On 20 March 2003 the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began. Before dawn American aircraft and cruise missiles struck a leadership target in Baghdad (in Washington it was still 19 March), and coalition troops crossed from Kuwait. U.S. forces entered Baghdad on 9 April. On this day in 1856 Costa Ricans routed William Walker's filibusters at Santa Rosa.
The first strikes on Baghdad
On 17 March 2003 President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. Two days later, intelligence suggested that Saddam and other senior Iraqi leaders were gathered at a site in the south of Baghdad, and the President authorized a strike on it. American aircraft and cruise missiles began hitting targets in and around Baghdad at 0230 GMT on 20 March, which was 5:30 a.m. in Baghdad.1
In Washington it was still the evening of 19 March. At 10:16 p.m. Bush told the nation from the Oval Office that American and coalition forces were "in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq". That is why American accounts, including the U.S. Army's own histories, date the opening strike to 19 March. Iraq answered by firing surface-to-surface missiles at Kuwait, where the coalition's ground forces were massed.2
Ground war before air war
The plan was changed at the last moment. The ground attack was to have followed the opening air strikes, but intelligence that Iraqi forces were preparing to destroy the southern oil fields led the American commanders to send the ground troops in early. Special operations forces moved first, and British and Polish special forces took part from the first night: the Army's official history has British and Polish commandos helping to secure the oil platforms off the Faw peninsula. On 20 March U.S. Marines set out to seize the southern Rumaila oil field and the gas and oil platforms.3
Coalition troops breached the sand berm on the Kuwaiti border on 20 March, and the main land offensive got under way early on 21 March. In the southeast the British, among them the Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade, advanced with the U.S. Marines on the al-Faw peninsula and the port of Umm Qasr. The main air campaign began only on the evening of 21 March, after the ground forces had started their advance. U.S. forces entered Baghdad on 9 April.4
Battle of Santa Rosa
20 March 1856 · 170 years ago
Santa Rosa, 1856: Walker's filibusters
The American adventurer William Walker and his filibusters had been in Nicaragua since 1855. On 1 March 1856 President Juan Rafael Mora Porras of Costa Rica called his people to arms, and in early March the vanguard of the army, under General José Joaquín Mora, marched north from San José. On 11 March the Nicaraguan government Walker controlled declared war on Costa Rica.5
Walker sent Colonel Louis Schlessinger into the Costa Rican province of Guanacaste with a force that included a company of Germans and a company of Frenchmen. Walker gives it about 240 men; the Costa Rican reports speak of four hundred.6
Fourteen minutes at the hacienda
Schlessinger's men were camped at the house of the Hacienda Santa Rosa when the Costa Ricans attacked them on the afternoon of 20 March 1856, taking them by surprise. Colonel Lorenzo Salazar attacked the front of the house, Captain José María Gutiérrez's men came down from the hill behind it, and Captain Mateo Marín's two guns fired on it. Gutiérrez was killed as his men stormed the house.7
The filibusters broke and fled. General Mora reported that the bayonet attack lasted only fourteen minutes; Walker wrote that within five minutes his whole command was "in full and most disorderly retreat". Mora's detailed report counts four officers and fifteen soldiers killed on the Costa Rican side and 26 filibusters dead; the museum's leaflet gives about 6 officers and 20 soldiers against 46 filibusters.8
After Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa was the first battle of what Costa Rica calls the Campaña Nacional of 1856 to 1857; the Costa Ricans fought again at Rivas on 11 April 1856, and Walker finally surrendered in 1857. The historian Marco Cabrera Geserick argues that 20 March ought to weigh more than 11 April, because Costa Rica fought on its own soil and the defeat cost Walker desertions and volunteers; yet, he writes, the date is not a national holiday.9
Also on 20 March: Mareth, 1943
On the evening of 20 March 1943, after a heavy artillery bombardment, the British Eighth Army opened its main attack on the Mareth Line in Tunisia. The bridgehead its 30 Corps won could not be held: the troops fell back on the night of the 23rd, and Montgomery had to turn to another plan.10
Also on this day
Siege of Fort William
20 March 1746 · 280 years ago
Jacobite clansmen laid siege to the government stronghold of Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland during the Jacobite rising of 1745. The garrison held out with supplies brought in by water, and the Jacobites abandoned the siege after about two weeks.
