General Smith Does a Job

There is many a creak in most U.S. defense preparations, but last week one job had been completed in a way the U.S. had every right to be proud of.

Toward the end of last summer Brigadier General Holland McTyeire ("Howlin' Mad") Smith of the Marines, an impatient man in any weather, almost came to a boil. Chunky General Smith wanted to take his First Brigade of Marines for needed training in the outposts of the Caribbean, where they might later see action. Yet somebody in Washington demurred. Reason: there was no housing for troops near Guantanamo, on the southeast coast of Cuba, where General Smith proposed to set up training headquarters.

Howlin' Mad finally went to Washington to see his boss, chunky Major General Holcomb, commandant of the Corps. Tommy Holcomb heard General Smith's lava-like flow of words, told him to go ahead. Last October, the First Brigade, 3,000 strong, heaved its seabags aboard the transport Barnett at Norfolk and shoved off. Last week the last units of the outfit came back. It was now the First Division, U.S.M.C., more than 8,000 strong, and Howlin' Mad, ruddier than ever, had the two stars of a major general on his shoulder straps. He also had a story of training to tell that will be required reading for other officers, if General Smith ever calms it down to writing.

When the First Brigade got to Guantanamo, it debarked in a juicy mango swamp near the Navy station. General Smith took one look at underbrush that no man could walk through, began snapping peremptory messages to Washington. Soon building materials and half a dozen bulldozers arrived from the States. The Marines prepared for housekeeping.

Howlin' Mad worked his men from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week. No hands were excused from work. They cleared 500 acres, cleaned out underbrush at the rate of an acre every 20 minutes. When building began, smart Marine sergeants discovered a construction genius in the uniform of a private, first-class. He was put in charge, bossed sergeants along with the rest. Said Howlin' Mad of this uncanonical procedure: "He just had a hell of a knack for building things." Prize building achievement was a mess hall. The first concrete was poured one noon. By dark next night it was finished and men were at table in it.

By Jan. 1, the First Brigade had all the mess halls, kitchens and heads (Marine for latrines) that it needed. It also had a good-looking tent camp. Meanwhile the boots (Marine for recruits) had started to come in. Still working seven days a week, the oldtimers finished off the boots' primary training.

By early January, the First, now 70% up to division strength, was ready to start the job it had come to do. Off Guantanamo now lay four big transports and the converted destroyers Calhoun, Gregory and Little. For days & nights on end the outfit practiced using small boats, getting on & off the transports.

Next job was a landing party exercise. The newfangled combat teams (chief components: infantry and artillery) were piled on to the big transports and the attack forces (secret in arms and organization) loaded on the speedy ex-destroyers. One sunset the whole fleet sailed over the horizon. At dawn it was seizing a beach head on another Caribbean island. The First was gone a month on its full-scale exercise. Units of the Atlantic Fleet worked with them. Admiral Ernest Joseph King looked his approval as the landing parties were called away and the bronzed, hornyhanded sea soldiers went over the side into armored small boats. By that time the First was getting hard: men moved easily and quickly under their 40-lb. combat packs, 240 rounds of ammunition, bayoneted rifles.

By the time the outfit was ready for its next dash into the Caribbean, it reached farther east, did the same job better. Back in Guantanamo it practiced with the new amphibian tank (one on hand, 200 on order), at last got time to get acquainted with itself. Howlin' Mad, detesting the tawdry fleshpots of Guantanamo, made camp life as comfortable as possible, even let his soldiers take beer from the post exchange to their tents to make things cozy.

Toward the end of the winter, the First made its final foray: a 14-day dash, well southeast of Cuba. Howlin' Mad was satisfied with the results, with the outfit in general. It was time to go home.

The winter's training had left its unmistakable mark on the men of the First, and the First had left its mark on the camp site at Guantanamo, as Marines have long marked the remote places on the Caribbean. Last week a U.S. civilian airplane pilot, crossing the water between Puerto Rico and the island of Vieques, looked for the pasture emergency field there. He had no trouble finding it. On the side of a hill his eye caught the red, white & blue of a huge stone U.S. flag alongside the globe & anchor of the Corps emblem. A legend ran across the hill in whitewashed rock: "U.S. Marine Corps--Semper Fidelis."

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