Combat· Banana Wars
Edson's Coco River Patrols
The pioneering riverine campaign of the Corps, and one of its most remarkable small-war operations.
From the spring into the summer of 1928, Captain Merritt Edson led a series of long patrols up the Coco River from the Caribbean coast deep into the Nicaraguan interior, more than two hundred and fifty miles by boat and on foot through jungle and rapids, hunting Sandino's bands in country no Marine had penetrated. The patrols pushed the rebels back from the eastern regions and denied them the recruits and plunder of the coast. The sharpest action came on 6 August, when the Marines struck a rebel force, killing ten of them at a cost of one Marine killed and three wounded. Edson's Coco River patrols became the foundational Marine experience in combined river-and-jungle operations, and Edson himself would go on to fame in the Pacific war at Guadalcanal.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 505