Talk:History of the United States Marine Corps

Comment on capitalization of Colonial Marines
Simmons uses the lowercase "marine" when referring to Colonial Marines. I have decided to retain this convention unless there are objections. --Mmx1 00:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Review
This is a very good article. Is there an interest in putting it up for GA or even working to FA? &mdash; ERcheck (talk) 03:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it is close to GA status if not already. Worth the effort for sure.  I will be gin to cite and edit as necessary.--Looper5920 03:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions
I made some edit on the Marine Corps History article but now my changes are gone. At the Battle of Bladensburg, the oldest US Marine Corps post, The Marine Corps Barrack was spare for their bravery. There was nothing in the article post about that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Okita Soshi (talk • contribs) 17:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC).
 * They were removed because they were very poorly written and because scholars doubt the factual accuracy of that version of events.--Looper5920 19:24, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Expansion request - GWOT
The GWOT section mentions Afghanistan (OEF) and Iraq (OIF), but does not mention other areas that the Marine Corps works in support of GWOT (Reserve support of border patrol, Horn of Africa, etc.) I think this is an area that should be expanded to include the full scope of USMC GWOT activities. &mdash; User: (talk) 00:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

French Fourragere
"and decorated both the 5th and 6th Regiments with the Croix de Guerre. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then Secretary of the Navy, stated that enlisted Marines would henceforth wear the French Fourragere on the left shoulder of their dress uniforms."

I'd like to point out that only Marines from the 5th and 6th Regiments wear the French Fourragere. The wording leaves it open to the interpretation that all enlisted Marines wear it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shpeve (talk • contribs) 04:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

Request for Addendum to the World War II Article
Obviously the Marine Corps were KEY in the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign. They WERE the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign. Its a very responsible use of space, content and imagery of the raising of the flag. I noticed that the article named only the photographer Joe Rosenthal at the raising of the flag, but not any of the names of the Marines in attendance. It is generally believed that their was a lot of anonymity regarding these soldiers. I do know of atleast one Marine that has been identified and honored in Texas for his participation on Mt. Suribachi. This Marine's name is Harlon H. Block. It would be note-worthy in my opinion to include the Marines and Corpsman that were actually raising the flag. Want some feed back please. [mailto:jerry.zambrano@utah.edu;jerry.zambrano@hotmail.com;jaredZUSMC@hotmail.com Jerry Zambrano] Jerry.zambrano 08:07, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * There is full information on this in the article &mdash; Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. The Marines in the first and second flag raising are identified in the article.  I don't think that level of detail is needed in this Marine Corps history article, which is already quite long. &mdash; User: (talk) 19:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC) P.S. Note that the article is linked in this History article's WWII section. &mdash; User: (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Traditions
I want to discuss the various traditions and symbols of teh Corps (EGA, the hymn, the Rifleman's creed, etc), but I'm undecided over whether it should be a section on this page or a new article. Thoughts? ''' bahamut0013 ♠  ♣  00:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Trophies
A note to Bahamut, please don't delete sourced information while making claims about the sources that are patently not true. The source i used clearly mentions the ear collection specialty. As to it being far fetched. May I humbly ask you to read
 * Trophies of War: U.S. troops and the mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941 - 1945
 * Skull trophies of the Pacific War

Or why not have a peek at Life Magazine "Picture Of the Week" from May 22, 1944.

Cheers --Stor stark7 Speak 09:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

From the source:
 * "It doesn't encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine-guns turned loose on them."
 * his allegations are supported by other American diarists, who report that the US marines, in particular, did not take many prisoners. Prof Aldrich also discovered new diaries showing that American generals worried about the abuse of human remains by their troops.
 * They were particularly concerned that the skulls of dead Japanese soldiers were often displayed as gruesome mascots by some units, while US marines made a specialty of collecting ears.

And this is the sentence that seems to be disliked by so many : A Marine-corp specialty was the collection of Japanese ears, while the army troops preferred to collect and display skulls.

By User:Looper5920 deleted with the reasoning: "it is poorly written, out of context, given way to much emphasis and should not be added to this broad a topic....bottomline it is out of place."

The "broad topic" in question being History_of_the_United_States_Marine_Corps

I can only conclude that the purpose of this article is to be a commercial and a recruitment poster for the U.S. Marine corps, and should be labeled as such to warn any potential readers of this bias and other flaws. Cheers.--Stor stark7 Speak 11:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * No bright one..it's a broad history of the Marine Corps. If you want to add it to an article on atrocities of WWII by allied soldiers or in the pacific theater then go ahead.  The more ears the merrier as they say but the fact doesn't change is that is is poorly written, given way to much emphasis as I am sure only a small fraction of Marines actually did this  and was out of place where it was added. --Looper5920 (talk) 11:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Bright one? Please, call me Lucifer. A more fitting article to add the information to would be United States Marine Corps during World War II, perhaps it should be started. However, since there is no such article at the moment the natural place to start expanding is here. But with the attitude displayed here I doubt there will be much written about the marines, except "hero" trivia. As to: "I am sure only a small fraction of Marines". What do you base that sureness on? Perhaps you are just as sure that just a small fraction of Japanese women in territory occupied by the Marines were raped for example?,,. --Stor stark7 Speak 13:52, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I missed the remarks of ears, but a single line in the article hardly merits a mention in the broad historical scope of the page. If you want to write about the atrocities, then write about them, but how many Marines collected ears in comparison to the scope of the war? Doubtful it was more than a handful. If yu feel the need to create such an article, the go ahead, but this article is not an indicriminate collection of random events that happened to occur in the USMC's history.
 * Your claims of NPOV in this article are also without merit, and quite frankly, offending. Simply because this is not a collection of negative facts does not make this a recruiting poster. The concept is to present objective facts, not analysis or conclusion, and let the reader draw thier own ideas. That also requires a balance, meaning that giving proportionate weight to events that occurred is important. When the section on WWII has a mere five paragraphs, mentioning a grotesque hobby that was so obscure as to only be notated in a single article is certainly not good balance (and I do say only one beacuse you present refernces about skull collecting by the US military, not ear collecting by Marines; such is not appropriate for an article about Marine history). We want to stick to a more wide-spread focus.
 * You could write an article about atrocities in World War II. Then you can broaden your scope to include all nations and all branches. ''' bahamut0013 ♠  ♣  15:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Once again you've obviously been careless with the sources. The two scholarly works deal with all types of U.S. trophy hunting, the most common of which was taking the gold-teeth of dead, and sometimes living, Japanese. Some excerpts: "U.S. Marines on their way to Guadalcanal relished the prospect of making necklaces of Japanese gold teeth and "pickling" Japanese ears as keepsakes." In an air base in New Guinea hunting the last remaining Japanese was a "sort of hobby". The leg-bones of these Japanese were sometimes carved into letter openers and pen-holders. And these were no isolated incidents, they were quite common. As to the skulls. In 1984 Japanese soldiers remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands. Roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls. Doesn't sound like the activities of just a handful of men. As to it being only a single article mentioning it. What on earth gives you that idea? Is it because I only provided you with one there must only exist one? As to notability, how about the fact that Hoyt in "Japan’s war: the Great Pacific Conflict" argues that the Allied practice of mutilating the Japanese was exploited by Japanese propaganda very effectively, and "contributed to a preference to death over surrender and occupation, shown, for example, in the mass civilian suicides on Saipan and Okinawa after the Allied landings." Hows that for impact of an "obscure" hobby.--Stor stark7 Speak 16:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, you exaggerate. I don't know how to get to you, you seem intent in establishing a negative light on a trivial part of World War II. I have to doubt that you actually have good intents for this article, and find it hard to assume good faith here. ''' bahamut0013 ♠  ♣  11:28, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This topic is also covered in American mutilation of Japanese war dead any comments on or additions to that article by editors here would be welcome - in particular on the incidence of these kinds of actions. Nick Dowling (talk) 02:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Fake diaries, fake atrocities, covering up the well known fact Japanese instead of surrending when in dire conditions conducting what leftist liars like the ones who act as the typical wikipedia "good" "sources" want everyone to consider "mass surrender", fantacal banzai charges and officers who failed committing suicide after the attack etc, all throughout the Pacific war which has been documented as 100% the case of the high death toll in the casualty rate not just by legit historians of the war in the Pacific that are American, but by Japanese as well, and was even promoted and admitted so by the Japanese at the time. But hey lets make up some crap to smear US Marines saying the didn't stop firing their "machine guns"...a brash uneducated sounding statement concerning war...I bet you can't even give me the techinal descripton of these weapons, much the lest the professionally trained gunners who manned them. Whats next John Bassilone when he was attacked by a huge swarm of Japanese, apparently they all really just wanted to surrender to him, and so now he upon further review is a racist, imperialist, war criminal? LOL. When it comes down to truth the skull story is a non-atrocity, dead enemy skull(thats been fully decayed, sitting out in the jungle for years) gets sent home as a shock to wife, Now this can't be a 1 in a million weird incident that has little to do with the Marine Corps as it does with the regulations at the US Postal office, or otherwise us Americans have 25,000 paper weights of skulls that Ghengis Khan would be proud off. Pro-Facist "historians" and Commies have long been cooking up fake war crime tales to smear America, they took the bs ear necklace thing and copied it from VVAW fake vet bs agitprop from the early 70's and sent it back in time to once again say based upon a few ridiculous, unfounded, no evidence for horror tales that have descripiencies out the wazoo the horrible White Amerika Nazi Republican War Machine was killing poor innocent Asian boys and toddlers who only wanted everyone to be happy and the "Co-Prosperity Sphere" to thrive. It was the Japanese who mutilated Americans, it was them who had a policy of murder, torture, and terror, we were the ones cheered and still like to this day in the Samoas, Marshalls, Phillipines, Taiwan, Burma, not those sickos.RT21Marine (talk) 05:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Promotion to B Class
This article has way more inline citations that I would expect in a B-class article, so I've promoted it. Its probably ready for a GA review if any of the authors want to give it a try. Kirk (talk) 14:56, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd be willing to try later on... I still need to flesh out some of the more recent wars, as well as deal with that large unorganized mass of Colonial Marine content that should probably get shifted to that article. I've been meaning to put some time in on this article again for a while.  bahamut0013  words deeds 15:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

RFC: Inaccuracy
In the article I found what seem to be discrepancies and a major omission. Any number of sources state unequivocally that The Continental Marines were founded on November 10, 1775. And that Captain Nicholas' second in command 1st Lt Isaac Craig recruited 63 Marines at Tun's Tavern in Philadelphia. While the original building is long gone the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has provided ample evidence of its existence near Dock St. It is to be expected that each of the four original officers probably went to four separate taverns to recruit Marines along the waterfront. Every year there is a major Marine celebration at a tavern on Oregon Avenue in South Philly where Marines have congregated for many years on November 10th. The Marines then joined Commodore Esek Hopkins squadron and made a successful amphibious landing on New Providence Island. They also gave a good account during the "Glasgow" incident which was blown out of all proper propriety for political reasons. Having spent a great deal of time on the water in fog you can become quickly disoriented. That notwithstanding, you could not pick out your own brother at 50 feet, let alone definitively identify a ship at 100 yards.

General Cadwalader ordered the Marines under his command to find out if it was safe to make a night crossing over the Delaware. A group of Marines shoved off slightly north of Pennsbury Manor and landed in New Jersey just south of the Assunpink Creek. Upon finding the area quiet Captain Craig ordered one of the boats back to Pennsylvania so that he could report to Cadwalader that it was safe to cross. Cadwalader refused to cross claiming all sorts of ridiculous objections. (Hence the Philly area terminology of a coward being a Cad.) The Marine officer thereupon recrossed the river and extracted his men according to the Cad's orders. Upon arrival back in Pennsylvania General Cadwalader decided to send the Marines back across the river and secure a beachhead for him for his movement at dawn by which time an infuriated General Of The Armies George Washington had already taken Trenton. The Cad's only accomplishment was to roust a small contingent of enemy troops at Assunpink Creek later in the morning. General Washington abruptly sent the Cad back to Philadelphia while he took the Marines and some Pennsy troops to Princeton. The Marines having never faced a bayonet charge by British Regulars panicked. The brilliant, and gallant General Hugh Mercer rode in among them and rallied the Marines at the cost of his life. Captain Craig thereupon was unwillingly conscripted into the Army serving until the end of the war in 1783.

My name is Walter S. Gee III and I am Isaac Craig's lineal descendant by right of primogeniture. I am first and foremost a researcher and second a writer. You can reach me at s or at My phone is and I live in Copperhill, TN 37317-0423. Should you wish to check out the above your first stop should be The Historical Society of Pennsylvania on Locust St in Philly. Your next stop should be the Carnegie Mellon Library in Pittsburgh, PA. I also located a great deal of information at the Philadelphia Free Public Library. I would also refer you to the National Archives where I also found a great deal of information.

Respectfully Yours, brother walt gee
 * Even if that's all true, it must be sourced to proper reliable sources; that's your job, not ours. I will also point out that the phrase "lineal descendant by right of primogeniture" is gibberish. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  19:19, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is written as VERIFIED from RELIABLE SOURCES. The discussion above contains no RELIABLE SOURCES supporting its claims. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What exactly are the supposed inaccuracies/omissions? It seems all you've done is ramble about the service of one of your ancestors, which wouldn't really be appropriate for this page (though a link to his biographical article certainly would be). Why did you RfC this?  bahamut0013  words deeds 15:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Samuel Edmundson Watson
LtCol Samuel Edmundson Watson, USMC, seemingly forgotten once believed future C.O. of the USMC. He was a Capt. of the circa 1830's Marine Barracks, Portsmouth Navy Shipyard, Kittery, Maine, and then a close friend (and I assumed kinsman) of my old New England Watson family of Dover, N.H. His actual Watson ancestry was old Virginia. He was later C.O. of the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., and thought a likely future Commandant. He was killed in the Mexican War and (temporarily? buried in the same grave with Maj. Twiggs, Gen. Twiggs' son. I think Twigg's remains were recovered to the U.S. after the war. The fate of LtCol Watson's remains are unknown to me. Somewhere it was alleged LtCol Watson made mistakes in that war; but I know no details. His death so effected the Washington Marine Barracks, that it's officers wore black arm-bands on their uniform sleeve, 30 days (was this then an "official" practice? Is it still official?). Where this should go with the USMC, I do not know? My ancestor, LtCol Robert Wm. James (1840's Holmes Co., Miss., militia, born 1811 Wilmington, N.C., died 1882 Biloxi, Miss) was civil an master of the U.S. Army transport 'Gen. Hamer' out of New Orleans, in the Mexican War. His pension application was denied because as a master, he was civilian. What was the pre-war, and post-war names of the "Gen. Hamer"; it's fate, and origins? ∞ focusoninfinity 18:26, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

First Solo Flight of Alfred Cunningham
http://www.flymcaa.org/getattachment/MCAA-Publications/YellowSheetWinter2012Cunningham.pdf.aspx "Birth" of flight is designated where actual "first flight" took place- in this case, Marblehead, MA, or in the case of the Wright Bros, Kitty Hawk, NC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.250.56.88 (talk) 17:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

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Confederate marines are irrelevant to discussion of the United States Marine Corps
Please remove the discussion of Confederate marines from the Civil War section of this article--an article specifically about the U.S. Marine Corps. The Confederate States of America, by contrast, was an enemy of the United States that killed U.S. troops--including at least 148 Marines, as the article itself describes. While CSA government and military organization is of real importance to historians, it is not part of U.S. governmental history and so should mostly be confined to its own articles. Conflating Confederate history with U.S. governmental history may please white nationalists, but it has no basis in fact or logic, and it does a disservice to the more than 360,000 U.S. servicemembers who sacrificed their lives to defeat Confederates and their cause. At most, the text describing Confederate marines should be reduced to a sentence linking to Wikipedia's Confederate marine corps article.

Last image in WWI section should be removed
This is not an image of US Marines during the Meuse-Argonne, it is an image of Iowa National Guardsmen taken 6 months earlier. The image is 111-SC-8364 in the National Archives. The original description reads: "168TH INFANTRY (FORMER 3RD Iowa Infantry) --French and American raiding party making their way to a Mecklembourg trench. This trench was captured in a former raid. Badonviller, France, March 17, 1918." Link: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/55177246 Tenacious Trilobite (talk) 04:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)