Reduced Regiments
The numbered colonel's commands of J-Series divisions
During the Second World War, twenty-nine regiments, served with the operational forces of the US Marine Corp. Of these, eighteen served as infantry regiments, six as artillery regiments, and five composite engineer regiments. On 1 October 1947, the number of regiments in the Fleet Marine Force had been reduced to fourteen. Moreover, where the Marine regiments of the Second World War provided permanent organizational homes for three - and, in the case of the artillery regiments, four - battalions, their postwar counterparts were configured as single battalions.
A plurality of the Marine regiments serving on 1 October 1947 - five infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, and one shore party regiment - belonged to the 2nd Marine Division. (Then, as now, the 2nd Marine Division hung its helmet at Camp Lejeune, on the coast of North Carolina.)
The second biggest collection of Marine regiments - two infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, and a shore party regiment - were assigned to the 1st Marine Division, located at Camp Pendleton, in the hills between San Diego and Los Angeles.
Two of the three remaining regiments were serving in China, in support of the (Quixotic) attempt to broker a peace between Nationalists and Communists. The last could be found on the island of Guam.
Sources
A Chronology of the US Marine Corps, Volume III (1947-1964) (Washington, DC: US Marine Corps, 1971) page 4 (USMC)
Gordon L. Rottman US Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002) pages 114 and 222
‘The New FMF’ The Marine Corps Gazette (May 1947) pages 10-14
‘Staffing the New Marine Division’ The Marine Corps Gazette (October 1947) pages 37-45
(Back issues of the Marine Corps Gazette can be found on the Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, JSTOR, and the magazine archive of the Marine Corps Association.)
For Further Reading
