Combat· Banana Wars
Hato Mayor action
A bloody patrol ambush in the long Dominican bandit campaign.
On 22 March 1919 a small mounted Marine patrol from the 44th Company, only a handful of men under a corporal, encountered a large body of entrenched Dominican bandits near Hato Mayor in the eastern part of the country. The bandits opened on the patrol from prepared positions, and in the sharp fight that followed three of the Marines were killed and one wounded, a heavy loss for so small a party. It was among the deadliest single Marine engagements of the Dominican campaign, a reminder of how badly a routine patrol could go when it blundered into a prepared enemy in the broken country of the east. The eastern provinces, where the bandit gavilleros were strongest and the terrain favored ambush, were the hardest and bloodiest ground of the whole Dominican occupation.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 114