Columbus, New Mexico, on the night of March 9, 1916, when he was abruptly awakened by the unmistakable sounds of men and horses passing outside his window. Read more

United States Marine Corps

George C. Marshall: Architect of Victory

By Michael D. Hull

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Hill 2200: Retracing the Steps of Balboa

By Guillermo Rivera

As a combat veteran of some of World War II’s toughest fighting, Lieutenant Jim McDonald was not easily flustered, but he had a bad feeling about this. Read more

United States Marine Corps

WWII Vehicles: The Island-Hopping LVT

By R.J. Seese

While making business calls in Tampa, Florida, during the summer of 1980, I spotted a strange looking tracked contraption atop an overgrown pedestal in front of the U.S. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Who Really Raised the Flag on Iwo Jima?

The Marine Corps announced this Wednesday, August 24, 2016 that it has revised the identification of two of the men who raised the first flag on Iwo Jima. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Operation Dovetail: Guadalcanal Rehearsal

By Arnold Blumberg

By June 1942, the military might of Imperial Japan threatened Australia. The string of spectacular Japanese conquests in the South Pacific menaced lines of supply and communication between the United States and its allies and bases in the region. Read more

United States Marine Corps

The Battle of Peleliu: Was it necessary?

by Eric Niderost

If Peleliu was one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Pacific Theater, it was also one of the least known until recently. Read more

United States Marine Corps

The USS Panay: First Step on the Road to War

By Eric Niderost

Around 10 o’clock on the morning of December 13, 1937, New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend received an unexpected visitor: Rear Admiral Tadao Honda of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Bringing Down the Bridges

By John Mancini

In April 1941, German troops swarmed into Greece from Bulgaria. Despite a valiant defense by the Greek Army and support from the British, the Nazis smashed their battle lines and controlled Greece within weeks. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Dickey Chapelle: First Female Photojournalist Killed in Action

By Al Hemingway

Colonel H.B. Miller, a Marine public relations officer on Guam during World War II, looked up from his desk to see before him a boyish-looking woman dressed in a baggy khaki shirt and pants and wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Read more

United States Marine Corps

The Battle of Cape Esperance: A Sorely Needed Naval Victory

By David Alan Johnson

“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” Read more

United States Marine Corps

The U.S. Army’s Humvee

By Albert Mroz

The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee, was created as a light, multipurpose, off-road vehicle that would supersede the venerable jeep and other light trucks. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Australians at The Hook

By Al Hemingway

During the battle for Hill 111 on the night of July 24-25, 1953, Sergeant Brian Charles Cooper was in charge of a 10-man machine-gun section of the 2nd Royal Australian Regiment located on the extreme right flank of How Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Island-Hopping at Tarawa

By John Walker

Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, commander of the elite Japanese garrison entrenched on tiny Betio Island in the central Pacific Ocean, boasted in mid-1943 that his heavily fortified island redoubt could hold out “against a million Americans for a thousand years.” Read more

United States Marine Corps

The Thompson Gun’s Curious History, from World War I to World War II

By Arnold Blumberg

In 1917, when America entered the First World War, the United States Army tasked Brigadier General John T. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Belleau Wood: Shrine of Great Deeds

By Al Hemingway

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1918, the earth trembled and the air was filled with a deafening roar as 4,000 German artillery pieces let loose a tremendous barrage on Allied lines. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Horror on Marpi Point: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

by John Wukovits

Normally, the end of combat brings satisfaction and a sense of relief, but the Army infantrymen and Marines who slugged it out with the Japanese at Saipan experienced little of either. Read more