by Harold Coyle
There was little that Guajardo could give these men, other than the new rifles and one machine gun with 2,000 rounds per pelotdn, to improve their odds. But that was enough. What they lacked in weapons and skills, they more than made up for in spirit and will. Even without the new weapons, the men of the Rural Defense Corps would have fought. They, and not the politicians in Mexico City, were the true grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Juarez and the Revolution. From early childhood, they had been raised to revere the deeds and struggles of their forefathers, to have faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe, and to jealously protect their land and rights from all quarters. Almost all had, at one time or another, been shown a picture of a relative who had fought in the Revolution. The image of that relative, standing tall in a wide sombrero, bandoliers crisscrossed over a proud chest thrown out, and holding a rifle at the ready, was burned into their memories. Some even had the ancient Mauser rifles that their grandfathers had carried when the picture was taken. Properly used, these men could tie down enemy forces many times their size. And with the prospect of an American invasion becoming more and more likely, the question of how and when to use them, and every other military and paramilitary unit in Mexico, was a question that Guajardo had to answer.
The deployment of the Texas National Guard to the border had come as no surprise. Every member of the Council of 13 knew that the United States would, eventually, do something. The only surprise was that the move had been a unilateral one made by the governor of Texas.
There was no question among the members of the council that some type of reaction to the provocative American move was required. The only questions were what kind and how much were necessary at this time.
The session of August 12, convened late in the afternoon to discuss the issue, had degenerated into a long, heated debate that created the first rift in the council since the June 29 coup.
Colonel Barreda, minister for foreign affairs, had opened the session with a review of the responses he had received through diplomatic channels at the UN and in Washington, D.C. That the movement of American troops would act as an impediment to his ability to deal with the American government could not be denied. "How can they expect us," he said, "to take them seriously when they offer one hand in friendship and talk of peace while they hold a gun in the other hand behind their backs?"
Barreda ended his review with an impassioned speech that was also supposed to be a warning. "Once a sword is drawn," he said, "for whatever reason, it is hard to return it to its sheath without showing some kind of victory. And that victory can only come at our expense." Walk ing about the table, his arms waving, and caught up in the passion of the moment, Barreda continued. "The governor of Texas, no doubt with the sanction of their president and in an effort to test our resolve, has declared, in his own words, a 'holy war' against us, referring to us as evil and murderers." Barreda ended by warning that if they did nothing, if they allowed the United States to dictate policy to them, they, the Council of 13, would lose face and fall. Caught up in the heat of the moment, however, Barreda forgot about his call for moderatiqn and, instead of warning against precipitous actions, swung toward a call to arms. "As our forefathers did in 1846, so must we send our Army to the Rio Grande.
To do less would be criminal and cowardly. And so, as Major General Mariano Arista did in 1846, Colonel Guajardo must be ordered north to the Rio Grande with the Mexican Army to face an American Army sent by their government to threaten us."
Barreda's rhetoric began to sway some of the moderates on the council.
As Guajardo watched the foreign minister deliver his inflammatory oration, more and more members of the council began to nod their heads in agreement. To counter this groundswell of support for military action, Guajardo believed that he had to be the cold, practical realist. He therefore commenced his review of Mexico's military situation by reminding them what had happened when General Arista went north to respond to President Polk's stationing of Zachary Taylor's army in Texas. Arista, with a larger force, had been defeated by Taylor at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, leaving his army routed and Mexico open to invasion. Guajardo's task, as minister of defense, was to protect the council from all major threats, both internal, which he emphasized as he looked at Barreda, and international.
The move by the governor of Texas, Guajardo warned, could be a small-scale test to see how they, the Council of 13 and the people of Mexico, would react to an overt military threat. If that were true, then they, the Council of 13, had to do something soon, but something that matched the threat and did not result in an escalation of the crisis. Instead, Guajardo stated, "We must, in this case, play the innocent victim.
Our efforts to defend ourselves must be measured, but not provocative.
Otherwise, we stand to lose any sympathy that we might gain from other nations, not to mention providing the Americans with more justification for these moves and more dangerous ones in the future. No, we must stay the course and continue as planned."
Referred to as the Dark One, Guajardo relied on few for counsel and provided little indication of what he was thinking or planning as he carried out his duties. With the exception of Colonel Molina, few could penetrate the mask of stone that Guajardo wore to hide his thoughts, his feelings, and his fears. Often, his subordinates were told only what they needed to know in order to execute their next mission. In part, this was a holdover from the days before the twenty-ninth of June, when secrecy had been of the greatest importance. But that was not the whole reason.
Guajardo, despite the fact that he had been raised in a society where men used boasts and rhetoric to intimidate their adversaries and promote themselves, disliked boastful men. Instead, he prized men of action, men who did, rather than bragged, men who saw things that needed to be done and did them with little fuss and no need for praise or physical reward. Action and results were what mattered to Guajardo. Everything else was, to him, a waste of time.
The plan that he spoke of staying with was one designed to fill the gaps left by the purges of the federal police and intelligence agencies. The Rural Defense Corps was a critical part of that plan, a plan that had already been accelerated as a result of the mysterious raids just north of the Rio Grande. Though the plan did call for an increase in both readiness and training of regular Army units, it intentionally avoided any increased military presence along the United States-Mexican border. Guajardo ended by stating that any movement of the Army north would only increase the tension that already was building. "I realize that it may be true that the Americans have a gun behind their back. That, however, does not mean that we must put bullets into it for them."
Spurred on by Barreda's stirring speech, Colonel Zavala led the faction calling for full mobilization. Guajardo's actions to secure the northern borders and his call for moderation were, in Zavala's words, timid, insufficient, and dangerous. "To do as our brother suggests," Zavala stated, "is tantamount to leaving our northern border undefended. How can we expect to command the respect of our own people, let alone the Americans, if we do nothing in our own defense? This is no time for half measures." Zavala's conclusion of his appeal to his brothers on the council was an emotional one, one that was meant to embarrass Guajardo as much as to rally support for Zavala's position. "Our honor as Mexicans and the Revolution demand that every inch of Mexican soil be defended. It is the only manly thing we can do at times like this."
Throughout the night, Guajardo continued to appeal to reason and sanity. "We can no more stop the Americans from coming, if they choose, than they can occupy all of Mexico. Sending the entire Army to the border to defend our masculinity is absurd and wasteful. No, we must restrain ourselves from overreacting. We must move slowly and cautiously, or we stand to lose everything that we have gained since the twenty-ninth." Although Molina favored Guajardo's position, as the president of the council, he kept out of the debate, allowing Guajardo to present his position. If the matter came to a tie vote, Molina would throw his behind
Guajardo.
That, however, was not necessary. When the final vote was taken just before midnight on the 12th, seven members of the council voted to declare full mobilization and meet the challenge from the north as best they could. So, when President Molina announced from Mexico City that morning that it was with a heavy heart that he was ordering the full mobilization of the Army and militia in preparation to go north to the border, he meant it.
The rearming of the Rural Defense Corps, planned before the current crisis, fell into place with the defensive plan that Guajardo was now developing as a result of the council's call for full mobilization. Even before the current crisis, Guajardo had felt that there was a need for the rearming, and so he had issued the appropriate orders. At that time, he himself could not have explained to his own satisfaction why he felt that doing so was necessary. Events had proved him right, though not for reasons he could have foreseen at the time.
The Rural Defense Corps, on horseback and foot, and supplemented by mechanized cavalry units of the Mexican Army, would patrol the border, providing both a visible presence and information. The last point, the gathering of information, was both critical and, for the Council of 13, a sore point. The Purification had, when it came to purging Mexico's intelligence apparatus and both the national and state police forces, gone too far too fast. While few members of the intelligence community and the police had been arrested, the number of those under suspension had been quite large, accounting for over one-third of all members of those agencies. In addition, many of those who were not affected by these actions deserted, either fleeing north to the United States or back to their home villages. This accounted for another third of the force. Within the ranks of those that remained, morale was almost nonexistent and reliability even lower. After all, as Colonel Zavala pointed out, to the intelligence community and police forces of Mexico, the interests of Mexico and of the PRI had been one and the same. "How can we trust men,"
Zavala had stated before June 29, "who owe everything they have to men whom we are about to kill?"
Perhaps he had been right, Guajardo mused as he watched apeloton of Rural Defense Corps reassemble after receiving their new weapons. The men, smiles on their faces, were busy chatting amongst themselves while they worked the actions on the rifles and machine gun and inspected the sights by aiming at distant objects around the courtyard. These men, who had also been part of the PRI's power structure, would now have to do the bulk of what trained and organized professionals had once done. And their task would be complicated by the need to look both ways, for it was Guajardo's intent to use this force to not only keep track of activities north of the border, but also on their own side. Perhaps, he thought, they, people from the local communities along the border, could discover who it was that was working so hard to start a war between Mexico and the United States. Any information, any clue, any tiny break could make a difference, a difference that could end the current crisis and buy the council the time to work the miracle so desperately needed to save Mexico.
But
as far as Guajardo was concerned, time and hope were running out.
Each day brought the possibility of open conflict between the two nations closer. And as that gap closed, the possibility diminished that the United States would believe any evidence offered by the Council of 13 that it was not responsible for the border raids.
12.
The country must have a large and efficient army, one capable of meeting the enemy abroad, or they must expect to meet him at home.
--Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of
Wellington
On U.S. Highway 83, 10 kilometers north of San Ygnacio, Texas
1745 hours, 29 August
Moving far too fast to observe anything along the route, the lead Humvee of Sergeant Jimmy Sullivan's scout section raced along the deserted highway to their assigned observation post. Two hundred meters behind, the second Humvee of the section, an armored Humvee armed with an M-60 machine gun, was pushing it to keep up with Sullivan. Were it not for an occasional reminder from Private Tod Alison, who normally drove Sullivan, Sullivan would have gone faster and lost the heavier and slower vehicle. Losing the second vehicle, however, was the least of his concerns.
With both hands gripping the steering wheel, Sullivan ignored the speedometer and leaned on the accelerator in an effort to make up the time they had lost getting ready back at the battalion's base camp. In the backseat, Andy Morrezzo, a scout observer, held onto his map with one hand and the radio mike with his other, keeping track of their progress and calling off checkpoints as they went whizzing by. While he was doing so, Morrezzo hoped that no one back at the battalion was noticing that they were hitting the checkpoints rather fast.
There were any number of excuses Sullivan could use, if necessary, to explain why they had started late. After all, this was only their third day on the border, using equipment that was relatively new to them, and working as a section for the first time. Even under the best of circum stances, it took the men of the ist Battalion, 141st Infantry, most of the first week of annual summer camp to get into the groove of tactical operations. After all, you simply cannot jerk eight hundred men from their homes scattered all over central Texas one day and expect them to be up to speed, working as a battalion, the next.
To say that the conditions they were working under were far from the best would be an understatement. To start with, instead of going to Fort Hood, where their equipment was located, the battalion had assembled at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas. There, they were reorganized and issued a mix of Humvees and ancient M-151 jeeps instead of their armored vehicles. The wheeled vehicles, which were cheaper to operate and more suitable for patrolling the vast stretch of border which they were responsible for, were nonetheless new to the men and required some retraining as well as rethinking on how to employ them. In the case of Sullivan's section, this meant reorganization as well as training. At Camp Mabry, Sullivan found that his scout section, authorized at five men and one M-3
Bradley fighting vehicle but consisting of four men and one M-113 armored personnel carrier since it was short personnel and modern equipment, now consisted of six men and two Humvees. One of the Humvees he was issued was a stripped model with nothing but a radio. It could carry four men and their equipment. The second Humvee, borrowed from an MP unit, was an armored version with a roof mount for the M-60
machine gun. The FM radios in both vehicles, VRC-64S, were built in the 1960s and had a planning range of twenty-five kilometers, or sixteen miles, which would be woefully inadequate for what they would have to do. Sullivan still wasn't sure how best to use this combination of equipment when they were moved to their sector on the border.
Sullivan's personnel status was just as bad. Of the three men assigned to his scout section before the call-up, one announced on the day everyone reported to the armory that he was nondeployable due to his job with the state police. This cut Sullivan's section down to three, including himself. To make good this deficiency, three new men were assigned to his section after they had arrived at Camp Mabry. One man, the best of the lot, had just left active duty. Although he had been an artilleryman while in the Army, he at least was trained. Of the other two, one had not yet had a chance to attend basic training while the other, Jack Lyttle, Sullivan suspected, was a dud transferred from one of the infantry companies.
Jack was a nice enough guy, anxious to please, but seemingly incapable of doing anything without close supervision. Sullivan thought that Jack's nickname, Gomer Pyle, gave him too much credit, since, as Sullivan put it, at least Gomer knew how to wear his uniform properly.
With this mix of new equipment, men, and mission, with almost no time to organize and train properly, Sullivan didn't have to fabricate a reason for not making their start time. In the words of his first sergeant, the scout platoon was an accident waiting to happen.
While Sullivan knew he could get away with such excuses, he didn't want to if he didn't need to. To do so at this ea
rly stage would be unwise.
The good ole boy system had no place in the 1st of the 141st. Instead, both the company commander and the battalion commander judged their people on their performance, not who they were or who they knew. Those who performed were rewarded, those who didn't got extra training or the boot. The day would come, Sullivan knew, when he would need a favor, such as a couple of days off to go home and see his family. When that time came, the last thing he wanted to have was some officer pull out his notebook, flip to a page, and inform Sullivan that on 29 August he and his patrol had been thirty minutes late getting into place. And Captain Terry Wilkes, his company commander, was just the kind of guy to do that. So Sullivan told his normal driver to hop in the passenger seat, took the wheel, and made a beeline for the site where they would set up their first observation post that night. Along the way, he decided to reduce the number of stops to check crossing points from six to three and make a visual inspection of the other three as they went by. It was a gamble that Sullivan thought was worth taking.
The truth was, it didn't make any difference. Even had Sullivan stopped at each of the six crossing points in his sector, neither he nor his section would have found any traces of Lefleur and his team. They, like all the other teams, were already north of the border, preparing to operate from new locations in the United States, not Mexico.