Vol 99 FEBRUARY, 1920 No. 4 General Pershing's Mexican Campaign By FRANK B. ELSER "As this is written, Villa is presumably still alive. Recent despatches recount reminiscently and with familiar detail stories of his raids and depredations in the same stretch of country over which the 'forces under Pershing made their painful way." T was June, and hot even for Chihuahua. To the north and east of us lay Columbus; to the south and west, in the distance, stretched the gray and buckskin-colored peaks of the Sierra Madre. Overhead in the blue sky, so blue that you thought of a Maxfield Parrish picture, the buzzards volplaned, or, in spiral upward flight, touched great heights from which they looked down on a desert of such softly blending colors as would render crude by contrast the subtlest art of war camouflage. Over this desert stretch, and by virtue of the desert dust they themselves camouflaged, three automobiles swayed and lurched and banged in low gear, belching steam from their radiators, grinding their way through the sand. Tanks would have been better suited to the journey. In the leading car sat a clean-shaved, six-foot, soldierly-looking man munching a saltless cracker. His name was John J. Pershing, but he was not then thinking of France. As a brigadiergeneral of cavalry, he was commanderin-chief of the United States expeditionary forces hunting Francisco Villa, who had, on March 9, 1916, killed sev- But our forces had not got Villa, and The Villa campaign was essentially lacking in what we have learned from the English to call "swank." There was no place for it. Pershing wore no Sam Browne belt. For weeks his headquarters was his hat, or at best a small tent, and for days at a stretch he slept on the ground near his men. Our allies, nominally, were the federal troops of the Carranza government, but from them we had no liaison officers. Pershing did not trust them and did not want them. That he was right in his stand developments in the campaign were to bear out. With minor exceptions mounted troops alone engaged the Villistas in what running fights we were able to force upon them, and the infantry, after hiking miles on blistering feet over the desert, fretted greatly under Copyright, 1920, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. 433 THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TIROIDITE Vol 99 FEBRUARY, 1920 No. 4 General Pershing's Mexican Campaign By FRANK B. ELSER "As this is written, Villa is presumably still alive. Recent despatches recount reminiscently and with familiar detail stories of his raids and depredations in the same stretch of country over which the 'forces under Pershing made their painful way.” T was June, and hot even for Chihuahua. To the north and east of us lay Columbus; to the south and west, in the distance, stretched the gray and buckskin-colored peaks of the Sierra Madre. Overhead in the blue sky, so blue that you thought of a Maxfield Parrish picture, the buzzards volplaned, or, in spiral upward flight, touched great heights from which they looked down on a desert of such softly blending colors as would render crude by contrast the subtlest art of war camouflage. Over this desert stretch, and by virtue of the desert dust they themselves camouflaged, three automobiles swayed and lurched and banged in low gear, belching steam from their radiators, grinding their way through the sand. Tanks would have been better suited to the journey. In the leading car sat a clean-shaved, six-foot, soldierly-looking man munching a saltless cracker. His name was John J. Pershing, but he was not then thinking of France. As a brigadiergeneral of cavalry, he was commanderin-chief of the United States expeditionary forces hunting Francisco Villa, who had, on March 9, 1916, killed seventeen Americans in the Columbus raid. But our forces had not got Villa, and the general was motoring north over the desert on a flying trip of inspection. Of the two cars that followed his, the first carried a guard of five enlisted men, the second three newspaper correspondents, one of whom was the writer. The Villa campaign was essentially lacking in what we have learned from the English to call "swank." There was no place for it. Pershing wore no Sam Browne belt. For weeks his headquarters was his hat, or at best a small tent, and for days at a stretch he slept on the ground near his men. Our allies, nominally, were the federal troops of the Carranza government, but from them we had no liaison officers. Pershing did not trust them and did not want them. That he was right in his stand developments in the campaign were to bear out. With minor exceptions mounted troops alone engaged the Villistas in what running fights we were able to force upon them, and the infantry, after hiking miles on blistering feet over the desert, fretted greatly under Copyright, 1920, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. 433 |