Combat· Banana Wars
Battle of Las Trencheras
The first major engagement of Pendleton's march on Santiago in the Dominican intervention.
As Colonel Joseph Pendleton's column pushed inland in June 1916 to break the resistance of the Dominican rebels, it came on 27 June to Las Trencheras, where the insurgents held entrenched positions, ground that had reportedly defied Spanish troops generations before. Pendleton brought up his artillery and machine guns to beat down the trenches, then sent his infantry forward in a frontal assault that carried the line and drove the defenders off. The action showed the effectiveness of combining Marine infantry with supporting arms against a dug-in enemy, and it cleared the way for the column's continued advance toward Santiago. It was the first of the two sharp fights, with Guayacanas a few days later, that marked Pendleton's march, the kind of set-piece assault that was comparatively rare in the guerrilla-flavored fighting of the Banana Wars.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 8