Been busy working on the second volume of On Contested Shores and another to be announced project, but I did get through the new book about the Continental Marine Corps by retired Major General Jason Q. Bohm. In it, he describes an early application of Marines employed for reconnaissance-counter reconnaissance providing support and intelligence in a joint scenario. How early? 1776.
In the winter of 1776, Washington is just trying to hold the Continental Army together. He’s grossly outnumbered by the British, he’s already been pushed out of the New York area due to some adroit amphibious warfare by the Royal Navy and Army, and he knows a lot of his troops enlistments are about to expire. He asks for reinforcements, including the four Continental Marine companies then forming in Philadelphia by name.
This would already be the second campaign for the Continental Marines, the first being the successful amphibious raid on New Providence Island in the Bahamas in March of 1776. But it would be their first in support of a land campaign and under Continental Army command.
The four companies formed a battalion under Major Samuel Nicholas and joined with a regiment-sized unit called the Pennsylvania Associators, serving under their commander Colonel John Cadwalader as one of his battalions. The Continental Marines battalion was small, only about 100 men strong, and therefore not a large part of the Associators regiment. Full rosters of the battalion have not survived.
While Washington and the Continental Army prepared to attack Trenton in December of 1776, Continental Marines, Pennsylvania Navy forces, Pennsylvania Marines, and the Associators used what vessels they had to screen the main body and even raided across it. The Continental Marine battalion was posted at Bristol on the Pennsylvania side of the river. Letters from Cadawalder to Washington include intelligence passed to him by Nicholas (Cadawalder mentions Nicholas by name as the source) gained through these amphibious raids across the Delaware, but full records of patrols and raids also have not survived. These operations were pretty similar to the cross-river raids and screening that Ukrainian SOF units are conducting on the Dnieper River right now.
The British did not attempt a crossing during this time, but knowledge of that enabled Washington to consolidate the Continental Army, plan, and execute the attack on Trenton on the night of 24 December 1776.
When word reached Cadawalder of the success, he consolidated his regiment and crossed as well, seizing British supplies at Burlington, New Jersey without a fight as the Hessian forces there retreated after Trenton. The Marines and the Associators would get in on the main action in the coming days, fighting with the main Continental Army forces at the Battle of Second Trenton (Assunpink Creek) and the Battle of Princeton.
After Washington took the Army into winter quarters at Morristown, the Marines continued to support patrols and raids, keeping the British and Hessians on the back foot for the winter. Then, its companies were converted to artillery batteries since the Marines had experience handling guns from their actions at sea in 1775. They began to be recalled company by company as Continental Navy ships neared completion, but many stayed on and enlisted in the Continental Army instead to stay in the artillery batteries serving under Henry Knox.
The idea that small units acting far forward and able to surveil, disrupt, and fix adversary forces through raids underpins the Marine Corps Stand-In Forces concept. Using amphibious raids to keep in contact with adversary forces and pass information to Navy and Air Force long-range fires platforms is only something that Nicholas’ battalion of Continental Marines could only dream of. It’s also interesting that critics of the current Marine Corps that make demands that it must get back to what it used to do don’t seem to be fully aware of what it used to do.