1918, November – 1919, September: (The Caco Resistance Escalates: Batraville, Russell’s Reinforcements, Haiti’s First Airplanes, and 131 Actions): For the ne…

1918, November – 1919, September: (The Caco Resistance Escalates: Batraville, Russell’s Reinforcements, Haiti’s First Airplanes, and 131 Actions): For the next four months the pot boiled higher — more than twenty contacts with large Caco bands were made by the hard-pressed Gendarmerie. On sober second thought, Russell estimated that Charlemagne had some 5,000 active adherents. Charlemagne himself was controlling operations in the North, while Benoît Batraville, a Caco bearing Charlemagne’s brevet as Chief Minister of the Revolution, kept things hot in the Upper Artibonite where he had once served as chief of police in Mirebalais before surrendering office when the Gendarmerie took over — Batraville, moreover, though the Americans would not know it until later, was also an adherent of Dr. Bobo, from whom he too heard regularly. On March 16, 1919, Colonel Williams admitted that he had a full-scale rebellion on his hands and the Gendarmerie was out of its depth, requesting that the Marine brigade be committed to the campaign. Russell responded with what he had: six small Marine companies deployed to the hot spots — two to Hinche, two to Lascahobas, one to Mirebalais, and one to St. Michel — with twenty-five percent of the brigade required to be on the trail patrolling around the clock. Colonel Frederic M. Wise was ordered from the States in mid-1919 to supersede Williams, and besides help from Marine units in Cuba came a more portentous reinforcement: Haiti’s first airplanes — seven HS-2 seaplanes based at Bizoton and six World War I Jenny land planes — which debarked at Port-au-Prince on March 31, 1919, and were soon flying. During the months that followed, April through September 1919, Marines and gendarmes fought 131 actions, ranging from skirmishes to pitched battles. Once Charlemagne’s camp was overrun; three weeks later, Batraville’s horse was captured. But Charlemagne and Batraville rode higher than ever.