THE SECOND MARINE DIVISION IN WORLD WAR II "The Silent Second"

PART I. BUILDING A LEGEND

The Second Marine Division has always been best known in the public's eye for its sacrificial fight on Tarawa in November 1943; this battle stands as one of the hardest-fought in the annals of military history. Indeed, the Second's deeds at Tarawa rank with the Spartans at Thermopylae, and the thin red line of British infantry at Waterloo. But Tarawa was only one of the campaigns that the Silent Second fought in the Pacific. It's epic narrative of war stretched from the shores of Iceland to the gates of Nagasaki.

Activation ceremony for the 2nd Marine Division, MCB, San Diego, Calif., 1 February 1941. MajGen Clayton Vogel, Commanding General, reads the activation order to the assembled troops and guests. USMC Photo

President Roosevelt put the armed forces on an emergency footing in September 1939 as a result of events overseas. Subsequently, the services embarked on a crash program of expansion and modernization to prepare for the certainty of war. For the Marine Corps this meant an increase in size far beyond anything ever experienced in the Corps' history. As part of this explosive growth, the Second Marine Division was activated at Marine Corps Base, San Diego, on 1 February 1941. This new division, established on the same day as it's sister unit, the First Marine Division, was built around the nucleus of the Second Marine Brigade, the west coast element of the Fleet Marine Force, which had been in existence since July 1936.

MajGen Clayton B. Vogel, USMC, first commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division. Vogel, who hailed from Philadelphia, spent 42 years in uniform as a Marine. He died in 1964 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. USMC Photo

Under its first commander, MajGen Clayton Vogel, the Division settled into new quarters at Camp Elliott, near San Diego, California. The Sixth Marines, a storied and proud outfit with many years of campaigning behind it, formed the core of the Division's combat power. About the Sixth, Leon Uris wrote in his autobiographical novel Battle Cry: "The Regiment had been settling banana wars for decades. We got a big reputation in the first World War in a place called Belleau Wood, where we stopped the hun dead in his tracks. For doing this the French decorated us with a fancy braid, the Fourragere, which all members of the Sixth Marines wear about their left shoulder. At Chateau Thierry, when the Allied lines were collapsing, the story goes that one of our officers yelled, "Retreat, Hell! We just got here!"" Such was the mystique of a unit that had seen hard service around the world.

The Sixth Marines detached a battalion to form the nucleus of the Eighth Marines, activated on 1 April 1940 and assigned to the Second Marine Brigade. On the date of the divisional activation, the Sixth again detached a battalion to form the nucleus of the newly activated Second Marine Regiment. Meanwhile, all manner of divisional units were formed in the breakneck days of early 1941. Camp Elliott was bursting at the seams as new men reported and mountains of equipment were issued out across the Division. Among the many specialized units necessary for a modern combat force were tanks, artillery, medical support, engineers, communications, supply, transport, communication, and many others.

As with every Marine unit, training was the order of the day. Among many rugged events, the Eighth Marines conducted a 180-mile forced march from San Diego through the Cuyahoga Mountains in April 1941. Combat veterans would remember this hike as particularly grueling, even when they compared it with later events in the war. All hands turned to at the Camp Mathews Range near La Jolla. Units ran field problems again and again and learned the small details of soldiering in the modern era. And Marines took liberty in San Diego, a jewel of a city that offered every sort of amusement, entertainment, and vice that the lonely Marines could afford.

But the Division was plagued by constant demands for cadres to depart and form new units. New regiments were forming, and all needed veterans to man their ranks and build a stable base for thousands of newly minted Marines fresh from boot camp. Nevertheless, the training focus continued, and all units in the Division ran in landing exercises on San Clemente Island, off the coast of southern California. Of course, the news at this time was full of the war. As the men of the Second Marine division sweated through their training schedules, Europe was in flames, and the Chinese continued their war of expansion in China. In May of 1941 the Sixth Marines was detached from the Division "for expeditionary duty across the sea." Other Divisional units were detached at the same time, the largest of which was the Second Battalion, Tenth Marines. They departed the Broadway Street Pier under wartime secrecy on 31 May 1941 aboard transports and transited the Panama Canal.

A Marine runs through the bayonet assault course at Marine Corps Base, San Diego. He wears the summer service uniform worn in the early part of the war as a field uniform and carries the M1 rifle. Training, both individual and unit level, was a constant part of the World War Ii experience and Marines practiced their skills incessantly. Life Magazine

Arriving at Charleston, South Carolina, on 17 June 1941, the Sixth and its accompanying units were attached to the newly formed First Provisional Marine Brigade. Five days later, the Marines sailed for Reykjavik, Iceland, to perform defensive duties there in cooperation with the British garrison. So began the first "real world" deployment of World War II. During the voyage across the Atlantic, an unknown wag improvised the parody below, sung to the tune of As the Caissons Go Rolling Along:

The convoy put into Reykjavik harbor on 7 July 1941, and the Marines soon were assigned to bleak camps scattered across 300 square miles of Icelandic countryside. The summer passed quickly and soon the Marines faced the long, dark winter as they became the garrison for on the outpost of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the rest of the Division stayed hard at work preparing for whatever was to come.

During the winter of 1941 a 37mm gun section of Weapons Company, Sixth Marines, performs gun drill under the watchful eyes of their NCO. Conditions were primitive and and the days were short and dark. By December, most tactical training had ground to a standstill due to the severe weather, which included included high winds, dust storms, heavy snow and freezing rain. Marine Corps Historical Collection

World events moved quickly in the summer of 1941. Nazi Germany conquered Greece, Yugoslavia, and Crete in the spring of the year and the North African campaigns were splashed across headlines all over the country. Then, on 22 July 1941 the Germans smashed across Soviet Russia's frontiers and it seemed as though nothing could stand in the way of Nazism. In the fall of the year, the Second Engineer Battalion was detached from the Division and sent on temporary duty to Hawaii to build facilities in preparation for wartime expansion there. As 1941 was drawing to a close, the Japanese empire launched a surprise attack against the American and British forces in the Hawaiian Islands, and other spots across the Pacific. On 8 December 1941, in one of the most stirring speeches in U. S. History, President Roosevelt asked the Congress to declare war on Japan. The world was about to change for all hands in the Division, and it would never be the same again.

This Christmas card was produced locally in Iceland during the 1941 holiday season and made available to men of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. USMC

Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, every unit on the west coast was placed on high alert. Assigned to coastal patrol duties from Oceanside to the Mexican border, the Division also manned antiaircraft guns around San Diego. Christmas of 1941 was hard and lonely for every man in the Second Marine Division. For those men still at Camp Elliott, there was no home leave authorized. And across the Atlantic in Iceland, the Marines shivered through a snowy, wind-swept winter far away from loved ones. The unknown yawned wide in front of every Marine that first Christmas of the war and all hands wondered what the new year would bring.

Answers weren't long in coming. In late December the Eighth Marines was alerted for overseas movement, along with the the artillerymen of the First Battalion, Tenth Marines and other divisional assets. Their mission was to stand-up the new Second Marine Brigade, Reinforced. Other divisional assets were assigned to the brigade under the command of newly promoted BrigGen Henry Larsen, former commanding officer of the Eighth Marines. The brigade was tasked with defending the island of American Samoa and shoved off from San Diego harbor on 6 January 1942.

After a voyage of over 4,000 miles the convoy arrived at Pago Pago on 19 January 1942. The men of the Second Marine Brigade, many on their first deployment overseas, learned the first of many reality-based lessons of World War II. Samoa may have looked like a picture postcard from the rails of the transports, but it was oppressively hot, rain was constant, and the jungle swarmed with mosquitoes. With the critical mission of defending

Samoa and securing America's south Pacific communication chain to Australia and New Zealand. The mission was a success since the only Japanese aggression against Samoa occurred while the Brigade was still en route. On 19 January 1942 an enemy submarine shelled the shoreline of Pago Pago, causing minor damage and no casualties.

Marines in training on Samoa—summer 1942. The Second Marine Brigade served on Samoa from January to October 1942. Although their mission unfolded peacefully, the threat of Japanese incursion was ever present. in the islands of Samoa, Marines encountered sweltering heat and constant rain. The main threat came from mosquito-borne sickness filariasis. Called "mumu" on Samoa, the disease could cause severe and grotesque swelling of the legs, arms, or genitals. USMC Photo

Meanwhile at Camp Elliott, The remainder of the Division continued to prepare for war. In response to a rush of new recruits that reported into Marine Corps Base, San Diego, in January 1942, the Division was ordered to set-up it's own boot camp at Camp Kearney. A few months later, an entire series of divisional schools were established for specialized subjects including scout/sniper operations, machine gun employment, chemical defense, and many others. In February 1942 the Ninth Marine Regiment was activated and attached to the Division. Formed in stages from cadres of the Second and Sixth Marines, the Ninth would subsequently be detached and then assigned to its permanent home in the Third Marine Division. In February and March 1942, the Sixth Marine returned from Iceland to rejoin its sister units in California. And the 2nd Engineer Battalion, its construction assignment in Hawaii finished, also returned to divisional control.

In May 1942, divisional units practiced combat landing on the Pacific coast north of San Diego. As events began to pick up speed in the war, news came of the great battles in the Coral Sea, and then in June 1942 of the decisive victory of US air and sea forces over Japan at Midway. Rumors flew through the ranks, scuttlebutt of every kind. But only one rumor turned out to be real. That was the one where the Second Marine Division was about to go to war in the Pacific.

PART II. FIRST TO FIGHT

SECOND MARINE DIVISION INDEX

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