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Posted on 04/13/2003 12:01:04 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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and The Mexican Punitive Expedition Eighty years ago, in February 1917, the last of the U.S. troops serving in the Mexican Punitive Expedition recrossed the border from Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico, into Columbus, New Mexico. Eleven months earlier the bandit Francisco "Pancho" Villa had raided Columbus. With approximately 485 men, known as Villistas,Villa had attacked the border town on March 9, 1916. According to War Department reports, ten American officers and soldiers were killed, two officers and five soldiers wounded, eight civilians killed, and two wounded. The Mexican irregulars' losses numbered approximately one hundred killed, with seven wounded and captured.  Pancho Villa Although the Mexican Punitive Expedition is considered a minor event in U.S. history, it is a story filled with adventure, intrigue, and confusion. The origins of the expedition are rooted in the 1910 Mexican Revolution, when a rebel faction led by Francisco I. Madero, Jr., attempted to overthrow Mexico's dictator of more than thirty years, President Porfirio Diaz. The United States was concerned that the conflict would harm American business interests in Mexico and its citizens living along the border. As a result, President William H. Taft sent about sixteen thousand troops to Texas for "war games" in April 1911. The troops, consisting of elements of several regiments, were designated as the Maneuver Division. Although officially sent to the border for training exercises, unofficially the division prepared for a possible incursion into Mexico. By June the revolution had succeeded, and Madero was elected president. The Maneuver Division was disbanded on August 7, 1911. Madero's victory was short-lived. On February 19, 1913, Gen. Victorio Huerta arrested Madero and forced him to resign. On February 22, Madero was presumed assassinated on orders from Huerta. A civil war erupted a few days later between Huerta's forces and supporters of Madero, who were led by Governor Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa. With a contingent of several thousand men, Villa formed a military band known as the Division of the North and operated in the mountains of northern Mexico. In the United States a new American President, Woodrow Wilson, took office. Like his predecessor, Wilson now faced the task of choosing a side in the ongoing Mexican Revolution. Wilson's administration refused to recognize Huerta because of the corrupt manner in which he had seized power, and it instituted an arms embargo on both sides of the civil war.  When Huerta's forces appeared to be winning the civil war in early 1914, Wilson lifted the arms embargo by offering to help Carranza. This action had volatile consequences. For several months, U.S. Navy warships had been stationed at the ports of Tampico (under the command of Rear Adm. Henry T Mayo) and Vera Cruz (under Rear Adm. Frank R. Fletcher's command) to protect American and other foreign interests associated with the rich oil fields in the area. On April 9, a group of sailors detached from the USS Dolphin went ashore at Tampico to retrieve supplies. Huerta's troops arrested and detained two of them. The sailors were released a short time later, and President Huerta offered an apology to the United States for the incident. Ultimately, Admiral Mayo demanded a twenty-one-gun salute to the U.S. flag in addition to the apology. Huerta agreed only if the Americans would return the honor. When learning of the incident, an angry President Wilson refused Huerta's request. Instead, he ordered the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet to Mexico's Gulf Coast to strengthen the forces under Mayo and Fletcher and occupy Tampico. Another crisis festering down the coast in Vera Cruz, however, prevented U.S. troops from occupying the city, and the Tampico incident came to an end with no real conclusion. The U.S. consul's office in Vera Cruz had been warned that a German ship delivering arms for Huerta was expected in the port on April 21,1914. President Wilson ordered U.S. forces in the area to seize the town's customhouse and capture the guns. On the afternoon of April 21, a contingent of 787 marines and sailors quickly went ashore and seized the customhouse. By noon of April 22, the U.S. troops had occupied the town. Although they had hoped to avoid bloodshed, U.S. forces were nevertheless fired upon by Mexican soldiers, and a violent street battle ensued. The American losses were four killed and twenty wounded on April 21 and thirteen killed and forty-one wounded on April 22. We have no accurate casualty number for the Mexican troops, but it was reported that between 152 and 172 were killed and between 195 and 250 were wounded.  On April 30, 1914, the U.S. Army's Fifth Infantry Brigade, under the command of Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, arrived at Vera Cruz. The brigade assumed occupation duty from the marines and also organized a military government to restore order to the city. President Huerta never officially recognized the U.S. occupiers, but he made no serious attempts to resist their power. On July 15, 1914, Huerta resigned from the office of president and moved to Spain. The Fifth Infantry Brigade left Vera Cruz on November 23, and the U.S. government agreed that Carranza and his de facto government could use the city as their capital. The United States and six Latin American nations officially recognized the Carranza government on October 19,1915, a direct insult to Pancho Villa and his followers, who had earlier parted ways with Carranza. Feeling betrayed, the Villistas set forth on a course of retaliation directed mainly at Americans. In one instance, Villa's irregulars assassinated seventeen U.S. citizens aboard a train traveling from Chihuahua City to the Cusi Mine at Santa Isabel, Chihuahua. Although this act infuriated the American public, it was the Villistas' next attack, the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, that caused the U.S. government to seek retribution.  Columbus, NM before the raid Why Villa chose Columbus as a target for his most daring raid is unclear. The small town had only one hotel, a few stores, some adobe houses, and a population of 350 Americans and Mexicans. Most likely, Villa was enticed to attack Columbus because it was the home of Camp Furlong and the Thirteenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment under the command of Col. Herbert J. Slocum. The Thirteenth had been garrisoned at Columbus since September 1912. At the time of the attack, the regiment comprised 500 officers and men, but only about 350 men were at the camp. A local citizen warned Slocum that Villa was nearby. As a precaution, Slocum strengthened the patrols and outposts of the camp with detachments from the regiment. Since Villa had numerous sympathizers living in Columbus and the vicinity, he had no trouble obtaining information on Camp Furlong's troop strength or other bits of intelligence. Although Villa's rationale for attacking Columbus has never been explained, the outcome is clearly documented. The secretary of war reported that "Villa's command crossed the border in small parties about 3 miles west of the border gate, concentrated for and made the attack during hours of extreme darkness after the moon had set and before daylight." After a bloody confrontation in which eighteen Americans died, two troops of the Thirteenth Cavalry under the direction of Maj. Frank Tompkins pursued the bandits. The troops chased the Mexicans south of the border for twelve miles before their ammunition and supplies were exhausted. The raid, however, could hardly be considered a victory for Villa and his men. Besides killing a small number of soldiers and civilians, his men came away with a few horses and a meager amount of loot from the stores and homes of the town.  Columbus, NM after the raid Both public outcry and pressure from the army moved President Wilson to order the military to pursue Villa and punish him. General Funston, now commanding the Southern Department, telegraphed the War Department the day after the raid, "I urgently recommend that American troops be given authority to pursue into Mexican Territory hostile Mexican bandits who raid American territory. So long as the border is a shelter for them they will continue to harass our ranches and towns to our chagrin." Wilson responded by directing Secretary of War Newton Baker to organize a punitive expedition.
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The url for the program is: www.specialops.org. Their email address is: warrior@specialops.org and their toll free phone number is: #1-877-337-7693. I promised that I would post information about their Tampa based Foundation here at Free Republic. Fregards, floriduh voter
Even though the European armies were already employing thousands of trucks in World War I, the U.S. Army only had about 100 vehicles, located at widely scattered posts and depots throughout the country. On 14 March 1916 the Quartermaster General purchased 54 one-and-a-half ton trucks from companies in Cleveland, Ohio, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. They left the Great Lakes region on a special southbound freight train on the 16th, and arrived at El Paso on March 18th, having covered 1,500 miles in 48 hours. Loaded and crossed the border into Mexico that same night.
From March to July 1916, QM Truck Companies delivered over 4,000 tons of supplies and hundreds of troops to Pershing’s mobile force, validating the truck’s worth. And in the process revolutionized the U.S. Army’s transport.
1916
Motorized Commissary
1916
Rurdosa, Texas
US Army Wagon Train near Rurdosa, Texas
1916
San Francisco Street
Troop H, 8th Cavalry on San Francisco Street
1916
Camp Cotton
National Guard Troops at Camp Cotton
1916
Fort Bliss
General Jos Dickmon at Fort Bliss
1916
8th and 14th Cavalry Regiments
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