Combat· Banana Wars
Battle of El Sauce
The last Marine action of the Nicaragua intervention.
As the outgoing president prepared to dedicate a new rail line from León to El Sauce in late December 1932, rumor had it that Sandino meant to wreck the line and the president with it, and the task of guarding both fell to Captain Lewis Puller with seven Marines and sixty-four Guardia. As the troop train neared the end of the line, a rebel band more than a hundred strong under Juan Umanzor, busy sacking a construction camp and thinking the train carried arms, opened fire. Puller's men leaped from the cars firing, and after the rebels' flanking attempt collapsed against a Guardia movement, the enemy broke; thirty Sandinistas were killed in the ninety-minute fight. The line was opened on schedule two days later. El Sauce was Puller's last fight in Nicaragua, a fitting close to the campaign that made his name.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 7