This is a copy of a book review by me that appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette. I present it here in honor of our Marine cousins beyond the sea.


Marine Corps Gazette - Quantico
Author: Caulkins, Robert D., Master Sergeant, USMC (Ret)
Date: Feb 1996



"NOTHING COULD BE AS BAD..."

FROM TRENCH AND TURRET: Royal Marines Letters and Diaries 1914-1918. By S. M. Holloway. Royal Marines Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, England, 1992, 103 pp., $6.95 plus $4.50 handling. Limited copies available through The Scholar's Bookshelf, 110 Melrich Road, Cranbury, NJ 08512. Catalog number 5AH5C. Telephone (609) 395-6933. Not available through MCA Bookstore.

For historians, students of military history, or inquisitive American Marines who want to know more about that "other Corps" across the sea from which the U.S. Marine Corps sprang, this book is a gold mine of information about the British Royal Marines in action in World War I.

From Trench And Turret contains firstperson accounts of the Royal Marines in action in the monumental naval battles of Jutland and the Dardanelles, and in savage land combat it Gallipoli, Zeebrugge, and the Somme.

In one chapter, Royal Marines describe an amphibious assault against a heavily fortified German naval base on the Belgian coast. It was a combined operation by the Royal Navy and Marines. The Navy mission was to run three blockships into the mouth of a canal in the harbor at Zeebrugge, Belgium. Once inside, the ships were to scuttle themselves, blocking the German Navy's direct access to the English Channel.

Embarked in an obsolete warship, HMS Vindictive and two ancient civilian ferry boats, the mission of the 4th Battalion, Royal Marines was to land on a fortified breakwater protecting Zeebrugge Harbor, and knock out several German heavy gun positions which would, if not neutralized, play havoc with the three blockships as they dashed past the breakwater heading for the entrance to the Zeebrugge-Bruges Canal.

Just after midnight on 23 April 1918, Vindictive and the two ferry boats, as quietly as possible, approached the fortified breakwater under the protection of a smoke screen. Abruptly, the wind shifted blowing the smoke screen away. Seconds later, a star shell 6red by German gunners burst over the ships revealing all three of them. Then, from the Zeebrugge shoreline, a powerful searchlight was turned on illuminating the scene even more brilliantly. The German defenders on the breakwater opened fire from 5-inch gun batteries at a range of less than 100 yards.

Aboard the Vindictive, the Marine assault force, formed by platoons on the open main deck and waiting to storm the breakwater positions, were caught in a hurricane of fire from which there was no escape. By the time the ship was close enough to drop gangways on to the breakwater, dead and wounded Marines and sailors were strewn all over the main deck and 12 of the 14 assault gangways rigged to the side of the ship had been shot away by German gunfire. On one of the ferry boats, a shell had struck a platoon of 56 Marines formed up on her deck, killing 49 and wounding the remainder.

The 4th Bn, Royal Marines sustained 366 casualties out of a total of 730 engaged. Of 30 officers in the action, 10 were killed. But, the slaughter diverted the German defender's attention from the three British blockships, which successfully bulled their way into Zeebrugge harbor and scuttled themselves in the canal, blocking it until the end of the war.

The chapters on Gallipoli, the Dardanelles, Jutland, and the Somme tell stories just as brutal in relation to casualties and just as amazing in regard to the heroism shown by the men of the Royal Marines.

A subsequent chapter in the book shows that as horrible as war is, there is occasional humor. Sometimes it is true merriment, but because of the environment, it is mostly the forlorn, gallows-type humor of those who know, or pretty much suspect, that their days are numbered.

The book is well illustrated and contains maps of the areas of action mentioned in the text.

In the epilogue the author notes that, "Nothing could be as bad as the things they had seen or heard, no fear could be as sharp nor camaraderie as close . . . years later die television pictures [travelogues] of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, calm and peaceful as the bays and beaches had become, could reduce men to tears as if it had all happened yesterday."

From Trench And Turret is a memorial to extraordinary braver under seemingly impossible conditions.

Quote to Ponder

On Sacrifice

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.

-Rupert Brooke, The Soldier 1914 and Other Poems (1915)

[Author Affiliation]
reviewed by MSgt Robert D. Caulkins, USMC(Ret)

[Author Affiliation]
MSgt Caulkins served 22 years in the Corps followed by service in the Central Intelligence Agency. He is now retired and currently resides in Brunswick,GA.


Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner, Marine Corps Gazette, further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.