ISBN: 0-7509-4796-0
Pages: viii + 279

Introduction; Acknowledgements; photos; charts; tables; organigrams; maps; OBs; TOEs; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Chronology of the War in the Far East and Pacific Theatre; Abbreviations and Acronyms; The Phonetic Alphabet; Some Examples of Nicknames; Some Examples of Operational Codewords for Assaults on Islands

   Sutton Publishing continues to expand its line-up of WWII-related handbooks. We've previously reviewed a few, including The Fleet Air Arm Handbook and The Luftwaffe Handbook. It would be nice to be able to report the volumes are all highly regarded and uniformly excellent, but in fact they're of varying quality, which is understandable given the variety of authors and range of topics, with some of the latter considerably broader than others.
   George Forty wrote one of the earlier releases in the series, Japanese Army Handbook, 1939-1945. This new one on the US Marines was also written by Forty. It arrives soon after a somewhat related volume by George Clark, The Six Marine Divisions in the Pacific, and both the Forty book and the Clark book bear comparison to Gordon Rottman's U.S. Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle as well as a slew of Osprey volumes by Rottman. Indeed, Forty's book contains echoes of quite a few earlier works.
   Forty's first chapter, "Landing Operations," provides a brief history of the evolution of the Marines, the genesis of their amphibious role, and a short account of Iwo Jima as a "typical assault landing." He quotes extensively from Rottman on the organization of combat teams, utilizes several pages from the history of The Fourth Marine Division in World War II (although Proehl's book is not listed in the bibliography), and closes his chapter with paragraphs from Semper Fi (but doesn't identify which of the several books with that title he's quoting).
   The second chapter, "Marine Corps Static Organisations," looks at Marine headquarters, the Marine band, training establishments and schools, embassy guards, ship detachments, recruiting, and Marine aviation. Forty quotes extensively from Rottman as well as Harry Edwards and George McMillan (who he lists as "MacMillan").
   Chapter Three describes organization of the Fleet Marine Force, amphibious corps, and separate brigades, including one-paragraph histories of six different brigades, tactical groups, and task groups. The next chapter focuses on USMC divisions. In the span of about twenty-four pages, Forty follows the evolving TOE of the divisions and offers several nice organigrams to illustrate typical organizations in July 192, April 1943, May 1944, and September 1945. The chapter provides some explanation for many of the different types of units organic to the division and—once again quoting Rottman—summarizes the "specific missions" of support weapons battalions, amphibious tractor battalions, engineer battalions, scout/recon companies, and so on. Chapter Six concludes the survey of Marine ground formations with data on the organization and deployment of defense battalions, AA battalions, barrage balloon squadrons, and a paragraph on African-American Marines.
   Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight cover insignia, clothing, personal equipment, weapons, vehicles, landing ships, and landing craft. The book as a whole is liberally illustrated with photos, and these chapters in particular use photos effectively to show uniforms, boots, helmets, and so forth, all in well-chosen black-and-white photos from the war years. Here's an example of Forty's description:

Heavy Machine Guns

   The .30-cal. M1917A1 Browning was the company and battalion heavy support machine gun, being the heavier (85.751b) water-cooled version of the company .30-cal. Browning, complete with water jacket and tripod, the latter alone weighing over 501b. However, it was possible to transport the complete weapon system on the M4A1 two-wheeled handcart.
   The other heavy machine gun, the .50-cal. Browning HB M2 heavy machine gun, was basically just an enlarged version of the .30-cal. M1917 and was manufactured in greater quantity than any other US machine gun, having many uses on the ground, mounted on armoured fighting vehicles, in an anti-aircraft role and in infantry use, the last of these being on a tripod (weighing 441b). It was also used on numerous aircraft. The Marines used it on tops of tanks and mounted it on LVTs and other types of landing craft, while there was a water-cooled version used as an anti-aircraft weapon, until it was replaced by the 20mm Oerlikon cannon in 1944. Weighing some 841b, it was fed by a 110-round web or disintegrating metal belt and had an effective range of 1,800yd.
   Battalions were well equipped with heavy MGs (of both calibres), which were often used by special weapons groups to help defend artillery and anti-aircraft artillery positions.

   The ninth chapter returns to examination of Marine units, in this case covering Raiders, paratroopers, and glider troops. As with the earlier chapters, Forty focuses on creation, organization, and deployment of units, but also devotes some attention to specialized clothing and equipment such as that utilized by the Raiders.
   Chapter Ten, amounting to about sixteen pages, reviews Marine aviation. The survey begins at the top with "directors of USMC aviation" and further discusses types of air units (fighter squadrons, torpedo bombing squadrons, scout bombing squadrons, etc), aircraft employed (Wildcats, Corsairs, Helldivers, etc), and the combat role of Marine aviation in the Pacific. The chapter includes a table showing the growth of personnel assigned to Marine aviation from 1939 through 1945 as well as a list of USMC aviators awarded the Medal of Honor, but doesn't deal with individual USMC air units or their histories. Not surprisingly, Gordon Rottman is quoted again in this chapter.
   Chapter Eleven deals with women in the Marine Corps.
   The twelfth chapter of the book expends about twenty pages altogether on histories of the six Marine divisions in the Pacific. Given the relative wealth of material Forty includes on clothing, helmets, and insignia, these histories seem under-developed. However, this is an area where both Gordon Rottman and George Clark excel, so the author probably felt no need to plow this ground again. Here's an excerpt from his sketch on 6th Marine Division, incorporating some text from another source:

   The 'Striking Sixth' was the only Marine division to be formed overseas, being activated at Tassafaronga, Guadalcanal on 7 September 1944. Its core was 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, formed a few months earlier for the Guam operation, together with 4th and 22nd Marine Regiment. Its commander throughout would be MajGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. As with 5th Marine Division, 6th Marine Division had more than just a smattering of men who had been in the thick of the fighting almost from the start of the Pacific war. Its shoulder patch explained everything, the encircling border containing the names of Melanesia, Micronesia and Orient, as Uncommon Valor explains: 'The first two were for Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Makin, New Georgia, Bougainville, Parry, Engebi, Eniwetok, two dozen land dots in the Marshalls, Emirau, Saipan, Guam. "Orient" stemmed from the old days of 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai and from the defense of Bataan and Corregidor, and pointed to the future—in China once more and in Japan itself.' The traditions of 4th Marine Regiment went all the way back to the original 4th Marine Regiment who had been in China in 1927. Now, the reborn 4th, for the very first time in Corps history, would assume the title and colours of a regiment not formally disbanded, while the men of the new 4th were not 'raw boots' but rather prime experts from the raider battalions, whose 'gung-ho' spirit had made them legendary. Their first mission as a separate regiment was the invasion of Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago in March 1944. It was a bloodless coup, but there were tougher days ahead.

   The book's final chapter offers thumbnail biographies of several Marines, not all from World War II, ranging from Medal of Honor winners to Marine Corps commandants:

• John Basilone
• Gregory Boyington
• Evans Carlson
• Anthony Casamento
• Clifton Cates
• Merrit Edson
• Earl Ellis
• Graves Erskine
• Roy Geiger
• Thomas Holcomb
• John Lejeune
• Randolph Pate
• Lewis Puller
• Keller Rockey
• William Rupertus
• Harry Schmidt
• Lemuel Shepherd
• Ruth Streeter
• Pedro dell Valle
• Alexander Vandergrift
• Frank Witek

   Unfortunately, these bios exhibit a few minor errors, such as noting Lejeune's top rank as Major General in one place, but elsewhere as Lieutenant General.
   In some circles, Forty has been criticized for producing quantity rather than quality, devoting insufficient attention to detail, and simply reassembling and recycling the work of others. Frankly, some of those criticisms seem to be valid here. For one thing, the author has adopted a somewhat annoying and condescending tone in his text with many first person interjections in the manner of a lecturer. For example, the first chapter contains these snippets:

   "This is not the place to go into detail about the early years...."

   "However, we do need to look at the interwar period...."

   "We shall be covering the detailed organisation of the wartime Marine division in another chapter...."

   "I have chosen the assault on 'Sulphur Island'...."

   "Space does not permit a complete 'blow by blow' account of the entire landing...."

   "I hope this short, but detailed, account of a typical assault landing will help...."

   Furthermore, Forty relies to a surprising extent on the work done by other writers, especially Gordon Rottman. With Rottman quoted at length and comprising a large proportion of the bibliography, it might even be accurate to say that Forty couldn't have compiled this handbook without Rottman's volumes, and the author makes a point of thanking Rottman in his "Introduction and Acknowledgements." While it's true that Forty has added some fresh material—notably photos and diagrams—overall this is quite a derivative work. Incredibly, however, the bibliography doesn't list a single one of the principal six USMC divisional histories (i.e., McMillan, Johnston, Aurther, Proehl, Conner, and Cass).
   This is by no means a valueless or incompetently produced volume, and the photos in particular will be of interest to many readers. It's always useful to have large quantities of accurately rendered information assembled in one handy location, but—outside the chapters on clothing, equipment, vehicles, and vessels—there are probably better, handier volumes—such as Rottman's in particular—for most of what Forty presents here. Probably the most generous assessment of this book would be to note that it brings together in one tome an attractive synthesis and abridgement of work done over the years by serious researchers and writers. Despite a few flaws, it's a workmanlike volume many readers will enjoy even if it's not likely to win any awards as one of the top new books of the year.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Sutton Publishing.
   Thanks to Sutton for providing this review copy.