Smedley Butler

Butler married Ethel Conway Peters in New Jersey in 1905, and had three children, a daughter, Ethel Peters Butler, and two sons, Smedley Darlington, Jr. and Thomas Richard.

He suffered from a bout of nervous breakdown in 1908 and received nine months of sick leave. During this time, he managed a coal mine in West Virginia.

In 1940, he was diagnosed with ‘a incurable condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract’. His family was with him till his death in the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia. His funeral was attended by many distinguished people, including politicians and Marines. He was buried near West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Smedley Butler was born to Thomas and Maud Butler in West Chester, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer, a judge and a Congressman.

He studied in the ‘West Chester Friends Graded High School’ and later in ‘The Haverford School’, where he excelled in baseball and football. He absconded from there when he was just sixteen to join the ‘US Marine Corps’, where he obtained a direct commission as a second lieutenant.

He completed six weeks of training in Washington D.C. and was then assigned to ‘Guantanamo Bay’ in Cuba in 1898, as part of a Marine Battalion. But he did not engage in combat as the area had already been captured by the time he reached there.

Next, he was posted aboard the cruiser USS New York for four months after which he was discharged. But, just two months later, he secured a First Lieutenant’ commission to the Marine Corps.

Butler was sent to Manila, Philippines where the Philippine-American war was going on. He was initially assigned only to garrison duty, but got an opportunity to get involved in combat in 1899, when he led 300 marines and successfully captured the town Noveleta from the Filipino ‘Insurrecto’ rebels.

In 1900, he was sent to Tientsin, China to fight against the ‘Boxer Rebellion’. He displayed considerable bravery in the battles there and was promoted to the rank of Captain for his efforts.

He returned to the US in 1901 and for the next two years was involved in a succession of interventions by the US in Central America and the Caribbean. These interventions were motivated by commercial and political reasons, and are termed ‘The Banana Wars’.

In 1903, he was sent to Honduras to protect the US Consulate in the wake of a revolt. He rescued a consul in the town of Trujillo, in the midst of an ongoing battle between the rebels and the government forces.

After another stint of Garrison Duty and an attempt at coal-mining, he was sent to Central America where he had a battalion under his command. In 1912, he led his battalion to capture the Coyotepe hill in Nicarcagua.

In 1900, Butler was assigned to Tientsin, China to supress the ‘Boxer Rebellion’. During the battle, as he got out of his trench to assist a wounded officer, he was himself shot in the thigh, but still managed to get the officer to safety. He was again wounded during the ‘Gaselee Expedition’ as a bullet grazed his chest. He was promoted to the rank of Captain for his bravery in these battles.

In 1914, he commanded a batch of Marines to seize an Arms Shipment in Varcruz, Mexico. The Marines were endangered by street fighting and sniper fire, but Butler countered these threats by conducting a door-to-door search, which resulted in the Marines’ victory with few casualties.

During the capture of Fort Riviere in Haiti in 1915, he entered the fort himself along with two other men through a drain in the wall, all the while dodging bullets. But he managed to reach inside the fort and as a result, the battle was won in just twenty minutes, without losing a single soldier.