Trouble was brewing down in Mexico. Did I say _was_ brewing? Well, what
I should have said is that it _had_ brewed, and will keep on brewing
until Uncle Sam goes down there and cleans out Villa and all the other
bandits and revolutionists.
You say the _Monroe Doctrine_ won’t permit it? Now there you’ve got the
best of me; I have a very hazy idea of what the _Monroe Doctrine_ means
but I’ve had occasion to observe that whenever a country can’t govern
itself or the ruler of some country wants to govern the whole world
Uncle Sam just naturally drives a gun carriage through the _Monroe
Doctrine_ and settles the affair to everybody’s satisfaction once and
for all. He is very like a school teacher who is so much annoyed by a
couple of his pupils that are constantly arguing and fighting he finally
gets mad himself and licks both of them and then things quiet down and
become decent like.
Getting down to cases, though, what I mean is that trouble was brewing
between Mexico and the United States. The Mexicans had been fighting a
long time among themselves; Madero who had been president of the
republic was shot and killed; Huerta, an Indian of Aztec stock, was
president at that time and he carried things on with a high hand, while
Carranza, a rebel who wanted to be president, was, with the aid of Villa
and other revolutionists, doing his best to wrest the government from
him.
Your Uncle Sam thought about as much of President Huerta as he thinks
now of the bandit Villa and would not recognize him as the head of the
Mexican Government. His attitude naturally made Huerta very sore on the
United States and, as I remarked before, trouble was brewing, for Huerta
had been doing small, contemptible things to aggravate the United States
and now he pulled off another low down trick.
It came about like this: in April, 1914, the U. S. S. _Dolphin_ anchored
in the bay of Tampico, Mexico, and the paymaster of the ship and some
marines went over to town in a launch. Their object in going ashore was
to buy some gasoline but before they had gone very far a number of
Huerta’s Mexican soldiers arrested them, led them through the streets
with a howling mob of _greasers_ after them and then threw them into
jail.
Rear Admiral Mayo of the _Dolphin_ soon learned of the predicament of
his men and demanded of the Commander of the Mexican army to set them
free immediately, if not sooner. The Commander, knowing full well what
would happen if he tried to hold the marines, let them go and apologized
for the _mistake_, as he called it.
But the Admiral was not the kind of an officer to let the Army or any
other branch of the Mexican Government insult our men and get away with
it. He therefore avowed that the Huerta government should salute our
flag by firing guns and that this must be done on or before a certain
hour.
In the meantime the Admiral communicated the incident to our government
at Washington and this was done by sending wireless messages from his
flagship to our Darien wireless station at Camento, Panama, and from
there it was retransmitted to Arlington. The Darien station which had
been completed only a little while before, has a sending apparatus equal
in power to the Arlington station but it can send and receive farther
than the latter station because all three of its towers are 600 feet
high.
Mr. Bryan, who was then Secretary-of-State, got in touch with Mr.
O’Shaughnessy, the U. S. _chargé d’affaires_ in Mexico City, and he took
up the matter with President Huerta. The erstwhile President of Mexico
also apologized profusely, believing that he could in this way get out
of saluting our flag. Our government insisted that apologies were not
enough but that the Mexican Government must salute our flag as Rear
Admiral Mayo had ordered, and this Huerta finally agreed to do.
Knowing the Mexican disposition, whose watchword is _mañana_ (which
means _to-morrow_), and having every reason to believe that there would
be a hitch in the proceedings, the Admiral extended the time in which
the salute was to be given to May 12.
As before, the 12th went by and the New York papers stated that Huerta
had failed in his promise to salute the flag. I _doped_ it out that
there would be big _doings_ down there and, unlike the _greasers_, I did
not let _mañana_ interfere with my patriotic obligations to Uncle Sam,
but I went right over to a recruiting station on 23rd Street and
enlisted in the Navy as an “electrician for wireless telegraphy.”
At that time a man who wanted to enlist in the Navy as a wireless
operator had to have “a working knowledge of telephones, measuring
instruments, call bells, etc., and he must be able to connect up same to
batteries and make minor repairs to them.” Also “familiarity with
ordinary telegraph instruments while an aid in acquiring a working
knowledge of wireless telegraph instruments, is not an essential
qualification for enlistment as a wireless telegraph operator.”
This is what the enlistment circular I was given to read said but, of
course, it was meant for men who knew a little about electricity and
nothing about wireless telegraphy to start with. But here I was a full
fledged operator, who had worked with Marconi and had helped to install
the equipment in the Arlington station!
The circular went on to say that “applicants would be enlisted as
_electricians, third class_, at $30 per month.” Some come-down for a man
who had been a _first wireless officer_ on a transatlantic liner and who
had earned, at least on one round voyage, $200 a month, to say nothing
of one who had worked with Marconi!
As I read on, the circular further stated “that men detailed as
operators will be eligible to be promoted to higher ratings when they
qualify as operators and have served the required probationary time
under the regulations through the successive grades to chief
electricians at $60 per month when they prove their ability to take
charge of the wireless telegraph station and interior communication on
board ship and have been assigned to duty.”
A man who knew nothing about wireless but wanted to become an operator
was given a course of instruction at some naval wireless school or
wireless telegraph shore station and when he was proficient enough he
was assigned to a cruising ship either in charge of a station or else as
an assistant to the electrician in charge.
As expert wireless operators were always in demand in the Navy I was at
once assigned to the _Alabama_ as an assistant operator and it was not
long before I was rated as a first class electrician.
I joined the _Alabama_ over at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, at New York,
where she had been in dry-dock undergoing repairs and the next day we
rode down the East River, through New York Bay and out to sea where we
joined the North Atlantic Fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral
Fletcher.
Surely enough, we got the news from Arlington on the 18th that Huerta
had put off saluting the flag though still agreeing he would do so;
President Wilson was heartily tired of it all and he finally sent an
_ultimatum_ to the sly old fox at Mexico City. This was to the effect
that if he did not salute the flag by 6 o’clock of the afternoon of the
19th he (President Wilson) would ask Congress the next day to permit him
to send the army and navy to Mexico to force him (Huerta) to do so.
To see that this was done on schedule time we received orders by
wireless to sail on the 14th to Mexico. The _North Atlantic Fleet_ was
formed of some thirty-six warships, and these were manned by no less
than 15,000 blue jackets and marines.
We were soon heading south. Talk about cleaning up Mexico! Why, we had a
fleet that could have cleaned up the world, and a mighty pretty sight
did she make, too. When we got there the fleet was split up into two
squadrons, one going to Tampico and the other, to which the _Alabama_
belonged, going to Vera Cruz, the Atlantic port nearest to Mexico City.
From what I gathered from the officers the purpose of President Wilson
was not to make war on poor old war-ridden, moth-eaten Mexico, but
simply to blockade the ports of Tampico and Vera Cruz and take over
their customs houses until such time as Huerta could see the necessity
of ordering the Commander of the Mexican Army to salute.
Two days later when we were steaming at full speed for Mexican waters, I
caught the message that Huerta had again agreed to salute and since he
knew we were coming I believed that he would do it this time sure and
that our next orders would be to steam to northern waters. I was out of
luck, that’s all. But we kept right on going just the same.
What Huerta really said was that if his Army fired the salute it would
be right, he thought, for our Navy to salute in turn. Huerta was
informed that this was always the custom when salutes of this kind were
fired and that our Navy would, of course, return it.
We learned by wireless the next day that Huerta had again flopped over
and he now wanted the salute to be fired gun for gun, that is, his army
would fire the first gun, then our fleet would fire the next one and so
on. Not only this but he wanted President Wilson to sign some kind of a
paper and tied the whole proceedings in a hard knot with a lot of other
strings. These conditions which Huerta wanted to impose President Wilson
would not agree to and there was nothing else left for him to do but to
back the ultimatum on the day he said he would.
On the way down I had plenty of time to look over the _Alabama_, to get
acquainted with the men and to get my bearings. I can’t tell you here
the little things that happened on board but I must say a word about the
_Alabama_.
The battleship, in her day, was the giant of all the sea-fighting craft
and her _armor_, that is, the steel covering that protects her, is a
great piece of work. First of all the whole main deck is made of thick
sheets of steel called _armor plate_ and this covers the ship from her
stem to stern-post just above the water line.
The part of a battleship where a shell hitting her would likely do the
most damage is at her water-line and if a shell should hit there and
explode it might tear out a big hole when she would quickly fill with
water and sink. To prevent this from happening a very thick band of
steel armor plate is riveted all the way round her at the water-line.
All the machinery and equipment of the ship including her engines,
boilers and machinery, the powder magazines and shell rooms, the
passageways through which the ammunition is taken, the wireless room, in
fact everything except her guns, is in the hold below this strong deck.
Of course there must be some openings in this deck but these are
protected by gratings of heavy steel, the bars of which set closely
enough together to keep fragments of shells from going through should
one hit and explode on deck.
On our battleships the main battery is generally made up of four 10
inch, 12 inch or 13 inch breech loading guns and these are mounted in
revolving turrets one of which is forward and one aft. The _Alabama_ had
four 13 inch guns in the large turrets and twelve 6 inch guns on the
broadsides. I’m telling you that if Huerta had been at Vera Cruz when we
got there and taken a look into the muzzle of one of our 13 inch guns
he’d have saluted the flag without any more of that mañana business. As
it was he was safely out of range of our guns for Mexico City is over
200 miles from Vera Cruz.
In the early days of wireless when every Tom, Dick and Harry was getting
up a “new” wireless system the _Navy Department_ tried out all of them.
It would not use the Marconi system because the government wanted to buy
the apparatus outright while the policy of the _Marconi Company_ was to
lease their apparatus.
The favorite type of wireless apparatus used by the _Navy Department_
was known as the _Telefunken_, a German getup that was a combination of
the Slaby-Arco and the Braun-Siemens and Halske systems. The transmitter
of our station was one of this kind and consisted of an induction coil
with a mercury turbine interruptor, an electric motor to run it and the
usual key, loose coupled tuning coil and condensers.
The receiver was of a later type and had both a _crystal detector_ and a
_vacuum tube detector_, the latter being the invention of Dr. Fleming of
England who has been Marconi’s technical adviser for many years. This
detector is really a small incandescent lamp bulb with not only a
filament but a metal plate sealed in it. The filament is kept at a white
heat by a current from a storage battery.
When the telephone receivers are connected to the hot filament and the
cold plate electrodes, the high frequency currents that are set up in
the aerial by the incoming electric waves are changed into direct
currents and the varying strength of these act on the head-phones. This
detector is very sensitive and needs no adjusting.
Many of the messages we sent and received were in straight English but
nearly all the important ones, especially those for and from Washington,
were in code, the purpose of which was to prevent any one else, except
our officers, from reading them and this kind of message is not very
interesting but we know that something is going on anyway.
We anchored off Vera Cruz on the 21st and the natives must have thought
from the number of warships that hemmed them in that we were going to
blow them to smithereens. A few hours after our arrival we landed a
thousand marines and they drove back Huerta’s soldiers and captured the
customs house.
The chief reason this was done was because our government had got wise
to the fact that a couple of German ships were scheduled to arrive at
Vera Cruz with a cargo of guns and ammunition for Huerta, and our
Commander had received orders on the way down to prevent this by seizing
the customs house.
There was not much show of armed resistance on the part of Huerta’s men
but in the scuffle that took place four of our men were killed and about
twenty were wounded. I made up my mind right then and there that if I
ever got a chance I’d blow the sombrero off of some greaser out of pure
revenge.
The favorite method of warfare that is waged by the Mexicans is
_sniping_, that is, they hide behind something and take a shot now and
then at you. As a result of sniping a few days later the number of our
men that had been killed was brought up to eighteen and the number of
wounded to 71.
When things had quieted down Hart Douglas, another operator and I got a
six hour shore leave. We buckled on our holsters and slipped our
revolvers into them with small thought of having a chance to use them.
We took a look around the town and all went well for awhile when _zip,
zip_, a couple of bullets whizzed by my ear and Hart dropped with a
bullet in his lung.
I whipped out my gun and wheeled around just in time to spot a couple of
snipers lying on a near-by roof with their rifles pointing toward us. I
emptied the five chambers at them as fast as I could pull the trigger. I
got one of them; he raised himself to his feet and pitched headlong into
the street. But the other one got me for he drew a bead on my gun arm
which, also don’t forget, is my key arm. A couple of marines put poor
Hart on a stretcher and carried him over to a field hospital. Another
bound up my arm, walked with me over to the launch and when I got aboard
my ship the doctor dressed it.
[Illustration: “I WHIPPED OUT MY GUN JUST IN TIME TO SPOT A COUPLE
OF SNIPERS”]
No more shore leaves were granted the men because two perfectly good
operators had gone ashore and two miserable good-for-nothing operators
had returned. Hart hovered between life and death for weeks but he
finally pulled through though he never will be as good a man as he was.
I came along all right but my hand seemed paralyzed from the wrist down
and it was many a moon before I could use a key again with my right
hand. I guess you see now why I like those greasers so well.
Our marines remained on duty until the end of the month when General
Funston arrived from Galveston with about four thousand troops and took
possession of the port. It was hard to see what turn affairs would take
next for Huerta had an army of 5,000 men not very far from Vera Cruz.
But I guess he had heard of General Funston before and he didn’t care
about being captured as Aguinaldo, the Philippine leader, was.
Instead of having some small war the diplomats of the A B C governments
of South America, as Argentine, Brazil and Chile are called, offered to
try to negotiate a friendly settlement between the United States and
Mexico. President Wilson, who liked peace and hated war, at once
accepted their kind offer and agreed to send representatives to their
proposed conference. The following day Huerta agreed to send his
representatives to the A B C conference which was to be held in the town
of Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the river.
Finally, when all the representatives met, the first thing that was done
was to have an armistice signed by the United States and Huerta’s
government. As soon as this was done Huerta’s representatives tried to
have the United States withdraw its forces from Vera Cruz and the United
States forego the salute for the insult to our flag. The representatives
of the United States asked only that Huerta resign.
After deliberating for five weeks the representatives of all the
countries agreed that a provisional government should be established in
Mexico, and that Huerta should resign; that the United States should not
ask Mexico to pay an indemnity nor to ask for a salute or other apology
for the insult to the flag at Tampico and that our troops were to remain
at Vera Cruz.
In the meantime Huerta was being hard pressed by Carranza on the north
and the rebel Zapata on the south and with our troops occupying Vera
Cruz it evidently suited him very well to resign. So on the 10th of July
Huerta appointed Chief Justice Corbajol to be president in his place.
It was common talk among the blue-jackets on our ship that Huerta had
some 3,000,000 dollars deposited in banks somewhere in Europe and that
he planned to go there. Be that as it may he handed in his resignation
to the Chamber of Deputies a week later and left for Puerto, Mexico, on
a special train under heavy guard. From there he sailed for Jamaica and
thence for Europe.
Thus it was that Huerta, the Indian descendant of the Aztecs, who always
went one way and came back another, got out of saluting our flag and
probably saved his life.