The 1st Marine Division , which is the base camp Pendleton in California, is the oldest and largest unit of this type of USMC, the Marine Corps U.S.. Even today, it comprises 19 000 men and is involved in several theaters of operations. It's nickname is "The Old Breed." It includes 1st, 5th and 7th Marines (infantry) and 11th Marines ( artillery). The 1st Marines was trained in Cuba in 1911. The 5th Marines was created in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914. He took part in engagements in France during the First World War, including the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918 when the Germans nicknamed the Marines " dogs of the devil" because of their ferocity in the attacks. The 7th Marines consists in Philadelphia in 1917 and the 11th Marines in 1918 at Quantico. The 1st Marine Division is created about it until 1 February 1941 aboard the battleship USS Texas . After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry into the war United States, the division will be illustrated in some of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa particular. After 1945, the division suffered budget cuts common to the entire American army after the war ended. However, the remaining troops are engaged in the Korean War: September 15, 1950, the 1st Marine Division participates Inchon landing planned by MacArthur, who will temporarily turn the tide of the conflict. Division releases Seoul and headed north and the Yalu River which marks the border with China, under the command of General boiling Oliver P. Smith . The Chinese launched a massive attack on UN forces November 27, 1950: The 1st Marine Division , cornered in the Chosin Reservoir , managed to retrieve it, not without losses, but by inflicting as much if not more to his opponent. The division remains online until the war ended in 1953.
The Korean War has allowed Marines to test the new doctrine of "vertical envelopment " the enemy through the use of helicopters, but this test was limited by the mountainous character of Korean territory. The next conflict will be found in which committed the 1st Marine Division will be an opportunity to realize this doctrinal thinking.
The Korean War has allowed Marines to test the new doctrine of "vertical envelopment " the enemy through the use of helicopters, but this test was limited by the mountainous character of Korean territory. The next conflict will be found in which committed the 1st Marine Division will be an opportunity to realize this doctrinal thinking.
Simon Dunstan after this presentation of the unit history, traces the career of the 1st Marine Division Vietnam. It landed in Vietnam in the second half of 1965: the 7th Marines is involved in the first major battle row of the war against the Vietcong , Operation Starlite (August 18).
The 1st Marine Division , like other units engaged in the USMC in Vietnam, is in the area I body tactic is to say the northern part of the country on the border with North Vietnam (the South Vietnamese had divided the country into four zones of different tactics, from I to IV north to south). In 1966, the entire 1st Marine division (17,000 men) participated in the fighting. The Marines put forward initially in accordance with the history of their body, a doctrine of pacification of the population, namely to protect the villages and inhabitants of the coastal plains where their bases before going to face opponent in the interior. General Westmoreland , the chief U.S. commander in Vietnam, is in a completely different strategy: Pressed by the political power to achieve results, he wants to initiate training Vietcong and North Vietnamese in major battles for eliminate more possible enemy soldiers. This is what will soon become the doctrine "search and destroy" . However, throughout the year 1966, the Marines face along the border of the regular units of the North Vietnamese army that infiltrate the south by the Ho Chi Minh trail in clashes rather conventional. This does not prevent them from developing the system CAP (Combined Action Platoons ) , self-advocacy groups collecting Marines and South Vietnamese forces local. At the top of the program, 2500 Marines assigned to it.
However, in the southern part of the I. Corps Tactical Zone where the 1st Marine Division , General Westmoreland ordered the Marines conducting operations more conventional for the year 1967. Accordingly, the "Great War " U.S. faces the proven expertise of Vietcong and North Vietnamese ambushes, entrenched positions are difficult to eliminate enemy contact to prevent the use weapons and support, etc.. The end of the year 1967 ends in a stalemate for the Americans: the strategy of protracted guerrilla benefit the North Vietnamese, who are preparing to launch the Tet Offensive in attracting the north, the maximum units Marines on the fortified camp of Khe Sanh , they pretend to want to attack with force. Westmoreland wants to crush the battlegroup North Vietnamese in a sort of " Dien Bien Phu in reverse . In fact, when the offensive fires 20 January 1968, is the clash between American firepower and the power of the human mass North Vietnamese. However, the real battle fires throughout South Vietnam with the Tet offensive of January 30, 1968. To the north, the North Vietnamese easily took the city of Hue, the Marines will have to recapture one of the bloodiest urban battles in the history of the USMC (147 dead, 875 injured in less a month of combat).
The "Great War " Westmoreland has occurred: the Vietcong wiped out in terms military. However, the general is fired and the Americans have not won the war. Quite the contrary, President Nixon and the new commander in chief, Abrams, will engage the "peace with honor": the beginning of negotiations, Vietnamization and gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces, emphasis on pacification, however, advocated in 1965 by Marines. The North Vietnamese won the war of public opinion they held until the Americans no longer support the war effort. The Marines know so the same problems as other units in the last years of conflict: racial problems, drug use, " fragging" (grenade attacks against the officers or NCOs). The last units of the division left Vietnam in 1971. The Vietnam War was the longest in the history of the USMC: nearly 13 000 men were killed in combat (or 30% of U.S. casualties) and nearly 90,000 were injured. The Marines guarding the U.S. embassy in Saigon will be the last to leave when the city fell into the hands of the Communists in April 1975 the bodies of the last killed will never be recovered. An output image of the disaster that is the conflict for the United States.
The Marines had a publishing arm that reflected their experience of " little war": the Small Wars Manual, published in 1940. The theory of peace they have experienced in other conflicts was to protect civilian populations surrounding the bases in the coastal plains, before pursuing insurgents or other adversaries in the interior. Marine Generals Krulak as Viktor also advocated massive bombings on strategic infrastructure North Vietnam (Red River dykes, railways with China, Hanoi) and the mining of Haiphong harbor where came the Soviet equipment. But "graduated response " Washington, fearing an escalation with China, was limited to the operation Rolling Thunder, a complete ineffectiveness. In the I Corps Tactical Zone, the Marines faced an opponent who had two sanctuaries nearby: Laos and the DMZ. It is indeed strange that Marines found themselves in this area: light infantry force trained to amphibious operations, they were placed in the area where we waited for the invasion of South Vietnam by the North's regular army. Would not it have been wiser to place Marines in the Mekong Delta, where their expertise would have been amphibious used? Interservice rivalry is playing here, because since the end of the Second World War, U.S. Army, already in Korea, had denied the doctrine of amphibious warfare carried by the Marines the benefit of his own doctrine of war conventional. The Marines ultimately remain a tool for showing worldwide, serving the president and U.S. interests.
Finally, the book by Simon Dunstan is not without qualities or faults either. Among the first: an abundant iconography and quality, interesting reflections on the role of Marines in the conflict, theme boxes, annexes well supplied. Among the latter: a text can be a bit short, about an unbalanced since focused mostly on the early years of the conflict, as quite often in books on the Vietnam War. The bibliography is perhaps a little short. Nevertheless, it is a good summary that allows the subject to clear.
Finally, the book by Simon Dunstan is not without qualities or faults either. Among the first: an abundant iconography and quality, interesting reflections on the role of Marines in the conflict, theme boxes, annexes well supplied. Among the latter: a text can be a bit short, about an unbalanced since focused mostly on the early years of the conflict, as quite often in books on the Vietnam War. The bibliography is perhaps a little short. Nevertheless, it is a good summary that allows the subject to clear.
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