Qualla: 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Captain Charles G. Grow, Public domain. On 14 December 1945, three months after Japan formally surrendered, Private First Class W.C. Patrick Bates of Kilo Company was shot dead by a Japanese sniper during a mopping-up patrol on Guam. He was the last American killed in World War II, and he wore the patch of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines. That this battalion, born on a North Carolina tobacco field in 1942, would also bury the war's final casualty says something about how thoroughly its history would intertwine with the violent century to come.

Image: Captain Charles G. Grow | Public domain

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines: Born at New River

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Marine Corps, Public domain. The battalion was activated on 1 June 1942 at what is now Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, initially designated the 5th Training Battalion. Its first Marines were a strange mix: officers and enlisted men left behind when the 1st Marine Division shipped out to the South Pacific, pa...

Image: United States Marine Corps | Public domain

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines: America's Battalion

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was RM Gillespie at English Wikipedia., Public domain. What came next was the Pacific. Bougainville in November 1943: 36 dead at Piva Forks, including Corporal John Logan Jr. and Captain Robert Turnbull, both posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Guam in July 1944: 97 killed and 300 wounded taking Chonito Cliff and Adelup Point under ...

Image: The original uploader was RM Gillespie at English Wikipedia. | Public domain

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines: Vietnam: 1,600 Days

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marine Corps photographer, Public domain. No Marine battalion spent more time in Vietnam than 3/3. Sixteen hundred days. Forty-eight combat operations. Six hundred and fifty-three Marines killed, nearly 2,800 wounded. Operation Starlite in August 1965 was the first major Marine engagement of the war, and it was Corporal ...

Image: Marine Corps photographer | Public domain

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines: From the Heart of the Pacific

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SGT Roe F. Seigle, 1st Marine Division, Public domain. In 1975 the battalion was reformed for the third time at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, in Kaneohe Bay. From then on the unit billed itself as Marines from the heart of the Pacific, deploying constantly across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They sat off Lebanon in 1983, two weeks befo...

Image: SGT Roe F. Seigle, 1st Marine Division | Public domain