Gilded Age Marines

Remember the Maine - Beyond the Slogan   The intent of this article is to provide some context on the origins of the Spanish American War, the circumstances that placed the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February of 1898 and provide a little color to the prelude to war often overlooked.    Spain and Cuba:   In 1898, rioting in the capitol of the Spanish Cuba threatened U.S. commercial and diplomatic interests, and led to the United States dispatching the USS Maine, Armored Cruiser No. 1, to Habana (Havana) harbor; in the sub-tropical heat, Maine sat at anchor, below the guns of the Moro Castle, showing the flag of the United States to Spaniards and Cubans ashore.     USS Maine   The U.S. had significant interests in Cuba. [1]   In the 1830s and 1840s, the southern U.S. and Cuba were linked by the transportation and trade in slaves, and southern plantation owners sought the comfort of expanding their plantation economy offshore.  U.S. merchants in the northeast sought additional markets

Medal of Honor citations are an account of a period of a battle, whether over the span of weeks, or in a single action.  What the citation doesn’t tell us is who the recipient was prior to battle, where they came from, and how they and their unit found themselves to be in that location in that specific moment.  John Bobo’s citation is an example of this.  I’d like to flesh out who he was, and the circumstances that led to his award.     I Corps was the northern-most military district in South Vietnam.  Third Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF) was responsible for Marine operations in the area, just south of the DMZ that had separated North from South Vietnam since July of 1954.  North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) units opposed to the Republic of Vietnam in the south crossed the DMZ periodically to attack U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) outposts and trucking on Highway 9, which ran from the coast to the mountains in the west and Laos.     In 1967 Ninth Marines,