![]() ![]() The Marine Corps now sent him to Manila, the Philippines. He came home to be mustered out of service in February 1899, but in April 1899, he accepted a commission as a First Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. and, after a short break, he was assigned to the armored cruiser USS New York for four months. His Marine company soon returned to the U.S. In July 1898, he went to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, arriving shortly after its invasion and capture. ![]() He trained in Washington DC, at the Marine Barracks on the corner of 8th and I Streets. In the anti-Spanish war fever of 1898, Butler lied about his age to receive a direct commission as a Marine Second Lieutenant. Nevertheless, Haverford awarded him his high school diploma on 6 June 1898, before the end of his final year his transcript stated he completed the Scientific Course "with Credit." Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War. Against the wishes of his father, he left school 38 days before his seventeenth birthday to enlist in the U.S. A Haverford athlete, he became captain of its baseball team and quarterback of its football team. His maternal grandfather was Smedley Darlington, a Republican Congressman from 1887-1891.īutler attended the West Chester Friends Graded High School, followed by The Haverford School, a secondary school popular with sons of upper-class Philadelphia families. His father was a lawyer, a judge and, for 31 years, a Congressman and chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee during the Harding and Coolidge administrations. His parents Thomas Stalker and Maud Darlington Butler, were descended from local Quaker families. Smedley Butler was born on 30 July 1881, in West Chester, PA, the eldest of three sons. He was buried at Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester, PA his home has been maintained as a memorial and contains memorabilia collected during his various careers. In his 1935 book, War is a Racket, he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.īutler continued his speaking engagements in an extended tour but in June 1940 checked himself into a naval hospital, dying a few weeks later from what was believed to be cancer. In addition to his military achievements, he served as the Director of Public Safety in Philadelphia for two years and was an outspoken critic of U.S. He is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. Smedley Darlington Butler, nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. ![]()
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