United States Marine Corps

Beginning on November 7, 2004, U.S. Marines led the major assault on Fallujah, Iraq, in what became one of the most intense urban battles fought by American forces since Vietnam. The city had become a center of insurgent control and symbolic resistance, and the operation involved difficult house-to-house combat alongside U.S. Army, Iraqi, and British forces. For the Marine Corps, Fallujah highlighted the demands of modern urban warfare: decentralized leadership, close infantry combat, precision fire support, and the political consequences of battlefield action. The battle became a defining experience for a generation of Marines who served in the post-9/11 wars.

When the coalition ground offensive of the Persian Gulf War began on February 24, 1991, Marine forces played a leading role in breaching Iraqi defenses and helping liberate Kuwait. The operation followed months of deployment during Desert Shield, when Marines had built up combat power in Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In Desert Storm, the Corps demonstrated its capacity for rapid expeditionary deployment, combined-arms warfare, and large-scale coordination with joint and allied forces. The campaign reinforced the Marine Corps’ post-Vietnam relevance and showed that its readiness model could be applied effectively to high-tempo conventional war in the modern Middle East.

On October 23, 1983, a suicide truck bomber attacked the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport, killing 241 American service members, most of them Marines. The Marines were serving as part of a multinational peacekeeping force in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war when the blast devastated the building. The attack was a major shock to the United States and became the deadliest peacetime day in Marine Corps history. Its aftermath affected U.S. policy in Lebanon, sharpened awareness of modern terrorism and force protection, and left a lasting mark on Marine memory, commemoration, and doctrine.

The siege of Khe Sanh began on January 21, 1968, when North Vietnamese forces intensified pressure on the U.S. Marine combat base near the Laotian border in northwestern South Vietnam. The battle unfolded amid the broader Tet Offensive and drew immense attention in Washington because observers feared a repeat of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Marines at Khe Sanh endured artillery bombardment, isolation, and constant threat while sustained air and ground support kept the base from falling. The episode became one of the defining Marine engagements of the Vietnam War and illustrated the Corps’ role in protracted, politically charged conflict.

On September 15, 1950, the 1st Marine Division took part in the amphibious landing at Inchon during the Korean War, a high-risk operation planned to reverse the momentum of the conflict. The assault overcame difficult tides, narrow approaches, and urban defenses, and it rapidly destabilized North Korean lines by threatening their rear. Inchon restored the prominence of large-scale amphibious warfare at a moment when some critics had considered such operations outdated after World War II. For the Marine Corps, the landing validated expeditionary doctrine, highlighted the Corps’ specialized capability, and reinforced its strategic importance within the U.S. military establishment.

President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981, signed on July 26, 1948, declared equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services and set in motion the desegregation of the Marine Corps. The Corps had been among the most resistant branches to racial integration, and implementation was gradual rather than immediate. Nonetheless, the order established a federal mandate that fundamentally altered Marine personnel policy and the institution’s social structure. Over time it helped end segregated systems such as Montford Point and broadened opportunities for Black Marines, making this one of the most consequential policy shifts in the Corps’ history.

The Battle of Iwo Jima began on February 19, 1945, when U.S. Marines landed on the heavily fortified volcanic island between the Marianas and Japan. The objective was to secure airfields that could support bombing operations and emergency landings for damaged aircraft. What followed was one of the fiercest battles in Marine Corps history, with defenders using tunnels, bunkers, and prepared positions to inflict severe casualties. Iwo Jima became inseparable from Marine identity because of both its tactical importance and the enduring symbolism of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, which came to represent sacrifice, cohesion, and victory under extreme conditions.

On August 26, 1942, the first African American Marine recruits arrived at Montford Point in North Carolina, beginning a major institutional change in a Corps that had long excluded Black Americans. Training remained segregated, and the men who came through Montford Point faced discrimination while preparing to serve during World War II. Even so, their arrival marked the start of the Marine Corps’ slow movement toward racial inclusion. The Montford Point Marines became pioneers whose service challenged the Corps’ racial barriers and laid important groundwork for later integration, recognition, and reform within one of the nation’s most tradition-bound military services.

The landing on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942, placed the 1st Marine Division at the center of the first major Allied offensive against Japan in the Pacific War. Marines seized the unfinished airfield later named Henderson Field and then endured months of ground, air, and naval combat as Japanese forces tried to retake the island. Guadalcanal was a test of endurance, logistics, and combined-arms warfare under tropical conditions. For the Marine Corps, it confirmed the value of amphibious doctrine developed before the war and demonstrated that Marines would be central to the long island campaigns that followed across the Pacific.

On August 13, 1918, Opha May Johnson enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, becoming the first woman known to enter the Corps. Her enlistment came during World War I, when the military needed more personnel for clerical and administrative work so that additional men could be assigned to combat-related duties. Johnson’s milestone represented more than an administrative change: it opened a path, however limited at first, for women to serve within the institution. The event marked the beginning of a long transformation in Marine personnel policy and remains a key point in the history of gender integration within the Corps.

By the end of the Battle of Belleau Wood on June 26, 1918, U.S. Marines had played a central role in helping halt the German advance toward Paris during World War I. Fighting in dense woods, wheat fields, and fortified positions, Marines of the 4th Brigade suffered heavy casualties but gained a reputation for aggressiveness and discipline under intense fire. Belleau Wood became one of the Corps’ defining modern legends, helping elevate its national visibility and reinforcing the image of Marines as elite shock troops. The battle’s memory shaped recruiting, internal culture, and public understanding of the Corps for generations.

The Marine Corps earned one of its earliest enduring legends during the campaign against Tripoli in 1805, when a small detachment of Marines joined an overland expedition that attacked Derna in present-day Libya. The action became famous because it marked the first significant U.S. land battle on foreign soil and contributed directly to the peace settlement that helped end the war. Its memory survives in the Marine Corps Hymn phrase “to the shores of Tripoli,” reflecting how the Corps linked expeditionary combat, naval power, and symbolic national reach long before the United States became a global military power.

In early March 1776, Continental Marines took part in the Raid of Nassau in the Bahamas, often recognized as the first amphibious landing operation in Marine Corps history. Led as part of Commodore Esek Hopkins’s expedition, the landing sought badly needed gunpowder and military stores for the revolutionary cause. Although much of the powder had been removed before the attackers arrived, the operation gave the young Corps practical experience in ship-to-shore action, expeditionary warfare, and cooperation with naval forces. Those themes became central to Marine identity and later doctrine, making Nassau a foundational milestone beyond its immediate tactical results.

The United States Marine Corps traces its institutional birth to a resolution passed by the Second Continental Congress on November 10, 1775, authorizing two battalions of Marines for service with the Continental Navy. Created in the context of the Revolutionary War, this force was intended to provide shipboard security, conduct boarding actions, and support raids ashore. Marine tradition strongly associates the Corps’ first recruiting activity with Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, giving the founding a lasting civic and ceremonial identity. The date remains the official Marine Corps birthday and anchors the Corps’ sense of continuity from the Revolution to the present.