1st Battalion, 8th Marines (1/8) is an infantry marines battalion in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The battalion consists of approximately 1000 Marines and Sailors and is nicknamed "The Beirut Battalion." The battalion falls under the command of the 6th Marine Regiment and the 2nd Marine Division.
The unit's history dates back to World War II where it fought in numerous campaigns in the Pacific War including Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. During the Cold War, it was part of Operation Blue Bat in Lebanon in 1958, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in Lebanon where 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers lost their lives. In 1991, it took part in operations during the Gulf War. Since 2001, 1/8 has fought the Global War on Terrorism by serving numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan.
Subordinate units Headquarters and Service Company Alpha Company Bravo Company Charlie Company Weapons Company
History
Activation
1st Battalion, 8th Marines was commissioned on April 1, 1940, in San Diego, California and was assigned to the 2nd Marine Brigade. The 2nd Marine Brigade was re-designated February 1, 1941, as 2nd Marine Division. After the outbreak of war, the 8th Marine Regiment with an assortment of other division assets formed the 2nd Marine Brigade and was dispatched to garrison American Samoa.
World War II Deployed during January 1942 to American Samoa and detached from the 2nd Marine Division, they participated in the following World War II campaigns:
Guadalcanal campaign On 4 and 5 November 1942 (D+90) the 8th Marines (1st, 2nd, 3rd BN's) led by Colonel Richard H. Jeschke arrived from American Samoa, landing as reinforcements on Guadalcanal.
On 12 January, the Marines began their advance with the 8th Marines along the shore and 2d Marines inland. All along the front of the advancing assault companies the going was rough. The Japanese, remnants of the Sendai Division, were dug into the sides of a series of cross compartments and their fire took the Marines in the flank as they advanced. Progress was slow despite massive artillery support and naval gunfire from four destroyers offshore. In two days of heavy fighting, flamethrowers were employed for the first time and tanks were brought into play.
The 2d Marines was now relieved and the 6th Marines moved into the attack along the coast while the 8th Marines took up the advance inland. Naval gunfire support, spotted by naval officers ashore, improved measurably. On the 15th, the Americans, both Army and Marine, reached the initial corps objective. In the Marine attack zone, 600 Japanese were dead. The 8th Marines was essentially pinched out of the front lines by a narrowing attack corridor as the inland mountains and hills pressed closer to the coastal trail.
On 31 January, the 2d Marines and the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, boarded ship to leave Guadalcanal. 1st Battalion 8th Marines headed for Wellington, New Zealand. The 8th Marine Regiment losses on Guadalcanal were 115 killed, 451 wounded, and 9 missing.
Battle of Tarawa 1st Battalion 8th Marines departed the via LVT's, and waited at the line of departure. Watching the battle unfold from sea as the division reserve, the battalion was ordered ashore after several hours. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of confusion and the word didn't reach the commander for some time. After 18 hours out at sea, 1/8 landed on Red Beach 2 at 06:15 on November 21, 1943 (D+1).
As soon as 1/8 began coming ashore, the murderous onslaught started. The LVTs didn't fare any better than the D-Day landings and were quickly bogged down by the reef. The men of 1/8 landed on the far right of Red 2 after wading over 500 yards ashore. The battalion commanding officer, Major Lawrence C. Hays reported to Colonel David M. Shoup, the newly promoted commander of the 2nd Marine Regiment, at 08:00 with about half his landing team. 1/8 had suffered more than 300 casualties just getting ashore; others were scattered all along the beach and the pier. Worse, the unit had lost all its flamethrowers, demolitions, and heavy weapons.
Col. Shoup directed Major Hays to attack westward, but both men knew that small arms and courage alone would not prevail against fortified positions. The Marines of 1/8 fought hard all day. Despite the slow progress, Col. Shoup ended his 16:00 hours message to General Smith with the line, "Casualties: many. Percentage dead: unknown. Combat efficiency: We are winning."
Col. Edson issued his attack orders for D+1 at 04:00 hours. 1/8, attached to 2nd Marines was to attack at daylight to the west along north beach to eliminate Japanese pockets of resistance between Beaches Red 1 and 2. On Red Beach Two, Major Hays launched his attack promptly at 07:00, attacking westward on a three-company front. Engineers with satchel charges and bangalore torpedoes helped neutralize several inland Japanese positions, but the strongpoints along the re-entrant were still dangerous. Marine light tanks made frontal attacks against the fortifications, even firing their 37mm guns point blank into the embrasures, but they were inadequate for the task. One was lost to enemy fire, and the other two were withdrawn.
Hays called for a section of 75mm halftracks. One was lost almost immediately, but the other used its heavier gun to considerable advantage. The center and left flank companies managed to curve around behind the main complexes, effectively cutting the Japanese off from the rest of the island. Along the beach, however, progress was measured in yards. The bright spot of the day for 1/8 came late in the afternoon when a small party of Japanese tried a sortie from the strongpoints against the Marine lines. Hays' men, finally given real targets in the open, cut down the attackers in short order.
The toughest fight of the fourth day (D+3) occurred on the Red Beach One/Two border where Colonel Shoup directed the combined forces of Hays' 1/8 and Schoettel's 3/2 against the "re-entrant strongpoints. The Japanese defenders in these positions were clearly the most disciplined—and the deadliest—on the island. From these bunkers, Japanese antiboat gunners had thoroughly disrupted the landings of four different battalions, and they had very nearly killed General Smith the day before. The seaward approaches to these strongpoints were littered with wrecked LVTs and bloated bodies.
Major Hays finally got some flamethrowers (from Crowe's engineers when LT 2/8 was ordered to stand down), and the attack of 1/8 from the east made steady, if painstaking, progress. Major Schoettel, anxious to atone for what some perceived to be a lackluster effort on D-Day, pressed the assault of 3/2 from the west and south. To complete the circle, Shoup ordered a platoon of infantry and a pair of 75mm halftracks out to the reef to keep the defenders pinned down from the lagoon. Some of the Japanese committed hara-kiri; the remainder, exhausted, fought to the end.
Hays' Marines had been attacking this complex ever since their landing on the morning of D+1. In those 48 hours, 1/8 fired 54,450 rounds of .30-caliber rifle ammunition. But the real damage was done by the special weapons of the engineers and the direct fire of the halftracks. Capture of the largest position, a concrete pillbox near the beach, enabled easier approaches to the remaining bunkers. By 13:00, it was all over. At the Red 1/Red 2 pocket there was no accurate count of Japanese dead.
There were an estimated 1,000 Japanese alive and fighting on the night of D+2, 500 on the morning of D+3 and only 50-100 left when the island was declared secure at 13:30 D+3. 2nd Marine Division suffered 894 killed in action, 48 officers and 846 enlisted men, with another 84 of the survivors later succumbing to their wounds.
Following the battle 1/8 along with the 2nd Marine Division was shipped to the big island of Hawaii. 1/8 remained in Hawaii for six months, refitting and training, until called upon for its next major amphibious landing, the Battle of Saipan in the Marianas in June 1944.
Battle of Saipan 1st Battalion 8th Marines landed on Green Beach on 15 June 1944. Confusion on the beaches, particularly in the 2d Marine Division area, was compounded by the strength of a northerly current flow which caused the assault battalions of the 6th and 8th Marines to land about 400 yards too far north. This caused a gap to widen between the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions.
On D+1 8th Marines moved east into the swamps around Lake Susupe. On 20 June the 8th Marines wheeled from facing east to attack northward into the foothills leading to Mount Tapotchau. The following day saw the Marines attack all along the line. The 8th Marines worked its painful way into the maze of ridges and gullies that formed the foothills of Mount Tapotchau.
On the west side of Saipan, the 2d Marine Division had a memorable day on 25 June. In a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, with a battalion of the 8th Marines clawing up the eastern slope, a battalion of the 29th Marines (then attached to the 8th Marines) was able to infiltrate around the right flank in single file behind a screen of smoke and gain the dominating peak without the loss of a single man. Over the next several days the 8th Marines encountered four small hills strongly defended by the enemy. Because of their size in comparison with Mount Tapotchau, they were called "pimples." Each was named after a battalion commander. Painfully, one by one, they were assaulted and taken over the next few days.
Bypassing the town, the 2d Marine Division drove towards Flores Point, halfway to Tanapag. Along the way, with filthy uniforms, stiff with sweat and dirt after over two weeks of fierce fighting, the Marines joyfully dipped their heads and hands into the cool ocean waters. By 4 July 1/8 and the 2nd Division were moved into the reserve force in order to prepare for the attack on Tinian.
Battle of Tinian At 17:05 on July 24, (Jig Day), 1/8 disembarked from the coming ashore at White Beach 1 at the request of the 4th Marine Division commander. The battalion was requested at 15:15 hours, however due to communication delays it didn't arrive until that evening. 1/8 was assigned as the 4th Marine Division reserve and was ordered to support the 24th Marine Regiment. Once ashore the battalion dug in at a place on the line near 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines.
On July 25 (Jig+1), Lieutenant Colonel Hays' 1st Battalion, 8th Marines began the day under the tactical control of the 24th Regiment. The battalion received orders to relieve the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, along the coast on the extreme left flank of the beachhead. This shift was accomplished at 09:20, almost the same moment that Hays' unit reverted to its parent regiment, the newly landed 8th Marines. The latter, now attached to the 4th Division, assumed the northernmost sector of the front with 2 medium and 2 light (flamethrower) tanks from the 2nd Tank Battalion attached. 8th Regiment then began to struggle northward toward Ushi Point.
Using the same tactics employed along the beach by the 24th Marines on Jig-Day, 1/8 supported by armored amphibians afloat and tanks ashore, inched slowly through the gnarled coastal terrain and snare-like undergrowth. Marines found the zone littered with bodies—Japanese counterattackers of the night before that required careful examination for suicidal survivors. At first there was no opposition, but as the unit pressed farther to the north resistance began to develop along the coast. There, survivors of the counterattack, holed up in the craggy coral, fired occasional challenging bursts at the Marines.