The Transformation of the Marine Corps (1899-1916)

Battalion: An Organizational Study of the United States Infantry

The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface and the previous section of this book may be found via the following links:

In terms of its growth, the Marine Corps benefited from the fallout over the campaigns around Santiago and Manila even more than the Army had. In March 1899, Congress authorized a Marine Corps with the unprecedented strength (even in wartime) of 201 officers and 6,062 men. The Corps’ actual strength reached 174 officers and 5,240 men by the end of that year. For the moment its institutional future seemed secure. Although Marine Commandant Charles Heywood wanted to increase his Corps’ traditional role of supplying warship detachments, the Navy was rapidly warming to the view that the Marines were far better employed manning permanent landing forces in support of the Fleet. The value of such forces had been unequivocally demonstrated in 1898 and Admiral Dewey was already calling for a Marine landing force to be stationed at Cavite for the use of the Asiatic Fleet. By November 1899, this force comprised no less than three Marine battalions (12 companies) totaling 43 officers and 976 men.[1]

More change was in the wind, however. Until 1898, the Navy never had a senior staff that could give advice to decision-makers on naval policy. In that year Secretary of the Navy John D. Long appointed a Naval War Board, or Strategy Board, headed by Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan. The Naval War Board would advise the Secretary on strategic policy and conducting the War with Spain but Long allowed the Board to dissolve when that war ended. However, the Navy’s rapidly expanding size and responsibilities caused the Secretary to announce the formation of the Navy General Board.

This body soon began to function as the Navy’s de facto general staff. Its chairman, Admiral George Dewey, had recently returned from the Philippines and was by then the most distinguished naval officer on active service. Like the Army’s General Staff, the Navy General Board was mostly an advisory body but the Secretary almost always followed its advice. Though mainly concerned with naval strategy and the annual shipbuilding program, the Board also decided a number of Marine Corps issues.[2]

One of these was that of the role that the Marines would play in naval landing forces. Prior to 1898, the Marines had routinely participated in most types of Naval landing parties. However sailors constituted the majority (typically 75%) of at least the larger landings and naval officers were normally in command. Commander William Fullam, still the leader of the movement to eliminate the Marine ship detachments, had as a lieutenant in 1896 called for the formation of permanent Marine battalions that could support the Fleet wherever it went. They would free more sailors for sea duty and enable the Marines to accumulate expertise in land operations. However, many officers opposed Fullam partly from conservatism and partly from the conviction that the Army could furnish any large landing forces that might be necessary and that the Marines should be abolished. Spanish-American War experience, however, tilted official opinion towards Fullam. Indeed, the Navy’s decision to form the 1898 Marine Battalion may well have been at least a partial result of Fullam’s influence.[3]

Since Admiral Dewey was already a strong advocate of giving the Marines the landing force mission, the General Board, which he chaired, decided in favor of this move fairly quickly. However, the Board believed that such landing forces should be mainly defensive. Since no enemy could defend everything, the Board expected that in most parts of the world there would be suitable undefended or lightly defended sites for fleet bases or anchorages. The Fleet would select one of these sites as its forward base and set the Marines to fortifying and defending it. This would leave the Fleet free for offensive action, knowing that it had a secure base close by that it could fall back on. Having arrived at this concept, the General Board advised the Navy Secretary to order the Marines to form a provisional four-company battalion at Philadelphia that could support it.

In September 1902 this battalion, after acquiring a fifth company (bringing its strength to 19 officers and 522 men), deployed to Culebra for extensive exercises with the Fleet. The potential wartime usefulness of this force was demonstrated a few years later in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japanese Marines established a fortified base in the Elliott Islands that allowed the Japanese fleet to closely blockade the Russian fleet in Port Arthur. This later brought about the latter’s destruction by land based heavy artillery. In 1907, as US relations with Japan deteriorated, US Marines in the Philippines built and manned temporary defenses at Olongapo to protect Manila and the Naval base at Cavite. The Marines’ ability to fortify and defend advance bases soon figured in all of the General Board’s war plans.[4]

Meanwhile, the Marines continued to develop their base defense doctrine and mission. By 1913 they had concluded that an advance base force should be structured as a brigade composed of two regiments of about 1,250 enlisted men each (plus officers). One would be a fixed defense regiment, armed with heavy pedestal mounted naval guns, mines, searchlights and other specialized equipment. It would protect the base itself and the seaward approaches to it. The other would be a mobile regiment, consisting of infantry and field artillery. It would engage enemy forces operating outside the range of the fixed defenses, and be particularly responsible for repelling a landing. This advance base brigade was not expected to fight the enemy’s main battle fleet (that was the Navy’s job) but would instead protect the base from smaller threats such as cruiser squadrons, fleet detachments, or raiding forces.

In 1911, in order to facilitate these plans, the newly appointed Marine Commandant Major General William Biddle ordered all Marines at barracks and naval stations who were not required for “housekeeping” duties or absent in ship detachments to form themselves into numbered companies. Each company would start off with three officers (at first, it was only possible to assign two officers per company) and 100 enlisted men. Many companies received training and equipment for specialized base defense roles though all were supposed to serve as infantry when needed. Companies could then combine to form temporary regiments or separate battalions. Two or three regiments, in turn, could form a brigade. Individual companies would be “semi-permanent” and provide some organizational continuity but larger units (regiments, brigades, etc.) would continue to be “provisional.”[5]

Implementation of General Biddle’s 1911 order seems to have taken some time although the numbered companies were definitely in place by 1913. Freeing up enough Marines to man them seems to have caused more difficulty than anticipated. Although nearly 10,000 enlisted Marines were on active duty in 1913, about 2,000 were serving in ship detachments and 950 in overseas garrisons. Another 5,600 were serving in the Navy’s depots, prisons, magazines, and shipyards. Still others were on furlough, in hospital, in confinement, or awaiting discharge. This left few enough for new units, though some of the men on depot or yard duty could be made available. By June 1913 two advance base regiments had been organized at Philadelphia. Of these, the First would be the fixed defense regiment and the Second would be the mobile defense regiment.[6]

Although Marine organization and doctrine for land combat was supposed to follow that of the Army, unique requirements and limited manpower, made it necessary to build Marine regiments and battalions differently. A Marine regiment could have six to 10 companies and it might operate as one, two, or as many as three battalions. Two to five companies could constitute an independent battalion but these were seldom created in practice. A regiment also included a staff, a headquarters detachment, and, frequently, a band. In a fixed defense regiment there would also be a fire control or searchlight unit to direct the naval guns. The headquarters detachment functioned similarly to an Army headquarters company, though it was usually smaller. The regimental quartermaster and his assistants handled all the regiment’s logistics without a supply company because animals, vehicles, and drivers were difficult to move by sea and would not be needed on a continuing basis. Marine landing forces only operated over short distances inland, could buy local food or rent transport, and could count on at least some help from the Navy.[7]

In keeping with these principles, the two regiments at Philadelphia initially had six companies apiece. In the First Regiment these were a signal company; a field artillery company; two naval gun companies (one with four 5-inch rifles and the other with four 3-inch); a mine company with 60 sea mines; and a machinegun company. The Second Regiment totaled four rifle companies, a field artillery company and a machinegun company. The field artillery companies in the two regiments each had four 3-inch “landing” guns and at least one company (from the First Regiment) had two Army 4.7-inch guns as well. Each machinegun company manned four “one-pounder” (37mm) boat guns and eight Colt machineguns and could also serve as an engineer unit. In November 1913, the two regiments became the Advanced Base Brigade. In January 1914, it exercised at Culebra with the Atlantic Fleet.[8]

The advance base training of the brigade, however, was soon interrupted. In April 1914 the Wilson administration ordered the Atlantic Fleet to occupy Vera Cruz in Mexico. The Marine brigade would have to participate as infantry and would require extensive reconfiguration and reinforcement. By May, the Brigade had expanded from 12 companies to 24. These included a signal company, two field artillery companies (forming a separate battalion), and three infantry regiments with a machinegun company and six rifle companies (forming two battalions) each. Expected reinforcements would add a seventh rifle company to each infantry regiment and a third company to the artillery battalion. Two more regiments (the Fourth and the Fifth) were also assembled but neither was needed. However, it was not until November that the Marine Brigade was free to return to Philadelphia, disband its Third Regiment and resume its advance base training. As early as the following August the Brigade once again had to revert to its infantry role when the Wilson administration ordered the Atlantic Fleet to intervene in Haiti. Just as Haiti was getting under control, the Brigade received new orders to send the bulk of its men into the Dominican Republic. Though organized resistance there was soon crushed, the Marine occupation of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic would continue until 1934 and 1924, respectively. Thus the Marine Corps, propelled by events over which it had little control, had again been forcibly diverted from its “natural” amphibious calling to become a colonial police force.[9]

Editor’s Note: The format of the many appendices to this work fit poorly with Substack. For that reason, I have placed them on a PDF file that can be found at Military Learning Library, a website that I maintain.

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[1]Shulminson pp. 197-198; and LtCol Kenneth J. Clifford USMCR Progress and Purpose: A Developmental History of the United States Marine Corps 1900-1970 (Washington DC, History and Museums Division Headquarters Marine Corps 1973) p 1. The total number of companies in the three Marine battalions at Cavite is not given in any source this writer has been able to uncover. However, four companies was the preferred number in a battalion and the fact that there were 43 officers strongly suggests that that this was the case (i.e. 12 companies with three officers in each, plus three battalion commanders, three battalion adjutants, and a force commander). The number of enlisted men also “tracks” (i.e. 12 companies of 81 men each plus three battalion sergeants major, and a force sergeant major).

[2]Clifford pp. 6-7

[3]Shulminson pp. 111, 146, 148, and 211; and Clifford pp. 8-10; see also Brigadier General Dion Williams USMC “The Fleet Landing Force” Marine Corps Gazette Volume XI No 2 June 1926 (Quantico Virginia) pp. 116-127.

[4]Clifford pp. 8-13

[5]Clifford, pp. 12-13; and Introduction to the Index for US National Archives (Washington DC) Record Group 127 p 31; and Heinl, Soldiers of the Sea, op cit pp. 165-166.

[6]Record Group 127, Ellsdran File 2385-60, letter from the Commandant of the Marine Corps to the Secretary of the Navy dated 16 September 1913, giving the then current deployment of the Marine Corps. Maj. James H. Johnstone A Brief History of the First Marines (Washington DC, Historical Div HQ Marine Corps 1960 revised 1962) p. 2; and Capt. Robert J. Kane A Brief History of the Second Marines (Washington DC, Historical Div  HQ Marine Corps 1962) p. 6

[7]Author’s own survey of surviving records of early Marine regiments. Too many sources to be noted here but see Record Group 127 Ellsdran file 2385 US National Archives and published Marine regimental histories.

[8]Clifford p. 16; Record Group 127, Ellsdran File 2385-30, letter from the commander of the 1st Marine Brigade at Vera Cruz, Mexico to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, July 17, 1914; see also Johnstone & Kane op cit.; and see Maj. David N. Buckner A Brief History of the Tenth Marines (Washington DC, History & Museums Div. HQ Marine Corps 1981) pp. 3-5; Heinl op cit p. 161.

[9]The best recent account of the Vera Cruz operation is Jack Sweetman, The Landing at Veracruz 1914 (Annapolis Maryland, Naval Institute Press 1968). See also the pamphlet “Organization of the First Brigade U.S. Marines Operating in Eastern Mexico” May 1st 1914 (New York, USMC Recruiting Publicity Bureau 1914). A copy is at the Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington DC.