Henry Leonard, USMC – An Uncommon Career
Henry Leonard, USMC – An Uncommon Career
John S. Naylor – November 16, 2025
By 1900, the Marines had six battalions in the islands, guarding the naval stations at Cavite, and Olongopo, and supporting the Army in fighting Filipino rebels. Having Marines permanently based in the Philippines gave the Secretary of the Navy a flexibility in being able to react to urgent, outsized, situations in the western Pacific.
On October 8, 1899, Leonard commanded a company of Marines during the Battle of Novaleta, at the base of the Cavite Peninsula.[2] Lieutenant Colonel George Elliot led his battalion, working with the Army, and cleared the area of Filipino rebels; in the process the 350 Marines suffered a dozen wounded and scores more prostrated from the high heat and humidity. Leonard was mentioned in dispatches for ably maneuvering his Marines under fire, driving a flanking enemy off the peninsula.
In June of 1900, he deployed with Major Littleton Waller’s detachment of 130 Marines to Taku, China, tasked with the relief of the International Legation at Pekin. The march from the sea to Pekin took coalition forces through Tientsin, where a pitched battle with Boxer forces occurred.
On June 21, Leonard rescued a wounded Marine under fire, risking his own life. On July 13, Lieutenant Smedley Butler ventured out under fire, to rescue a fallen Marine. When Butler was wounded, Leonard, then serving as Colonel R.L. Meade’s adjutant[3], rushed out to carry Butler back to friendly lines. In the process, Leonard was shot in the arm, suffering a fractured humerus, and a severed brachial artery. Doctors amputated Leonard’s left arm at the shoulder.
The Marines suffered five dead and twenty-four wounded that day. After a short stay in the field hospital, Leonard was transferred to USS BROOKLYN on August 22nd, then to the Naval Hospital at Yokohama, Japan. Leonard was awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds and was mentioned often in the Commandant’s report to the Secretary of the Navy that fall.
In short order, Leonard was transferred to the Marine Barracks at Mare Island, California, before being assigned to the Washington Barracks, where he took sick leave. Returning to duty, he was transferred to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he picked up the Marine Detachment for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, opening in June of 1901. His detachment was composed of 1st Lt Arthur E. Harding, 2nd Lt Arthur J. O’Leary, a gunnery sergeant, three sergeants, four corporals, a trumpeter, a drummer and forty privates. Arriving on the 7th of June, the Marines set up Camp Heywood, named for the Brigadier-General Commandant as was the custom of the day, to the east of Hoyt Lake, and south of the exposition grounds.
During the summer of 1901, the Marines at the Exposition drilled daily, in company and section, and maintained a guard on government displays. Months of drill and display culminated in a mock battle with “Indians” in the exposition stadium. Leonard’s men were responsible for the daily winding of the chronometer, and the attendant ball drop on the midway. The detachment displayed souvenirs of recent conquests; cannon captured during the Boxer Rebellion, as well as flags and signal flags from Guantanamo and the Battle for Tientsin garnered the attention of crowds visiting the detachment camp.
Tragedy interrupted the daily rote of drill and display for the public at the exposition; on September 6, President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music. McKinley lingered for eight days before succumbing to gangrene. Captain Leonard and a detachment of Marines accompanied the remains of President McKinley back to Washington by rail. After returning to Buffalo, the Marines continued in their encampment until early November, at which point they tore down camp, and displaced to the South Carolina Interstate and West India Exposition at Charleston, SC. The Marines’ camp, again named after the commandant, was laid out the same as it was at Buffalo.
When President Roosevelt visited the South Carolina exposition in April, Leonard’s Marines, augmented by another thirty from DC and Annapolis, were made responsible for his security. Leonard was made Roosevelt’s aide-de-camp for the duration of the tour. Following the visit, Leonard stood relieved by Captain Smedley Butler, his compatriot from the China campaign, who commanded the detachment until the end of the exposition.
In 1905 the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment stood down from protecting the American Legation in Pekin, and Marines from Olongopo accepted the duty, a duty which they would execute until 1942. Leonard returned to China, to serve as the Marine attaché in Pekin. After two years, Leonard was recognized for his service by the Chinese government with the Order of the Dragon. Leaving China in 1907, he returned to Washington. At headquarters, Leonard worked with the Judge Advocate and on other projects.
In September 1908, Leonard was transferred from Headquarters to the Portsmouth Naval Prison, where he commanded the Marine Guard. From Portsmouth he transferred to League Island, Philadelphia, which in 1911 was transforming into the home of the Advanced Base School, and home of the cadre of the Advanced Base Force.
With training as a lawyer in his portfolio, he had earned a bachelor’s and a master’s in law from Columbia prior to his commissioning in 1898, Harry found himself assigned to the Judge Advocate in August of 1909 for the court of inquiry examining the death of Marine 2nd Lt Jimmy Sutton, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1907, in an after-hours drunken fight, while undergoing Marine officer training at Annapolis. Sutton died from a gunshot wound to the forehead during a physical confrontation with several other lieutenants. The service deemed his death a suicide; his mother, having seen visions of her dead son, pleaded that the original inquest was incomplete, and demanded answers for why her son died at the School of Application. Due to Annapolis’ proximity to Washington, and the supernatural visitations, the case garnered interest amongst the national press corps. Also, Major Leonard’s line of investigation turned an inquiry of circumstances into a trial of witnesses and participants. After a new round of hearings, the court did not change the original findings but issued letters of censure to members of the chain of command at the School of Application at the time of the incident.
The Sutton inquiry is interesting, not only in the court procedure, and notoriety it garnered, but for being a harbinger of controversies that would arise from Marine Corps trainees dying during training. The hearings revealed a failure in discipline at the School of Application, and critics pointed to lowered standards for those qualifying for commissions in the years following the war. For twenty years prior to the war with Spain, all new Marine officers were successful graduates of the United States Naval Academy. After 1898, Marine lieutenants were primarily commissioned direct from civilian life, or from the ranks of non-commissioned officers, after passing interviews and an acceptance exam. Interestingly, Henry Leonard was one of those non-USNA officers; all the lieutenants involved or implicated in Sutton’s death were either commissioned from civilian life, or washouts of USNA.
Colonel Charles Doyen, then commanding the School of Application, already had a disciplinary record; in 1901 a court martial found him guilty of missing movement after an “alcoholic debauch” in Newport on the Fourth of July (he lost two numbers on the promotion list, and was issued a letter of reprimand from the Secretary of the Navy, later withdrawn by President Roosevelt)[4] .As the findings were released, they were hashed out in the press, and Leonard returned to his post at the Naval Prison at Portsmouth.[5]
In October of 1911, a medical board retired Major Leonard. Prior to his departure from active duty, he had been working for the Judge Advocate in Washington. In 1914 he married Mrs. Ellen Ward Thoron, née Warder. Ellen was the daughter of a prominent Colorado Springs family
As a retiree, Major Leonard returned to perform “temporary special duty” for the Judge Advocate from time to time, and returned to service (retired) in April of 1917, to work with the Judge Advocate during the Great War; he retired again in 1919. In retirement Leonard worked in Republican politics, and ranching, when he wasn’t practicing law. The National Metropolitan Bank of Washington made him a director in 1921, where he served as a member of the investment committee.
In January of 1926 Leonard returned to Judge Advocate service, “on active duty as Judge Advocate of Court of Inquiry to inquire into loss of Shenandoah.” SHENANDOAH was a U.S. Navy rigid airship launched in 1923. In September 1925 she was torn apart mid-air by updrafts caused by storms over Ohio. The accident killed 14, and galvanized criticism of both Army and Navy aviation efforts. Colonel (former General) Billy Mitchell’s criticism triggered the Army to take him to court martial. The Navy brought Leonard in on to represent the Navy when the previous Judge Advocate was implicated in attempting to influence the testimony of SHENANDOAH’s deceased captain’s wife. He remained in this status, until April 1926, when he returned to retired status.
In 1931, Leonard represented his old friend and comrade in arms, Smedley Butler, when Butler was charged in a court martial for making comments about Benito Mussolini.[6] The case against Butler was dismissed. Leonard passed away in Colorado in 1945, at the age of sixty-eight.
Henry Leonard was born on July 31, 1876, in Washington, DC. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws, from Columbian University in 1891, and a Master of Laws in 1898 from the same institution. He died on April 8, 1945 at the Elkhorn Ranch in Colorado Springs, CO.
[1] Most career significant dates have been sourced from Marine Corps Muster Rolls available on Ancestry dot com.
[2] Most unit activities have been sourced from the annual report of the Commandant to the Secretary of the Navy, available on the Hathi Trust website.
[3] Meade superseded Waller in command of the regiment on July 12 when he and 400 Marines from Cavite arrived to reinforce the relief expedition.
[4] New Hampshire History Blog. July 12, 2018. www.cowhamshireblog.com and Marine Corps Muster Rolls, July 1901.
[5] Robin R. Cutler. A Soul On Trial, A Marine Corps Mystery at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2007.
[6] Buffalo News, April 9, 1945
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