The Benet gun played a significant role in the capture of two old, decaying, French-built forts—Dipitie and Riviere—in the 1915 Haitian campaign. The Benet guns were used to deliver a constant suppressing fire against Haitian Cacos, or bandits, who had ambushed a patrol of around 30 Marines near Dipitie, and were later used against those Cacos who had holed-up in Fort Riviere. One of the Corps’ most capable chroniclers, Col. Robert D. Heinl, described the fight near Fort Dipitie in a 1978 Leatherneck magazine article:

“After dark, while the patrol was negotiating a mountain stream, a blast of rifle fire ripped out from the bush. Some 400 Cacos from Ft. Capois and nearby Ft. Dipitie, three miles east, had closed in. All night, the Marines were surrounded and under steady fire. Worse still, the bourrique (burro) carrying the one machine gun had been killed while fording the stream. To retrieve the weapon, Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Daly made his way through the Caco lines, located the dead animal, cut loose gun and ammunition and struggled back with them to the perimeter. For this feat, Daly received his second Medal of Honor. When day broke, rather than let the Cacos close the trap, Butler attacked with everything he had. The Cacos broke and ran.”

In describing the riverside ambush, Lt. (later Gen.) Adolf B. Miller noted in his diary that: “I had commanded the rearguard with the machine gun. When we opened up on them with the Benet, they sure were surprised.” Miller, one of the Corps’ earliest machine gun officers and author of the first Marine Corps manual for the Colt “potato digger” machine gun, went on to immortalize the Benet-Mercie machine rifle in yet another variation of the familiar song of the American Civil War, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching.” (This tune is also well-known as “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and a version, “Damn, Damn, Damn the Insurrectos,” that was sung during the Philippine Insurrection, includes the phrase, “And beneath the starry flag, we’ll civilize ’em with a Krag”.) When Miller penned the lines, “And beneath the broiling sun, let ’em have the Benet Gun,” in his own parody, entitled “Damn, Damn, Damn the Haitian Cacos” and recorded on the first page of his diary, he was simply continuing a musical tradition. When Butler successfully attacked Fort Riviere a few weeks later, he had two Benet guns under the command of Lt. John Marston, and according to an account by another participant, Lt. Thomas E. Thrasher, those two guns kept the Caco bandits on the fort’s ramparts fully occupied, while the rest of the detachment surrounded and assaulted the old French fort.

The next year, in July 1916, less than four months after the New York Times had announced that the Army and Marine Corps were already in the process of abandoning the Benet-Mercie in favor of an American-made version of the British Vickers machine gun, Cpl. Joseph Glowin was blazing away at rebels in the Dominican Republic with his Benet at the battle of Guayacanas. Trying to force their way through a stoutly held rebel strongpoint, the Marines brought up several light machine rifles. Glowin was wounded twice, but stayed at his gun, earning the Medal of Honor. As noted in the New York Times article, the Benet gun was notorious for jamming, and Glowin’s gun jammed, as did the others being put into action. When rebel fire wiped out the crews of the light guns while they were trying to clear the jams, 1st/Sgt. (later Brigadier General) Roswell Winans brought up a Colt gun on its wheeled carriage and opened fire. After a while, it, too, jammed and Winans was awarded the Medal of Honor for standing in full view of the enemy while clearing the jam. With two more Colts brought in the fray, the suppressing fire was enough to enable the Marines to take the rebel position at the point of the bayonet.

The Navy had adopted the Colt “potato digger” machine gun (so called for the pumping action of its gas lever under the barrel) in 1895, and had loaned four guns to the Marine Regiment that landed at Guantanamo during the Spanish-American War. Chambered in .276 or 6 mm Lee Navy, the machine gun served the sea services well during the Spanish-American War (reportedly turning the tide of battle at Cuzco Wells), in the Philippine Insurrection and in the Boxer Rebellion. With the standardization of rifles throughout the services, starting in 1900, those machine guns in the hands of the Navy and Marine Corps were re-chambered to .30 Army (.30-40 Krag), and later some were even converted to fire .30-’06 Sprg. ammunition. The machine guns in the Marine Corps’ inventory (and those sometimes manned on shore by Navy “blue jackets”) were taken ashore both on tripods and on wooden wheeled mounts, depending on the requirements of the particular campaign, as contemporaneous accounts refer to both types of mounts being used in several early actions of the Banana Wars.

However, in the end, it was not the guns in the hands of the Marines, but the dedication and resolve of the men in khaki behind them that made the difference. As is still true today, when the Marines of the Banana Wars were facing incredible odds, tense situations, and deplorable conditions, they still maintained control over the situation, prompting war correspondent Richard Harding Davis’ famous quote, “The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.”

The author thanks the staff of the Marine Corps History Division, the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps Archives for their wholehearted and enthusiastic assistance in the preparation of this article.