A Legacy of Our Past: The Birth of Quantico
By Bradley A. Davis & Jennifer Collins
At the turn of the century, a series of budget and manning crises crippled the American military apparatus, and while the roles of the Army and Navy were rooted in the American psyche, the Marine Corps remained the country’s most understaffed and least known military institution. It was amid this uncertainty that a solution began to take shape, one that would not only be a turning point in the Corps’ fighting capabilities but would also result in the creation of one of the world’s most recognizable military bases.
Following the Corps’ successful demonstration of its expeditionary capabilities during the Spanish-American War, the Secretary of the Navy convened a board to resolve a variety of disputes over America’s naval defenses. It was under the purview of this board that the Advanced Base Force concept was created.
Originally designed to keep the Marine Corps adaptable across global waterways, it wouldn’t be until January 1914 that the concept matured to the point that field exercises were possible.
Elements of the Advanced Base Force demonstrated amphibious strength in Veracruz, Haiti, and Santo Domingo from 1914-16.
The Marine Corps was not the only institution developing and demonstrating an emboldened military prowess.
On the European continent, Germany and the other Central Powers were engaged in a war that would shape the world.
Months of U-boat attacks and unrestricted submarine warfare on Allied ships barely affected the neutral United States. That changed in May 1915, when a German U-boat sank Lusitania, a British passenger ship, killing hundreds on board and turning the tide of American public opinion. Though the United States still resisted declaring war on the Central Powers, American service branches immediately began preparing for the impending conflict.
Fulfilling both the Advanced Base Force concept and the inevitable march toward war, Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island opened in South Carolina in October 1915 with a second Marine base in San Diego, Calif., opening in January 1916. The expansion of Marine Corps recruiting capabilities coincided with an increase in Corps strength, which in mid-1916 stood at approximately 11,000. In August, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act of 1916, authorizing an increase in Corps strength to nearly 16,000 with an emergency quota of roughly 18,000, effectively ensuring that both recruit depots would be filled to maximum capacity.
The explosive expansion of authorized strength, however, didn’t shock Corps leadership. The Corps’ problem, however, was one of space—even with the expansion of bases at Parris Island and San Diego, it needed a larger, post-boot camp installation to teach the Advanced Base Force concept. The new Commandant of the Marine Corps, Major General Barnett, was also aware of this need as he advocated for the establishment of a new Marine Corps base on the Atlantic in his fiscal year reports for both 1915 and 1916.
The logical plea, however, went unheeded until the onset of war, when suddenly the previously overlooked request became a priority. Compounding the problem of a necessary base was President Wilson’s declaration of emergency, authorizing the increase of Corps strength to roughly 18,000. On April 6, 1917, four days after the President’s request to Congress, both houses voted to declare war on Germany with the Marine Corps having neither a base nor the maximum strength necessary to wage a war across the globe.
Knowing the advancing war effort would soon consume current service capacity, MajGen Barnett wasted no time in searching for land. He appointed a board composed of Col Charles A. Doyen, Lieutenant Colonel George Van Orden and Captain Seth Williams and tasked them with “recommending a site in [the Washington] vicinity for a temporary training camp and maneuver field for the Marine Corps.” His requirements for the site included accommodations, space to maneuver and a rifle range for roughly 7,500 men. While the board’s original choice—a camp in the local vicinity with a nearby location for maneuver and target ranges—was voted down, their second option, Quantico, Va. fared much better.
Originally a plot of land given to the Brent family by King George II, Quantico was one of the earliest tobacco farms in the New World before it transitioned to a fishing and mining town. The Quantico Company, tasked with urbanizing and expanding business in Quantico, had fallen on hard times. Despite the company’s best efforts to increase shipbuilding and tourism in the region, the town remained relatively unsettled, ungroomed and underutilized.
On April 23—approximately a week after the initial inspection—the three-man board reported to MajGen Barnett that Quantico not only “fulfilled all requirements of a ... training camp for the Marine Corps” but it also met “all the requirements for a permanent post, except that it [was] not on deep water.” After a series of brief negotiations, the federal government leased approximately 5,300 acres—enough room for 7,000 men to train, maneuver and sleep—and the future of the once-quiet town was forever changed.
It was the next board, however, that was the most important. Composed of Navy and Marine Corps officers—including Brigadier General John A. Lejeune—the board was charged with laying a rough outline for the installation. While initially unimpressed, the board created a comprehensive, sprawling plan to utilize all available acreage in order to build a base worthy of the greatest expeditionary force the world had ever seen.
Despite the length of time it took to secure a Marine Corps base on the East Coast, the staffing, clearing and building of the new installation seemingly happened overnight. Arriving from Marine Barracks Annapolis on May 14, 1917, a company of Marines descended upon the new territory and turned the Commandant’s vision into reality. In a December 1917 issue of The Quantico Leatherneck, First Lieutenant Charles Phelps Cushing remarked that, in six short weeks, “the construction contractors had cleared upward of a hundred acres of forest, and a small city of one-story wooden barracks was open to receive a regiment of Marines [who arrived] to begin training for service overseas.” What once was a sprawling forest with barely enough cleared space to hold a formation had become a massive complex of wooden barracks with wells, sewage systems and telephone lines. It was a far cry from more modernized bases elsewhere, but it was significant improvement over the original structure.
Four short days after the opening of the base, the first group of Marines arrived for training. Having declared war on the Central Powers just over a month prior, these Marines, along with new arrivals and far-flung elements of the Advanced Base Force, would merge to form the Corps’ Fifth Regiment, a cohort of Marines trained to serve alongside the Army as part of the first expeditionary force deployed to the Western Front.
While hindsight paints a patriotic image of Marines serving their country, the reality of Quantico in 1917 is far less rosy. The 6th Regiment, composed primarily of college-age men who enlisted after the declaration of war and officers, both seasoned professionals and newly commissioned, found the base to be particularly inhospitable. Wagons and ox-carts were the primary method of transportation, and while horses provided some measure of stability during the winter and spring, Quantico’s roads quickly became swamps when it rained. As time went on, however, Quantico continued to grow and modern innovations helped the base become more urbanized. The government allotted a significant portion of funding to the paving of roads and parade decks across Marine Barracks Quantico, and the trainees grew increasingly excited as wooden barracks sprouted up on the outskirts of the installation and replaced the less-than-hospitable tent camps. In June 1917, Gunnery Sergeant Frank F. Zissa wrote to his wife that, “Over one hundred [of the barracks] are under construction with nearly half that number nearly finished.”
Nestled deep within the leased territory, the original town remained and problems soon arose between the civilian inhabitants and their Marine tenants. Following a series of civilian disputes, the Marine Corps was forced to acknowledge and negotiate a number of problems that had arisen, including the maneuverability of the primary road in and out of town and basic access to water. Though a variety of other problems would surface throughout the war, the Marine Corps quickly settled into its new home, and the townsfolk of Quantico prospered alongside their Marine neighbors.
While the base was nowhere near complete, the swift and decisive efforts of both the Corps and its contractors had turned a once-unruly forest into a functional training bulwark for Marines preparing to deploy. By the time that BGen John A. Lejeune took command of Quantico in September 1917, the base was well on its way to stability. BGen Lejeune remarked that while “a sufficient number of barracks buildings to house personnel were completed, a large amount of construction work still remained to be done.” Family housing, for example, was not available unless the Marine was willing to commute from Fredericksburg, 20 miles south, and while the government had allocated funding for paved roads, they had yet to be completed. All of these problems, however, were negligible compared to a specter that had been growing since the Corps’ initial arrival in Quantico over a year before.
From the base’s earliest days, Quantico had a sanitation problem. Within a few weeks of opening, more than 1,000 Marines flooded the base for training, with hundreds of additional contractors, citizens, and visitors streaming in weekly. In these early weeks, the Corps initiated a series of test solutions to limit the waste problem—including incinerators and rubbish pits—but no action undertaken could keep up with the sheer amount of debris. Compounding the rise of trash in Quantico was an uncontrollable mosquito population. In an effort to prevent the spread of diseases, including pneumonia, measles and meningitis, Marines filled in swampy areas and sprayed mosquito breeding grounds across the base. Again, however, a lack of organized structure impeded progress—an unfortunate combination of highly saturated ground, significant rainfall and underdeveloped land resulted in such a widespread concentration of mosquito breeding grounds that it was nearly impossible to locate and spray them all.
To combat the rise and spread of mosquito-borne diseases, the Quantico hospital moved into a wood frame building, effectively abandoning the tent city that had once composed the post’s primary medical facility. BGen Lejeune, however, would soon have another problem on his hands, one that couldn’t be solved by simply enforcing sanitary protocol and emphasizing pro-active base construction.
While World War I may have spurred the Marine Corps into action, industrializing the Corps and increasing both strength and base operations, it also served as a catalyst for a unique strain of influenza. What began in 1917 would eventually be called the Spanish Flu, and the virus evolved as it spread in both the European trenches and across key American sea routes. Within 24 hours of BGen Lejeune’s assuming command, the newly christened hospital admitted more than 100 individuals infected with the volatile strain. The next day those numbers doubled.
By the end of the month, more than 1,500 Marines had contracted influenza, resulting in the evacuation and transition of newly constructed barracks into temporary hospital wards. The staff of the hospital was especially taxed as the small number working in the now overrun infirmary were forced to work long hours, sometimes around the clock, to combat an illness that seemed to consume the base. By the time that the first wave of the flu swept across Quantico, more than 4,000 cases were confirmed, and roughly 140 of those infected succumbed to the illness.
Disease failed to stop the aggressive initiative of the Corps, and by the end of 1917, Quantico morphed increasingly into a modern and innovative military installation. As the base grew, expanding to include new sanitation measures, laundry and training facilities, kitchens, mess halls and additional barracks, it became obvious that the Corps would soon outgrow its space.
The Quantico Company, however, offered a solution. For the low sum of $500,000, the company would sell the Marine Corps all territory covered under its present lease in addition to another parcel of local real estate, turning the land into a permanent Marine Corps base. The federal government agreed, and after a short period of negotiations, the Quantico Company sold the land for a fraction of the cost.
In addition to solidifying its future, Marine Corps Base Quantico also proved its role as the premiere base for formalized training during the second year of America’s involvement in the Great War. As units prepared for deployment to the European continent, a variety of schools and courses—including officers camps and the Overseas Depot, which trained Marines to serve as replacements to those fighting alongside the American Expeditionary Force—were established to organize the relentless flow of new Marines. The Overseas Depot in particular is credited with churning out 12 battalions, two regiments, and approximately 16,000 Marines, a quarter of whom graduated from specialized schools also based at Quantico.
After four long years of war, Germany collapsed beneath the weight of the Allied forces’ industrial and physical prowess. On Nov. 11, the guns went silent on the Western Front after a war of attrition filled with unimagined destruction, and a fragile peace finally settled across the fighting nations. By the time that the warring nations signed the armistice, nearly 30,000 Marines had deployed from Quantico to join the fighting in Europe.
While their actions along the Western Front, specifically in Belleau Wood, would become part of their legend, the enduring legacy of the Marine Corps’ time in WW I is rooted in Quantico. This key installation would not have existed had it not been for the war. The Marine ingenuity and dedication to being the “first-to-fight” resulted in the rapid growth of Quantico in an environment that fluctuated from frigid, marsh-like conditions to oppressively hot temperatures with occasional dust storms. More importantly, however, were the Marines who took acres of underdeveloped forest and turned them into forward-thinking pillars of success.
Marine Corps Base Quantico, finally a permanent base, carries on the legacy of both the Marines who prepared the Corps to fight across the globe and the sacrifices of those Marines who died defending our nation and its allies. Much as it did in 1918, Quantico today is the epicenter of Marine Corps professional development. Both enlisted men and officers come to the “Crossroads of the Marine Corps” in order to advance both themselves and their careers, developing the long-lasting academic innovations necessary to propel the Corps into the future. Even now, after so many years, elements of Quantico’s early days, including the pier, the old hospital and the practice trenches, litter the base, masked by resurgent greenery reminding us of a time when the Corps still had battles to fight to gain the respect they have today, a time when the dreams and ambitions of a handful of officers changed the balance of American military posture for decades to come.
There is no greater symbol for the tenacity, ingenuity and dependability of the Marine Corps than Quantico, Va. Born from the needs of World War I, Quantico is a solid and unshakable testament that, in the words of 1stLt Cushing, “is distinctively [Marine]—with the stamp of the Soldiers of the Sea upon it.”
Whether driving through the base gates or walking through Q-Town, Marines and visitors can feel the sweep of history upon a place so heavily defined by the Corps’ ethos. Everywhere one looks, however, lies the legacy of those first few. The declaration of their voices, the courage of their dreams and their willing sacrifices gave the Marine Corps what few will ever have or even fewer will ever understand—a foothold for the future shaped by the courage of the past.
Author's Note: A version of this article appeared in the May 2017 edition of "Leatherneck," a publication of the Marine Corp Association & Foundation. Photos appear in the article and are courtesy of the National Archives and the Marine Corps History Division.