Combat· Banana Wars
Battle of Coyotepe
The decisive action of the 1912 Nicaragua intervention.
Liberal rebels under Benjamin Zeledón held the fortified hill mass of Coyotepe and the neighboring Barranca, above Masaya, commanding the railroad the Marines had been sent to keep open. After Marine and government artillery had shelled the positions, a Marine force, including Major Smedley Butler's battalion, was ordered to storm the southeastern slope at dawn on 4 October in concert with Nicaraguan government troops. The fight was brief and sharp: the men went up the hill at 0515 against a heavy but inaccurate fire, and in forty minutes it was over, twenty-seven rebels killed, nine captured, the rest scattered. Zeledón was killed by his own soldiers as he tried to flee. Seven Americans, sailors and Marines together, were killed taking the heights. The storming of Coyotepe broke the Liberal revolt and was the largest Marine action of the early Banana Wars.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 4