“From the halls of Montezuman to the shores of Tripoli we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea. First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean, we are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.”
The Marines is a well-respected branch of the United States Armed Forces that started in the year 1775. It’s three commitments -to make quality American citizens, to fight America’s battles, and to make Marines -makes the United States Marine Corps or USMC one of the most dedicated branches of the Armed Forces. Formed by a few young Americans, the US marines started with two battalions during the war of the colonies and Great Britain.
The resolution drafted by then congressman John Adams stated that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” to serve the Continental Navy. This resolution created the Continental Marines –now known as the United States Marine Corps.
The original US Marines made their way into American history in their participation in the revolutionary war. The very first Marine landing that occurred on hostile territory was led by Captain Samuel Nicholas. He and his men captured the Bahamas’ New Province Island from the British forces in March of 1776. This led to Nicholas being the first commissioned officer of this branch of the Armed Forces. It is interesting to note however that when America finally got its independence from Great Britain in the year 1783, the marines disbanded due to the demobilization of the Continental navy.
A conflict at sea with France resurrected the US Navy in May of 1798. It was John Adams, the very person who drafted the resolution for the creation of the Continental Navy formally established the US Marine Corps two months later. This made the marines a permanent military force under the Department of Navy.
What makes a marine?
What Capt John W. Thomason said in 1918 while in France speaks not only of the Marines who were fighting the war at the time but of all the men who wore the uniform of the USMC.
“There were Northwesterners with straw-colored hair, delicately spoken chaps with the stamp of the Eastern universities on them There were large-boned fellows from Pacific Coast lumber camps, and tall, lean Southerners who swore amazingly in gentle, drawling voices. There were husky farmers from the corn-belt, and youngsters who had sprung, as it were, to arms from the necktie counter. And there were also a number of diverse people who ran curiously to type, with drilled shoulders and a bone deep sunburn, and a tolerant scorn of nearly everything on earth. Their speech was flavored with navy words, and words culled from all the folk who live on the seas and the ports where our warships go. There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet –such a column represents a great deal more than 28, 000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column, too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation –Brandywine and Trenton, and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickmauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly every year –in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap was in Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of women; and that abstract thing called patriotism which I never heard combat soldiers mention –all this passes into the forward zone, to the point of contact, where war is firt with horrors. And common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory.”
Today, there are over 200, 000 active-duty and reserve personnel for the Marines. They are divided into three divisions. One stationed in Camp Lejeune in North Caroline, one in Camp Pendleton in California and one in Okinawa, Japan.
Always faithful, as their motto “Semper Fidelis” says, the US Marines are always there to serve the nation –to defend its right to freedom.
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