USMC at Normandy?

[Dan Wilson]

Sure looks like USMC camo there in that fortified foxhole?!?!

Information

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[Sunray]

Paras maybe, but not Marines.

[rayg]

They are US Army camouflage fatigues. Used in the ETO in Normandy and for about 6-7 weeks afterwards. Some of the units that used them in the ETO were the 41st Armd Inf/48th Medical Battalion/17th Engineers and the 82nd Recon of the 2nd armored and the 30th Infantry. Some Army units who wore them in the PTO, were the 6th Infantry, 32nd Infantry, 40th and 43rd Infantry Divs. Ray

[Dave]

Gen. Marshall was not fond of the Marines and their pubilicty Dept. He thought they got more then their share of credit in WW1. He would not allow them in the ETO, so the story goes.

[Johnny Peppers]

Have no idea whether correct or not, but read that the camo looked too much like the German camo, and was recalled.

[SSgt's Son]

Sgt. Saunders (whose 1928 Thompson carried 3 million bullets in a 30 round clip and he NEVER needed to reload) always wore a camoflage cover on his helmet - I thought it was a Marine cover (may have been in real life), and never understood how he came by it. But at least now I know that it was "issue"... Of course, Saunders wore it through out the 5 years of the show (never getting out of France), and he must have missed the "recall" order.

Thanks for clearing up one of the mysteries of my youth!

[Maury Krupp]

Gen. Marshall was not fond of the Marines and their pubilicty Dept. He thought they got more then their share of credit in WW1. He would not allow them in the ETO, so the story goes.

I know there's an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor over the bar here but...

George C Marshall's personal likes and dislikes had little, if anything, to do with where the USMC was employed.

Two of the reasons the USMC wasn't in the ETO were it was too small and it wasn't organized, trained, or equipped for the type of operations conducted in the ETO.

The entire Marine Corps only fielded six infantry divisions. These divisions were light on anti-armor capability, long distance mobility, and long term combat sustainability. They conducted primarily short duration amphibious assaults on isolated enemy outposts to seize bases for strategic operations conducted by the Navy and Air Force.

The US Army fielded 42 infantry, 15 armored, and 4 airborne divisions in the ETO. Plus numerous separate infantry regiments, armor, cavalry, artillery, and tank destroyer battalions. All but the unreinforced airborne divisions had heavy organic anti-armor and transport making them suited to the long distance mobile warfare of the ETO. Combat in the ETO was characterized by large scale long duration operations intended to destroy the german armed forces and occupy the enemy's homeland.

A third reason is without the Marines the Navy would have been pretty much unable to carry the war to the japs. Or it would have had to rely on the Army to seize the necessary bases. It simply made sense, especially for the Navy, to keep all the USMC in the PTO where it could do the most good.

Maury

PS - You may be thinking of Doug MacArthur who did try to screw Marines every chance he got.

[Pete]

My understanding is that there were indeed a few Marines present for the landing at Normandy but their role was purely as advisors and trainers on amphibious warfare. I once dated the daughter of a Marine who said her father was there watching the initial landings while aboard a ship. The Marines were and are the U.S. experts on amphibious warfare.

In 1944 my dad's U.S. Army infantry division was trained by the USMC at Coronado on amphibious techniques. The division was in California about to depart for the Pacific when the Germans attacked in the Ardennes and they went to the European Theater instead. Right after the German surrender they were immediately sent back to the U.S. and they were loading on ships in Seattle when the atomic bombs were dropped. They were part of the occupation force in Japan.

[John Kepler]

Also, doctrinal differences often made a joint Army-Marine command HIGHLY problematic. The Marines had a "hell-for-leather" assault mentality that often got a lot of good troops killed...trading blood for time. The Army tended to take the "longer view" and assaulted in a more systematic, economical, but more protracted manner. Neither was wrong, but reflected differing doctrines for differing roles. It came to a head on Saipan where Gen. Howland "Howling Mad" Smith USMC couldn't get the Army units attached to his battle force to attack at the same pace as the Marines on their flanks, opening a hole that the Japanese exploited with near disastrous results. Smith vowed he would NEVER command a joint Army-Marine Force again....and with the Army's hearty approval, never did! Smith commanded the all-Marine assault on Iwo Jima....and Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner USA, commanded the joint Army-Marine assault on Okinawa.

At the end of the day, it was probably a case of using the right tools for the job at hand....you don't hitch a race-horse to a plow!

[rayg]

Most likely any marines that were present during landings in the ETO were the regular ship board garrisioned marines that were stationed on the navy ships that were there. They may have assisted in some way but their main duty was shipboard, Ray