1st Marine Battalion Battle Report Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. -1898

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1st Marine Battalion Battle Report Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. -1898:
$110.00

This is the original battalion copy of the 1st Marine Regiment actions including the decisive Battle of Guantanamo Bay during the Spanish American between April 17 - June 18, 1898

It consisted of six typed pages on heavy bond paper measuring 10.5\" x 8.0\" that are complete and in excellent condition. These pages give daily, highly detailed information on the Regiment, commandeered by Lt. Col. R.W. Huntington and 6 companies of me. and artillery.

The 1st Marine Battalion embarked on April 17th joining with Admiral\'s Sampson\'s \"Flying Squadron\" at Fortress Monroe and sailing to Cuba.

Reading the daily activities is like stepping back in time as an observer of the events that transpired. Details such as casualty lists of the soldiers, types of equipment used, the ships that transported and provided covering fire and battle strategies are described.

With the decision to establish a base at Guantánamo Bay, the First Battalion of Marines, consisting of six companies of around 650 men (four infantry and one artillery company), was ordered to proceed in the converted transport USS Panther, and join the fleet off Santiago. The First Battalion, under the command of Lt. Col. Robert W. Huntington USMC, had been undergoing battalion exercises while awaiting orders at Key West. The Panther reached Santiago on 9 June 1898.That same day, in advance of the battalion landing, Navy Commander Bowman H. McCalla of the USS Marblehead, the officer in command of the landings, approved a camp site selected for the Marines by Lt. Col. Huntington. The site selected was a flat ridge on top of a hill, above the village on Fisherman\'s Point, and designated Camp McCalla. In addition to an artillery company equipped with a battery of four 3-inch rapid-firing artillery pieces and a Model 1895 Colt–Browning machine gun, each marine was equipped with the Navy\'s new rapid-firing magazine rifle, the Model 1895 Lee Navy. Both the Colt machine gun and the Lee rifles used a new high-velocity smokeless powder cartridge, the 6 mm Lee Navy.

The Battle of Guantánamo Bay was fought from June 6 to June 10 in 1898, when American and Cuban forces seized the strategically and commercially important harbor of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Capturing the bay from the Spanish forces was instrumental in the following Battle of Santiago de Cuba and the subsequent invasion of Puerto Rico.

Since doesn\'t allow links to outside sites, Please read more about the Battle of Guantanamo Bay on Wikipedia.

Military battle reports such as this are seldom available to the public and are usually only found in museums and university archives. This would make an excellent addition to any Spanish-American War collection,