Organization
The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade varied in size and structure each time it was created. Headquarters and Service Company, the company comprising the headquarters staff and support personnel, was much smaller than the equivalent company in standard Marine brigades. Each iteration of the brigade was assigned provisional military police, signal and other supporting companies and platoons. This was not an uncommon practice for the U.S. Marine Corps, which created such ad hoc units regularly in wartime. During World War II two other provisional Marine brigades were formed, which eventually expanded into divisions.
Component units varied considerably as well. In its first iteration in 1912, the brigade had only 1,200 men in two provisional regiments. When re-formed for duty in Iceland in 1941, it was based around volunteers from the 2nd Marine Division. Volunteers from the division were moved into the 6th Marine Regiment's 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions, and the 10th Marine Regiment's 2nd Battalion. It took 4,095 men from A Company of the 2nd Tank Battalion, A Company of the 2nd Service Battalion, and parachute and antitank platoons. In its 1944 iteration, the brigade was far larger than a standard brigade, 9,886 men, formed around the 4th Marine Regiment and the 22nd Marine Regiment, with provisional headquarters, military police, and signal companies and a provisional battalion of artillery.
The brigade's Korean War organization was a 4,725-man force based around the 5th Marine Regiment and supported by Marine Aircraft Group 33, including military police, reconnaissance and intelligence companies. The attack force included the 1st Battalion, 2nd Battalion and 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment as well as supporting companies from the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Motor Transport Battalion, 1st Ordnance Battalion, 1st Service Battalion, 1st Shore Party Battalion, 1st Signal Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Amphibian Tractor Company, and 1st Combat Service Group.
In each of its iterations, the brigade was not organized as a permanent formation. Typically it was created only as a temporary front-line unit while larger United States Marine units were formed. The brigade would then merge with these to form a Marine division. The 1942 brigade merged with the 2nd Marine Division, the 1944 brigade was the basis for the formation of the new 6th Marine Division, and the 1950 brigade acted as an advance force for the newly reactivated 1st Marine Division before merging into that unit.
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