Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include

Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!

Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include

Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!

4to-over 9¾"-12" tall. xxxiii, 692 pages, numerous illus & maps, notes,

4to-over 9¾"-12" tall. xxxiii, 692 pages, numerous illus & maps, notes, bibliog, index. This is the story of the gallant Corps of men whose pride is that they are "first to fight for right and Freedom; " the men who expect to guard the streets of heaven after having vanquished their country's last foes on, earth. They have been fighting since 1775, when they were organized in a Philadelphia tavern to help George Washington win our forefathers' long war for freedom against King George III. Having achieved this aim, the Marines (as well as the Army and Navy) were disbanded, only to be called back to service in a few years to fight the French and then the Barbary pirates, and then King George again. They have been in all the nation's big wars ever since and most of the small ones, even fighting Indians in the swamps of Florida. Most Americans were at peace in 1871; the Marines were busy that year chastising the Koreans over a barbarous reception they had given some American citizens a short time earlier. Most Americans were at peace in the years before and after the first World War; the Marines in those years were fighting to bring order in Haiti, a land ravaged by such bloodthirsty fanatics as Charlemagne Peralte, and in Nicaragua, torn asunder by the elusive fellow-traveling bandit, Augusto Sandino. In the jazz age they guarded the U. S. Mail against home-grown bandits ("Shoot, and shoot to kill, " were their orders) and at any time over a period of a century they were likely to be keeping the peace in Shanghai or Tientsin or battering down unfriendly forts on the Pearl River in south China. As one gunnery sergeant put it in 1918. "in peace th' stuff flies around and war looms ahead. In war th' stuff flies around-and peace looms ahead. " In between the little wars and the big ones, in which the Marines were given such tough nuts to crack as Belleau Wood, Blanc Mont, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Inchon, the Marines managed to develop amphibious warfare, perhaps the most important tactical innovation of World War II. Meanwhile they have constantly had to fight off attacks from enemies at. home who for reasons of their own were attempting to abolish the Corps or at least reduce it to a ceremonial remnant of itself. Time and again the Marines have been saved only by public opinion, the Congress of the United States, and their own fighting-spirit. Soldiers of the Sea tells the story of those officers and men who have made up the Corps and who have fought the country's battles on land, at sea, in the air, and in the committee rooms of Congress in victorious actions against such formidable foes as the Barbary pirates, the Sultan of Kuala Batu, the German army, the Japanese navy, and several Presidents of the United States. DJ faded/chipped.