A Patriot's History of the Modern World (19 page)

Whether death and mutilation came by artillery shell, machine gun bullet, gas, or the bayonet, the result was the same. It was even more tragic when the shells were fired by one's own artillery: “friendly” artillery treated all men alike: the French reported 75,000 troops killed by their own artillery, and Major Charles Whittlesey's “Lost Battalion,” unable to radio distress signals, was repeatedly subjected to shelling from Allied guns. Regardless of the origin of the ordnance, the casualties piled up, bringing with them the reality, even the inevitability, of dying. A French soldier, a month before being killed, wrote “Death! That word which booms like the echo of sea caverns…. Now we die. It is the wet death, the muddy death, death dripping with blood, death by drowning, death by sucking under, death in the slaughterhouse.”
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Victory Through Attrition

After the Marne, Ypres, and the Gallipoli debacle—in which British, Australian, New Zealand, and French Senegalese soldiers were sent to seize a point on the Dardanelles defended by entrenched Turks, producing a slaughter—the dominance of the trench was confirmed in blood. At the Battle of Sari Bair near the original Gallipoli landing zones, one New Zealand battalion saw 711 of its 760 men killed or wounded. Trenches snaked across France and Belgium, the Turks held the Dardanelles, the Russians verged on collapse, and the Austrians proved only slightly more capable than the Italians. New commanders now led each army in the West: Sir Douglas Haig for the British and General (later Marshal) Ferdinand Foch for the French Northern Army Group in 1915, General (later Marshal) Philippe Pétain commanding the French Army Group Centre in 1916, and Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German General Staff. By 1916, convinced the French were on the verge of collapse and the British exhausted, von Falkenhayn ordered a fresh offensive at Verdun, the linchpin of the Allied line. For the first time, there was no real strategic objective, other than simply killing enemies economically in a war of attrition (von Falkenhayn calculated his forces could exact five enemy dead for every two of their own). A disputed Christmas memo to the Kaiser, appearing only in von Falkenhayn's memoirs, argued that a breakthrough was beyond Germany's means, but was unnecessary at any event.
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France would either attempt to
cling to Verdun or surrender the town and its location as a jumping-off point for Paris, while at the same time forcing the British to mount a counteroffensive in their sector. Either way, the result was the same: a massive German assault could be undertaken with the hope of ending the war.

Beyond that, von Falkenhayn had not selected the salient capriciously. A German railhead was only twelve miles away, while French lines were supplied by only the
Voie Sacrée
, the single road still available to the French to supply Verdun. As with many Great War offensives, the plan looked good on paper. In practice, once the German troops advanced outside of their artillery cover, and into the range of French guns, each additional mile came at fantastic cost. Nor did the French supply train, coming up the “Sacred Road,” fail. During a single push into the village of Douaumont, four German regiments were eliminated through a crossfire from each side of the Meuse valley. At the peak of the fighting, 100,000 shells poured into the Verdun salient every hour. After capturing Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux, the Germans were forced to retreat in October–November 1916 after the French brought up heavy 400 mm railway guns, directed by aircraft spotters. By December, von Falkenhayn's offensive had failed.

The bloodletting eclipsed anything seen up to that time, which, given the casualty lists, says a great deal. France lost half a million men, the Germans 434,000. England, in the Somme counterattack, suffered another 420,000 casualties (including a staggering 58,000 killed or wounded on the first
day
). Von Falkenhayn's promise to “bleed France white” proved only partially true: now, all the combatants were bled white and warfare became a battle of accounting. “Here,” wrote Ernst Jünger of the Somme counterattack, “chivalry had disappeared for always…. Here the new Europe revealed itself for the first time in combat.”
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Just as von Falkenhayn believed Germany was close to winning, so too did the British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, think that a summer offensive at Ypres (or Passchendaele) could succeed. Capture of the Messines Ridge in June 1917 suggested that Haig might be correct in his view that the Germans were nearing collapse. Haig dawdled, insisting on waiting until the end of July. Typical heavy shelling to break up the wire tipped off the Germans that an attack was coming, but more important, once the attack was in progress, torrential rainstorms turned the battlefield into a mud pit. Soldiers stumbled into shell craters and drowned, tanks became trapped, and infantry could barely move.

War in the West proved a bloody slugfest, and dragged on seemingly
endlessly. The Schlieffen Plan had specifically called for a rapid victory over France in order to deal with the expected larger threat of the Russian armies. But while the Russian forces were large, they also were largely inept. Stretching over one thousand miles from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the eastern theater of war pitted about 1.2 million Russian soldiers at the outset against the German 8th Army (166,000 men) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire's 1 million troops, plus 117,000 Turks on the southern flank. In August 1914, the Germans smashed the Russian 2nd Army at the Battle of Tannenberg, with the Russians suffering more than ten times more casualties and prisoners than the Germans. The German victory more than offset an Austrian loss at the Battle of Galicia in Ukraine, where the Austro-Hungarian Empire lost one third of its forces (including more than 130,000 prisoners). Despite success at Tannenberg, the collapse of the Austrians forced Germany to keep the newly created 9th Army in the eastern theater, denying those troops to the encirclement wheel of the Schlieffen Plan. By 1915, the German/Austrian forces had advanced through Russian Poland and secured the Eastern Front—but at the cost of desperately needed men in the West.

Mexico's Robin Hood

While Europe convulsed in seas of blood, combat of a different sort became common in America's southern neighbor, Mexico, where multiparty gangs battled constantly. This Mexican interlude would soon play an important part in America's entry into the European conflict. In August 1914, just before World War I broke out, Sonora governor Adolfo de la Huerta had briefly seized power, but the U.S. government under Taft had refused to recognize him. Incoming president Woodrow Wilson promised to continue Taft's policy, announcing, “I will not recognize a government of butchers.”
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Using the chaos in Mexico as an excuse, Wilson landed troops in Veracruz in April 1914 to produce “an orderly and righteous government” (and oust Huerta), and after the Americans seized the city in a sharp fight, Huerta resigned. Wilson then recognized Venustiano Carranza, a former pro-American general every bit a butcher like Huerta, as president, whereupon Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who felt betrayed by the American support of Carranza, led his army of
banditos
on a raid of Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916.

Alternately described as animalistic, magnetic, shrewd, cruel, catlike, and tough, the stocky Pancho Villa (born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula
in 1878) was the embodiment of the macho bandit. A womanizer of epic proportions and an excellent gunfighter, Villa was also so renowned for his horsemanship that he was nicknamed “The Centaur of the North.” His mood swings were instantaneous and complete, hurtling from rage to tears in seconds, and (as Hitler later would) he acquired praise and admiration from Americans, including John Reed and William Jennings Bryan, who called him the “Mexican Robin Hood,” or “a Sir Galahad.” Pro-American until Wilson decided to ally with Carranza, allegedly because Carranza “looked honest” with his long, white beard, Villa himself had once supported Carranza before Carranza decided to ditch his
bandito
element—which included Emiliano Zapata—in an attempt to gain respectability in American eyes.

Villa began with only fourteen loyal followers, but this band soon ballooned into an army. Arrested earlier by Huerta, Villa had escaped from jail by sawing through the bars with a smuggled saw and seemed to live a charmed life. Allied with Carranza, he used the aura of the Constitutional Party to legitimate his expropriation of landowners' money and property. Why he attacked Columbus, even with a force of 400 men, is still under debate. Certainly he knew that a local detachment of the U.S. Army's 13th Regiment was garrisoned nearby when his men arrived at four o'clock in the morning. Villa's bandits burned the town and seized military supplies and food, but not without resistance from Columbus's armed citizens, who fought back with fierce determination. American soldiers suffered 8 dead and 6 wounded, along with 10 civilians killed, but their resistance cost Villa nearly 100 men killed and 30 captured—one fourth of his entire force. It was a disastrous foray which guaranteed further American military action.

Within a week, Wilson ordered General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing to lead a 10,000-man expeditionary force to capture Villa. Pershing's force was filled with oddities and ironies: Custer's old reconstituted 7th Cavalry was present, including Pershing's second in command, George Dodd, a sixty-three-year-old colonel who had fought the Indians with the 7th Cavalry. The 7th had, in fact, regained some of its honor at the Battle of Bear Paw, where Chief Joseph's Nez Perce surrendered in 1877, lost it again in 1890 at Wounded Knee, and regained it for good in the Filipino campaign a decade later. Pershing had also commanded troops in two African-American regiments, the 10th and 24th Infantry, whose glory included the charge up San Juan Hill in 1898 and action in the Philippines. Pershing, an advocate of black rights, felt Wilson's racist hand on his shoulder at all
times, and carefully separated the units from white troops as Wilson demanded. For his association with the all-Negro units, Pershing earned the nickname “Black Jack.”

Pershing had languished under the Army's slow promotion policies in spite of his obvious talents as a military leader until marrying Helen Frances Warren, daughter of Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming in 1905. Pershing was only a captain, but in 1906 he was suddenly promoted from captain to brigadier general, leapfrogging 862 more senior officers. Apparently the fact that Senator Warren was chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee (now the Armed Forces Committee) did not hurt Pershing in the least. Although the promotion was heavily criticized as gross favoritism, Pershing had been highly recommended by leading generals in the Army, and enjoyed the support of President Roosevelt since his days alongside him at San Juan Hill. Following another six years in the Philippines, Pershing had been placed in command of the 8th Brigade in San Francisco, and then ordered to El Paso, where he was when Villa attacked Columbus.

Using Curtiss Jenny observation planes and armored cars as scouts, the Americans crossed into Chihuahua, pushed relentlessly by Black Jack. American troopers came close to nabbing Villa in late March, but Mexican guides misled the
yanquis
and delayed their arrival until the
banditos
had fled. In April, Lieutenant George S. Patton's advance units located one of Villa's top officers, Julio Cárdenas, and Patton personally shot him and two of his men. Patton ceremoniously notched his revolvers before tying the bodies to the hoods of the cars so that he could return them to the base for identification. Although a second Villa general was shot later, the Expeditionary Force increasingly bumped into Mexican Federal Army units. Two separate clashes between Pershing's men and the
federales
forced Carranza to warn Pershing off, by which time the American forces had lost precious manpower to liquor and venereal diseases.

Both Wilson and Carranza feared they were stumbling into war, and the Mexican president knew he would lose, while the American president knew a conflict with Mexico might well be a distraction for the larger, almost inevitable, entry into the European conflict. By spring of 1916, the danger from U-boat attacks, tremendous British financial losses, and French casualties made it obvious to Wilson that the United States would be drawn into war. Villa, meanwhile, soon after having his leg operated on without anesthetic, led a new offensive against the Mexican government in Chihuahua
City. When that Carranza garrison fell, Villa issued his “Manifesto to the Nation,” denouncing the “twin evils” of the “barbarians of the North” and the “most corrupt Government we ever had.” Wilson reined in Pershing, infuriating George Patton, who said the president had neither “the soul of a louse nor the mind of a worm or the backbone of a jellyfish.”
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American troops were finally withdrawn in January 1917, having failed to capture Villa or stop the raids. A bitter Black Jack later said he had been “outwitted and out-bluffed at every turn,” and denounced the withdrawal, describing it as “sneaking home under cover, like a whipped cur with its tail between its legs.”
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Villa, on the other hand, had become a hero, in part because he managed his publicity and massaged his image. He permitted legendary writer Ambrose Bierce to tag along with his
banditos
. Bierce was with Villa in Chihuahua in 1913, then mysteriously disappeared in December of that year, writing to his niece just before his death, “Good-bye—if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think it was a pretty good way to depart this life…. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!”
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Another reason for Villa's success was his identification with the peasant classes, building a school and freely redistributing wealth. Not only did most Chihuahuans protect and revere him—he had been Carranza's governor of Chihuahua—but his impressive victory at Tierra Blanca brought him a Hollywood contract with producer D. W. Griffith's production company. Film units tagged along with Villa on his battles, and the Revolution got half the profit from the movies they made. He also robbed trains, forced unwilling hacienda workers into his army, and extracted money at gunpoint from hacienda owners. But he knew how to mug for the camera, and American journalists and movie producers ate it up. The fact that he evaded the mighty gringo army only added to his mystique, as did his spectacular and grisly death. Accepting retirement under a negotiated peace with interim president Adolfo de la Huerta in 1920 after his archenemy Carranza was assassinated, Villa agreed to cease his revolutionary activity and retire on some land and a small stipend provided by the Mexican government. A lifetime of enemies, however, could not be negotiated away. In July 1923, assassins pounded 150 shots into Villa's car, riddling the
bandito
leader with bullets. After his death, Villa's legend grew, with pawn shops claiming to possess his trigger finger, tombstones set up on both sides of the border, a famous statue in Zacatecas, and over two dozen movie depictions by such stars as Yul Brynner, Wallace Beery, Telly Savalas, and Antonio Banderas.
Celebrated in rock songs and horror movies, Villa became in death far more influential than he was in life.