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Old Gimlet Eye (Illustrated): The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler
Smedley Butler joined the Marine Corps at age 16 and took part in critical military actions in Cuba, the Philippines, China, Central America, Mexico, and France. He won renown as a battlefield hero and was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history at the time of his death in 1940. Old Gimlet Eye is a boots-on-the-ground account of his many tours of duty, offering invaluable insight into early US military strategy and tactics, weaponry, equipment and many other fascinating field details from the Spanish-American War to World War I and beyond.
This new annotated edition of Old Gimlet Eye includes original footnotes and images.
*Original footnotes.
*Includes images.
This new annotated edition of Old Gimlet Eye includes original footnotes and images.
*Original footnotes.
*Includes images.
259 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1933
290 people are currently reading
144 people want to read
About the author
Lowell Thomas
167 books18 followersLowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, actor, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence. He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 20, 2013
USMC Major General Smedley Butler was born 1881. Through the graces of good fortune Butler is one of a selected few from our service branches to be bestowed with the Medal of Honor for action on two separate occasions. This book was copyrighted in 1933 shortly after Butler resigned from the Marine Corps under much controversy. Other books shed light on the final chapter of his life beyond the Marine Corps.
Author Lowell Thomas, Jr. is remembered for his stellar media career as well as his first book “With Lawrence in Arabia” (copyright 1922) that catapulted British agent T. E. Lawrence to the world stage. Thomas used his unique creative ability to write the non-fiction biography of Butler with the narrative in first person. Additionally, military biographies are not known to be hilarious, yet Thomas through his relationship with Butler, described many light hearted incidents throughout the book.
Without any formal military education Butler became a Marine Corps officer on day one, a 2nd lieutenant at age 16. He was certainly not the first to lie about his age as one had to be 18 to enter the Corps. When Butler’s father U.S. Congressman Thomas A. Butler, Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, heard the news he whimsically thanked his determined son for not setting the birth date back three years to his wedding year.
Butler’s military career spanned the late 19th Century through the early 20th Century fighting insurgents on small islands and other locations across the globe and finding success on his own without his father’s coattails. During WWI he was given an assignment in France, but to his dismay he did not see military action in the greatest war of his lifetime.
He devoted 33 years of his life to the Corps and although he was most certainly a Marine, in final year of service his outspoken views created a much tangled web as his career spiraled out of control. Due to volatile circumstances the major general and senior ranking officer in the Marine Corps was bypassed for the vacancy as the 15th Commandant. Soon thereafter, for reasons explained in the book, Secretary of the Navy Adams began the process to have Butler formally arrested with his flag taken down and placed under court martial. Butler had a very loyal following and he cherished his friendships with General John A. Lejeune the 13th Commandant, General Wendell Neville the 14th Commandant along with former Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, yet certain powerbrokers wished to take him down. Butler successfully fought the court martial and resigned.
Butler is one of the elite accomplished Marines in Corps history yet one of the most complex individuals to reflect upon. To fully comprehend his life one must transcend back to a different day and time and even then it’s not simple.
Author Lowell Thomas, Jr. is remembered for his stellar media career as well as his first book “With Lawrence in Arabia” (copyright 1922) that catapulted British agent T. E. Lawrence to the world stage. Thomas used his unique creative ability to write the non-fiction biography of Butler with the narrative in first person. Additionally, military biographies are not known to be hilarious, yet Thomas through his relationship with Butler, described many light hearted incidents throughout the book.
Without any formal military education Butler became a Marine Corps officer on day one, a 2nd lieutenant at age 16. He was certainly not the first to lie about his age as one had to be 18 to enter the Corps. When Butler’s father U.S. Congressman Thomas A. Butler, Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, heard the news he whimsically thanked his determined son for not setting the birth date back three years to his wedding year.
Butler’s military career spanned the late 19th Century through the early 20th Century fighting insurgents on small islands and other locations across the globe and finding success on his own without his father’s coattails. During WWI he was given an assignment in France, but to his dismay he did not see military action in the greatest war of his lifetime.
He devoted 33 years of his life to the Corps and although he was most certainly a Marine, in final year of service his outspoken views created a much tangled web as his career spiraled out of control. Due to volatile circumstances the major general and senior ranking officer in the Marine Corps was bypassed for the vacancy as the 15th Commandant. Soon thereafter, for reasons explained in the book, Secretary of the Navy Adams began the process to have Butler formally arrested with his flag taken down and placed under court martial. Butler had a very loyal following and he cherished his friendships with General John A. Lejeune the 13th Commandant, General Wendell Neville the 14th Commandant along with former Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, yet certain powerbrokers wished to take him down. Butler successfully fought the court martial and resigned.
Butler is one of the elite accomplished Marines in Corps history yet one of the most complex individuals to reflect upon. To fully comprehend his life one must transcend back to a different day and time and even then it’s not simple.
May 18, 2019
A true Marine hero!
As a jarhead myself, I remember learning about General Butler in boot camp. Lowell Thomas biography filled in many of the blanks that were not covered in the USMC history classes. A wonderful story of a true Marine hero!
Semper Fi General Butler!
As a jarhead myself, I remember learning about General Butler in boot camp. Lowell Thomas biography filled in many of the blanks that were not covered in the USMC history classes. A wonderful story of a true Marine hero!
Semper Fi General Butler!
March 6, 2022
I approached Lowell Thomas’s Old Gimlet Eye (Illustrated): The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler, with something of my own Gimlet eye. I had read a little of Thomas’s other histories and I had read the opinion that he was a creator of the ”Myth” of Lawrence of Arabia”. I have also read more than a little of what Marine General Smedley Butler had to say of his career. The man we meet in the Lowell Thomas, affected first person narrative by the subject is not the General Butler who titled one of his books ‘War is a Racket”. This might be the same man, who when approached to become America’s Dictator by the industrialists behind the “Business Plot” promptly took this story to the authorities. Parenthetically Congress did investigate, the press laughed at it, but later history is that he was right.
Some parts of the book helped clear some things for me. I had thought he received his first (had two ) Medal of Honor for his roll in the relief of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. He did do those things, but at that time Officers could not receive the MoH. The enlisted men who were part of that action did get MoH’s for their actions. Smedley Butler, was an officer and therefore not qualified. I had also believed that he was for many years the only man to have been awarded the MoH twice. Thomas has him saying that he, Butler knew of others.
The tone of what is supposed to be the voice of a grizzled long-time warrior tended to be between a kind of back wood aww shucks kind of character that America of the time admired and a more un emotional recitation of his involvement in a number of actions, many in South America.
Smedley Butler was known as the Fighting Quaker, because he grew up in a Quacker family, but his father was a very influential member of the US Congress. A fact that made it possible for him to join the Marines as an officer at the age of 16. He deployed to the Spanish America war as a teen aged second Lieutenant, and was just barely allowed to act as more than a company mascot.
His early years of service seemed to include an overly large number of superannuated, eventually senile senior officers left over from service in the American Civil War. Later we get his version of being involved in a number of fights in support of this or that government in central and South America. It is never clear exactly why the Marines were so necessary in any of these countries.
One cannot believe that the real Old Gimlet Eye would have so little to criticize about either of these situations.
There is no need to speculate, the reason why Gen Butler would write about war as a racket, is because he felt like one of the racketeers. Either at the time, or later he came to feel he was not there to protect American Security interests so much as those of America’s Corporate Interests. Nowhere in Old Gimlet eye will we meet the man who would describe his career as follows” “I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.”
Lowell Thomas was a reporter. As such he writes more as a reporter, seeking the big seller parts of a story. He wrote a number of these kinds of fact high drama histories/biographies. Several worth reading. His approach is to romanticize. It is not always clear how much he has ‘cleaned’ the event at the cost of accuracy, but he is very readable. I can recommend Old Gimlet Eye (Illustrated): The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler, but caution to the reader to seek out other more solid histories of the man and this period. Perhaps starting with Butlers’ War is a Racket.
Some parts of the book helped clear some things for me. I had thought he received his first (had two ) Medal of Honor for his roll in the relief of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. He did do those things, but at that time Officers could not receive the MoH. The enlisted men who were part of that action did get MoH’s for their actions. Smedley Butler, was an officer and therefore not qualified. I had also believed that he was for many years the only man to have been awarded the MoH twice. Thomas has him saying that he, Butler knew of others.
The tone of what is supposed to be the voice of a grizzled long-time warrior tended to be between a kind of back wood aww shucks kind of character that America of the time admired and a more un emotional recitation of his involvement in a number of actions, many in South America.
Smedley Butler was known as the Fighting Quaker, because he grew up in a Quacker family, but his father was a very influential member of the US Congress. A fact that made it possible for him to join the Marines as an officer at the age of 16. He deployed to the Spanish America war as a teen aged second Lieutenant, and was just barely allowed to act as more than a company mascot.
His early years of service seemed to include an overly large number of superannuated, eventually senile senior officers left over from service in the American Civil War. Later we get his version of being involved in a number of fights in support of this or that government in central and South America. It is never clear exactly why the Marines were so necessary in any of these countries.
One cannot believe that the real Old Gimlet Eye would have so little to criticize about either of these situations.
There is no need to speculate, the reason why Gen Butler would write about war as a racket, is because he felt like one of the racketeers. Either at the time, or later he came to feel he was not there to protect American Security interests so much as those of America’s Corporate Interests. Nowhere in Old Gimlet eye will we meet the man who would describe his career as follows” “I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.”
Lowell Thomas was a reporter. As such he writes more as a reporter, seeking the big seller parts of a story. He wrote a number of these kinds of fact high drama histories/biographies. Several worth reading. His approach is to romanticize. It is not always clear how much he has ‘cleaned’ the event at the cost of accuracy, but he is very readable. I can recommend Old Gimlet Eye (Illustrated): The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler, but caution to the reader to seek out other more solid histories of the man and this period. Perhaps starting with Butlers’ War is a Racket.
May 25, 2019
General Smedley Butler is not widely known outside of Marine Corps circles anymore. Like General Chesty Puller, he was an inter war years Marine who spent a lot of time in China where the Marines operated in a pretty independent fashion considering the communication challenges of the time.
This book will reveal the can-do character that sets exceptional Marines apart from other branches of service. You will find how outspoken officers who are exceptional fighters and organizers manage to remain in service and how the jealous few try to u desmine them.
Lowell Thomas was acompetant and popular newspaper writer of the times and popularized a number of prominent military personalities. A worthwhile read for anyone with a deep interest in history and Marines especially.
This book will reveal the can-do character that sets exceptional Marines apart from other branches of service. You will find how outspoken officers who are exceptional fighters and organizers manage to remain in service and how the jealous few try to u desmine them.
Lowell Thomas was acompetant and popular newspaper writer of the times and popularized a number of prominent military personalities. A worthwhile read for anyone with a deep interest in history and Marines especially.
Read
May 31, 2021Rock 'em Sock 'em
I don't know when I have enjoyed a biography more than this first-person rendering of what was an extraordinary life. They just don't make them like this genuine American fighting man any more - he was tough and noble and principled. He was able to see exactly what the crisis called for, set the example for his Marines and lived by a remarkable code of honor and personal courage. His exotic travels only add to the color and dash of this Devil Dog's adventures. Americans should never let these remarkable characters disappear from our pantheon of stalwart forebears. TWO Medals of Honor - would have been three if he had not been an officer. What a treasure.
I don't know when I have enjoyed a biography more than this first-person rendering of what was an extraordinary life. They just don't make them like this genuine American fighting man any more - he was tough and noble and principled. He was able to see exactly what the crisis called for, set the example for his Marines and lived by a remarkable code of honor and personal courage. His exotic travels only add to the color and dash of this Devil Dog's adventures. Americans should never let these remarkable characters disappear from our pantheon of stalwart forebears. TWO Medals of Honor - would have been three if he had not been an officer. What a treasure.
April 8, 2019
A fine book about a fine man
This book is well written to the extent that even some parts of Butler's career that could be slow are made interesting. It makes me proud to understand what men have sacrificed to make America great, and ashamed that often men in high places sometimes soil the flag for their personal gain. Any person would do well to emulate Butler's sacrificial form of leadership, but must not expect to always be appreciated.
America will do well to have men of this caliber surface but alas I'm afraid too few will be found to lead us. Jeff Lahar
This book is well written to the extent that even some parts of Butler's career that could be slow are made interesting. It makes me proud to understand what men have sacrificed to make America great, and ashamed that often men in high places sometimes soil the flag for their personal gain. Any person would do well to emulate Butler's sacrificial form of leadership, but must not expect to always be appreciated.
America will do well to have men of this caliber surface but alas I'm afraid too few will be found to lead us. Jeff Lahar
April 26, 2019
Fun to Read
The humorous episodes were well written. I felt I was there and enjoyed the funny situations. This a good read for background of the military events for this time period.
The humorous episodes were well written. I felt I was there and enjoyed the funny situations. This a good read for background of the military events for this time period.
October 3, 2020
The first part review of his military career was refreshing and enjoyable. A refreshing comment on personal involvement with social issues and very solid solutions. Would be great if today's athletes applied Smedley's handling on social issues in their world.
October 28, 2020
Interesting account
A thorough account of this man's military life. His Medal of Honor stories are not much in the scope of the narrative. It's more about his dealings with politicians and military brass.
A thorough account of this man's military life. His Medal of Honor stories are not much in the scope of the narrative. It's more about his dealings with politicians and military brass.
November 25, 2020
A good book
It is a shame that inter service rivalry undermines the unity and effectiveness of the armed forces. And politicians frequently do whatever is in their own interest and not necessarily the right thing to do. General Butler was indeed a magnificent soldier.
It is a shame that inter service rivalry undermines the unity and effectiveness of the armed forces. And politicians frequently do whatever is in their own interest and not necessarily the right thing to do. General Butler was indeed a magnificent soldier.
January 19, 2021
Great book
I didn't know anything about General Swedish before reading this book but now I feel like I know him personally. Well written and thoroughly enjoyable. I heartily recommend it.
I didn't know anything about General Swedish before reading this book but now I feel like I know him personally. Well written and thoroughly enjoyable. I heartily recommend it.
May 8, 2025
Very early autobiography of a Marine Corps Major General during Spanish-American War and Boxer Rebellion and beyond. He was a great leader and earned two Congressional Medals of Honor. He often gave speeches and some things he said derailed his career.
April 12, 2019
Interesting read from a simpler time in American culture.
I am a former Marine. Smedley Butler is one of several Banana War Marine of mythic legend.
I am a former Marine. Smedley Butler is one of several Banana War Marine of mythic legend.
June 24, 2019
Past my time
Funny how the passage of time, limits the interest, in what at the time was very important.
A fairly good read, but it all seems, so long ago.
Funny how the passage of time, limits the interest, in what at the time was very important.
A fairly good read, but it all seems, so long ago.
September 5, 2019
Need more Marines like Butler.
This tome on General Butler shows that true warriors can not be made to fit into molds. They are the true leaders that make the USA free.
This tome on General Butler shows that true warriors can not be made to fit into molds. They are the true leaders that make the USA free.
February 28, 2021
Excellent read!
May 24, 2018
This book is very entertaining. It was written in first person narrative about Smedley Butler’s life from just a bit before enlisting in the US Marines until his resignation / retirement from the Marines. There are several very funny stories about military life.
November 29, 2018
This is a very good book regarding one of the most decorated Marines of all time. I enjoyed the first person narrative of Gen. Butler's life and stories, despite the numerous grammatical errors throughout the book.
December 22, 2019
would highly recommend reading facts that I did not know. excellent read interesting
Would highly recommend this book. Interesting I reading also learned things this was never aware about the Marine Corp. Would read again.
Would highly recommend this book. Interesting I reading also learned things this was never aware about the Marine Corp. Would read again.
Read
May 23, 2019Excellent account of the old Corps
Very fun telling of tales and shenanigans by a two time Medal of Honor winning Marine officer who served all over the world near the turn if the last century. Very enjoyable book.
Very fun telling of tales and shenanigans by a two time Medal of Honor winning Marine officer who served all over the world near the turn if the last century. Very enjoyable book.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews