Kentucky Marine: Major General Logan Feland and the Making of the Modern USMC

12. Back to Nicaragua, 1928

185 12 Back to Nicaragua, 1928 While Logan and Katherine Feland were moving to the general’s new command at Parris Island, the Marine Corps was still dealing with two difficult situations in China and Nicaragua. Throughout the summer of 1927 the Corps had been withdrawing troops from Nicaragua to sustain an increasing buildup in China. As the Chinese Communists and Nationalists continued to fight, the Marine Corps established a garrison in Shanghai, home to many thousands of foreigners. Another detachment went to Tientsin, commanded by Smedley Darlington Butler. Back in Nicaragua, Colonel Louis Gulick took over the hunt for Augusto Sandino, who, despite the defeat at Ocotal, simply would not go away. The consensus about the decline of Sandino’s forces proved overly optimistic. Learning from his experience at Ocotal, Sandino changed tactics , switching to guerrilla warfare against the Marines and the Guardia Nacional. Soon after Ocotal, the ever-defiant Sandino issued a proclamation underscoring his continued resistance to the Treaty of Tipitapa and to the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua. Debate raged both in the United States and abroad about whether Sandino was a bandit or a freedom fighter. The U.S. State Department, Nicaraguan Liberal leader General Moncada, and Brigadier General Logan Feland regarded Sandino as nothing more than a bandit. Nevertheless , Sandino’s increasingly strong guerrilla movement after Ocotal belied that analysis. The Battle of Ocotal increased Sandino’s stature in the eyes of many throughout Central and Latin America, who saw his resistance as a worthwhile fight against U.S. imperialism.1 In the last quarter of 1927, Sandino and the Marines engaged in sev- 186 KENTUCKY MARINE eral skirmishes. One particularly notable incident occurred when Sandino forces shot down a Marine Corps plane. The pilot and observer, Lieutenant Earl Thomas and Sergeant Frank Dowdell, managed to elude Sandino forces for a while, but they were eventually either killed outright or captured, tried, and hung. A photograph purported to be Lieutenant Thomas hanging from a tree appeared in Mexican and Honduran newspapers , inflaming the Marines. A large-scale recovery effort failed to find the men’s bodies and ran into fierce resistance from Sandino forces. The Marines continued to send patrols and flights to El Chipote, Sandino’s mountain retreat, but to no avail.2 Also in the last quarter of 1927, plans began to jell for a U.S. representative to oversee the Nicaraguan national election in November 1928. Henry Stimson had been sent to the Philippines as governor-general and was not available to return to Nicaragua. In June 1927 President Coolidge announced that Brigadier General Frank McCoy of the U.S. Army would be his personal representative to Nicaragua and oversee an electoral commission there. McCoy had a distinguished military and diplomatic career; he was a veteran of the Philippines insurrection and World War I and had served on the 1920 U.S. military mission to Armenia under the command of James Harbord. McCoy arrived in Managua in late August, along with the new chargé d’affaires of the U.S. legation, Dana G. Munro. The army general evaluated the political and military situation and started planning for a peaceful election. He concluded in a report to Secretary of State Frank Kellogg that the Marines should not be reduced in number and that more should be done to finance and provide officers for the Guardia Nacional. At the beginning of October 1927, McCoy returned to the United States and started choosing a team to go to Nicaragua to oversee the national election scheduled for the following year. He and the mission ’s chief technical adviser, political scientist Harold Dodds, drew up a law that would govern the Nicaraguan national election.3 McCoy would soon return to Nicaragua, as would Feland. The Felands had little time to settle at Parris Island before the word came that, given the continued resistance by Sandino, more Marines would be sent to Nicaragua. The New York Times reported on January 4, 1928, that, after consultation with President Coolidge, Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur had decided that Feland would return to Nicaragua. His force would be bolstered by another 1,000 men, bringing the total Back to Nicaragua 187 number of Marines in the country to approximately 2,500. The intent was to put more Marines at the front to chase Sandino. In effect, the Eleventh Regiment would be sent back to Nicaragua, this time...