The General and the Jaguar (42 page)

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.”

T
HE FIRST WEEKS IN
M
EXICO
had been hard on Herbert Slocum. Unlike General Pershing, he had grown soft in middle age; he smoked
cigars, he was overweight, and he was sixty-one years old. In the evenings, he retired early and slept so deeply that sometimes
he didn’t even remember when his adjutant shook him awake to ask him a question. With the limited rations and rigorous exercise,
Slocum shed thirty pounds and felt better physically than he had in years. Psychologically, though, he was still under great
stress. The investigation into the Columbus affair was dragging on. To compound his misery, Pershing had developed an extreme
antipathy toward him and had instructed his chief of staff, Colonel DeRosey C. Cabell, to monitor Slocum’s activities. As
a consequence, Cabell was busily writing him up for various infractions of army regulations, such as leaving his camp filthy;
removing horses from the picket line that belonged to other troops; losing a military codebook; failing to establish adequate
outposts; and not following orders.

Slocum wrote long letters to old West Point chums Hugh Scott and Ernest Garlington, inspector general of the army, asking
for their help in finding him a new position. While waiting, he carried on as best he could. One of his closest allies was
Captain James Ryan, the Thirteenth Cavalry’s intelligence officer. Ryan, who wore a toupee, had also felt the sting of Pershing’s
malice while on a reconnaissance mission in Mexico. One hot afternoon, Pershing ordered his staff, including the bewigged
Ryan, to undress and accompany him on a cool swim. Ryan objected but was overruled and soon the entire headquarters staff
was innocently splashing water on him while he gingerly made his way into the river “trying to balance his wig,” remembered
Pershing’s former aide James Collins.

Ryan was also close to Hugh Scott and often wrote letters to him, hinting broadly that he should do something to get Slocum
out of Mexico. “Slocum is in better health because we have a good camp and he keeps in the shade during the heat of the day.
He cannot stand any more hard campaigning down here in the sun and I have urged him to pull out as soon as he can, without
being criticized.”

Slocum was eventually cleared of the infractions written up by Cabell, but he still had to cope with the much more serious
allegations revolving around the Columbus raid. Unlike in the Carrizal incident, when more than seventy sworn affidavits were
taken from soldiers on the battlefield, the army conducted a very limited investigation of the attack. No effort was made
to explain how Villa and five hundred men slipped past the roving patrols, none of the cavalry officers living in town were
questioned about their activities or whereabouts during the actual attack, and none of the civilian eyewitnesses who had warned
of Villa’s approach were questioned. Instead, the inspector general’s investigation focused only on the precautions that the
colonel took to protect the town and camp and Slocum himself appeared to be the only witness questioned. He vigorously defended
his actions, describing the mounted and dismounted guards scattered about the camp and the troops that he had dispatched to
the border:

To have had scattered out of immediate concentration in case of need, any greater portion of my small command, would have
been, under the circumstances, most unwise, and was so considered by me. The facts developed by the Mexican attack in the
extreme darkness of March 9, 1916, has [
sic
] not changed this view in any way. The small town of Columbus has no lights, no electricity, and but little kerosene being
used. On a dark night, such as the hour selected for this attack, a sentinel or member of a patrol could not see twenty feet
in front of him. It was an easy matter for lightly shod Mexicans to sneak into the stable sheds in this darkness and cut the
horses loose, as there were no lights around the stables. A requisition for oil and street lamps for this purpose having been
previously disapproved.

Colonel Slocum also pointed out that there were no restrictions on the “floating Mexican population” in Columbus. A sketch
of the camp was found on one of the dead Mexican soldiers, he added, indicating that many hostile Mexicans in Columbus joined
in on the fight. “It was an easy matter,” he continued, “for an enemy to concentrate immediately south of the border line
without being disturbed, and attack the camp and Columbus, when notified by spies there of the most favorable opportunity.”
Only the machine guns were kept under lock and key, he said, adding that the men had access to their rifles and ammunition.
He went on:

I consider that every possible precaution was taken to protect American interests both civil and military by my command at
Columbus, and the readiness and quickness with which the troops turned out, and met the attack, drove the Mexicans out of
town and camp, with a loss known to me to be 78 killed, number of wounded unknown, except the ten or twelve wounded that were
found in Camp, that the town of Columbus nor the Palomas Cattle Co has no just cause for feeling they were not amply protected
by the troops. Further: had it not been for the braveness and thoroughness of the troops which met the attack, Columbus today
would be off the map.

Slocum hung tough with the investigators, but by early July he was ready to quit and said as much in a letter to General Scott.
“Mrs. Sage in ill health, and my father feeble, and must go on and size up situation, possibly my retirement may be found
necessary—of course, I will not leave here while there is any chance of a scrap, but the Mexicans do not want it and if we
only play fair there won’t be any with the Punitive Expedition.” In a postscript, he added, “If you have any duty in U.S.
[illegible] for an old colonel, ring me up!”

Three weeks later, he received a telegram from General Scott saying that he was reassigning him to Brownsville. “God be praised!”
Slocum exploded in a July 25 letter. “I am so overjoyed! This service was truly getting on my nerves and I was about all in—Didn’t
want to quit under circumstances and now I can continue in harness for a while longer and finally retire from the firing line.”

More good news followed a few days later when Slocum received a packet from Washington containing the inspector general’s
findings in the Columbus investigation. “You have been hammered from various directions a good deal by the press about Columbus,
and we have not been able to take your part heretofore, but now the papers have come in and we have gotten the whole matter
cleared up, about ten days ago,” Scott wrote on July 29. “I have the permission of the Secretary of War to put it out in the
public press, which I hope will have the effect of remedying any damage which may have been done by different people who rushed
into the newspaper without cause.”

The final report made no mention of any negative findings, and all the generals—including Pershing and Funston—stood solidly
behind Slocum. “Colonel Slocum seems to have made every endeavor to obtain accurate information of the whereabouts and intentions
of Villa,” General Pershing said. “Although a brigand, Villa was not presumably an enemy of the United States nor were Mexico
and the United States at war. Although Villa’s approach to the border excited the curiosity of our officers along the border,
it is not believed that many thought that Villa would have the audacity to attack a regimental garrison of American troops.”

For his part, Funston retracted his earlier remarks about Slocum not having posted adequate guards. “The matter had not seemed
clear to me before reading Colonel Slocum’s statement, but it is now my opinion that there was not sufficient grounds for
alarm to have made incumbent on him to increase materially the guards at the camp and town.”