The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Identity and Role 71
is—of what the Marine Corps’ job really is. The Marine Corps’
primary function is to prepare the way for other troops. Ours is
an amphibious operation. . . . For that purpose we have trained for
over a hundred and sixty- seven years. We are today, I believe, the
most proficient amphibious military body in the world, and I say
this with due modesty. 116
Holcomb’s Corps certainly valued excellence in amphibious operations
for its wartime utility but, perhaps more important, because amphibious
expertise offered the Corps distinction. Craig Cameron, writing of that era,
describes this mission set as the “great gift” to the Marine Corps, fulfilling
its ultimate craving for “a single, great mission” and a distinctive role—
one essential to national security—that would set it apart from the Army
and Navy: “Amphibious assault made a sort of elite of the entire Marine
Corps.” 117 Holcomb was forthright about this status. Speaking in 1943, he
pointed out that the Marine Corps’s dedication to “the most exhaustive
research of landing operations . . . throughout the world’s written military
history” provided Marines with an education that
does not make us better Army officers than the best Army officers or
better Naval officers than the best Navy officers. They can run the
Army far better than we can. They can run the Navy far better than
we can. But by the same token, because of our specialized training,
we can run amphibious and landing operations better than they
can. With our tradition, experience, and our training, they could
run amphibious operations as effectively as we can, but they do not
spend their lives in this specialization. We do. 118
Holcomb encouraged Marines to take exceptional pride in their expertise
since “landing operations are, of course, the most difficult of all military
maneuvers.” The successful prosecution of these operations, in his view, laid
the foundation for the Marine brand of esprit de corps. 119 A newly pinned
Marine subjected to Holcomb’s version of leatherneck history would see it
as an unbroken path of preparation for amphibious assault:
The U.S. Marine Corps always has had a predilection for this kind
of amphibious fighting. . . . For nearly one hundred and seventy
years, Marines have been specializing in amphibious warfare, and
I believe the Corps has fought more continuously than any other
service. We conducted landing operations during the Civil War,
and again during the Spanish- American War. The Marines landed
at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. They landed in Haiti, and Nicaragua,
and at other places in Latin America and the Caribbean. They
landed in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. Always, when