Combat· Banana Wars
Haiti Operations
The longest Marine occupation of the Banana Wars, nineteen years in a chronically unstable republic.
After preliminary landings in 1914, the full intervention began in July 1915 in the wake of a president's assassination, and the Marines moved quickly to restore order. The first Caco war that autumn ran through a series of fights in the northern mountains: at Fort Dipitié in October, Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly earned his second Medal of Honor for recovering his patrol's machine gun under fire during a night ambush, and the campaign reached its climax in November in Major Smedley Butler's storming of Fort Rivière, where Butler won his own second Medal of Honor and Privates and sergeants of the assault party, among them Samuel Gross and Ross Iams, were also decorated.
Engagements in this conflict (4) Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 496