Analysis of First To Fight

First To Fight begins with Krulak engaged in a conversation with a Gunnery Sergeant who was asked how the Marine Corps got the reputation of having one of the world’s greatest fighting formations. The GySgt replies “Well lieutenant they started telling everybody how great they were and pretty soon they started believing it”. The story goes on to talk about how there nearly wasn’t a Marine Corps.

starts out with Marine Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith on the bridge of the command ship Mt. Olympus, off Iwo Jima on the morning of 23 February 1945 with Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal who said that the raising of our flag atop Mt. Suribachi means there will be an Marine Corps for the next five hundred years. Smith commented “When the war is over and money is short they will be after the Marines again”, and a dozen Iwo Jimas would make no difference. The resolute general was voicing the frustrations of the many generations of Marines before him who had learned through hard experience that fighting for the right to fight often presented greater challenges than fighting their country’s enemies.

The Marines’ survival struggles during their first century and a half were mere skirmishes compared with what was to commence following the Second World War. Even as America was still trying to see through the smoke of Pearl Harbor, there were problems which were seen that were far more serious. A carefully designed plan which, if implemented, would destroy the Marine Corps as a fighting force. The scene was set according to Krulak by three events. In early October 1942 Krulak was a member of a team of four Marine officers assigned to the Army’s 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii to conduct instruction for the divisi...

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...states there are three powerful external factors that cloud the Marines’ horizon. The first being the oppressive influence of threat. That threat is rooted in the attitudes or aspirations of the Army, the Navy, or various chief executives. Its nature has varied-threat to the Corps’s repute, to its right to fight, to its very survival. Secondly, the recurrent military affliction called austerity. At worst, they linger in active service and are a hazard to all around them. The third is the dead hand of bureaucracy that lies over the entire military establishment. While the larger services may be able to handle the pressures of bureaucracy, the Marine Corps has neither the instinct nor the time for it. The Marines are an assemblage of warriors, nothing more. Paper massaging and computer competitions do not kill the enemy, which is what the Marines are supposed to do.