Our Navy in the War

by Lawrence Perry

The company officers of the battalion stepped out in front of Major-General Barnett and saluted. Then the general spoke for a few minutes in an every-day, conversational tone. He told the men that he trusted them, that he knew they would uphold the honor and high traditions of the corps when fighting in France under General Pershing. The officers saluted and stepped back to their places. The battalion stood at rigid attention for a moment. Then with a snap, rifles jumped to shoulders, squads swung into column formation, and the line passed swiftly down the street to the gate of the navy-yard.

No cheering crowd greeted the marines as they emerged from the gateway, and only a few persons saw them board a train of day-coaches for a near-by port. The sun-browned fighting men, all veterans of campaigning in Hayti and Santo Domingo, waved their campaign hats from the windows and the train moved away.

Half an hour later another battalion marched briskly down the same street from the end of a tree-lined vista, and formed on the parade-ground. The bluejacket nine was still at baseball practice, but the marines were at the far end of the field, too distant to attract particular attention. A third battalion formed and stacked arms in front of the barracks. Presently, without so much as a bugle-note for warning, the two battalions formed, picked up their arms, and defiled out of sight, back of a screen of shade-trees.

A quarter of an hour later a rumor came to the bluejacket ball-players that the marines were boarding ship. The jacky beside the home plate dropped his bat and ran toward the street, his team-mates close behind him. They were too late to catch even a glimpse of the rear-guard. The marines, just as swiftly and quietly as if they were on their way to Hayti, Santo Domingo, Vera Cruz, or Nicaragua, had departed.

We all know what they did and what subsequent regiments of marines sent to the front has done. Their fighting in the region of Torcy in the German drive of last June, when the Teutonic shock troops got a reverse shock from the marines, has already become a part of our brightest fighting tradition. The marines are fighters, have always been so—but it took their participation in this war to bring them prominently before the public.

"Who and what are the marines?" was the question frequently asked when the communiques began to retail their exploits. Ideas were very hazy concerning them, and indeed, while we all are by this time quite familiar with what they can do, there are many of us even now who do not quite know what they are.

Be it said, then, that the United States Marine Corps was authorized by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775, and therefore has the distinction of being the oldest military branch in the United States service. The corps served valiantly throughout the Revolutionary War, and was disbanded at the close of the war, April 11, 1782. But the corps was reorganized and permanently established July 11, 1798. From that day to this, its officers have been zealous participants in every expedition and action in which the navy has engaged, and in many trying campaigns they have won distinction with their brethren of the army. Their motto is Semper Fidelis, and ever have they lived up to it in war and in peace.

The marines serve both on land and sea. They are trained, clothed, and equipped very much as are soldiers of the land forces. In their preliminary instruction on shore, at navy-yards and naval-stations, they are instructed and drilled in the duties of infantry soldiers, field-artillery men, and as machine-gun companies. In preparation for their duties as landing-parties from ships of the navy, for expeditionary duty, and as defenders of naval advance bases, they are further trained in the use of portable search-lights, the wireless telegraph, the heliograph, and the various other methods of signalling. They study range-finding; erection, operation, and maintenance of telegraph and telephone lines; planting of land and submarine mines; handling of torpedoes; erection and demolition of bridges; building of roads; knotting and splicing of ropes; handling of heavy weights; fitting of gun-gear and the various methods of slinging and transporting ordnance, and the mounting in suitable shore positions of guns of 3, 5, and 6 inch caliber.