THE HISTORY OF MARINES AROUND THE WORLD characterized by attacks launched from the sea by naval and landing forces against hos tile shores The main form is the amphibious assault which may be conducted for any of several purposes to serve as a prelude to further combat operations ashore to seize a site required as an advanced naval or air base or to deny the use of the site or area to the enemy Landing of expeditionary forces on a shore or at a port already secured by friendly forces is not usually included in the concept Although ostensibly tied to their respect tive navies marines across the globe today usually operate relatively independently as military forces in their own right In fact despite the name marines are in many ways removed from an explicit connection to the sea While landing operations are still inextricable features of corps marines also regularly go to battle in the air and in land locked battlegrounds Where once ships were the defining marine corps transport modern technology has made it possible to send marines into battle in among other vehicles ramphibious landing crafts tanks helicopters and jets and has even led to occa sionally removing the soldier entirely from confrontation as in the case of unmanned drone aircraft Io
INTRODUCTION In recent years the structure and demo graphics of marine corps around the world have changed drastically compared to the his toric makeup of corps The most noticeable change is perhaps the addition of women over the past century to what was an exclu sively male enterprise since the earliest corps of the Byzantine Empire Women primarily served clerical or other noncombat duties but by the early 21st century they were play ing full roles in all aspects of many marine corps throughout the world Similarly homo sexual individuals were allowed to serve in dozens of marine corps worldwide by the mid 201Os and the number of corps that allow openly homosexual soldiers to serve will surely grow in the approaching years No matter the advance in troop makeup technological innovation or other funda mental changes to marine corps in the future one constant promises to be that their sol diers will be used in every way possible and will continue to prove themselves among the most versatile and tenacious of any fighting force on Earth II
WHAT IS A MARINE CORPS W oldiers of the fleet is probably the best term to describe marines They are troops recruited trained and organized for land sea and air service in operations related to naval campaigns The word marine is derived from the Latin word mare meaning sea The most signifi cant exploits by such troops were probably during World War II when fighting men of the United States Marine Corps were landed on island beaches throughout the Pacific theater of war Their mission was to take control of island after island from occupy ing Japanese forces They were normally the initial assault troops who established beach heads and engaged in some of the bloodiest combat of the war DEVELOPMENT The use at sea of troops essentially trained for land warfare was a natural outgrowth of the way sea battles were fought for many centuries 13
