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🗓️ 5 March 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Pete Owen, LTC USMC (Ret.) comes on the podcast to talk about his book “To the Limit of Endurance: A Battalion of Marines in the Great War.”
From Texas A&M University Press:
“Scholars and historians offer several theories for the crippling losses suffered by the American Expeditionary Forces on the battlefields of World War I: inexperience, poor leadership, hasty expansion of duties, and others. But until now, most of these studies have focused at the division level or higher.
Now, with To the Limit of Endurance, Peter F. Owen offers a tautly worded, historically rigorous, and intensely human survey of the agonizing burden shouldered by the Second Battalion of the Sixth Regiment of U.S. Marines from its formation in Quantico, Virginia, in 1917 until the cessation of hostilities in November of the following year.
In places like Belleau Wood and Soissons, these young men, led by dedicated officers, died in staggering numbers—primarily because of the outmoded tactics they had learned. Owen shows how the battalion regrouped after these campaigns, however, and embarked on a period of intense retraining. By the time of the closing weeks of the war, the adjustments they had made allowed them to mold themselves into a coldly efficient military machine.
Drawing on a treasure trove of surviving first-hand accounts, Owen expertly combines these individual observations with military records and archival sources to create a mosaic that provides not only a case study of how one organization grappled with transformation but also a tightly focused, ground-level view of the lives—and deaths—of these courageous American military men. The grueling, ultimately triumphant odyssey of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines will appeal to military historians, professional soldiers, and interested general readers.”
Where to buy “To the Limit of Endurance: A Battalion of Marines in the Great War” -
https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781623491567/to-the-limit-of-endurance/
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0:00.0 | The |
0:07.0 | The The |
0:23.6 | The Hey, folks, welcome to theles of the First World War podcast. |
0:55.9 | So joining the podcast today is Pete Owen, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Marine Corps, retired, |
1:02.1 | here to discuss his book, to the limit of endurance, a battalion of Marines in the Great War. |
1:08.0 | Before we get into the book, here's some background on Pete Owen. |
1:11.5 | Taken from the monograph on Blankmont, he co-authored with John Swift, |
1:16.2 | Lieutenant Colonel U.S. Marine Corps retired as well. |
1:20.3 | Pete Owen enlisted in the Marine Corps from Virginia Beach, Virginia in 1981. |
1:25.7 | After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1986, he served as an |
1:30.0 | infantry officer for more than 20 years. His assignments included leading a reconnaissance |
1:35.2 | platoon in northern Iraq in 1991 and serving as an executive officer of the first Marine |
1:41.6 | Regiment during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. |
1:45.0 | His final assignment was directing amphibious raid, reconnaissance, and water survival training in Coronado, California. |
1:52.0 | Owen has taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Marine Corps College of Distance Education and Training since 2004. |
2:00.0 | He also has organized and led Marines on |
2:02.8 | battlefield walks at Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, Bellowood, France, |
2:09.7 | and Iwo Jima, Japan. He is the author of To the Limit of Endurance, a Battalion of Marines in the |
2:16.7 | Great War from 2007, co-editor of |
2:20.3 | Over There, a Marine in the Great War, 1997 by Carl Brannon, and editor of the World |
2:26.6 | War I memoirs of Dawn the Paradis, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC, 2010. I hope I said the sergeant's name correctly. |
2:37.0 | I think it's Peratus, but I never found out for sure. |
... |
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