U.S. Marine Corps
2nd Marine Division
The 2nd Marine Division - the "Follow Me" Division - has fought from the blood-soaked reef at Tarawa to the streets of Ramadi. Based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the division carries the Southern Cross on its insignia and the lessons of every Pacific island on its soul. Tarawa taught the Marine Corps how to storm a beach - and the 2nd Marine Division paid the tuition in blood. "Follow Me" - because somebody has to go first.
DIVISION STRUCTURE - THE REGIMENTS
INFANTRY
EST. 1911
1911
ACTIVATED
Tarawa
FIRST WAVE
Saipan
MARIANA ISLANDS
Iraq
RCT-2
The 2nd Marines landed in the first wave at Tarawa - wading across that reef into the worst of it. The regiment fought at Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa in World War II, then deployed to Iraq as RCT-2 during the Global War on Terror. The regiment carries Tarawa in its lineage the way the 1st Marines carries Peleliu - it is the defining scar.
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INFANTRY
EST. 1917
1917
ACTIVATED
Belleau Wood
WWI LEGACY
Tarawa
GILBERT ISLANDS
Iraq
OIF DEPLOYMENTS
The 6th Marines earned immortality at Belleau Wood in 1918 - where Marines fought hand-to-hand through a hunting preserve against veteran German troops and a French officer suggested retreat, prompting the legendary response from Captain Lloyd Williams: "Retreat? Hell, we just got here." The regiment fought at Tarawa and across the Pacific in WWII, deployed to the Dominican Republic during the Cold War, and served in Iraq during the GWOT. The 6th Marines is where the Marine Corps legend of stubbornness was born.
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INFANTRY
EST. 1940
1940
ACTIVATED
Guadalcanal
FIRST COMBAT
Beirut
BLT 1/8 - 1983
Iraq
RCT-8
The 8th Marines fought at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa in WWII. But the regiment's defining moment came on October 23, 1983, when BLT 1/8 lost 220 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing. The 8th Marines carries that weight. The regiment deployed to Iraq as RCT-8, fighting in Anbar Province during some of the war's worst years. Every Marine who has served with 8th Marines knows the date - October 23rd - and what it means.
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ARTILLERY
EST. 1914
M777
155MM HOWITZER
HIMARS
ROCKET ARTILLERY
Tarawa
FIRE SUPPORT
Every
CAMPAIGN
The 10th Marines have provided artillery fire support for every campaign the 2nd Marine Division has fought - from pack howitzers at Guadalcanal to M777s and HIMARS in the 21st century. At Tarawa, naval gunfire was supposed to eliminate Japanese defenses before the landing. It did not. The lesson burned into the 10th Marines was simple: the infantry depends on accurate fires, and failure to deliver them costs lives. The regiment has spent eighty years making sure that lesson was never repeated.
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WORLD WAR II - THE PACIFIC
1942 - 1945
GUADALCANAL
NOVEMBER 1942
2nd
MARINES REGIMENT
8th
MARINES REGIMENT
6
MONTHS FIGHTING
Henderson
FIELD
Before Tarawa, the 2nd Marine Division cut its teeth at Guadalcanal. The 2nd Marines and 8th Marines deployed as reinforcements for the battered 1st Marine Division, fighting through the jungle around Henderson Field against Japanese counterattacks. Guadalcanal was the proving ground - the division learned to fight in the Pacific, learned to endure disease and deprivation, and learned that the Japanese would fight to the last man. These lessons would save lives at Tarawa. Some of them.
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GILBERT ISLANDS
NOVEMBER 20-23, 1943
1,009
MARINES KIA
76
HOURS OF COMBAT
4,500
JAPANESE DEFENDERS
17
JAPANESE SURVIVED
Betio Island - 291 acres of coral, smaller than the Pentagon parking lot - was the most heavily defended piece of real estate on Earth. The tide betrayed the Marines. Higgins boats hung up on the reef 500 yards from shore, and Marines had to wade across open water under point-blank machine gun and artillery fire. Entire waves were cut down before reaching the beach. The first day was a catastrophe - communications collapsed, units were pinned at the seawall, and commanders ashore could not reach the ships. But the Marines kept coming. For 76 hours the 2nd Marine Division fought through concrete bunkers, coconut-log pillboxes, and interconnected tunnels until 4,500 Japanese defenders were dead. Only 17 survived. The photos of dead Marines washing in the surf at Tarawa were the first images of American dead released to the public - and they shocked a nation that had not yet understood the cost of the Pacific War. Tarawa taught the Marine Corps everything about opposed amphibious landings. Every beach assault that followed - Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa - was planned with Tarawa's blood lessons written into the doctrine.
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MARIANA ISLANDS
JUNE 15 - JULY 9, 1944
3,400+
U.S. KIA
4,000
BANZAI CHARGE
30,000
JAPANESE KIA
B-29
RANGE TO JAPAN
Saipan was strategic - taking it put B-29 bombers in range of the Japanese home islands for the first time. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions landed side by side on June 15, 1944, and fought through 25 days of organized Japanese resistance across volcanic terrain. On July 7, the Japanese launched the largest banzai charge of the entire Pacific War - roughly 4,000 soldiers and armed civilians overran American positions in a human wave that pushed through two Army battalions before being stopped. The aftermath at Marpi Point was worse. Japanese civilians - families with children - threw themselves off the cliffs rather than surrender. Marines watched helplessly as hundreds of men, women, and children chose death over capture. Saipan broke something in every Marine who fought there.
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MARIANA ISLANDS
JULY 24 - AUGUST 1, 1944
9
DAYS TO SECURE
Feint
LANDING DECEPTION
North Field
B-29 BASE
Enola Gay
DEPARTED HERE
Tinian was a textbook amphibious assault - the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions used a feint landing to draw Japanese defenders to the wrong beach, then stormed ashore at narrow White Beaches on the opposite coast. The island was secured in nine days. What made Tinian historic came later. North Field became the largest operational airfield in the world - and on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay rolled down its runway carrying Little Boy to Hiroshima. Three days later, Bockscar departed for Nagasaki. The island the 2nd Marine Division seized became the launchpad that ended World War II.
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RYUKYU ISLANDS
APRIL - JUNE 1945
L-Day
DIVERSION FORCE
Deception
FEINT LANDINGS
June
COMMITTED ASHORE
82
DAY BATTLE
At Okinawa the 2nd Marine Division initially served as the floating reserve and diversionary force, conducting feint landings off the southeast coast to draw Japanese defenders away from the actual landing beaches. The division eventually committed elements ashore in the final weeks of the 82-day battle. After Okinawa, the division prepared for the invasion of Japan - Operation Downfall - which never came. The atomic bombs dropped from the airfield they had captured on Tinian made the invasion unnecessary.
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COLD WAR - THE READY FORCE
1946 - 1989
MIDDLE EAST
JULY 1958
BLT 2/2
LANDING TEAM
Beirut
BEACH LANDING
14,000
U.S. TROOPS DEPLOYED
0
SHOTS FIRED
When Lebanon's pro-Western government faced a civil crisis and feared a coup following revolution in neighboring Iraq, President Eisenhower ordered Marines ashore. BLT 2/2 from the 2nd Marine Division landed on Beirut's beaches - where they were greeted by sunbathers and ice cream vendors instead of enemy fire. It was a show of force, not a fight. But it worked. The government stabilized, the crisis passed, and Marines were home by October. Not every deployment ends in combat. Some of the most important ones never fire a shot.
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CARIBBEAN
APRIL 1965
6th
MARINES REGIMENT
Santo Domingo
CAPITAL CITY
Evacuation
MISSION
Cold War
INTERVENTION
Civil war erupted in the Dominican Republic and President Johnson ordered Marines to evacuate American citizens and prevent what he feared was a Communist takeover. Elements of the 6th Marines from the 2nd Marine Division landed in Santo Domingo, established a security zone, and evacuated civilians while firefights cracked through the capital. The intervention was controversial - Cold War politics driving military action in Latin America - but the Marines did what Marines do: showed up, secured the ground, and got people out.
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LEBANON
241 KILLED
241
AMERICANS KILLED
220
MARINES
1/8
BLT
6:22 AM
DETONATION
At 6:22 on a Sunday morning, a yellow Mercedes truck carrying 12,000 pounds of explosive drove through the concertina wire, past the guard post, through the open gate, and into the lobby of the Battalion Landing Team 1/8 headquarters building at Beirut International Airport. The explosion was the largest non-nuclear blast in history - it lifted the entire four-story building off its foundation and collapsed it into rubble. 241 American servicemembers died - 220 of them Marines from the 2nd Marine Division. It was the deadliest single-day loss for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima. The Marines in that building were peacekeepers, not combatants. They had been sent to stabilize Lebanon and their rules of engagement kept their weapons unloaded. The men of BLT 1/8 died in their racks on a Sunday morning. The 2nd Marine Division has never forgotten. Every October 23rd, the division remembers.
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20+
CAMPAIGN STREAMERS
84
YEARS OF SERVICE
241
NEVER FORGET - BEIRUT
Follow Me
DIVISION MOTTO