Marines Digging In to Base History : Corps Working on Pendleton Museum to Instill Esprit

There’s a lot of history to tell in the proposed Marine Corps museum at Camp Pendleton, and it involves more than just the role of the base during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

As retired Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Simmons reminds visitors to the Corps’ historical center here, the Marine connection to Pendleton dates back more than a century, to the 1848 Mexican War.

That was the year that Marine Lt. Archibald Gillespie, dispatched to California as a special agent by President James K. Polk, saved a U.S. Army troop detachment from a total rout at the Battle of San Pasqual near Escondido. Gillespie subsequently bivouacked at Pendleton, then known as Rancho Santa Margarita, along with Capt. Jacob Zeilin, who later became Marine Corps commandant.

“By a great coincidence of history, the area’s connection to the Corps began almost a century before it became the great Pendleton base, in 1942,” said Simmons, director of Marine Corps historical activities and the author of several monographs on Gillespie.

“So in many ways, it’s quite appropriate to have a museum there.”

Simmons and his staff will be in the forefront of putting together a Pendleton museum once the base commander, Maj. Gen. Robert E. Haebel, submits a final proposal later this year for the Pacific War Museum.

A site study, scheduled for completion this spring, is under way on the hoped-for location, at the entrance to Camp Pendleton off Interstate 5 in Oceanside. The plans include a grove of trees honoring the memory of prisoners of war from various Pacific campaigns. The first tree, a cedar, was planted in July.

“The concept approved by Maj. Gen. Haebel is to emphasize the Marine Corps mission, to show how vital this base has been to provide staging and training for our country in time of need,” said base historical officer Maj. Ted Bahry, who is in charge of museum planning.

Simmons and Bahry emphasized the museum’s function in educating Marines about their service’s history in California and the Pacific.

In addition, it is likely to be a strong tourist attraction for the City of Oceanside, given the area’s strong links to the military and the preferred location at Pendleton’s main gate.

“That allows the American taxpayer to be exposed to the various roles and missions that Camp Pendleton has,” Bahry said.

The Marine Corps, however, will not tailor the design or layout to assure commercial success with the public, such as adding theme-park-type videos or displays to boost attendance.

“It’s not our mission per se to be doing this for civilians,” Bahry said.

As Simmons phrased it, “Marine Corps museums exist for Marines first. We are anxious to serve the public as well, but not at the expense of sacrificing the historical focus on Marines.”

Simmons said that too many Marines know the history of the Corps only as a catechism. As an example, he said a typical Marine will tell you that the red stripe on the dress uniform’s pants symbolizes the blood shed at Chapultepec in Mexico City during the 1848 war with Mexico, even though the stripe appears on uniforms dating back to the Revolutionary War.

“Obviously a museum helps in teaching about the Marine Corps,” Simmons said.

Haebel, a veteran of World War II, added, “Knowledge of our history and tradition can only strengthen the team concept (of the Marines).”

The Pendleton complex would become the largest of what the Marine Corps calls “command museums.” A smaller one is in the planning stages at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, to tell new Marines and their parents the story of basic training since the bayside training ground opened in 1921.

Such museums explain the functions of a particular base and its importance to the neighboring region, but leave the telling of the total Marine historical experience to the headquarters museum here.

“The Camp Pendleton museum will tell the history of the (Pendleton-based) First Marine Division, how and why it was formed, along with the history of the ranch,” Simmons said.

He is adamant that each museum be set up according to the highest professional standards. The insistence on quality means that museum planners will not simply take a collection of old military paraphernalia and display it.

“The goal is to determine the story we want to tell and then figure out the best way to illustrate it,” Simmons said. “Not everything that people have out there is of historical value.”

To that end, Bahry asks that people interested in donating to museum collections wait to contact Pendleton until ground is broken for the facility, which Bahry hopes will be in the fall.

Tentative plans during the ground breaking call for the unveiling of a 16-foot-high statue of Marines raising the flag during the battle of Iwo Jima. Noted sculptor Felix deWeldon is fashioning the bronzed fiberglass model after his famous Iwo Jima monument at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

“I’ve been working on it for more than two years and would hope that it could be dedicated Nov. 10, which marks the Marine Corps birthday,” DeWeldon said.

The ceremony will probably mark the beginning of a fund-raising effort for the museum complex, which could cost $4 million. Although specific fund-raising plans have not been drawn up, Bahry said that a nonprofit foundation will be created because the Marine Corps itself cannot use appropriated monies from Congress to build the museum.

Simmons said that Congress “perceives museums in the military to be frivolous” and therefore provides funds only for operation and maintenance, not for construction.

As a result, the Arlington memorial was paid for by a special foundation and later turned over to the National Park Service for operation, Simmons said.

“Construction monies can be raised through donations, through the base exchange, through solicitations, through the Marine Corps Historical Foundation, through a variety of ways,” Simmons said. “But it is always a problem.”

“The hope is that we can build the museum in stages as contributions are received,” Bahry said.

The smaller museum contemplated for the recruit depot could open as early as spring by using temporary facilities in one of the World War II-era tin barracks that are being phased out. The museum eventually will be housed on the top floor of a building being converted into a receiving barracks for new recruits.

A committee of active-duty and retired Marines headed by retired Maj. Gen. Marc Moore is finishing plans for the project to forward to Simmons in Washington. The Washington staff will stock the museum initially with material contained in the headquarters archives.

“We’re adding a new dimension to the so-called catechism, to have more than just a lecture from a drill instructor, more than just sitting on a rifle box memorizing historical dates,” said Moore, who is dean of National University in Vista.