THE CARRIZAL INCIDENT was the last fight of the Punitive Expedition. Forbidden by his superiors to even send out patrols, Pershing had nothing left to do but await orders to withdraw, which did not come for another seven months. In some ways, the dormant period proved more challenging for him than the active hunt for Pancho Villa. His task now became trying to keep an army of ten thousand men occupied and out of trouble. The troops were divided into two camps, with roughly six thousand men at Colonia Dublán and another four thousand troops stationed sixty-five miles to the south near the town of El Valle.
The Dublán camp, enclosed by a fence and patrolled by sentries, soon came to resemble a small thriving town. A river ran along its western edge and to the east were irrigated fields and a few of the brick houses belonging to the Mormons. Dozens of Chinese entrepreneurs descended upon the camp, opening up laundries and concession stands, which sold hot doughnuts and the sugary treats that the soldiers had craved during the long, cold marches. The cooks often took their shotguns and hunted for wild turkey and quail and ducks and rabbits to supplement the officers’ messes. In the neighboring pastures, the horses fattened and grew serene. The troops built sturdy shelters from adobe bricks and stretched their canvas tents over the walls for roofs. They stuffed grass beneath their bedrolls and made “ice boxes” by draping wet gunnysacks over crates. Long truck trains rumbled in and out of the camp from the dirt road leading north to Columbus, bringing letters, food supplies, and packages from home that included navel oranges, English walnuts, writing tablets, candles, and Ivory soap.
An arena for boxing and wrestling was built and a field laid out for baseball and football games. In the evenings, there were minstrel shows and one-act plays and long hours of letter writing. Pershing turned a blind eye to the craps and high-stakes card games, but drew the line at allowing intoxicating liquors into the camp. As a consequence, cantinas sprang up outside the fence and a lively bootlegging business developed. One of the largest cantinas and dance halls was run by Greeks from Juárez. The “sanitary village” south of the camp continued to do a land-office business. The compound was roughly an acre in size and consisted of a restaurant and about forty one-room cabins where prostitutes worked and slept. Pershing approved a similar restricted district for the troops in El Valle. In a letter to General Scott, he said he saw no other way to resolve the “woman question” and pointed out that the arrangement had actually lowered the rate of venereal disease. Some of the medical officers, though, found the arrangement appalling. “As some of the men remarked, ‘Whenever the wind blows we get covered with whore dust,’ and while that is putting it rather vulgarly, yet it was the way we felt about it,” William Eastman concluded.
With the growing heat and large concentrations of men and animals, the risk of disease and illness grew. Meat was dipped in boiling water and hung in drying huts swabbed down with kerosene. Latrines were fired daily, manure swept up and deposited far from the camp, and the men encouraged to rinse their eating utensils in boiling water. The sanitary inspectors were particularly worried about typhus, which was endemic throughout Mexico. The illness was transmitted by lice and the troops were instructed to air their tents three hours a day, change their bedding, shave their beards, cut their hair, put on clean underwear, and bathe “all over at least twice a week.”
Pershing despised idleness and drilled the troops relentlessly in the use of overhead machine-gun fire and mounted pistol charges. The young Patton abhorred idleness even more. “We are rapidly going crazy from lack of occupation and there is no help in sight,” he groused in a letter to his father on July 12, 1916. Patton blamed their predicament on the U.S. president and his vacillating policies. “I should like to go to hell so that I might be able to shovel a few extra coals on that unspeakable ass Wilson.”
On August 31, Pershing decided it was time for a vacation for himself and his restless young aide. Together with members of the headquarters staff and several newspaper reporters, they drove from Dublán to Columbus over a deeply rutted road. There, they met Beatrice and Nita Patton and spent the rest of the week as tourists. There was much to see; the raid had put Columbus on the map in a way the civic boosters could never have dreamed of. “We are well advertised now,” sighed the Columbus Courier.
“Eat houses,” drink stands, shooting galleries, tonsorial parlors, cigar stands, Turkish baths, ice cream parlors, poolrooms, laundries, and new grocery stores had been established. The Hoover Hotel was booked to capacity, with two guests to each room and overflow consigned to the lobby. Miller’s drugstore had reopened under new owners who were skilled at compounding the latest medicine; Sam Ravel had begun planning a new hotel that would feature “steam heat baths.” And the lot next to the Commercial Hotel, where two donkeys nosed through tin cans, was being offered for a shocking one thousand dollars.
“There are dozens or more eat houses that feed hundreds and hundreds of people every day,” the newspaper reported. Many of the eat houses were forced to open in large canvas tents. For fifty cents, a customer could buy a T-bone steak, sirloin steak, or hamburger steak, and twenty-five cents bought an omelet or a piece of apple pie. The food was often covered with a fine layer of sand, the dirt floors covered with rain puddles, and the tables obscured by roiling steak smoke, but business was so good that customers frequently were turned away.
Alfred Everett Wilson, a teenager who dreamed of becoming a writer but was already suffering from the tuberculosis that would claim his life in a few years, went to work in his father’s eating tent and recorded in his diary the windstorms that thinned the soldiers into shadows; the fist-sized tarantulas; the adventurous truckers, who outfitted both themselves and their dogs with sand goggles; and the violent fights among the kitchen help, particularly a dishwasher named Mac, a former juggler who suffered from pleurisy, biliousness, neuralgia, catarrh, asthma, bronchitis, and drunkenness.
For entertainment, there was a movie house with a rouged blonde at the ticket counter and moving pictures powered by a sputtering gasoline engine; five marching bands in the army camp; and private drinking clubs that featured such names as the Benevolent Order of the Bees, the Loyal Order of Moose, and the Fraternal Order of Grizzly Bears. Into the wee hours of the night, the patrons could dance the Bool Weevil Wiggle, the Texas Tommy Tango, the Bunny Hug, the Buzzard Flap, or the Pappy Huddle.
Pershing and Patton had only a week’s leave, not nearly enough time to savor all the amenities, and before they knew it they were jouncing back to Dublán. Pershing could not stop talking about Nita. “He’s all the time talking about Miss Anne. Nita may rank us yet,” Patton told his wife.
The budding romance energized Pershing but did not distract him from his duties, and he continued to monitor closely political and social conditions in Mexico. A lawless anarchy existed in northern Chihuahua. The Carrancista troops preyed on the local people, extorting money and robbing them in broad daylight. “No discipline among either officers or men,” an informant told Pershing. “The latter are un-uniformed, dirty, and ragged, with but scant clothes of any kind. They are paid in Carrancista money, which merchants do not want at any price, but under coercion exchange at 100 for 1, or practically as so many pieces of blank paper. Among these so-called soldiers are boys from apparently 12 years of age to old men—a deaf mute, a hunchback, and a one-legged boy.”
More disquieting was the knowledge that el jaguar—Pancho Villa—was on the prowl again.
Although the expedition’s mission, as amended by General Scott, was simply to disperse Villa and his band, Pershing and the members of his intelligence staff nonetheless concocted a secret plot to assassinate the guerrilla chief. The plan called for Japanese agents posing as peddlers to infiltrate Villa’s hideout and poison him. (Villa loathed the Chinese but the Japanese government had made repeated overtures to him and he had many friends among the Japanese expatriates living in Mexico.) E. B. Stone, the controversial federal agent, had first come up with the idea of using Japanese agents to kill or capture Pancho Villa. The expedition’s intelligence division, which included an officer who spoke Japanese fluently, had hit upon a similar idea.
ACCORDING TO THE U.S. ARMY’S intelligence reports, Villa had remained in the house on the outskirts of Santa Cruz de Herrera until the first of June. Though his leg was not yet healed, he then marched south into the state of Durango and established a new headquarters at the Hacienda de Torreón de Cañas. Green fertile fields, cottonwood trees, and flowers of all kinds surrounded the farmhouse. By inquiring of peasants along the route, two Japanese agents named Tsutomo Dyo and A. Sato tracked Villa to the hacienda. Dyo and Sato had run a mining operation in Chihuahua that had been looted by the Villistas, and from that unlikely beginning a friendship developed between Villa and the two Japanese men.
The agents were escorted into the farmhouse, where they found Villa sitting in an armchair. Dyo was greatly startled by Villa’s physical appearance. In his diary, he wrote, “His long untrimmed jet black beard first attracted my attention and beside him were two crutches; he wore only one shoe, the right, the swollen left foot was covered with light woolen sock.” When Villa asked Dyo why he was so far from his ranch, Dyo replied that he had run into Villa’s wife, Luz, in El Paso and she had asked him if he could take some bandages to her husband. He had readily agreed, telling Villa, “It occurred to me that our former good relations and friendship counted for something so I consented.”
Villa seemed to pay little attention to what Dyo was saying. Abruptly he changed the subject and asked if the two agents were hungry. When they nodded, Villa said that he had already given orders for his troops to move out but would have his cook prepare them a meal. His isolation and long period of recuperation had left him immensely curious about the outside world and he peppered his visitors with questions. “During the meal, Villa grew inquisitive as to the relations between the United States and Mexico and propounded numerous questions concerning the location of their forces. I gave him what information I knew on the subject. I was especially astonished when he asked me point blank: ‘What does the world think about me; what is the consensus of opinion as to whether I am dead or alive?’ I replied that the consensus of opinion was that he was dead but that a large number did not believe it.”
When they were finished, Villa rose from the table and announced in a loud voice that he was leaving to attack Parral. Before departing, however, he said he wanted his leg dressed with the bandages that his wife had sent him. Dyo volunteered, adding that he had once taken a first-aid course:
This was my first opportunity to examine in detail the wound of which we had heard so many varied tales. I removed the soiled calico bandage from the left [actually the right] leg below the knee, which was separated from the flesh by two wild leaves, the name of which I am not familiar; as the leaves were removed considerable pus matter oozed out from the open sore. I observed that the bullet had entered from the rear, penetrating the leg bone midway between the knee and heel and had come out in the corresponding part of the leg in front. The bullet hole in the rear is closed and to all appearance healed. The hole in front is also closed but the pus hole is just above it and as I touched this part I could feel the fragments of broken leg bone. The leg is considerably swollen from the knee to the toes so Villa is unable to wear a shoe. For very short distances about the house he moves with the aid of crutches. The wound pains him considerable when he rides a horse, and does so only when necessary. In order to cover any considerable distance, he rides in a buggy.
While Dyo was wrapping the leg, Villa told him that he had been struck by a stray bullet fired by the Carrancistas—a statement that suggests that he still had no idea that one of his own conscripts had fired on him. In a musing voice, Villa continued, “No one will ever know how much I have suffered with this. You know I am a total abstainer but I have fallen three times in my life; once when my mother died, the second time when my father passed away, and the third time when wounded at Guerrero. No amount of stimulant seemed to remove my pain.”
It was dusk when Dyo finished his ministrations. The troops were already saddled and marching toward Parral and Villa invited Dyo to accompany him in his buggy. Fifty Dorados rode three hundred yards ahead of the carriage. Francisco Beltrán and Nicolás Fernández, who had done more than anyone else to keep the movement together while Villa was recuperating, were in charge of the main body of troops. The soldiers moved in a northwesterly direction toward Parral, but as soon as enough distance had been put between them and the hacienda, Villa suddenly switched directions and struck east across the open country. Dyo realized that his loudly announced plan to attack Parral had been a ruse to throw off any spies who might be listening. Villa’s real goal, as it turned out, was to attack Jiménez, located about fifty to sixty miles east of Parral, and seize the huge cache of ammunition stored there. “He took occasion to explain to me that what he sought was ammunition and popularity and that he needed the former to ensure that latter,” Dyo wrote.
The soldiers marched over mesquite-covered hills that were devoid of even the faintest of trails. When the terrain became too rugged, Villa got out of the buggy and walked or rode his horse. After traveling about eight miles, he ordered a halt in an arroyo and instructed the men not to smoke or build fires. That evening, he asked Dyo to change his bandages again. Watching the procedure, Villa said, “I see no marked change for the better with the application of the bandages sent me by my wife.” Dyo replied that he should have an operation to remove the bone fragments in his leg. Villa shook his head. “I have never had any use for doctors. I would rather wait that nature do her duty. I believe that the leaves that grow in the mountains are much more effective than your doctors.”
The following day, Villa was in an expansive and talkative mood and shared with Dyo some of his military philosophy. The knowledge of terrain was the single most important factor in winning military battles, he said. “For that reason,” wrote Dyo, “he selected as advance guard commander the leader acquainted with the ground on the line of march. When the time for attack arrived, he allowed this leader to have a prominent part in the disposition of forces and when he thought it advisable, he did not hesitate to place him in absolute command under his supervision.”
Villa and his army, which had now grown to about twelve hundred men, made several stops on the way to Jiménez. At a hacienda owned by Luis Terrazas, Villa drove off the overseers and distributed the furnishings and land to the peons. Then he continued marching until he reached the small village of Río Florida. There, he ordered the mayor to assemble the townspeople and gave a short speech in which he once again alleged that Carranza had sold out the Mexican people to the United States. “I am here to urge you all to join me in overthrowing this usurper of Mexican right and liberty; we shall then be free to challenge the United States of North America and demonstrate to them that the Mexican people will not allow themselves to be bought and sold in bondage.” The speech lasted perhaps ten minutes and Villa repeated himself several times. Yet, the speech was sufficiently inspiring for nearly a hundred men to join him voluntarily.
Villa had hoped to take Jiménez by surprise but that hope was dashed when a group of Carrancista soldiers quartered at a nearby hacienda discovered his presence. Villa decided to attack the troops at once, and easily defeated them. The tira de gracia was applied liberally to the officers. Villa decided to release about 180 of the rank and file but not until they had been “branded.” Wrote Dyo: “General Balderio [probably Baudelio Uribe] who is known as the ‘inventor’ of the Villa forces, suggested the singular punishment for the prisoners of branding them by cutting pieces of flesh from one or both ears so that if caught a second time in the service of the Carranza government their identification would be easy. Balderio produced shears, knives and scythes from the farm houses, which he handed to volunteer privates to carry the idea into effect. About fifty or sixty of the Carranza prisoners were abused and punished in this manner.” Villa ordered the property, which belonged to U.S. businessmen, burned but rescinded the order when General Beltrán suggested that doing so would harm the tenant farmers.
Villa then sent some of his troops on to Jiménez, which they captured on July 4 without firing a shot. The following day, Villa entered the town himself, still riding in the carriage. He ordered all the stores looted and the proceeds distributed among the poor families and his troops. An official of the British vice consulate later prepared a report on the incident from the statements of eyewitnesses. “They proceeded then to commit every manner of atrocity upon persons and property there. They killed civilians and soldiers wantonly and capriciously, ransacking every house and store, stripped clothes from passersby in the street, and even proceeded, in a number of notorious cases to the barbarous practice of clipping off men’s ears.” The Villistas, he wrote, were covered in vermin, dressed in rags, and half starved. One of their main objectives was to find a doctor. “The man looked sickly, and likely to die, but still preserved much of his extraordinary old-time energy,” the British official said of Villa. “When he dismounted from his coach he was compelled to use crutches, his right leg being so swathed in wrappings as to indicate inflammation, and it was said, blood poisoning had set in.”
Villa went to the local telegraph station, where he dispatched a number of messages designed to confuse the Carrancistas. Then he returned to the plaza and delivered a fierce harangue, claiming again that Carranza had sold Mexico to the gringos. Wrote the British official, “He made the usual promises to the mob for relief from the hunger and suffering that they have endured, with wealth for them all, and was cheered to the echo.”
Villa remained in Jiménez for two days, then faded back into the countryside. The Japanese agents, meanwhile, proceeded to put their poisoning plan into action. Dyo had been given three tubes containing twenty poison tablets each. The tablets had no taste or smell and took effect in three days. Dyo had tested the poison on a dog, giving the animal two tablets with “apparent good result.” He planned to administer thirteen pills—nearly seven times as much—to Villa.
At some point, Dyo apparently succeeded in mixing the pills into a cup of coffee and gave it to Villa to drink. But Villa, who for years had worried about being poisoned, poured half the coffee into the cup of one of his aides and waited until the man drank before he sipped from his own cup. Without waiting around to see what happened, the agents slipped away from Villa’s camp and returned to expedition headquarters. Whatever ill effects the drink had on Villa is unknown, but the concoction certainly didn’t kill him.
With Pershing’s troops penned up at Dublán, Villa’s fortunes began to rebound and in mid-September he dashed a note off to the Carrancista commander, General Jacinto Treviño, in Chihuahua City promising that he would be in town on the sixteenth of September, Mexico’s Independence Day, to shake hands. He added that “he might be hungry and would like to have something to eat.”
Villa kept his word, once again displaying the insolence and audacity that had brought him so much fame. In early September, he disguised himself and slipped into the city to check out the location and strength of the Carrancista forces. At two thirty on the morning of September 16, Villa’s troops stormed the city. He freed two hundred prisoners at the penitentiary, who promptly joined him, took over several federal buildings, and continued on to the governor’s palace, where he appeared on the balcony and made a speech to the wildly cheering crowds. “I will give you liberty for I am your brother!” he shouted. Treviño gathered up his escort and started toward the palace but his men deserted him and joined the Villistas instead. Never intending to hold the city, Villa retired leisurely with sixteen carloads of booty and numerous captured artillery pieces, which were guarded by other Carrancista soldiers who had switched sides.
Throughout his military career, Friedrich Katz writes, Villa had the uncanny ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and defeat from the jaws of victory, and his resurgence in the fall of 1916 and early spring of 1917 followed that pattern. He rebuilt the División del Norte until he once again had a full-fledged army consisting of five to six thousand soldiers. He stopped the looting and began to reassert the old discipline that he was once known for. “Subordinate failure to carry out instructions no matter how trivial was punishable by death,” U.S. Army intelligence officials later wrote.
Two weeks after his dramatic appearance in Chihuahua City, he delivered a much more serious manifesto to the Mexican people in which he cited the recent heroic efforts of the people of Belgium to defend their country from the German invaders and called upon the Mexicans to do the same in repelling the “Barbarians of the North.” He continued, “Victory will crown our efforts, do not forget it, because just causes always triumph, but, if destiny proves adverse to our cause, we will fall with our faces to heaven as the gladiators fell. . . .”
Pershing continued to urge his superiors to let him resume his hunt for Pancho Villa. When the requests were denied, he seems to have resigned himself to the fact that no more serious efforts would be made to apprehend Villa. In a letter to General Scott, he said Villa was holding his own simply because there was no energy being put into his capture. “You are familiar with Villa’s terrorizing methods of enforcing service,” he wrote drily. “He kills if men refuse to follow, and threatens to burn their families at the stake if they desert.”
And that was not the most heinous of Villa’s crimes. In the town of Camargo, he shot a woman point-blank when she flew into a rage upon learning that her husband had been killed by his troops. At the urging of his supporters, he then ordered the execution of ninety additional Carrancista women.
Villa briefly occupied the city of Torreón in mid-December and confiscated numerous goods, including thirty boxcars of soap, cottonseed meal, and cottonseed cake from the soap factory of Patrick O’Hea, the British vice-consul. In a highly emotional and graphic report describing Villa’s activities, O’Hea wrote, “His career is that of a dog in rabies, a mad mullah, a Malay run amok.”