_My letter again. I go to America and become a United States
soldier. Sent to Mexico and sentenced to death there. I join
Villa’s army and gain an undeserved reputation._
I must leave Europe behind me now and go on to the period embraced in
the last five years. A private soldier in your United States Army—the
victim of an attempt at assassination in stormy Mexico—major in the
Mexican army; once again German secret agent and aide of Franz von Papen,
the German Military Attaché in Washington; prisoner under suspicion of
espionage, in a British prison, and finally your Government’s central
witness in the summer of 1916, in a case that was the sensation of its
hour—these are the roles I have been called on to play in that brief
space of time.
In the month of April, 1912, I abruptly quitted the service of my
government. The reasons which impelled me were very serious. You
remember that my active life began with the discovery of a document of
such personal and political significance that government agents followed
me all over Europe until I drove a bargain with them for it. In the
winter of 1912, by a chain of circumstances I must keep to myself, that
self-same document came again into my possession. I knew enough then, and
was ambitious enough, to determine that this time I would utilize to the
full the power which possession of it gave me. But it could not be used
in Germany. Therefore I disappeared.
There was an immediate search for me, which was most active in Russia. I
was not in Russia nor in Europe. After running over in mind all the most
unlikely places I could put myself I had found one that seemed ideal.
While they were scouring Russia for me I was making my way across
the Atlantic Ocean in the capacity of steward in the steerage of the
steamship _Kroonland_ of the Red Star Line.
[Illustration: The telegram von der Goltz received from Villa, inviting
him to go to Mexico with Dr. Rachbaum, Villa’s physician, and join the
Constitutionalist army.]
The _Kroonland_ docked in New York City in May, 1912. I left her
as abruptly as I had left a prouder service. Three days later a
sorry-looking vagabond, I had applied for enlistment in the United States
Army and had been accepted. I was sent to the recruiting camp at Fort
Slocum, and under the severe eye of a sergeant began to learn my drill.
It was toward the middle of May that I—or rather, “Frank
Wachendorf”—enlisted. After a stretch of recruit training at Fort Slocum,
I was assigned to the Nineteenth Infantry, then at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas.
I learned my drill—shades of Gross Lichterfelde!—with extreme ease. That
is the only single thing that I was officially asked to do.
But early in my short and pleasant career as a United States soldier
something happened which gave me special occupation. My small library
was discovered. Among the volumes were Mahan’s “Sea Power” and Gibbon’s
“Decline and Fall”—not just the books one would look for among the
possessions of a country lout hardly able to stammer twenty words in
English. But the mishap turned in my favor. My captain sent for me.
“Wachendorf,” he said, “you probably have your own reasons for being
where you are. That is none of my business. But you don’t have to stay
there. If you want to go in for a commission you are welcome to my books
and to any aid I can give you.”
Thereafter life in the Nineteenth was decidedly agreeable. I set myself
sincerely and whole-heartedly at the task of winning a commission in your
army. I believe I might eventually have won it, too. But fate revealed
other plans for me when I had been an American soldier some nine months.
That winter of 1913, you remember, had been a stormy period in Mexico.
Huerta had made his coup d’etat. Francisco Madero had been deposed and
murdered. President Taft had again mobilized part of the United States
forces on the border, leaving his successor, President Wilson, to deal
with a Southern neighbor in the throes of revolution.
The Nineteenth Infantry was ordered to Galveston, Texas. And in Galveston
the agents of Berlin suddenly put their fingers on me again. It happened
in the public library. I was reading a book there one day when a man I
knew well came and sat down beside me. We will call him La Vallee—born
and bred a Frenchman, but one of Germany’s most trusted agents.
“_Wie gehts, von der Goltz?_” was his greeting.
I told him he had mistaken me for some one else. He laughed.
“What’s the use of bluffing,” he asked, “when each of us knows the other?
Just read these instructions I’m carrying.” He laid a paper before me.
La Vallee’s instructions were brief and outwardly not threatening. Find
von der Goltz, they bade him. Try to make him realize how great a wrong
he was guilty of when he deserted his country. But let him understand,
too, that his government appreciates his services and believes he acted
impulsively. If he will prove his loyalty by returning to his duty his
mistake will be blotted out.
I read carefully and asked La Vallee how I was expected to prove my
loyalty at that particular time.
“You know what it is like in Mexico now,” he said. “Our government has
heavy interests there. Your services are needed in helping to look out
for them.”
“But,” I objected, “I am a soldier in the United States Army. You are
asking me to be a deserter.”
“Germany,” said La Vallee, “has the first claim on every German. If
your duty happens to make you seem a deserter, that is all right. Frank
Wachendorf must manage to bear the disgrace. Speaking of that,” he added,
carelessly enough, but eyeing me severely, “were you not indiscreet
there? Suppose some enemy should find out that you made false statements
when you enlisted? I believe there is a penalty.”
La Vallee knew that he had me in his power. I had to yield, and was told
to report to the German Consul at Juarez, across the Rio Grande from
El Paso. So in March, 1913, Frank Robert Wachendorf, private, became a
deserter from the United States Army and a reward of $50 was offered for
his arrest.
Before I crossed the border I had one very important piece of business
to attend to, and I stopped in El Paso long enough to finish it.
Mexico, under the conditions that prevailed, was an ideal trap for me.
As the lesser of two evils I had decided to risk my body there. But I
had no mind to risk also what was to Berlin of far more value than my
body—namely, that document which, a year before, had led to my abrupt
departure from Germany and her service.
In El Paso, where I was utterly unacquainted, I had to find some friend
in whose stanchness I could put the ultimate trust. Being a Roman
Catholic, I made friends with a priest and led him into gossip about
different members of his flock. He spoke of a harnessmaker and saddler,
one E. Koglmeier, an unmarried man of about fifty, who kept a shop in
South Santa Fe Street. He was, the priest said, the most simple-minded,
simple-hearted and utterly faithful man he knew.
I lost no time in making Koglmeier’s acquaintance, on the priest’s
introduction, and we soon were on friendly terms. When I crossed the
international bridge I left behind in his safe a sealed package of
papers. He knew only that he was to speak to no one about them and was to
deliver them only to me in person or to a man who bore my written order
for them.
I reported to the German Consul in Juarez. He asked me to carry on to
Chihuahua certain reports and letters addressed to Kueck, the German
Consul there. From Chihuahua Kueck sent me on to Parral with other
documents. And a German official in Parral gave me another parcel of
papers to carry back to Kueck.
I had no sooner reached Chihuahua on the return trip than I was put
under arrest by an officer of the Federal (Huertista) forces, then in
control of the city. I asked on whose authority. On that, he said, of
Gen. Salvador Mercado. I was a spy engaged in disseminating anti-Federal
propaganda. I had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of that, and asked what
proofs he had to sustain such charges.
“The papers you are carrying,” he said then, “will be proof enough, I
think.”
Chihuahua was under martial law. I had not the slightest inkling as to
what might be in those papers I had so obligingly transported. I had put
my foot into it, as your saying goes, up to my neck, the place where a
noose fits.
They marched me up to the cuartel and into the presence of Gen. Mercado.
That was June 23, 1913, at 9 o’clock in the evening.
Gen. Salvador Mercado, then the supreme authority in Chihuahua, with
practical powers of life and death over its people, proved to be a squat,
thick, bull-necked man with a face of an Indian and the bearing of a
bully.
His first words stirred my temper to the bottom, luckily for me. If I had
confronted the man with any other emotion than raging anger I should not
be alive now.
“Your Consul will do no good,” he told me sneeringly. “He says you are
not a German. You are a Gringo. You are a bandit and a robber. You have
turned spy against us, too, I am going to make short work of you. But
first you are going to tell me all you know.”
As the completeness of the frame-up flashed upon me I went wild. There
was a chair beside me. I converted one leg into a club and started for
Mercado. The five other men in the room got the best holds upon me that
they could. By the time they had mastered me Mercado had backed away into
the furthest corner of the room.
The remainder of our interview was stormy and fruitless. It resulted in
my being taken to Chihuahua penitentiary, the strongest prison in Mexico,
and thrown into a cell. It was two months and a half before I came out
again.
There is small use going in detail into the major and minor degradations
of life in a Mexican prison. I pass over _cimex lectularius_ and the
warfare which ended with my release. There are more edifying things to
tell. For instance, how I came into possession of half a blanket and a
pair of friends.
I was confined—incommunicado, a sentry with fixed bayonet standing before
my door—in an upper tier in the officers’ wing. Confinement in the
officers’ wing carried one special privilege in which I, the desperado,
did not share. During the day the cell doors were left open and the
prisoners had the run of the corridor and galleries. My sentry’s bayonet
barred them from me, but could not keep them from talking of the new
prisoner who claimed to be a German and was suffering because he was
suspected of attachment to the Constitutionalist cause.
On my third or fourth night there I was attracted to my cell door by a
sibilant “_Oiga! Aleman!_” and something soft was thrust between the bars.
“German,” whispered a voice in Spanish out of the blackness, “it is cold
to-night. We have brought you up a blanket.”
So began my friendship with Pablo Almendaris and Rafael Castro, two young
Constitutionalist officers. Almendaris, in particular, later became a
chum of mine. He was a long, lank, solemn individual, the very image of
Don Quixote of La Mancha. I remember him with love because he was the man
who gave to me in prison, out of kindness of heart, a full half of his
single blanket.
This is how it happened. He and Rafael Castro, who were cellmates, had
contrived a way to pick their lock and roam the cell block at night,
stark naked, their brown skins blending perfectly with the dingy walls.
They had already heard the story of my plight. That night Almendaris
had cut his blanket in two, and the pair, with the bit of wool and a
bottle of tequila they had bought that day when the prison market was
open, sneaked up to the gallery and my cell. They gave the liquor to the
sentry, who, being an Indian, promptly drank the whole of it down and
became blissfully unconscious.
The blanket was the first of many gifts, and many were the chats we had
together, all with a practical purpose.
“If you ever escape or are released,” Almendaris kept telling me, “go to
Trinidad Rodriguez. He is my colonel. And if you ever get out of Mexico,
go to El Paso and hunt up Labansat. He is there.”
So they contrived to alleviate the minor evils of my predicament, and I
shall never forget them. The major difficulty was beyond their reach. The
trap had closed completely round me. The charge of spying and Mercado’s
general truculence were only cloaks for a more subtle hostility from
another quarter. The reason for my imprisonment was soon revealed openly.
I had made various attempts to communicate with Kueck, the German Consul.
Always I met the retort that Kueck himself said I was no German. At the
same time, managing to smuggle an appeal for aid to the American Consul,
I was informed that etiquette forbade his taking any steps in my behalf.
Kueck himself, he said, had told him the German Consulate was doing
all it could to protect me. It did not need a Bismarck to grasp the
implications of those contradictory statements.
After I had been in prison for about three weeks Kueck came to see me and
made the whole matter thoroughly plain.
“Von der Goltz,” he opened bluntly, “you are in a bad situation.”
“Do you think so?” I asked him, significantly.
“I have every reason to think so,” he said. “My hands are tied. I
positively can take no steps in your behalf, unless”—he looked straight
at me—“unless you restore certain documents you have no right to possess.”
They had me nicely. The surrender of my letter was the price I must pay
for my life. Acting under instructions, he had made me a definite offer.
I had to take it or leave it.
I could not give the letter up. It was my guarantee of safety. As long as
Kueck did not know where it was I was valuable to him only while alive.
Furthermore, I had some hopes of being freed by outside aid. Through
Almendaris I had learned that the Constitutionalists were attacking
Chihuahua, with good hope of taking the city. I knew that if they
succeeded, the German—whose suffering for their cause, I was told, was
known throughout their forces—would be well taken care of. So I reached
my decision.
“Herr Consul,” I said, “I will not give up the papers you refer to. I am
not a child. Those papers are in a safe place. So are instructions as
to their disposal in case of emergency. Let anything happen to me, and
within a fortnight every newspaper in the United States will be printing
the most sensational story within memory.”
On July 23, 1913, I was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death.
That led to a bitter personal quarrel between Gen. Manuel Chao, the
Constitutionalist commander attacking the city, and Mercado, who defended
it.
Chao sent in a flag of truce, absolving me from any connection with his
cause and threatening that if I were killed Mercado personally would have
to pay the score when the Constitutionalists took Chihuahua. The Indian
bully retorted that if the Constitutionalists ever captured the city they
would not find their pet alive there.
Three times in the weeks that followed, the Constitutionalist forces
seemed on the point of capturing Chihuahua. Have you ever walked out
with your own firing squad and spent an endless half hour on a chilly
morning in the company of an officer with drawn sword, five soldiers with
loaded rifles and a sergeant with the revolver destined to give you your
_coup de grace_? Three times that happened to me, at Mercado’s orders. My
profession has seldom permitted me to indulge in personal hatreds, but as
I was marched back from that third bad half hour my mind was filled with
one thought: If ever I got Mercado where he had me then I would let him
know what it felt like.
Then matters came to a crisis. Reinforcements were brought up from Mexico
City and the Constitutionalist besiegers suffered a crushing defeat. I
could put no more hope in them.
Kueck came again to see me.
“Give me an order on Koglmeier for those papers,” he demanded. “There’s
no use saying Koglmeier hasn’t got them, for I know he has.”
I could see he was not bluffing, and knew the game was up. I signed the
release for the papers. There had been no personal animosity between
Kueck and myself. I had seen too much of life to be angry with a man
simply because he was obeying his orders.
[Illustration: Constitutionalist soldiers surrounding the first cannon
captured by Villa after he was released from prison in Mexico City.]
About September 12, 1913, Kueck came to escort me out of prison, and in
his own carriage drove me to the railway station, bound north, out of
Mexico. I had a sheaf of letters, signed by Kueck, which recommended
me, as Baron von der Goltz, to the good offices of German Consular
representatives throughout the United States and requested them to supply
me with funds.
The last man who spoke to me in Chihuahua was Col. Carlos Orozco,
commander of the Sixth Battalion of Infantry, and Gen. Mercado’s
right-hand man, though his bitter enemy. His farewell was a threat. “You
are lucky to get out of Mexico,” he told me. “If you ever come back and I
see you I will have you shot at once.” My next meeting with Col. Carlos
Orozco occurred on Mexican soil.
Escorted by Consul Kueck out of Mexico I went up to El Paso, determined
to return to Mexico as soon as possible. But before I did anything else,
I felt a very great desire to square accounts with Gen. Salvador Mercado.
So I stopped off at El Paso to look for Labansat, the Constitutionalist
about whom my friend Pablo Almendaris told me while I was in prison, I
lost no time in getting into touch with him and other members of the
Constitutionalist junta.
Another acquaintance made at that time proved very useful to me later.
Dr. L. A. Raschbaum, Francisco Villa’s personal physician, was a fellow
guest at the Ollendorf Hotel.
We were an earnest but impecunious bunch. Juan T. Burns, now Mexican
Consul General in New York, may still remember a morning when he and I
found ourselves with one nickel between us and the necessity of getting
breakfast for two at an El Paso lunch counter. That lone “jitney” bought
a cup of coffee and two rolls. Each of us took a roll and we drank the
cup of coffee mutually.
I also renewed my intimacy with Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe
Street. He told me a man he did not know had come with my written order
for the papers I had left in his safe and he had turned them over.
Despairing at last of obtaining results at El Paso, I availed myself of
my consular recommendations and went out to Los Angeles, Cal. There I
received help from Geraldine Farrar, whom I had known in Germany, and in
November, 1913, directly after the battle of Tierra Blancha, Chihuahua, I
received a telegram saying: “Dr. Raschbaum’s proposition accepted; come
at once,” and signed “Francisco Villa.” My way lay open before me and I
was free to start.
I reached El Paso on November 27th and went on to Chihuahua, which had
fallen into the hands of the Constitutionalists. Once there, I looked
up my friend of the half blanket, Pablo Almendaris, and by him was
introduced to Col. Trinidad Rodriguez, commanding a cavalry brigade, who
promptly attached me to his staff, with the rank of captain.
The Federalists had retreated across the desert northward and settled
themselves in Ojinaga, the so-called Gibraltar of the Rio Grande, a
tremendously strong natural position.
Toward the middle of December we received orders to proceed to the
attack of Ojinaga. Our brigade and the troops of Gens. Panfilo Natira
and Toribio Ortega were included in the expedition, some 7,000 men. The
railway carried us seventy miles. The rest of the journey had to be
made on horseback. During four days of marching in the desert I made
acquaintance with Mexican mounted infantry, the most effective arm for
such conditions and country the world has seen.
Arriving before the outer defenses of Ojinaga, we began our siege of the
city. Soon after I got my first sight of Pancho Villa.
Of a sudden one evening, Trinidad Rodriguez told me that “Pancho” had
just arrived and we must ride over for a conference with him.
We found Villa lying on a saddle blanket in an irrigation ditch in the
company of Raul Madero, brother of the murdered President, a handful of
officers who had come up with them, and our own commanders, Natira and
Ortega.
Madero, to my mind one of the ablest Mexicans alive, was clad in the
dingiest of old gray sweaters. Villa, unkempt, unshaven and unshorn, was
begrimed and weary from his ride across the desert. But he seemed full of
bottled-up energy, and when Gen. Rodriguez and I came up he was giving
Gen. Ortega a talking to because so little had been accomplished in
regard to taking Ojinaga.
While we talked I rolled me a cigarette, and all at once he broke
off abruptly. “Give me some of that, too,” he demanded. I handed him
“the makings” and he attempted a cigarette. He was so clumsy with it
that I had to roll it for him. Then for the first and last time in my
acquaintance with him I saw Pancho Villa smoke. Contrary to the stories
that have gone out about him, he is a most abstemious man with regard to
alcohol and tobacco.
On Christmas night, 1913, happened the adventure which made me, quite by
accident, and without intention, a hero. Also, I underwent the greatest
fright of my life.
My commander, Rodriguez, had received orders to make an attack that night
straight-forward toward Ojinaga. After it was completely dark we formed
and advanced, finding ourselves very soon among the willows lining the
bank of the Rio Conchas, which we had to cross.
It was my first taste of genuine warfare, and I cannot begin to tell you
how it affected me, how ghastly it was among the willows in the vague
darkness through which the column was threading its way with the utmost
possible quietness. The beat of hoofs was muffled in the soggy ground,
and the only sound to break the utter stillness of the night was the
occasional clank of a spur or thin neigh of a horse.
Then all at once, to the front and in the distance, came a boom—the
single growling of a field-gun. Ping! Ping! Ping! broke out a volley of
rifle shots, and then with its r-r-r-r-r! a Hotchkiss machine gun got
to work. A staccato bam! bam! bam! as a Colt’s machine gun joined the
chorus. Somewhere troops were going into serious action. That was no
skirmishing.
We finally crossed the river and dismounted. Part of the brigade had gone
astray. Rodriguez cursed impatiently and incessantly under his breath
until it joined us. He was a born cavalry leader, mad for action. Any
sort of waiting lacerated his nerves.
In line, with rifles trailing, we moved across the unknown terrain of
low, rolling hills. On our front there had been no firing. Then all at
once, directly before us and not far ahead, sounded a startled “_Qui
vive?_” and an instant’s silence while the surprised outpost of the enemy
waited for an answer. “_Alerta! Alerta!_” sounded his shrill alarm.
Hell broke open around us then. Rifles, machine guns and cannon opened
fire all at once. Bullets whined above our heads and bursting shrapnel
fell around us. We had just come to an irrigation ditch, six feet wide,
with a high wire fence on the further bank of it.
“Stay here till they’re all across and look for skulkers,” Trinidad
Rodriguez gave himself time to order me, then leaped across the ditch and
began to run toward the fence. “Come on here, boys!” he shouted.
The men were quickly across. I followed, or tried to, and just as my
front foot touched the further bank the clay crumbled. Down I went into
the ditch.
When I recovered myself in that four feet of mud and water and poked my
head up over the bank the fence had been demolished. Beyond it countless
rifles spat tongues of fire toward me. But not a living soul was near.
The night had swallowed up every last one of our men.
Fright had not come yet. I was bewildered. I still had my rifle and began
to use it. After a few discharges there came a violent wrench and the
barrel parted company with the rest of the weapon. It had been shot to
pieces in my hands. I threw the stock away and got out my revolver—a Colt
.44 single-action, of the frontier model.
Boom! There was a roar like a field-gun’s and a flash that lit up the
night all round me. The wet weapon was outdoing itself in pyrotechnics,
and I was unnecessarily attracting attention to myself. So, half
swimming, half wading, I moved down the ditch in the direction of the
high hill which, looming vaguely, seemed half familiar to me.
I was lost, you understand. I had come at night into unknown terrain.
I welcomed that hill, which seemed to give me back my bearings. I
reached the base of it, got out of my ditch and began to climb, with some
caution, luckily for me. For just as I stole over the crest a roar and a
flash obliterated the night. Two enemy field-pieces had been discharged
together, almost into my face.
Deeming it more than likely that the flash had shown the gunners one
startled Teutonic face, I rolled down that hill and was once more in my
ditch. But panic had full possession of me. I climbed out on the far side
and ran among the scattered trees there until I realized that no racer
can hope to outrun a bullet. Then I stopped.
Phut! Phut! Bullets were hissing into the soft irrigated ground all round
me, for by accident I had gotten into a very dangerous zone of dropping
cross-fire, while overhead shrapnel was searching out blindly for our
horses.
By good luck I knew the trumpet calls. Whenever the signal to fire
sounded I took what cover I could, going on again in what I decided was
the direction of the Rio Conchas as soon as the bugles called “cease
firing.”
After a while I found a small gray horse standing dejectedly by a tree.
I mounted him and eventually got among the willows on the river bank.
There the horse collapsed under me without a warning quiver or groan, and
when I had wriggled myself loose and groped him over I discovered the
poor brute must have been shot as full of holes as a flute before I ever
found him.
But I had small sympathy to spend on fallen horses just then. Cleaning my
gory hands as best I could on breeches and tunic, I stumbled on through
the bushes. After a long time I came, by accident, to the place where the
brigade had dismounted to go into action. The mounts were mostly gone,
but a few still stood there, with perhaps a score of men and one officer,
Lieut. Col. Patricio, who was vastly surprised at my sudden appearance
from the direction of the front.
Our brigade had been withdrawn within twenty minutes of the beginning
of the action—as soon as it was quite certain the surprise had failed.
Patricio was waiting there because his brother had been killed and he
wanted, if possible, to take back his body.
“But,” cried the colonel, suddenly warming into emotion, “you—where have
you been? You, valiant German, refused to come back with the others! All
night, all by yourself, you have been fighting single-handed. Let me
embrace you!”
He flung his arms about me, to receive a fresh surprise. “You are all
sticky with something,” he cried. “What is it?”
“Blood,” I told him simply and truthfully. My reputation was made.
Bravado stirs a Mexican as nothing else can. Counterfeit bravado is just
as effective as any so long as the substitution is not suspected. Young
Capt. von der Goltz, in his first real engagement, had got stupidly lost
and very badly frightened. But of Capt. von der Goltz Col. Patricio and
his troopers sang the praises for days thereafter to every officer and
every peon soldier they met. He had fought on alone for hours after every
comrade left him. He had bathed himself in the blood of his enemies, up
to his hips and up to his shoulders. You could see it on his clothes.
By the time Ojinaga fell “_El Diable Aleman_”—the German Devil—had become
a tradition of the Constitutionalist Army.
Ojinaga fell at New Year’s, 1914, the Federalists retreating across the
Rio Grande into the United States. We pursued them. And on the bank of
the river I had a little adventure.
You remember that when I left Chihuahua, a released prisoner, the last
person who spoke to me was Col. Carlos Orozco, commanding the Sixth
Infantry Battalion, and his farewell was a threat.
That Sixth Battalion had been engaged in the defense of Ojinaga and
had retreated with its fellow organizations. When I came up to the Rio
Grande a small body of fugitives was in midstream. My handful of troopers
rode in, surrounded them and brought them back to Mexico. Their heroic
commander, who had offered no show of resistance, proved to be Orozco,
with the colors of his outfit wrapped round his body, under his blouse!
The provocation was too much for me. “Don Carlos,” I asked him, “is it
possible you have forgotten me? When we parted last time you promised
to shoot me if ever we met again. I am naturally all on fire to learn
whether you are thinking of keeping your promise now?”
Prominent prisoners were getting short shrift in those days, and Orozco
preserved a sullen silence. But I let him ford the river to safety. He
eventually got back to Mexico City and Huerta, by way of San Antonio,
Galveston and Vera Cruz. The story of his exploit at Ojinaga, the sole
Federal officer to come out of it alive, unwounded, and bringing his
colors with him, furnished columns of copy to _El Imparcial_ and the
other papers. Friends and admirers of his who heard the lion roar at that
time may find some interest in this less romantic record of his adventure.
I had another account to settle with my old acquaintance, Consul Kueck
of Chihuahua. During the last battle before Ojinaga an officer struck up
a rifle which he saw a peon aiming at my back. The ball whistled over my
head. The soldier later saw fit to confess the reason for his act. He
said that a big, fat German—Kueck’s secretary, he thought—had come to him
just before we left Chihuahua on our expedition and had given him 500
pesos to attempt my life.
Returning to Chihuahua very soon after New Year’s, I made it my business
to call on Consul Kueck. He had cleared out across the border to El Paso,
just before we got in.
Failing the principal, I took the liberty of arresting Kueck’s secretary
inside the sacred precincts of the Foreign Club. After my adjutant and he
and I had three or four hours’ private talk and he understood how likely
he was to occupy the cell in Chihuahua penitentiary which had once been
mine, he helped me obtain copies of certain documents in the consular
archives, particularly the letter Kueck had written the American Consul
affirming himself to be fully responsible for my safety, at the very time
when he was setting Mercado on and telling me that he could and would do
nothing for me. Once I got hold of that, I felt fairly certain that Kueck
would be moderate in his dealings with me thereafter.
Only Gen. Salvador Mercado stood wholly on the debit side of my account
book. I had heard that he had been captured on United States soil, along
with numerous other fugitive Federal officers, and had been put for
safekeeping into the detention camp at El Paso.
It chanced that Villa and Raul Madero went up to the border for a few
days of the winter race-meet at Juarez, just across the river from El
Paso. Don Raul was kind enough to invite me too, and I went along in
fettle, with a new uniform. Our army was in funds and I had all the money
I wanted.
From Juarez it was merely a matter of crossing the international bridge
to be in El Paso. I went over. I wanted to see Koglmeier, the saddler in
South Santa Fe Street, and I wanted to visit the detention camp.
I chose to see the camp first, and had the forethought to fill one of
the pockets of my overcoat with Mexican gold pieces, very welcome to my
whilom enemies. Poor fellows, they were, most of them, in the tattered
clothing they had worn when captured. Their faces were wan and meagre and
they were glad enough to accept, along with my greeting, the bits of gold
I contrived to slip into their hands.
In the center of the camp we came upon a tent more imposing than its
mates, though by no means palatial.
“This,” said my cicerone, “is the quarters of Gen. Mercado, the ranking
officer here. Do you wish to pay him your respects?”
As I have said, Salvador Mercado is squat and thick in build, with a bull
neck. Some day, I fear, he is going to die of apoplexy, if he does not
fall, more gloriously, in action. He shows certain apoplectic symptoms.
For instance, as we stepped inside his tent and he saw who one of his
visitors was, his neck swelled till it threatened to burst his collar.
“My General,” I assured him warmly, “it is indeed a pleasure and an honor
to see you again. I trust the climate up here agrees with you?” I did not
offer him a gold piece when he said good-bye.
[Illustration: Photograph of a clipping from the El Paso Herald of
December 22, 1913. No motive has ever been discovered for the crime,
other than the theory advanced by Captain von der Goltz.]
From the detention camp I went to Koglmeier’s shop in South Santa Fe
Street. Both front and rear doors were standing open, and through the
back of one I could see Koglmeier’s horse, a beast I had often ridden,
switching its tail in the yard, which was its stable. I went into the
store. “Koglmeier!” I called. “Oh, Koglmeier!”
From the side of the shop stepped out a man on whom I had never set eyes
before.
“Koglmeier ain’t here.”
“But he must be here,” I insisted. “I can see his horse out there in the
yard.”
“Yes,” said the man, “the horse is here, but Koglmeier ain’t. Nor he
won’t be. It just happens that Koglmeier’s dead.”
“When did he die?”
“The 20th of last December,” said the man. “But he didn’t die. He got
murdered.”
On the night of that 20th of December, Koglmeier, the quietest, most
inoffensive man in El Paso, had been murdered in his shop. It looked,
said my informant, “like his head had been beat in with a hatchet,
or something.” Robbery apparently had not been the motive, for his
possessions were untouched. If he had made an outcry it had not attracted
attention, perhaps because a carousel was going full blast in the vacant
lot beside his place of business. The authorities were utterly at sea,
and still are. The United States Department of Justice agents told me
they could find no motive for the murder. I knew the motive. Koglmeier
had kept “my documents” for me; therefore Imperial Germany had willed he
die.
[Illustration: This “six months’ leave of absence” granted by Gen.
Raul Madero of the Mexican Constitutionalist army to von der Goltz, is
declared by von der Goltz to have saved him from the death of a spy, when
the British captured him in London. With this document von der Goltz was
enabled to convince the London War Office that instead of being a German
spy he was a bona-fide Mexican army officer on leave of absence. At the
right is the letter of recommendation given von der Goltz by Madero at
the same time.]
Koglmeier was the only German in El Paso who was a friend of mine, and
knew of the existence of those documents which I had been forced to give
up through the agency of Mercado’s firing squads.
His end subdued the festive spirit in me and I was not sorry when we
started back for the interior of Mexico.
Torreon was taken by Villa on April 2, 1914, and we settled down there
for a brief period of rest and recuperation. Rest! Torreon stands out in
my memory as the scene of the most hectic activity I have indulged in.
Raul Madero and I have since laughed over the ludicrousness of it. But at
the time it was deadly serious. My reputation was at stake. I managed to
save it barely by the skin of its teeth.
Chief Trinidad Rodriguez got twenty machine guns down from the United
States and turned them over to me. “Train your gun crews and get the
platoons ready for field service,” he ordered. “You can have three weeks.
Then I shall need them.”
Without a word I saluted and turned on my heel. I could not very well
tell my general that I had never in my life touched even the tip of one
finger to a machine gun.
The guns arrived next day, as promised. They had been sent to us bare,
just the barrels and tripods. There were no holsters, no pack saddles
for either guns or ammunition, not one of the accessories which equip
a machine gun company for action. I had to start from the ground, in
literal truth. And I had not a soul to advise me how to begin.
We loaded the guns onto our wagons, took them over to camp and laid them
side by side in a long row down the center of an empty ware-house in
Torreon.
That satisfied me for one afternoon. I went over to Gen. Rodriguez’s
quarters.
“I’ve got the guns,” I reported.
“Good!” he cried. “I shall want the platoons ready for action in three
weeks. Not a day later.”
It was up to me to have them ready. So I got busy at once.
My first move was an abduction. There happened to be in Torreon jail
at that time a first class bank robber named Jefferson, who was being
held for the arrival of extradition papers from Texas. The day after my
guns arrived Jefferson escaped, and though the authorities made diligent
search they failed to find him. He knew more about machine guns than I
did. His profession had made him an excellent mechanic. Furthermore,
he had Yankee ingenuity and American “git up and git.” We soon had all
twenty guns set up in working order.
Then came the problem of the gun crews. Our Indians, slow, thick-headed,
stubborn and stolid, were no fit material for such highly specialized
work. Machine gun manipulation requires special qualifications in every
man concerned. Three men compose the crew. One squats behind the shield
and pulls the trigger. The second, prone, slides the clips of cartridges
into the breach. The third passes up the supply of ammunition. At any
moment the gun may heat and jam. Also, at any moment any one of the trio
may fall, yet his work must be carried on. I have seen a gunner sit on
the dying body of a comrade and coolly aim and fire, the action being so
hot there was not time to drag the wounded man aside. You cannot take an
Indian wild from the hills and in twenty-one days fit him to do such work
as that by any course of training.
My only resort was to get my gun crews ready made.
A brigade not far away from ours possessed machine gun platoons which
were the pride of its heart. I looked at them, and broke first the Tenth
and then the Eight Commandment.
To a wise old sergeant I gave a hundred pesos.
“Juan,” I told him, “get the men of those machine gun crews drunk in this
quarter of Torreon. And encourage them to be noisy.”
Juan obeyed instructions. Once the beer and mezcal took hold, the men I
wanted became boisterous enough to justify our provost guard in running
them all in. The rest was simple. The breach of discipline was condoned
by Gen. Rodriguez only on condition that the culprits were turned over to
him for further discipline.
So I got my gun crews. I was beginning to have hopes. The best saddler in
the city was making holsters. When I first approached him with an order
he had promptly thrown up his hands. “There is not a scrap of leather
left in Torreon,” he said.
I instantly thought of chair backs. In Spanish countries furniture
upholstered in old carved Cordovan leather is an heirloom. In time of
war ruthlessness is a useful quality. I soon presented my saddler with
sufficient leather for my purpose and could turn my attention to pack
saddles. Not even the sawbuck frames were procurable in Torreon, but wood
was plenty. And there was a jail filled with idle prisoners. Ten days
after the first sight of my guns I was able to report to Gen. Rodriguez
that the platoons were coming along.
“But I have no mules for them yet,” I hinted.
He sent a hundred next day, beauties, fat, strong, in the pink of
condition. But they had come straight down from the mesa. They could be
trusted to kick saddles, guns, tripods, holsters and ammunition cases
into nothing at the least provocation.
Torreon was celebrating its new Constitutionalism with daily bull
fights. Each afternoon, while the fight was on, the plaza before the
entrance to the ring was crowded with public rigs in waiting, all drawn
by sorry-looking mules, half fed and too worn out to have a single kick
left in them.
With a squad of troopers I descended on the plaza one day. No cabbie
anywhere is markedly shy or retiring, and these were hill-bred muleteros.
But we got the mules in the end.
“You are getting the best of the bargain,” I assured them. “I am only
swapping with you. In the corral I have a hundred fine, strong, new mules
worth three times as much as these played-out beasts you are getting rid
of. You can have the nice new ones to-morrow.”
If Gen. Trinidad ever guessed how thoroughly improvised his favorite
outfit was—the second in command a bank robber on enforced vacation, the
gunners kidnapped, the equipment made by forced labor from commandeered
material, and the mules snatched rudely from between the shafts of
cabs—he made no comment.
He did not live long to enjoy the fruits of my labors. In mid-June,
during the ten-day attack which resulted in the fall of Zacatecas, he was
mortally wounded.
I shall always remember that day, not only for the death of my chief, but
for a personal bit of adventure.
I was temporarily away from my guns with some riflemen in a trench. The
enemy fire was very hot and the men became exceedingly restive. Something
had to be done to steady them, for there was no cover of any sort on the
bullet-swept, shrapnel-searched plain behind us. Retreat was impossible.
There were plenty of horrors in the situation—the blazing sun, the sense
of isolation, the cries and curses of the men who were being struck. And
there was the cactus.
Unless you have been under fire of high-power rifles in a region where
the common broad-leaved cactus grows you cannot guess its nerve-shaking
possibilities. A jacketed bullet can pierce a score of leaves without
much diminution of its velocity, and as it goes through the thick, juicy
flesh, it lets out a sound like the spitting of some gigantic cat. Ten
Mauser bullets piercing cactus can make you believe a whole battalion is
concentrating its fire on your one small but precious person.
The men were getting demoralized. If they broke I was done for. If I
stayed in the trench alone the Federals would eventually get me and stand
me up to the nearest wall. If I retreated with them, nothing was gained.
No man can hope to outrun a bullet.
I stood up, exposing my body from mid-thigh upward to that withering
fire, and took out my cigarette case. The nearest men watched side-wise,
waiting to see me fall.
By some fortune I was not hit, and after a moment looked down at the man
beside me.
“Hello, Pablo!” I said, “why aren’t you smoking, too?” I offered my case
to him, but took good care to stretch out my arm quite level. To get at
the contents he had to rise to his feet.
Habit won. He did not even hesitate, and I held my cigarette, Mexican
fashion, for him to take a light. Once committed in that fashion, he was
too proud to show the white feather, and he and I smoked our cigarettes
out while the bullets flew. It was the longest cigarette, I think, I ever
smoked, but it turned the trick. We held on to that trench till darkness
put an end to the fire.
After the capture of Zacatecas I went to the staff of Gen. Raul Madero,
with the rank of Major. The invitation had been extended several times
before. Now that Trinidad was dead, there was nothing to hold me back,
and I very gladly joined the official family of the brother of the
murdered President. Since my first association with him, before Ojinaga,
he had impressed me as the ablest man I had seen south of the Rio Grande.
The closer and constant contact entailed by my becoming a member of his
staff confirmed that feeling. Raul Madero has clarity of intelligence,
an encyclopaedic grasp of Mexican affairs, social, religious, political
and financial, and a winning personality that masks abundant energy and
determination.
I was associated with him for only six weeks. On June 28th, 1914, you
remember, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated.
All through July the Austrian Government was formulating its demands
on Serbia, which culminated in the ultimatum of July 23. Long before
that I had formed my opinion as to which way the wind was to blow. And
I had a sufficiently conceited notion of my usefulness as a trained and
experienced agent to believe that when the general European disturbance
should break out my days as a soldier of fortune in Mexico would be ended.
Toward the end of July a stranger brought me credentials proving him a
messenger from Consul Kueck in El Paso.
“The Consul,” he told me, “wishes to ask you one question, and the answer
is a yes or a no. This is the question: In case your Government wished
your services again, could she expect to receive them?”
“In case of war—yes,” I answered.
It was not very long before I received a telegram from Kueck. “Come,” was
all it said.