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Colonel James Wes Hammond Jr., USMC
(ret.) is “a 1951 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1975. In addition to a B.S.
from the Naval Academy, he has a M.A. (International Law) from the Catholic University of America and a M.A. (Journalism)
from the University of Nevada. During more than a quarter of a century of active duty, he was wounded in action as an infantry
platoon leader in Korea; twice, he was a tactics instructor at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Va.; commanded a
company in an infantry battalion afloat in the Mediterranean; was aide-de-camp to MajGen. D.M. Shoup (later 22nd Commandant
of the Marine Crops) on Okinawa, where Wes met and married Miss Donna M. Selby of Brighton, Colorado.
He deployed with the forces afloat
for the Cuban Missile Crisis. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marines ("The Magnificent Bastards") in Vietnam
until wounded in action and evacuated. He returned to duty as Plans Officer of the 3rd Marine Division until wounded again.
Then he was Head, Command Dept., Marine Corps Command & Staff College in Quantico. There he taught Research and Writing;
Command and Staff Organization and a future concept of amphibious operations called "Sea Base." He was transferred
to Hawaii and promoted to colonel and assigned as Protocol Officer and Aide to Commanderin- Chief, Pacific, Adm. John S. McCain,
Jr. USN. He retired from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and returned to Reno, Nevada. While on active duty (1964-67) he was Editor
and Publisher of the Marine Corps Gazette, the professional journal of the Marine Corps Association. Eight years after retiring
from the Marine Corps, he moved to Annapolis, Maryland, to be editor of Shipmate, the monthly magazine of the U.S. Naval Academy
Alumni Association. After a dozen years there, he again retired and returned to Reno.
Colonel James Wes Hammond, Jr.
is the author of The Treaty Navy: The Story of the U.S. Naval Service Between the World Wars; A Few Marines; A
few More Marines; Poison Gas: The Myths Versus Reality.
According to the MOAA, in The
Treaty Navy: The Story of the U.S. Naval Service Between the World Wars, “Hammond explores the history
of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in the 1920s and 1930s. He discusses how the Naval Service, despite restrictive international
treaties, a stingy Congress, and a war-weary population, anticipated and conceptually prepared for the coming naval war with
Japan. Hammond explains that the ballyhooed feud between the "battleship admirals" and the "carrier admirals"
was, in fact, a question of who was the next potential naval enemy. A battle against England and her Royal Navy would require
battleships; however, a fight for mastery of the Pacific would require aircraft carriers and submarines to "wage war
in Japanese waters." Hammond's book fills a gap in the knowledge concerning the preparations leading up to victory
in the Pacific and explains how dive-bombing, carrier deck-spotting, amphibious warfare, fuelling at sea, and mobile advance
bases came into being.”
According to the book description of
A Few More Marines, “This is the second of a series of volumes of informal chronicles of the
U.S. Marine Corps in the 20th Century. The genre is fiction but the reader should be aware that many of the episodes could
have happened and maybe they did. A different view of the of the Marine Corps and the characters who populated its ranks is
shown. It is hoped that the reader will become acquainted with the Marine Corps that many of us knew and loved. Sadly, many
of those days and characters are gone forever but their memory is preserved here.”
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