"The Government of the United States das decided to withdraw the American Marine detachments now maintained ashore in China, at Peiping, Tientsin, and Shanghai. It is reported that the withdrawal will begin shortly." President Franklin D. Roosevelt Press Conference, 14 November 1941. President Roosevelt's announcement formally ended almost 15 years of duty by the 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai. Clouds of war were quickly closing in on the China Marines as Japan and the United States edged ever closer to active hostilities. "One could sense the tenseness in the air," Lieutenant Colonel Curtis...

The John H. Russell, Jr., Papers (P.C. 114) provide a background for understanding the transformation of the Marine Corps from a conglomeration of small detachments into a major naval arm; from the source of ad hoc expeditionary units into a type command capable of task-organizing flexible, balanced projection forces to meet the needs of the fleet. While this collection does not detail the development of the Fleet Marine Force concept, it identifies many aspects of the milieu in which the concept evolved. More especially, it limns the career of the leader who nurtured the ideas, codified them...

The battles of Belleau Wood and Soissons in June and July of 1918 marked a turning point in World War I and in the stature of the US Marine Corps. In this book J. Michael Miller takes us to the battlefields of Belleau Wood and Soissons, immersing us in the experience of a single brigade of marines at the forefront of the fighting.