Combat· Banana Wars
Pendleton's March on Santiago
The set-piece campaign that completed the conquest of the Dominican interior.
In the summer of 1916 Colonel Joseph Pendleton led the 1st Marine Regiment inland from the north coast at Monte Cristi to take Santiago, the country's second city and the center of the resistance in the Cibao. The march was a sustained inland operation, unusual in the small-war fighting of the era, and it turned on two pitched battles against entrenched Dominican insurgents: Las Trencheras on 27 June, carried by a frontal assault behind artillery and machine guns, and Guayacanas on 3 July, where the Marine automatic weapons broke the resistance. Pendleton entered Santiago on 6 July, completing the occupation of the country. The march cost the regiment two killed and fourteen wounded across its engagements. It was the largest single Marine ground operation of the Dominican campaign and a demonstration of the Corps' capacity for sustained operations far from the coast.
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Record no. 514