Wyld Life

The Marine Corps Mess Night: Origins and Traditions
by LtCol Merrill L. Bartlett, USMC(Ret)

Steeped in history, the mess night is an occasion to foster comradeship, respect, and admiration for our Corps of Marines.
The American Naval Heritage

The Marine Corps officers' introduction to anything resembling today's mess night came through service at sea. Until 1914, wine messes were part of the wardrooms of the ships of the fleet. When that great prohibitionist moralizer, Josephus Daniels, took up the portfolio of Secretary of the Navy in 1913, he argued that officers should not be granted a privilege denied enlisted bluejackets and Leathernecks. While the rum ration (later changed to whiskey in 1806) had been a tradition of the age of sail, the practice ended in the American Navy in 1862. During the tenure of Secretary John D. Long (1897-1902), the Department of the Navy even prohibited the sale of alcohol to enlisted men at stations ashore. But alcohol continued to be available to officers in their wardroom messes, a privilege that affronted Daniels' egalitarian principles. When no one took the indefatigable and determined Daniels seriously on the matter, he suggested that alcohol abuse and drunkenness prevailed among the officers of the fleet and seriously impaired its efficiency. Daniels often related the tale of a young officer who never drank before entering the Navy where his messmates taught him a fondness for the loathsome habit. Predictably, the young man became a drunkard, and Daniels vowed to end what a later generation would surely call substance abuse.

Now, the specious argument of the Secretary of the Navy found acceptance and received Presidential approval. Thus, the infamous General Order No. 99 prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages aboard the ships of the U.S. Navy came into being and remains in effect to this day. Throughout the fleet, however, officers expressed outrage. Numerous wardrooms in 1914 witnessed a variety of "going dry" commemorations, liberally punctuated with witty soliloquies, that demeaned the character of the pompous Secretary of the Navy. On the battleship USS Washington, Capt Edward W. Eberle hosted a riotous dinner for his officers, each course of which came heavily doused with some form of an alcoholic beverage. Sailors and enlisted Marines alike expressed umbrage upon learning that alcoholic beverages were no longer available to them at canteens ashore. Daniels had become increasingly convinced that most disciplinary problems in the Naval Services resulted from excessive consumption of alcohol.

Prior to Daniels' meddling, formal dinners probably resembling something like a mess night—occurred infrequently in various wardrooms. MajGen George Barnett recalled such an affair while serving on the USS San Francisco in 1897. Barnett had just reported aboard, having caught up with the cruiser in the harbor of Smryna, and found the evening's entertainment most enjoyable. Perhaps concluding that the new commanding officer of the ship's Marine detachment thought the elaborate dinner a regular occurrence, a Navy officer admonished Barnett, "We don't do this every night, you know!" Col Robert D. Heinl, Jr. remembered something like a mess night (but without alcoholic beverages) while serving aboard the battleship USS Idaho as a midshipman in 1936. A fife and drum section marched through "officers' country" playing "The Roast Beef of Old England" to summon the officers to dinner.

Ashore, Marine Corps officers came together for formal dinners occasionally. Earl H. "Pete" Ellis recalled a farewell dinner for a group of officers departing Cavite during his first tour in the Philippines in 1902. He estimated that more than 50 officers from both of the sea Services attended, captured Chinese banners taken during the Boxer Rebellion decorated the dining room, and a Filipino orchestra played a mixture of Spanish love songs and American ragtime melodies. The gathering extended far into the evening as Ellis and the other officers toasted the Marine Corps, the departing officers, and the gallant dead of Tientsin and Samar. Following a similar, celebratory dinner a couple of years before in the islands, Smedley D. Butler—obviously in his cups—serenaded the nearby jungle foliage for the remainder of the night. A future Commandant (CMC), Ben H. Fuller, thought the spectacle so out of character for the normally sober Butler that he recorded the incident for his personal papers, labeling it "Butler's Bawl."

Even after four decades, Gen Holland M. Smith remembered the conduct of the officers' mess in nearby Olongapo and Col Lincoln Karmany's strict compliance to the social niceties of the mess. Senior captains ruled the mess in that halcyon era of tropical campaigning and "a captain in those days was only one step removed from a king," Smith recalled. "The only time lieutenants were allowed to open their mouths [at dinner] was to put food in." No stranger to the quest for hedonistic pleasures—Karmany discarded his first wife for a younger model, an act that affronted genteel naval circles of the era—it was he who supposedly muttered, "There may be a few good men who don't drink, but they've got to prove it!"

Formal dinners or anything resembling today's mess night might have disappeared altogether, given the egalitarian moralizing of Secretary Daniels and the tide of temperance that followed in the 1920s. The Secretary of the Navy extended his unpopular dictum to stations ashore, even into the quarters of the officers. Shocked and dismayed by the ukase, the socialite wife of the CMC outmaneuvered Daniels with authorization to use liquor in cooking. At the historic Home of the Commandants, Mrs. George Barnett—a doyenne of Washington society, well known for her sparkling "reparties spirituelles" at the expense of pretentious politicians—served the Secretary of the Navy and the other guests a dinner they would not likely forget. Grapefruit came first, laced with at least the alcohol content of two cocktails. Soup consisted mostly of sherry, while the terrapin arrived floating in Madeira. Traditional roast beef was followed by rum sherbet and a salad of champagne frappe. Brandied peaches ended the repast. As Mrs. Barnett recalled the evening in her memoirs, the senator on her left declined a second helping of dessert with a grave response, "Madam, I just couldn't eat another drop!"

Formal dinners of several courses and accompanied by a variety of alcoholic beverages all but disappeared from Marine Corps circles in the 1920s. John A. Lejeune refused to emulate the lavish social scene of his predecessor, and formal dinners at "Eighth and I" became somewhat infrequent and subdued affairs. One disappointed observer, the daughter of MajGen Wendell C. Neville, noted tartly that, "The Lejeunes, you know, they never entertained." By that era, Lejeune had become a teetotaler and his good friend, Butler, a militant prohibitionist. The latter officer once served on detached service with the city of Philadelphia as its commissioner of public safety and undertook a determined program to rid the municipality of vice and demon rum. Later, while in command at Quantico, Butler threatened to put the tiny municipality adjoining the base "off limits" unless the city fathers eliminated the bootleggers selling alcohol to his troops. Lejeune recommended the outright purchase of the small town to solve the dilemma. The combination of these temperance attitudes served to dampen any enthusiasm for formal dinners as most observers, like Mrs. Barnett a decade before, could not imagine formal dining without aperitifs and wines.

The introduction to a formal dinner, faintly resembling anything like the Marine Corps mess night, came about through association with British officers in China. While serving as the adjutant of the 4th Marines in Shanghai in 1927, then-Capt Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. coached the regiment's swimming team. His counterpart in the 2d Battalion Scots Guards invited young Shepherd and his commanding officer, Col Henry C. Davis, to a guest night hosted by the officers' mess of this famous regiment.

Gen Shepherd remembered an impressive evening. The mess silver sparkled in the light of the handsome candelabra arranged on a polished table laden with fine crystal and china. During the dinner the battalion's pipe major played several traditional highland ballads to the tune of his own wailing on the bagpipes, and a guardsman danced. Although the attending officers drank to the health of King George V with a glass of fine port, the battalion commander—the president of the mess—invited the pipe major to join him in a glass of whisky after the performance. The final toast of the evening was to their famous regiment and its raising by King Charles II in 1662. Both Marines left visibly impressed. The following morning, Col Davis summoned his adjutant and instructed him to arrange a similar gathering hosted by the 4th Marines and to invite the officers of the Scots Guards.

Exchanges, such as recalled by Gen Shepherd, continued as the 4th Marines served in China. The Marines received the musical instruments to accompany a successful mess night, a gift from the American Troop and American Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. Sterling Fessenden, the chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council, apparently orchestrated the donation in 1927, and the grateful Marines dubbed their new musical group "The Fessenden Fifes." The bandsmen of the Green Howards, another British Army regiment in Shanghai, taught the Marine musicians to play the instruments (1 base drum, 8 side drums, 10 fifes, and 2 piccolos). Doubtless the new martial music added an appropriate and enjoyable accompaniment to any mess nights hosted by the Marines. But apparently the tradition waned for a while during the 1930s, at least as hosted by the 4th Marines.

"Toasting," or the raising of glasses in tribute to someone or an institution as a measure of respect, is a social custom more than a millennium old. The appellation "to toast" came about through the English custom of flavoring wines with spiced toast as apparently wines transported from the continent often spoiled en route to the British Isles. Cookbooks as early as the 15th century referred to the habit. Early in the 18th century, an aristocrat obviously in his cups—referred to a certain lady whose very countenance supposedly enhanced his being like "spiced toast." The social custom took hold, and diners took pains to compose the wittiest and briefest toasts. Gen Shepherd remembered attending a formal dinner in France in 1917, hosted by the 115th Battalion Chasseurs Alpine. At the conclusion of dinner, the battalion commander rose to propose a toast "to the best fighters, the best drinkers, and the best lovers in France—the Chasseurs Alpine."

Unlike Americans, Britains responded to each toast by draining their glasses and sometimes throwing them over the left shoulder "so that no lesser toast might be drunk." Toasts were always drunk with port wine and in "bumpers." This unusual name for a wine glass had its origins from the continental custom of always toasting the Pope first, "au bon Pere," which in its convoluted form became simply "bumper." In the Book of Navy Songs (Naval Institute Press, 1955), a doggerel proclaims most proudly:

Make it a bumper, comrades,
And each one standing here
Can whisper soft above his glass,
The name he holds most dear.
The choice of toasting with port wine has its origin more in politics than in gastronomy. After 1703, to drink French wines denoted a show of favoritism to the enemy on the continent. Wine from Portugal, usually port, meant to embrace the beverage of an ally as a poem by Swift declared:
Be sometime to your country true
Have ever the public good in view,
Bravely despise Champagne at Court
And choose to dine at home with Port.

Perhaps the most strictly controlled of all wines, government officials mandate the location of the vines and its maturation. The grapes are shipped down river to the seaport which gives its name to the libation, "Oporto," where barefoot workers mash the grapes according to a 1,500-year-old custom. A vintage port is held in wood for 22 to 30 months, then bottled. As it matures, a heavy sediment appears on the bottom of each bottle and thus the requirement to decant it prior to serving. After fermentation, inspectors release a minimum of one-third of the vintage—to which approximately 20 percent alcohol in the form of brandy has been added—and the vintage passes to the open market for sale. The beverage gained in popularity such that by 1762, every Royal Navy ship bound for the West Indies contained at least one "pipe" of port, or 56 dozen bottles, for the enjoyment of the officers' mess. In the 18th and 19th century, it was a common custom for the aristocracy to "lay aside a pipe of port" for each male member of the progeny.
After dinner, some members of the mess might engage in games such as "cock fighting" or "Moriarity, where are you?" More likely, the officers played bridge or billiards as on any other night. In most instances, the evening bears no resemblance to a drunken party. Many junior officers spent their evening stifling yawns while hoping that the colonel would go home so that they could go to bed. Those so inclined might enjoy another glass of port or perhaps a snifter of brandy. In later years, when guest nights occurred less frequently, such evenings became increasingly boisterous and drunken.