USMC Battle Order Trivia Quiz

On 10 Nov 1775, the Continental Congress authorized raising two battalions of naval infantry troops to operate from Continental Navy ships. Samuel Nicholas began recruiting in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. Nicholas received the first officer's commission in the Marine Corps, and 10 Nov and Tun Tavern are considered the birth date and place of the Marines.

Pirates operating from bases in North Africa, known as the Barbary Coast, impeded commerce between the U.S. and Europe, commerce that the new nation needed to build the government. The First Barbary War lasted 1801-1805, centered on the ports of Tripoli and Derna in Libya.

In 1804, a force of just eight U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon, and 500 mercenaries captured the city of Derna. The Maries raised, for the first time, the American flag in victory on foreign land. The first line of the Marines' Hymn memorializes this: "...to the shores of Tripoli."

During the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), a force of Marines joined the assault on the Chapultepec Palace in September 1847. The capture of Chapultepec led to the fall of Mexico City and U.S. victory in the war. This battle leads the Marines' Hymn: "From the Halls of Montezuma..."

Marines were first deployed to China in 1894 during the First Sino-Japanese War. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in 1900, Marines guarded the embassy quarter of Beijing (Peking). Marine Dan Daly was a private during this engagement and won a Medal of Honor, the first of two he would earn over the course of his 30-year career.

During intense fighting in 1918 at Belleau Wood, France, the opposing German soldiers allegedly called the Marines "Teufel Hunden", which translates as "Hell Hounds" or "Devil Dogs". The Marines gladly adopted the moniker, especially as it fits well with their traditional bulldog mascot.

The bloody battle for Iwo Jima lasted for 5 weeks in February-March 1945. American casualties outnumbered Japanese at a rate of 3 to 2 and only 216 of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers survived to be taken prisoner. Only four days into this carnage, a squad of Marines raised the U.S. flag atop the highest point of the island, Mt. Suribachi. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured an iconic image of this flag raising that won him a Pulitzer Prize.

The image was recreated as a statue for the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

In November 1950, over 120,000 Chinese troops encircled approximately 30,000 United Nations troops, mainly the First Marine Division and the Army's 7th Infantry Division, near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. Over 17 days, the UN forces fought their way out of the encirclement and retreated to an evacuation port, in horrible winter weather with temperatures as low as -38 degrees F (-36 C).

The weather caused casualties on both sides almost equal to combat casualties, and the battle is known as "The Frozen Chosin".

At nearly the same time as the fall of South Vietnam to communist forces in April 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge forces overthrew the government of neighboring Cambodia. In May, the Khmer Rouge captured the U.S. flagged merchant ship SS Mayaguez and interned the crew on a nearby island.

A force of Marines assaulted the ship and island where the crew was held. A fierce battle followed, but the Marines were unable to directly rescue the crew, although they were freed soon after the battle. In the confused extraction of U.S. forces, Marines and Air Force helicopter crews were lost.

Their names are the last listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC.

On 23 October 1983, truck bombs detonated near barracks at the Beirut Airport that housed U.S. Marines and French troops that were peacekeeping forces during the Lebanese Civil War. The terrorist group Islamic Jihad took credit for the bombing that killed a total of 307 people including 241 Marines.

Following the acquittal of four policemen accused in the beating of Rodney King, the city of Los Angeles erupted into riots that lasted for five days. President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed 1,500 Marines and 2,000 Army soldiers to the city to reinforce National Guard troops.

This was the first military intervention in a U.S. city since the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.