Butler, Smedley Darlington (1881–1940)

Smedley Darlington Butler (b. 30 July 1881; d. 21 June 1940), an American marine officer popularly known as "Old Gimlet Eye." Following his commission in 1898, Butler served during the Spanish-American War and in China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In 1912, Butler led marine battalions in Nicaragua that helped suppress its civil war and in 1914 at Veracruz, where U.S. forces prevented armaments from reaching Mexico's warring factions. His dominant role during the Haitian intervention in 1915 earned Butler the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in World War I. Butler retired as major general in 1931.

See alsoSpanish-American War .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lowell Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye (1933).

Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Vera Cruz (1962).

Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900–1934 (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Butler, Smedley D. War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti-Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the "Horror of It." Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003.

Langley, Lester D., and Thomas David Schoonover. The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880–1930. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995.

O'Brien, Thomas F. The Revolutionary Mission: American Enterprise in Latin America, 1900–1945. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

                                   Thomas M. Leonard