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expertise needed to operate division-size commands.     He did have
confidence in General Lejeune, of course, but then the latter was
a graduate of both the Naval Academy and the Army War College.
This attitude rankled Marine officers for the next two decades.

1004.   WOR~D WAR II

a.   World War II brought the formation of not only Marine
divisions but also amphibious corps which commanded both Marine
and Army divisions.  In the invasion and conquest of Okinawa in
1945, Marine Corps major generals commanded what in today's
terminology would be the joint force air component.     During the
fighting on the island, Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger, an
amphibious corps commander, briefly commanded the Tenth Army
following the death of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner,
USA.

b.   Such command arrangements were not unusual in the Pacific
theater of operations.   For example, when the Marines? 1st Raider
Regiment conducted the raid on Munda in 1943, the task organiza-
tion included two Army battalions from the 37th Infantry Divi-
sion.   For this operation, these soldiers donned the same type of
camouflage uniforms as the Marines (and learned later, to their
disappointment, that all the published photographs showing
members of their unit carried captions which identified them as
Marines.)

C.   The Saipan-Tinian campaign of 1944 provides examples of the
best as well as the worst in ??unity of effort.??   A superb example
comes from the ad hoc joint command fo~med to provide artillery
support from Saipan for the invasion of Tinian.     The most
troublesome example occurred earlier during the fighting for
Saipan when the Marine corps commander relieved an Army division
commander.

a.   The latter situation is generally known as the "Smith-versus-
Smith" affair.   The Marine officer was Lieutenant General Holland
M.   ??Howli~g Mad?? Smith, the commander of the ground force
fighting for Saipan.   The 27th Infantry Division, originally a
New York National Guard unit, was commanded by Major General
Ralph C. Smith, USA.2  The 27th Division, which even Army sources
conceded was not a top-notch unit, did not advance as rapidly on
Saipan as the Marines wished.   At least part of the problem lay
in the doctrinal differences between the two services.
e.   Lieutenant General Holland Smith decided to relieve Major
General Ralph Smith, partly because he wished to force a greater


      2   By that stage of World War II,  personnel turnovers had
long since diluted the original makeup of the division.     The 27th
Division probably had no higher percentage of New Yorkers than any
other Army division at the time.

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