1/23/2013

In “Banana War Ambush” by Marine Corps Historical Artist Col. Charles H. Waterhouse, USMCR, (Ret.), a lone Marine with his ‘03 Springfield fights for his life on a jungle trail. “Horse Marines” were in evidence throughout the Caribbean and Central America during the “Banana Wars.

A squad of Marines crept quietly forward through the hot, steamy and tangled Haitian jungle, index fingers hovering near the triggers on their weapons. Captain Jesse Perkins, himself a seasoned veteran of jungle engagements since the 1899 Samoan campaign more than 20 years before, silently signaled to his men and pointed out the hideout of the Haitian Caco bandit chieftain, Benoit de Batraville. The Marines were anxious to find de Batraville, since, after the death of Charlemagne Peralta—at the hands of Garde d’Haiti Lt. Herman Hanneken and his .45 M1911 Colt pistol a few months before—he became the chief Caco in what has now become known as the Second Haitian Campaign. In order to bolster his mystique and aura of invincibility among his rag-tag followers, de Batraville had cannibalized a mortally wounded Marine serving as an officer in the Garde d’Haiti, Lt. Lawrence Muth. After ambushing Muth’s patrol a few weeks previously, the bandit chief had cut out and eaten Muth’s heart, while smearing Muth’s brains on the stocks of his men’s rifles, ostensibly to improve their marksmanship.

Gunnery Sergeant Albert A. Taubert moved into position among the jumbled rocks at the entrance of a cavern, with his M1911 .45 Colt pistol in hand. Taubert, a holder of the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Italian Medal of Valor and the French Medaille Militaire for his actions during the battle of Soissons in World War I, had volunteered for duty in Haiti so that a married comrade could remain at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Suddenly, de Batraville appeared in the mouth of the cave, firing his .38 Colt revolver at the squad of Marines. Taubert stepped forward and returned fire, blowing a hole through the Caco chief’s gun belt and killing the bandit leader. For this feat, he was awarded a second Navy Cross, and it signaled the end of the 1919-1920 Second “Caco” War. Taubert kept the bandit chief’s gun and holster rig as a trophy of war.

The Marine Corps had adopted the U.S. Model of 1911 pistol in 1912, and the officers who went ashore at Vera Cruz, Mexico, during the 1914 intervention carried them in both versions of the M1912 holster —mounted and dismounted—with “USMC” stamped on their flaps. In the first Haitian campaign of 1915, several Marines were awarded the Medal of Honor while armed with .45 pistols. The most famous of those was Smedley Butler, who received his second Medal of Honor for bursting through the decrepit brick-walled drainage ditch of a derelict French fort that was serving as the hideout for a band of Cacos and, with only two Marines beside him, engaging scores of bandits with his pistol. The M1911 pistol served in every action during the Banana Wars from Vera Cruz to the final withdrawal from Haiti and Nicaragua in the early 1930s. During the Second Nicaraguan campaign, some Marines carried their pistols in long, specially converted M1916 holsters, also marked “USMC.”

The term “Banana Wars” referred to a series of interventions, nearly all by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, in the Caribbean and Central America in the years between the Spanish-American War and the mid-1930s. While there were several valid reasons for these various interventions, the major justification was the “protection of American property and citizens” from the vagaries of popular uprisings and civil war in those countries. Since the “American property and citizens” were, for the most part, involved in the tropical fruit industry—mainly banana plantations—the informal name served as an understandable catchall term.

As noted in the first installment of this series, although the service pistol and rifle—the M1911 Colt pistol and the M1903 Springfield rifle—served throughout most of the early Banana Wars and through all of the later campaigns, the automatic arms used in the Banana Wars changed dramatically after the Marine Corps’ experience in World War I. Whereas the pre-World War I campaigns in Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were fought by Marines armed with Benet-Mercie machine rifles and Colt “potato digger” machine guns, starting with the second Haitian “Caco” War in 1919, Marines were supported in the later Banana Wars by the rapid fire of the Lewis light machine gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, the Thompson submachine gun, and to a lesser extent, the Browning M1917 water-cooled machine gun. All of those arms then served into at least the early days of World War II, and some even into the early 1960s.

Finally dismayed at the fragile and unreliable Benet-Mercie machine rifle, the U.S. Army opted to replace it, and its obsolete M1904 Colt-Maxim heavy machine gun, with the British-designed Vickers machine gun in 1915. However, the Vickers was a heavy, tripod-mounted, and water-cooled gun. In 1917, the U.S. Navy decided to adopt the Lewis light machine gun, which was then being manufactured by the Savage Arms Co. in Utica, N.Y., for the British. An American invention, but produced and used overseas because of a long-standing dispute between the inventor, Col. Isaac N. Lewis, and the U.S. Army’s Chief of Ordnance, the American version of the bipod-mounted, shoulder-fired machine gun was chambered in .30 U.S. (.30-’06 Sprg.)

Firing 47 rounds out of its distinctive top-mounted drum magazine, the air-cooled Lewis gun quickly became a favorite of Marines. Although the Marines’ Lewis guns were taken away from them and replaced with the questionable French Chauchat automatic rifle shortly after landing in France, those Marines patrolling the Caribbean islands during World War I kept a lid on local unrest with their Lewis guns. When the second Caco revolt broke out in Haiti in 1919, Lewis guns were used in many of the actions. In addition, many of the Marines’ aircraft were also equipped with Lewis guns mounted on Scarff rings in the “rear seat.” Both Marines and the Guardia National de Nicaragua used Lewis guns in Nicaragua during the late 1920s and the early 1930s. The Guardia was yet another native constabulary very much similar to the Garde d’Haiti and the Dominican National Guard that the Marines had instituted in those countries. As in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, these native constabularies were, for the most part, armed with obsolescent Krag rifles, and officered by Marines on detached duty. The first of the famed Coco River Patrols, led by the noted Marine, “Red Mike” Edson, carried Lewis guns on its grueling expedition by boat up Nicaragua’s unpredictable and dangerous Coco River, but Edson later opted for Thompson submachine guns on the final push against the Sandinista rebels.

In his book, Chesty, one of the Corps’ best historians, Col. Jon T. Hoffman, recounts an ambush in Nicaragua involving the legendary duo of Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller and “Ironman” William A. Lee, in which Lee was wounded, but when he recovered during the battle, Lee: “[S]truggled to a pack mule and retrieved the unit’s Lewis gun. The guardia lieutenant then demonstrated equal parts determination and marksmanship as he employed the weapon with telling effect against the rebels. His accurate bursts cooled the ardor of the bandits and incoming fire began to die off. Puller seized the advantage Lee had won. The company commander jumped to his feet, called for a charge, and dashed uphill toward the right half of the enemy line. His guardias followed. The Sandinistas in front of them fled.”

Although the Lewis gun was largely replaced by the M1919 Browning light machine gun in the late 1930s, Marines of the Fourth Regiment—recently arrived from long-time service in Shanghai—were still manning their Lewis guns as late as 1942, during the defense of the Philippine island of Corregidor.

Marines enthusiastically embraced the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, commonly known as the “BAR,” when it was introduced into the American Expeditionary Forces in the autumn of 1918. Although its only combat use in France by Marines was literally on the last night of the war, the Marine Corps put the selective-fire rifle to good use during the Banana Wars, and had even more success with its successor, the variable-fire M1918A2, in World War II and the Korean War, until it was finally phased out shortly before the Vietnam War. Firing the standard service rifle cartridge from a 20-round detachable magazine, the BAR gave the extra firepower needed in the brief and violent ambushes that had become the hallmark of the Banana Wars.