U.S. Army Military Police badge
The Military Police Corps achieved permanent status in the U.S. Army on 26 September 1941, yet its traditions of duty, service, and security date back to the Revolutionary War. Over the last two centuries the military police-or provost marshals as they were called during much of their history-evolved from a group of miscellaneous units and men organized on a temporary basis in time of national emergency to perform a limited range of law and order responsibilities into today’s highly organized and trained combat support force. During the 1980s military police units carried out many of the wide-ranging duties they have assumed in the Army, such as fighting in Grenada; guarding the summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea; helping to quell civil disturbances in the Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo; and playing an essential role in JUST CAUSE, the Army’s operation in Panama in 1989-1990. Based on a tradition of service that stretches back more than two hundred years, military police have come to be recognized as an important element of the Army in both peace and war.
The Military Police Corps traces its beginnings to the formation of a provost unit, the Marechaussee Corps, in the Continental Army.1 Authorized by Congress on 27 May 1778 with a name borrowed from the French term for provost troops, the special unit was assigned by General George Washington to perform those necessary police functions required in camp and in the field. The first American military police unit was organized along the lines of a regular Continental Army company with 1 captain, 4 lieutenants, 1 clerk, 1 quartermaster sergeant, 2 trumpeters, 2 sergeants, 5 corporals, 43 provosts, and 4 executioners. Reflecting the unit’s special requirements for speed and equipment, the corps was mounted and accoutered as light dragoons.
The assets that make the Military Police Corps so valuable in contemporary battlefield doctrine are actually quite similar to those possessed by the Marechaussee Corps in the Revolutionary War. While traveling a difficult road to organizational permanence and recognition as an organic element of the Army’s fighting team, military police have along the way carefully adapted their mobility and communications capability to a myriad of new duties and responsibilities, leaving the corps ready to assume greater responsibilities and duties in the Army of the future.
Learn more about the rich history of the Military Police Corps at the Center of Military History‘s website: http://www.history.army.mil/books/Lineage/mp/mp.htm
Join us in wishing the U.S. Army Military Police Corps a Happy 71th Birthday!
