This episode follows the Marines from secret missions in Mexico to Civil War battlefields. We begin with Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie's covert journey that helped ignite the conquest of California and trace how that campaign laid the foundation for the Corps' presence on the Pacific coast and the birth of Camp Pendleton.

From there, we turn inward as the nation collapses into civil war. The Marine Corps splits in two, with brother facing brother at sea and on land, from Bull Run to Charleston Harbor, from the ironclads at Hampton Roads to the final assault at Fort Fisher. Both the Union and Confederate Marines fight with the same discipline they once shared, even as their causes diverge.

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