First to Fight: The Marines go to sea

By David C. Perry

1775. Tun Tavern, Philadelphia. A handful of men in a Philadelphia bar are about to do something no one in the colonies has tried before: build a fighting force from nothing, on the word of a Congress that can barely agree on anything else.

Samuel Nicholas becomes the first officer commissioned into a Marine Corps that doesn't have uniforms, training, or a single ship to its name. Across the city, merchant captains and congressmen argue over whether a navy is salvation or suicide - provoking the most powerful fleet on Earth with converted cargo ships and untested crews. When Congress finally says yes, the new Continental Navy and Continental Marines are thrown together for their first combined operation: an amphibious raid on the British colony of New Providence in the Bahamas, followed by a desperate fleet action against the British frigate Glasgow in Block Island Sound.
First to Fight is built from the historical record, not invented around it - 144 named figures drawn from muster rolls, courts-martial records, diaries, and the official Marine Corps history of the Revolution, with only three fictional characters added to connect the threads. Real dialogue from congressional debate. Real casualties. Real consequences, including a court-martial that put a young John Paul Jones in command of his first ship. This is the birth of the Navy-Marine Corps team, year by year, exactly as it happened - and as the nation marks 250 years since these events, the story of how an idea in a tavern became the force that has fought "in every clime and place" ever since.

"Meticulously researched, historically accurate and well written." - Major General Timothy Hanifen, USMC (Retired)
"Captures the true essence of the Corps." - L. Douglas Hogan, USMC Veteran, author of the Tyrant series
Includes a nautical terms glossary, a roster of principal historical characters, and historical context notes opening each chapter.
Book 1 of the Not Self But Country series.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1543022855
• ISBN13: 9781543022858
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"