Book Description

The John H. Russell, Jr., Papers (P.C. 114) provide a background for understanding the transformation of the Marine Corps from a conglomeration of small detachments into a major naval arm; from the source of ad hoc expeditionary units into a type command capable of task-organizing flexible, balanced projection forces to meet the needs of the fleet. While this collection does not detail the development of the Fleet Marine Force concept, it identifies many aspects of the milieu in which the concept evolved. More especially, it limns the career of the leader who nurtured the ideas, codified them into a practicable doctrine, negotiated their adoption, and ensured implementation in combined fleet exercises. From theory to operational fact, it was Russell who sired the Fleet Marine Force. The collection is an incomplete and largely unstructured accumulation. It is strongest in areas which Russell apparently viewed in retrospect as worthy of documentation; there are indications of belated gathering of materials related to specific topics, rather than across-the-board files of given periods. The papers retained from early service in Haiti pertain primarily to defending his command against problems he inherited. Papers retained from his commandancy are dominated by the relatively minor problem of Smedley Butler. These two topical areas provide focal points of interest in the collection. Certainly the papers from Haiti are the most intriguing segment of the collection, as much for what they do not say as for what they do. From the American side, they reflect the boring day-to-day routine-spiced with moments of high drama-which characterizes almost any military operation. From the Haitian side, they expose the reader to a flamboyant political opportunism. There are random samples from an arena in which ignorance, greed, superstition, counter-racism, anti-colonialism, and pride in a decayed culture all melded into a rhetoric of the underdog who had something to gain and nothing, absolutely nothing, to lose.