Word: holcombes
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...radio speeches and assorted red fire. Thus the Marine Corps will celebrate its 165th birthday. Since it was founded, the Marine Corps has had only 17 commandants; the head man of the birthday celebration will be William Ward Burrows' 15th successor: crop-headed, broad-chinned Major General Thomas Holcomb, spectacled veteran of more than 40 years' service. Burrows' command was only a few hundred men, armed with muzzle-loading muskets...
...Tommy Holcomb's Corps musters close to 40,000, includes a small, well-integrated army (the Fleet Marine Force) equipped with tanks, airplanes, machine guns, artillery. But in Holcomb's day, as in Burrows', the Marines still insist on restoring Politeness...
...that their crack-shooting riflemen in the tops of the Bon Homme Richard helped John Paul Jones to glory against Britain's Serapis off Scotland's coast in 1779. Today the Marine Corps is the keenest rifle-shooting outfit in the world. On the walls of Tommy Holcomb's office in the sprawling Navy Building on Washington's Constitution Avenue hang the trophies of 15 first places won by Marine Corps teams in 31 National Team Matches. Not far away, under the portraits of his 16 predecessors, hangs a framed copy of the letter written...
...trouble getting men, even though Marine Corps enlistments are for four years. It still picks and chooses applicants, rejecting about 80%. By week's end the strength of the Corps, recorded daily on a chart in General Holcomb's office, stood at 37,500 (not including 4,000 reservists being called to active duty). At the training stations at Parris Island, S. C. and San Diego, Calif., young recruits were put in tow of hard-mouthed N. C. O.s in starched khaki, to be taught how to look, act and think like Marines...
Fortnight ago Tommy Holcomb signed an order (sent down from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox) for the organization of the first full divisions in Marine Corps history, two outfits especially designed for swift thrusts into troubled areas. They are "triangular," like the Army's streamlined divisions: three regiments of heavily armed infantry, three battalions of 75-mm. pack howitzers, one of 1555, and 72 tanks...