Today in Manhunting History -- June 25, 1927: Gilbert Hatfield's New Pen Pal

Ocotal, the capital of Nicaragua’s Nueva Segoiva department, sits 2,000 feet up a broad valley, less than 20 miles from the Honduran border. In the summer of 1927 it was the northernmost outpost for the U.S. forces deployed on the peacekeeping mission to the tiny Central American republic. Although such an isolated garrison could be a lonely place, Captain Gilbert D. Hatfield, United States Marines Corps, had a pen pal. Although he had only recently occupied the Nicaraguan garrison town of Ocotal with 40 Marines and 60 Nicaraguan guardsmen, Hatfield had attracted the attention of the most prominent local citizen: General Augusto C. Sandino.

On June 25 Sandino wired Hatfield that he had arrived in nearby San Fernando with his insurgent forces, and asked: “Shall I wait here for you or shall I go to you?”

Hatfield wrote back the same day. “I am giving you the idea of coming here, assuring you that we shall not run away. . . . I thank you for your letter, and trusting that you will soon come and salute me personally. I am yours respectfully, G.D. Hatfield, Capt., USMC.”
Sandino replied by sending Hatfield a crudely drawn cartoon of a guerrilla brandishing a machete over the neck of a prostate marine.

Thus began one of the more remarkable correspondences in U.S. military history.

Captain Gilbert Hatfield and his Marines at Ocotal, July 1927