Army and Navy Review 1915 Panama-California Edition - Balboa Park

Only in recent years have we had company and regimental organization
in the Marine Corps, and at the present time we have three regularly
organized regiments, two of which are designated as advance base regiments.
An advance base regiment is one which is trained with the idea of
co-operating with the fleet by seizing, fortifying and holding some harbor
where the fleet may rendezvous, or where it may seek protection. The
men of an advance base regiment are therefore trained in the landing and
placing of heavy guns, up to seven-inch, and manning such guns; in placing
and handling of submarine mines; and in signal work of all kinds, including
wireless telegraphy.
It is characteristic of the Marine that he must be able to look after
himself, and he is, therefore, trained as a signalman, seaman, and artillerist,
while primarily he is an infantryman.
A force of Marines ashore in hostile territory is absolutely independent
of other arms of the service, carrying its own artillery, automatic rifles,
engineers, signal corps, etc.
The Marine Corps is an integral branch of the Navy, and is under the
Secretary of the Navy, except when by direction of the President the Corps
or parts thereof may be turned over to the Secretary of War for duty with
the Army. One reason why the Marine is not better known to the people
of the United States is, because his deeds have been merged by historians
into chronicles of the Army and Navy. One reads for instance of the naval
battle between the Bon Homme Richard and Serapis, without realizing that
in this engagement the Marines of the Bon Homme Richard lost forty-nine
out of a total strength of one hundred and thirty-seven; in all the naval
engagements of our country, the Marines have participated, and always
with great credit to their Corps and to their country.
Not alone have the Marines participated in the naval engagements,
but they have fought shoulder to shoulder with their brothers of the Army
on many a bloody field. Thus with the army of General Scott during the
Mexican war, a battalion of Marines from the fleet were with the Army,
and the first regulars who entered the fortress of Chapultepec when Mexico
City was taken, were United States Marines. Major Twiggs, who commanded
the Marines, was killed in the storming of Chapultepec. After the
occupation of the City of Mexico the battalion of Marines was detailed as a
guard of the Palace.
It was in 1805 that Lieutenant O’Bannon of the Marines, with a small
body of Marines participated in the attack on Derne, Tripoli, after a sevenhundred-mile
march across the desert, and first planted the flag of the
United States on foreign soil. There was a battalion of Marines at Bull
Run. In 1812 the Marines fought Malay pirates on the Island of Sumatra.
In 1836-7 a regiment of Marines co-operated with the Army against the
Indians in Georgia, and on many occasions in faraway localities, the Marines
have defended the honor of the flag at times that are seldom mentioned
by historians, it being characteristic of the Marine that he be sent ashore
on foreign soil and settle various affairs without the historians deeming it
of sufficient importance to note it in history. Thus in 1839 the Marines
participated in minor engagements in the Fiji Islands, and in 1855 took
part in the destruction of a fleet of piratical Chinese junks. They fought
again in the Fiji Islands in 1858, and in the same year Marines were landed
in Montevideo, Uruguay. It is not generally known that the force under
Colonel Robert E. Lee, that captured John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in
1859, were Marines. In 1859 Marines first landed in Panama. In 1860
Marines were landed on the west coast of Africa to protect American prop­