Over the beach - University of Oregon

Staff, the Navy General Board, the Army War College as both an educational
institution and as an extension of the Army Staff for planning and strategic
thought, and, in 1903, the Joint Board of the Army and Navy.
The Joint Board was intended to provide a forum for the discussion
of matters that required the cooperation of the two Services. The Board
engaged in some war planning in the years prior to World War I, including
joint studies for a possible war with Japan, and considered command
and control of joint operations. 28 In 1908 Dewey, the senior member of
the Board, recommended that when Army, Navy, and Marine forces were
engaged in joint operations on shore, the senior line Army offcer should
command the joint force and have authority to issue orders to the offcers
in command of the forces of the other two Services. At the time, both
Service Secretaries agreed, but such action required legislation and by
1913 the Navy had reversed its position and the project ceased. 29
During this same period, the Marine Corps underwent changes that
would ultimately result in the adoption of landing force operations as its
primary mission. The Marine success at Guantánamo coincided with a
growing sense within the Navy that a force devoted to the landing mission
should replace the traditional ad hoc landing forces. 30 In 1900 the Navy
General Board gave the mission of seizing and defending advance bases
to the Marine Corps after considering, and dismissing, Army forces for
this role, because an appropriate Army force might not always be available.
In 1901 the Marine Corps designated a battalion for the advance base
mission, carried out landing exercises in the Caribbean, and in 1910 established
an Advance Base School at New London, Connecticut. 31 While far
less focused on the issue than the Marines, the Army produced a rudimentary
manual on landing doctrine in 1908 and conducted a landing exercise
on the coast of Massachusetts in August 1909. 32
The most signifcant landing operation before World War I took place
in April 1914, when a US Naval Division composed of marines and sailors
from ships of the Atlantic Fleet, augmented by a Marine battalion from
the Advance Base Force, seized the Mexican port city of Vera Cruz. On
24 April Brigadier General Frederick Funston arrived with a reinforced
Army regiment to replace the naval division, take operational control of
the marines, and begin an occupation that lasted until 23 November. 33
World War I provided no opportunities for US amphibious operations,
but other belligerent powers carried out several landings. In September
1914 the Japanese landed on the coast of China to seize the German colony
at Qingdao (Tsingtao). They also occupied German possessions in
the Marianas, Caroline, Palau, and Marshall Island groups in the Central
18