File:Letter, 31 August 1949, page 2 of 3.jpg

English: "Be dispatched to any threatened point in Central or South America with a minimum loss of time. Guantanamo, Cuba was selected as the most strategically located spot for the home base of this army, and the Fourth Defense Battalion the numbers

The Fourth Defense Battalion consists of three batteries of three inch anti aircraft guns, one battery of 50 caliber machine guns, one battery of 30 caliber machine guns, six, sixty inch search lights and six sound locators. There are four guns to the battery of three inch, forty-eight to the fifty caliber and sixty to the thirty caliber. The personel is about eight hundred officers and men. The machine guns are supposed to protect the three inch batteries from dive bombing attacks. This Battalion will be augmented by some two thousand Marines from Quantico, a broken down freighter, converted into a transport, and two obsolete destroyers for convoy work. Where the tanks, planes, and anti-tank guns are coming from God only knows. Perhaps we’ll just simulate"

From the Edward L. Parke Collection (COLL/5627) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division

OFFICIAL USMC PHOTOGRAPH