by Alan Axelrod
Mexico was in turmoil. Numerous would-be leaders vied for power, including the brutal Victoriano Huerta and the more moderate Venustiano Carranza. In these struggles, partisans of one leader or the other sometimes crossed the border into the United States to replenish their war chests with cash and goods “liberated” from towns in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Army border garrisons were expected to police the region and prevent or turn back such incursions. Patton’s hope was that the police action would soon break into open warfare.
In a matter of months, it would, more or less. But for now, Patton could find no one at Fort Bliss to tell him what he was expected to do.
Eventually, he was informed that there really was nothing for him to do until his regiment arrived. In the meantime, it was suggested that he study for the examination that would qualify him for advancement from second to first lieutenant. He asked for extra time to prepare, and since no one had anything to better occupy him, he was granted the extension. Patton used this time not only to study but, quite shamelessly, to butter up the president of the promotion board by helping him train his polo ponies. Learning that his former Fort Sheridan commander, Captain— now Major—Francis Marshall, was at Fort Bliss on an official visit and was the guest of a promotion board member, Patton wasted no time in calling on Marshall and his host, confident that “Maj. M will blow my horn.” 4 No doubt Marshall did, for Patton took the examination and was quickly qualified for promotion. The actual promotion would come on May 23, 1916.
Shortly after he passed his exam, Patton’s regiment, the 8th Cavalry, arrived at Fort Bliss. Patton was sent with his troop to Sierra Blanca, a rudimentary Texas border town of perhaps 20 houses plus 1 saloon. It was a town out of a dime novel, populated by cowboys and patrolled by a rugged snowy-haired marshal named Dave Allison, who quickly befriended the young officer. Beyond the few rude streets of the town lay a landscape of desolation, through which Patton led mounted border patrols and, from the saddle, at the trot, hunted jackrabbits. “I like this sort of work,” he wrote with satisfaction, “a lot.”5
Something more exciting than jackrabbits loomed on the horizon on Thanksgiving Eve. While in Sierra Blanca with Troop A of the 8th Cavalry, Patton received a telegram from Fort Bliss warning of an impending raid on the town by some 200 Mexican revolutionary bandits. With all the senior officers out on patrol, Patton was in command. He wrote to his father that he did not believe the “rumor” of a raid, but, in any case, he set about planning how to repel an attack, assigned battle stations to each of the 100 men with him, and ordered everyone to sleep beside their weapons. “I wish they would come. I . . . could give them a nice welcome,” he wrote.6 As Patton had predicted, however, nothing happened.
On Thanksgiving Day, he was ordered to advance against a knot of eighty Mexicans who were reported to have set up camp on the American side of the Rio Grande. He decided to launch a classic attack, with drawn sabers and at dawn, the time of day at which an enemy is most vulnerable. There was little time to relish the prospect of the attack, however. Before Patton led his men out, the troop captain and first lieutenant returned from patrol and ordered the men to leave their sabers in camp. Swordless, the Master of the Sword led the patrol in a tedious 11-hour ride along the Rio Grande, found no Mexicans, then returned to Sierra Blanca. He was soon ordered to return to Fort Bliss, to which Beatrice and the children came for what she planned as a two-month stay. At first appalled by conditions there and terrified by a brutally dusty windstorm, she actually asked her husband to resign his commission. Patton’s earliest biographer, Ladislas Farago, described Beatrice as a woman “at her best when the chips were down,”7 and she proved that now, quickly pulling herself together. Indeed, as she began to explore El Paso, she concluded that it was not so bad after all. She resolved to move herself and her two babies permanently into the less-than-sumptuous on-post housing.
Once the Pattons were settled into their modest house, sister Nita came to visit. Patton introduced her to the senior commander at Fort Bliss, Brigadier General John J. Pershing. Nita Patton was 29, unmarried, unattached, and a figure every bit as imposing as her brother, described by one Pershing biographer as “a tall blonde Amazon.”8 Pershing was a martially handsome 55, having been tragically widowed on August 27, 1915, when fire swept through his family’s quarters at the Presidio in San Francisco, killing his wife and three of their daughters while he was on duty in Texas. There was a mutual attraction between Pershing and Nita, who stayed at Fort Bliss longer than she had planned. So far as Patton was concerned, the prospect of a budding romance between his sister and the commanding general was a source of delightful anticipation.
Doroteo Arango, who later called himself Francisco Villa, but became known to the world as Pancho Villa, was the orphaned son of an impoverished field worker. When one of the owners of the estate on which his family labored raped his sister, Pancho Villa killed the man, then fled to the mountains, where he lived out his teen years as a fugitive. He learned the art of survival, and he also discovered that he was possessed of a certain personal magnetism as well as a natural talent for guerrilla warfare. In 1909, he joined Francisco Madero’s successful uprising against the brutal dictatorship of Porfirio Dfaz. In the process, Villa began to shine too brightly to suit his senior colleagues, and in 1912, he was condemned to death by fellow revolutionary Victoriano Huerta. Madero intervened and sent Villa to prison instead. He escaped, fled to the United States, and, after Madero was assassinated in 1913, returned to Mexico, gathering about himself a band of several thousand, dubbed the Division del Norte. Committing himself and his men to the service of Venustiano Carranza, Villa fought against the dictator Huerta, partaking with Carranza in a glorious victory in June 1914.
Shortly after Villa and Carranza rode into Mexico City as the triumphant leaders of the latest revolution, they came to blows, and Villa fled to the mountains of the north with the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. Why he did what he next did has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps he resented President Wilson’s support of Carranza, once his comrade, now his rival. Perhaps he merely wanted to demonstrate to his fellow countrymen and the world that he, not Carranza, controlled northern Mexico. Whatever his motive, during January 1916, Villa executed 17 American citizens in the Mexican town of Santa Isabel and, on March 9, crossed the border with about 500 “Villistas” to raid Columbus, New Mexico. There he fought with local residents as well as soldiers of the nearby 13th Cavalry. Ten American civilians and 14 U.S. soldiers were killed in the raid, while casualties among Villa’s forces were significantly higher, at least 100 dead.
In response to the Columbus outrage, President Wilson ordered Pershing to conduct a “Punitive Expedition” into Mexico with the object of capturing or killing Pancho Villa. This was exciting, but Patton now worried that Pershing would not include his regiment, the 8 th Cavalry, in the expedition because its colonel was obese and might be judged unfit. To his father, he wrote on March 12, 1916: “There should be a law killing fat colonels on sight.”9 Patton’s fears proved well-founded; Pershing chose to leave the 8 th behind. In a panic at the thought of being excluded from the action, Patton prevailed on his squadron adjutant personally to recommend him as an aide to Pershing. He also appealed to Major John L. Hines, appointed adjutant general of the Punitive Expedition, and he buttonholed one of the general’s regular aides, Lieutenant Martin C. Shallenberger, as well. Then he called on Pershing himself, telling him that he would do anything, no matter how menial, if only he were allowed to join the expedition. Knowing Pershing’s distaste for publicity, Patton suggested he could handle newspaper correspondents, something, he said, he was especially good at. (In fact, at the time, he had never before so much as spoken to the press.) Pershing dismissed Patton without giving him his decision. The next morning, however, Patton received a telephone call from the general.
“Lieutenant Patton, how long will it take you to get ready?”
Patton answered that he was already packed.
Taken aback, Pershing replied: “I’ll be God Damned. You are appointed Aide.”10
The Punitive Expedition was a large force of two cavalry brigades and a brigade of infantry—ultimately numbering nearly 15,000 men—aug-mented by the 1st Aero Squadron equipped with a half-dozen rickety Curtiss JN-2 “Jennies,” state-of-the-art aircraft for the Army Air Service, but already obsolete by world aeronautical standards. (Although the planes proved highly unreliable, they fascinated Patton, who, in World War II, would pioneer the use of light spotting and reconnaissance aircraft during the Third Army’s epic advance across France.)
Over nearly a year, from March 1916 to February 1917, Pershing would lead his men some 400 miles into the rugged eastern foothills of Mexico’s Sierra Madres. As an aide, Patton performed the duties of factotum, everything from ensuring the general was well fed to assisting him with inspections; looking after the well-being of his horses, motor vehicles, and troops; and serving as a courier. That last role was a dangerous one, and Patton eagerly embraced it. In April, he volunteered to deliver a message to the 11th Cavalry, which had advanced to the south and was cur-rently—somewhere. It was, Patton wrote, “almost a needle in a haystack.” Seeing him off, Pershing shook Patton’s hand and cautioned: “‘Be careful, there are lots of Villiastas.’ Then still holding my hand he said, ‘But remember, Patton, if you don’t deliver that message don’t come back.’”11 The message, of course, was delivered.
Frustrated by the expedition’s failure even to catch sight of Pancho Villa, much less catch him, General Pershing decided to target some of Villa’s key subordinates, the most important of whom was General Julio Cardenas. Patton begged Pershing to give him an opportunity to participate in the manhunt, and he was temporarily attached to Troop C, 13th Cavalry. Learning that Cardenas was apparently living on a ranch near San Miguelito, Patton and part of Troop C rode out in mid-April. They did not find the general, but they did locate his wife and baby, as well as his uncle. In a letter to his father written on April 17, Patton noted that the “uncle was a very brave man and nearly died before he would tell me anything.” Clearly, Patton and his men had tortured Cardenas’s uncle in an effort to extract the general’s whereabouts. Just as clearly, they had been unsuccessful. As Patton noted in his diary, “Tried to get information out of uncle. Failed.”12
The next month, on May 14, Pershing dispatched Patton on a foraging expedition, to buy corn from Mexican farmers. Patton and his party of 10 soldiers, 2 civilian scouts, and 2 civilian drivers set out in three automobiles. They stopped at two villages, Coyote and Salsito, and made the necessary purchases. Then Patton continued on to Rubio, where he spotted a group of 60 very rough-looking Mexicans, whom one of his scouts, an ex-Villista himself, identified as associates of Villa and Cardenas. This suggested to Patton that Cardenas was nearby, and he and his men drove the six miles north to San Miguelito and the same hacienda in which he had earlier found the general’s uncle, wife, and baby. Several times during his life, Patton described what happened next.13
About a mile and a half south of the house the ground is lower than the house. And one cannot be seen until topping this rise. As soon as I came over this, I made my car go at full speed and went on past the house . . . four men were seen skinning a cow in the front. One of these men ran to the house and at once returned and went on with his work. I stopped my car northwest of the house and the other two [cars] southwest of it. I jumped out carrying my rifle in my left hand [and] hurried around to the big arched door leading into the patio. ... I rounded the comer and walked about half way to the gate. When I was fifteen yards from the gate three armed men dashed out on horseback, and started around the southeast corner.
So schooled was I not to shoot, that I merely drew my pistol and waited to see what would happen. . . . When they got to the corner they saw my men coming that way and turned back and all three shot at me. One bullet threw gravel on me. I fired back with my new [ivory-handled] pistol five times. Then my men came around the corner and started to shoot. I did not know who was in the house. There were a lot of windows only a few feet from our right side. Just as I got around the corner three bullets hit about seven feet from the ground and put adobe [chips] all over me.
Patton had deployed his small force carefully, so that all exits from the house were covered.
I reloaded my pistol and started back when I saw a man on a horse come right in front of me. I started to shoot at him but remembered that Dave Allison had always said to shoot at the horse of an escaping man and I did so, and broke the horse’s hip. He fell on his rider and as it was only about ten yards, we all hit him. He crumpled up.
During this gun battle, another Villista who ran out of the hacienda very nearly made good his escape, but Patton and some of his men sent a hail of bullets after him. He, too, fell dead.
Two down, but Patton needed to know just how many Villistas were left in and about the hacienda. He climbed onto the roof of the building to get a better look. As he stepped out onto the dirt roof, it gave way, with Patton falling through and coming to a stop, wedged in at the armpits. Patton quickly struggled out of the hole. In the meantime, one of his scouts shot and killed another escaping Villista.
During the entire adventure, Patton noted, the four men who had been skinning the cow continued to go about their work, completely ignoring the mayhem. Patton now ordered the roundup of these four, and he and three soldiers each seized one as a human shield while they searched the interior of the hacienda. The hate-narrowed eyes of Cardenas’s mother and wife (who held her baby daughter in her arms) followed the men. Cautiously opening a heavy wooden door, Patton found a number of wizened old women, cowering in prayer.
In all, three Mexicans had been killed in the “Battle of San Miguelito.” One of the cow skinners identified one of those slain as Julio Cardenas himself. The others were a Villista captain and a private.
Patton ordered the three corpses to be strapped across the hoods of each of the detachment’s three automobiles, like trophy stags. Ready to leave, Patton suddenly saw a band of perhaps 50 Villistas approaching at the gallop. Shots were exchanged, and the vastly outnumbered Americans lead-footed their accelerator pedals and rumbled down the road to Rubio. (Or as Patton sardonically put it: “We withdrew gracefully.”) As a precaution, Patton directed one of his men to cut the telegraph wires along the road to prevent word of the shoot-out from reaching the town before their arrival. After passing through at high speed, the party did not stop until it had reached Pershing’s headquarters. There Patton was mobbed by news correspondents, who were starving for a story in what had become a long and monotonous Mexican sojourn, as dry as the surrounding desert. Headlines trumpeted Patton’s name, and, even better, official army dispatches mentioned him repeatedly.
George S. Patton Jr. was now a national hero—at least for a few weeks. In the longer term, the Punitive Expedition had more important consequences for him. Patton’s automobile trip to San Miguelito was, in fact, the very first time a United States Army unit had been transported into battle by motorized vehicles. In his assault on the Cardenas hacienda, Patton, who would champion the tank in World War I and would be the foremost American exponent of mobile warfare in World War II, had, more or less inadvertently, pioneered mechanized combat. Even more important, the San Miguelito exchange—and indeed the entire Punitive Expedition—created a genuine bond between Patton and Pershing. Patton saw in Pershing the ideal general, the mold from which all others should be struck. Not only did he have a firm grasp of strategy and tactics, he issued crystal-clear orders, he demanded absolute discipline, he earned and returned absolute loyalty, and, while he never lost the big picture, neither did he miss the most minute detail. Added to all of this, he looked the part. He was, every inch of him, a commanding officer. Patton watched, admired, and learned. He was more determined than ever that he, too, would become a general— a general just like John J. Pershing.
But San Miguelito proved to be the high point of the Punitive Expedit
ion. Wanting to avoid a major international crisis, President Wilson ordered Pershing to withdraw to within 150 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border, and, from that point on, boredom set in. On May 18, Patton recorded in his diary, “I did absolutely nothing but take a bath.” On the next day: “Terrible wind all day. No one did anything.”14 And so it went, day after dreary day.
Second Lieutenant Patton was at last officially advanced to first lieutenant on May 23, 1916, and he spent a good deal of idle time writing to his family, including encouraging letters to Papa, who had decided to run for the U.S. Senate. In August, Patton accompanied Pershing back to Columbus, New Mexico, for a few days of vacation. Beatrice met her husband there, and Nita was on hand to greet Pershing. Everyone began to assume that, despite the difference in age, the two would wed. As Patton put it to Beatrice, “Nita may rank us yet.”15
Patton soon returned to headquarters in Mexico, where, early in October, he met with a bizarre accident. While writing a report in his tent, his gasoline-fed lamp exploded, sending flames across his face and hair. “I ran out side and put my self out,” he later explained to Beatrice.16 The burns were serious, and they were painful, but Patton suffered neither permanent scars nor was his eyesight damaged. He was granted sick leave, met Beatrice in Columbus, then traveled by train to his boyhood home at Lake Vineyard and, in Los Angeles, was treated by Dr. Billy Wills, an uncle by marriage. His sick leave made it possible for him to be at Papa’s side when he learned that he had been very soundly defeated by his Republican senatorial opponent.