We Few

by James R. Dickenson

"Desperate for junior officers to meet the demands of its rapid wartime expansion and to replace its mounting casualties in the Pacific, the U. S. Marine Corps convened a special officer candidate school (SOCS) at Camp Lejeune in 1944 to augment the regular officer candidate courses (OCC) at Quantico. The four hundred candidates assigned to this special class had enlisted in the V-12 officers procurement program and were called to active duty from colleges and universities across the country. Destined to fight in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II and to answer the call to arms again in Korea, these SOCS 400 Marines, as they called themselves, served in the Minuteman tradition established at Lexington and Concord nearly two centuries earlier. Their story is told here by James R. Dickenson, a former Marine and reporter for some of the nation's leading news organizations. Focusing on ten men representing all six Marine divisions, he chronicles their experiences through inducti