Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1918 — Why the Marine Is a Fighting Demon [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Why the Marine Is a Fighting Demon

Esprit de Corps and Unceasing Training Give Power to the Soldiers of the Sea

THE FRENCH, tired from countless attacks, were filtering to the rear. The roads were choked with war material, with roaring trucks and rushing camions. Everywhere the refugees were hurrying toward safety, carrying with them their household effects, dragging their cows behind their heavily loaded wagons—sad, yet smiling and striving to be brave. The last great German drive was on, pounding, relentlessly forward toward Paris. But in contrast to this picture was another, that of great trucks crammpd with full-chested, steel-muscled men, hastening to the front. Men from the far-away were these new warriors of new vim'and new ideas and new methods of fighting. Men who knew Germany only as a thing to be defeated, who never had met Fear, who laughed at the horrors of the Huns, They were United States marines.

But the odds were figainst them. The Germans had started their rush — the swift-moving hordes must be halted. And more than that, halted by a body of men who must make up for their inferiority in numbers by a superiority of fighting power. The trucks churned on. Children, standing b/ the roadway, threw flowers to those marines and cheered them. White-haired old women, rocking atop the refugees’ carts, called a blessing to them. But would' they—these bronzed giants from overseas —be able to achieve the impossible? More than one wondered—and hesitated to think of the outcome. A night in an open wheat field. Then the great elfish! And out of the great tangle of war’s complex nfachinery came a message that was electrical in its results. The weary French took on new life. The British, standing only a few months before with their backs to the wall, fretted in a new anxiety to attack. The whole great organization of civilization, fighting there on the western front, 1 suddenly saw tlie dawn of a new <say, and the brightness of a new hope. For those United States marines had done the'impossible. Fighting against odds of nearly ten to one, the marines had turned back the enemy—and started the rearward rush toward Berlin that still is continuing. They had proved that they were the real supermen. -Marines with as many as tdh and eleven bullet holes in them still fought forward. Others, ordered to the rear, obeyed, only to return without waiting to have their wounds dressed. Men mortally wounded swept on until the machine-gun nests of the enemy were captured—then died. Still others, felled by the enemy, forgot their own wounds that they might ask of the wounds of some comrade, or Insist on not being given aid until later—there were who muist be cared for first.

Why the Marine Is Fighter. And why? Why should this body of men—and remember, the total authorized strength of the United States marine corps Is only 75,000 —be able to accomplish so much? Why should they be the real “supermen” which Germany believed it alone possessed—until Chateau Thierry and Belleau wood and Bouresches? Why. should they be able to accomplish such deeds of heroism that the grateful French nation ordered the name of Belleau wood changed to Bois de la Brigade de Marines? The answer comes In two things- I —esprit de corps and the marine training. There’s never an idle second In the life of a marine. His training never ceases —apd, more than that, there never is a time when the belief Is not

constantly inculcated in the mind of a marine that he must do superhuman things simply because he is a marine,, and that his own conscience will call him a criminal against himself and his corps if he doesn’t. The first thing that a marine applicant gets when he reaches the eastern training camp at Paris island, 8. C., or the western camp at Mare island? Cal., Is a heart-to-heart talk. And it’s a talk that’s a work of art—• a speech that tells of the history of the corps, from the beginning of the Continental marines In 1740 to the present day, the great things the marine corps has done and the great things It has stood for. A talk that tells of honesty and straightforwardness and decency and cleanliness. . The Creed of the Marine. And then, when the time of probation is over and the enlistment completed, the marine learns this: “I am a soldier, though not an army soldier. I go to sea, yet am not a sailor. I am older than the soldier of the army or the sailor of the navy. I fight my country’s battles everywhere and anywhere—in the trenches in France, on ships at sea, or in airplanes above. It’s all the same. “I raised „the first American flag On foreign soil, more than a century ago. I carried Old Glory into action in Tripoli, Egypt, West Africa, the Fiji islands, Sumatra, Hawaii, Mexico, China, Uruguay, Paraguay, Alaska, Panama, Formosa, Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Haytl, and now I’m with General Pershing in France. I carry a punch in either hand. I’m a hard-fisted, three-way fighting man. I’m a soldier of the navy, a U. S. marine.” That’s the beginning. That’s the thing that send! the real flush of pride Into the new marine’s heart. And when he walks out upon the training ground? and the physical director Darks out an order to seize the horizontal bar and chin ten times, that' new marine does it! He may never have chinned himself before. His muscles may ache and twitch and do

strange things afterwards—but h« raises and lowers himself those ten times—because he’s a Unite/1 States marine! J ' Urged to Better Things. There’s something inside him, urging him on, telling him that he must be better, better, better every hour,, every minute, every second of his life. And when the long houre of drilling start, that marine is not only willing to go the limit —but eager! He’s a marine—he’s simply got to know everything and, be everything and do everything! Facing him everywhere are signs: “If You Don’t Know You* Get Killed.” And the marine knows. He trains tyith the naked bayonet. He goes out upon the rifle range, and if he doesn’t qualify as an expert, a marksfnnn or a sharpshooter he kicks himself all the way back to camp, and sits up nights to dream out a way of making 'it up In some other way. Exercises. Training.- Work. Play.; They follow one after another In rushing sequence. Men box —because the movements of boxing are similar to those of bayonet fighting. They h(\,ve “pulling up” exercises—because that helps one to get in fin’d out of trenches. Swimming—and the men even march to the swimming hole — because - thfit develops every muscle t>f the body. % Drill, hour after hour, while sergeants barh and the nian who misses a step is his own worst enemy. Lectures, more drill, more work, more play, more training. In seven weeks, the body and the mfnd of the murine are at the edge of perfection. And then, while the band plays and the “left-bebinds” cheer/ he embarks for France, via Quantieo, there to work again, play again and’drill again. And not until the moment of the “zero” when the signal calls for fighting demons to rush over the top, Is thut training relaxed for a moment. After that it’s not a question of training—but the results of it. And Chateau Thierry and Belleau wood have told those to the world.