6                                   U.S. MARINES rN THE PERSIAN GULF, 19901991

   Marines have been deploying by brigades for more than a hundred years.
The first expeditionary brigade worth counting was the one that went to Panama
in 1885. At the turn of the century, another brigade marched to the relief of the
embassies in Peking,    shouldering aside the Boxers, then returning to the
Philippines for service against Aguinaldo's insurgents.
   When the Marine Advance Base Force, the forerunner of today's Fleet
Marine Forces, was formed in 1913, it was a brigade of two small regiments.
It also had an aviation detachment: two primitive flying boats.  The Advance
Base Brigade     had its first expeditionary testing  at Vera  Cruz in  1914.
Unfortunately, the aviation detachment did not go along.       There was no
convenient way to get the short-legged flying boats from New Orleans to Vera
Cruz other than to take them apart and put them into boxes.
   In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, it was planned that
Marine aviation would support the Marine brigade that was sent to France, and
which figured prominently at such places as Belleau Wood, Soissons, Blanc
Mont,   and the Meuse-Argonne.     But the 1st Marine Aviation Force-four
squadrons of DH-4 Dellavillands--which reached France in late summer 1918,
was used as the Day Wing of the Navy Bombing Group, far from where the
Marine brigade was engaged.
   Between World Wars I and II, the Marine Corps sent small expeditionary
brigades to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China.     In every
case, these brigades had an organic aviation clement.  These bush-war Marine
aviators of the 192Os and 1930s did not invent dive bombing or its handmaiden,
close air support, as Marines sometimes like to claim, but they did do a great
deal to develop those concepts and make them work.
   In 1933, when the old-style East and West Coast Expeditionary Forces
became the Fleet Marine Forces, there was a 1st Marine Brigade based at
Quantico and a 2d Brigade based at San Diego.        Each had its own aircraft
group.  At about this time, Marine squadrons began qualifying for aircraft-car-
rier operations.  This carrier qualification cross-training has continued.
   In early 1941 the 1st Marine Brigade became the 1st Marine Division and
the 2d Marine Brigade became the 2d Marine Division.     Correspondingly, the
East and West Coast air groups became the 1st and 2d Marine Aircraft Wings.
Early World War II Marine Corps deployments were made in brigade strength.
In the summer of 1941, a 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was pulled out of the
new 2d Marine Division, formed in 15 days, and sent to garrison Iceland.  In
January 1942, a 2d Brigade was taken out of the 2d Division and sent to
American Samoa.     Two months later, a 3d Brigade was stripped out of the 1st
Marine Division and dispatched to Western Samoa. In 1944, a two-regiment 1st
Provisional Marine Brigade (entirely different from the brigade that went to
Iceland) was formed for the re-occupation of Guam.     But the aphorism is that
"The Marine Corps deploys by brigades, but fights by divisions." Thus it was
that by the end of World War II, the Corps had expanded to six Marine
divisions and five aircraft wings, and close air support had been developed to
a fine art.