October 3

3 OCT--This Day in US Military History

1912 – Marines participated in the Battles of Coyotepe and Barranca Hills during the Nicaraguan Campaign.

Located on the end of the Masaya Lagoon are two large hills, one called Coyotepe and the other called La Barranca. Before the Marines showed up, Liberal forces fortified both hills. Coyotepe was the more strategic of the two as the main railroad leading from Granada to Managua passes directly under its heights; a few small pieces of artillery on Coyotepe can effectively disrupt traffic since it also overlooks the main road between Masaya and Granada. It was obvious that the Marines would have to take the hill in order to control access to Granada and defeat the rebel coalition of Zeledón and Mena.
Telegrams were exchanged between the U.S. forces and Zeledón: the Marines asked him to leave Coyotepe: he politely refused and told them they would have to fight him. Before dawn on October 4, 1912, Company “C” of the First Battalion, First Provisional Regiment, U.S. Marines, Nicaraguan Expedition, under the command of Colonel Joseph H. Pendleton, assembled at the foot of Coyotepe Hill and made ready their assault. At first light they started up the hill. They shot their way to the top, and took control of Coyotepe Hill. Zeledón’s forces had retreated off the hill as the Marines approached the summit. Irregulars from Conservative forces began combing the area for Zeledón and his men.
The next morning near Diriomo, Zeledón ran into a Conservative force and shot it out with them. He was struck in the spine by a bullet. He was taken by mule or by wagon, according to different versions, to Catarina. The wound had been fatal and he was dead on arrival. Another version has Zeledón being captured in Catarina and taken to Masaya where he was executed on orders from the Marines. The corpse was then paraded through the streets. A young Augusto César Sandino may have witnessed this procession, or perhaps his burial in the cemetery at Catarina. Zeledón lay there, unremarked upon, until Sandinista Comandante Tomás Borge dedicated a large monument in the form of a Winchester rifle to him in 1980.
Regarding the assault, the only accurate account of the battle and the condition of the hill at the time of the battle is found in an address that Colonel Pendleton gave in 1913 at the dedication of a plaque to honor the dead who took part in that battle. That plaque is mounted on a wall in the Marine barracks in Boston, where the great majority of the men who took part in the assault had come from. Pendleton finally told what happened on the hill outside of Masaya.
Commanded in the field by Captain Fortson, Company “C” had made it part way up the hill before they were detected by a sentry stationed on the summit of Coyotepe, who started waving a sword. The strategy of the Marines was to have one group of soldiers pin down the defenders with accurate rifle fire as the others climbed the hill. This worked until the Marines reached an open space right under the summit. A machine gun had been placed to cover it, and it was also blocked with barbed wire. As soon as the Marines made it there, three were shot dead and several others were wounded seriously. A fourth Marine named Durham continued forward and was shot down, but not before he had managed to cut the barbed wire. The Marines then took the summit. The assault on Coyotepe was over. American losses were four killed and several wounded; Nicaraguan losses unknown.

https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/october-3