Combat· Mexican-American War
Battle of Chapultepec
The action that gave the Marine Corps the first line of its hymn.
Chapultepec Castle, set on a height guarding the western approaches to Mexico City, was the last major obstacle to General Scott's army. A Marine battalion under Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Watson was attached to Quitman's division for the assault. Major Levi Twiggs led a forty-man Marine storming party up the slope under heavy musket and artillery fire; Twiggs was killed near the foot of the works, and Corporal Hugh Graham and several privates fell at the city gates as the attack pressed on through the San Cosmé and Belén causeways into the capital. The castle was carried by mid-morning and Mexico City fell the next day. The expedition's named Marine losses were about eight killed and roughly twenty-one wounded across Chapultepec and the gates. The storming party's percentage losses were severe, and the Corps' part is memorialized in "the Halls of Montezuma."
Podcast episodes on Mexican-American War
Record no. 52