Download WWI Punitive Expedition and Education of Pershing

World War I and the Federal Presence in New Mexico
The Punitive Expedition and the Education of General John J. Pershing
General John J. Pershing returned to the United States from a tour as commander of
Fort McKinley in the Philippines and assumed command of the 8th Infantry Brigade at the
Presidio of San Francisco in January 1914. At fifty-three, he was one of the army’s “rising
stars.” President Roosevelt promoted him to brigadier general in 1906, passing over 862
more senior officers to tap Pershing. His exceptional leadership skills had been recognized
since his days as a West Point cadet, and Pershing had also married well—to Helen Frances
Warren in 1905, daughter of U.S. Senator Francis E. Warren (R-WY, served 1895-1929).
Theirs was a storybook romance, and even President Roosevelt attended the wedding.
By April of 1914 skirmishes along the Mexican border prompted the transfer of
Pershing and the 8th Infantry to Ft. Bliss, Texas. There he soon assumed post command.
This assignment brought him near to where his military career had begun in 1886, when he
served in the Apache campaign in southern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona under
General Nelson A. Miles. The ebb-and-flow of the Mexican Revolution required numerous
border patrols and led to various skirmishes, all of which kept Pershing and his troops busy
in 1914 and 1915.
Meanwhile, his wife and their three young daughters and a son stayed at the Presidio
of San Francisco. No doubt everyone expected to be reunited when the “border problems”
subsided. But on August 27, 1915, fire destroyed their house and only five-year-old Warren
survived. Consumed by grief, the devastated Pershing sought solace in his military duties.
Shortly his assignments became the most important in the Army.
At 4:45 AM on March 9, 1916, 485 revolutionary forces commanded by insurgent
leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa did what had not occurred on U.S. soil since the British
burned Washington, D.C., in 1812: foreign troops invaded an American town—Columbus,
New Mexico. Attacking first the Army’s Camp Furlong south of town and then moving into
Columbus proper, Villa’s forces killed eighteen Americans, women as well as men, including
ten soldiers. Ninety villistas died in the attack and twenty-three were wounded. A further
nineteen were captured. Beginning about 7:00 AM Villa’s raiders retreated across the border
and fled into Chihuahua, Mexico.
The next day President Wilson ordered General Pershing to lead an expeditionary
force of about 5,000 soldiers to pursue Villa and disperse his revolutionary band. In carrying
out this order, Pershing conducted what became known as the Punitive Expedition, which
lasted nearly a full year until the last American troops left Mexico on February 5, 1917.
Pershing’s mission was to track down and attack Villa’s soldiers, and to do so he marched
over three hundred miles into Mexico and searched large portions of western Chihuahua.
Pershing initiated his expedition by moving Regular Army troops from Fort Bliss to
Columbus, where he added to them hundreds of soldiers from Camp Furlong’s 13th Cavalry.
Two separate columns left Columbus and Hachita, respectively, to carry out the initial
assault into Mexico. Over the coming weeks, Regular Army troops from nearby states added
reinforcements.
A voluntary mobilization by Deming-based members of the 1st New Mexico Infantry
(National Guard) assisted briefly at Camp Furlong. They were formally ordered to Columbus
on May 9. The New Mexico National Guardsmen’s arrival in Columbus marked the start of
the longest mobilization of any National Guard unit during the Punitive Expedition—ten
months and twenty-six day. They demobilized only a few days before the United States
entered World War I.
In mid-June 1917 war between Mexico and the United States seemed imminent, and
in anticipation of such hostilities a federally mandated mobilization ordered 125,000
National Guardsmen from all states to the border. Their call-up followed a one-hour battle
between Mexican forces and one of Pershing’s reconnaissance squads. For several days the
two nations remained on the brink of war, but both President Woodrow Wilson and
Mexico’s President Venustiano Carranza gingerly edged back from armed conflict in the
second half of June.
The threat of war passed and the Punitive Expedition, now augmented, continued its
mission to ensure that Villa’s bands did not reform. The search for Villa became an exercise
in chasing shadows, and he eluded capture. But skirmishes inflicted more losses on Villa’s
troops. By the end of June, 273 villistas had been killed.
The nation eagerly followed news of Pershing’s expedition, and public statements
emphasized its successes. On August 23, 1916, the New York Times ran a headline “Pershing
Praises Troops” and said of 5,000 troops reviewed at Columbus, New Mexico, “Warlike
efficiency radiated from the ranks of the troops of his command.” Privately, though,
Pershing’s own report of the three-and-a-half-months of the expedition, and the appended
commentary of his key officers, offered a grim assessment of troop preparedness.
Repeatedly they used the phrase “confusion and congestion” or synonyms. The most
frequently stated recommendation was that efforts should be made to “revise regulations.”
Pershing always thought the Punitive Expedition provided him and America with a
learning experience. As such, one of the key lessons was the lack of preparedness. As he
wrote in his memoirs,
It was said that a greater number of men were not sent to the border for want
of equipment and supplies. This fact should have prompted immediate corrective
action, which, if taken, might have prevented the delay that occurred later for the
same reason when the large numbers of men were called out to prepare for service
in the World War.
Pershing’s Punitive Expedition revealed gapping holes in every aspect of military
effectiveness. Pershing submitted a scathing report in October 1916 assessing nearly four
months of field activities in which he pointed to numerous deficiencies in combat fitness
among almost all units under his command. Let us consider just one topic—the issue of
discipline, a prerequisite in troop effectiveness. Pershing noted in his October 1916 report
that nineteen soldiers faced courts martial for offenses ranging from murder to
insubordination. The number may not seem high among 5,000 soldiers, but these challenges
to authority rose to a level that required formal action. Many more incidents occurred and
were handled informally.
A young lieutenant, George J. Richards, in charge of some Regular Army engineering
troops, recalled years later that the enlisted men were barely adequate and described them as
having “a medium school education. They weren’t geniuses.” Moreover, some disgruntled
sergeants in his company repeatedly fomented dissention until severely reprimanded.
Camp Cody in Deming served as the National Guard headquarters closest to
Columbus. It, too, struggled with lack of troop discipline. The conduct of National Guard
units stationed in Columbus and at nearby Camp Cody revealed problems associated with
the rapid mobilization of civilians. While the Progressive era fostered attention to morals,
and even though the Army had long enforced discipline in personal habits, the deportment
of citizen-soldiers in 1916-17 exposed problems on a scale that required new approaches to
how the Army controlled its soldiers’ conduct.
Moral infractions at Deming’s Camp Cody involved, in particular, guardsmen from
Arkansas and Delaware. Drunkenness and venereal disease at Camp Cody prompted military
officials to work with community leaders in the fall of 1916 to monitor the town’s seven
saloons. Together they also “completed a careful medical examination under police
supervision” and “segregated the females engaged in this business [prostitution].”
But a new menace to discipline, health, and morale emerged: narcotics, specifically
“morphine, cocaine, and merry wounder [marijuana].” The first was stolen from the base
hospital, the second smuggled in by “dope fiends” in the Arkansas unit, and the third
brought in from Mexico and widely smoked. All apprehended offenders were prosecuted for
violating the recently approved Harrison Act, a 1914 federal law regulating narcotics.
Incidents involving drugs resulted in detailed reports sent to General Frederick
Funston, Pershing’s superior in charge of the Army’s Southern Department at Fort Sam
Houston in San Antonio. A summary report on narcotics submitted at the end of the
Punitive Expedition noted, “it is well known that the improper use of these debasing and
habit forming drugs is increasing in our army and will probably continue to increase more
rapidly when and where all alcohol stimulants are cut off entirely.”
Others also drew lessons from the Punitive Expedition. The military excursion
tethered to Columbus, New Mexico, attracted international attention, particularly among the
German high command. Early in the Punitive Expedition, the German armed forces claimed
“the military incompetence of the United States has been clearly revealed by the campaign
against Villa. . . . The United States not only has no army, it has no artillery, no means of
transportation, no airplanes, and lacks all other instruments of modern warfare.” Moreover,
after 1916 German military strategists consistently disparaged American preparedness, an
attitude some scholars believe emboldened them to resume submarine warfare early in 1917,
dismiss the effectiveness of American troops throughout the summer of 1918, and even
contributed to World War II.
President Wilson and his Army Chief of Staff, General Hugh Scott, believed General
Pershing’s time in Mexico served as a dress rehearsal for what he would face in creating and
fielding the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). But probably neither Wilson nor Scott
fully grasped the similarities of the two command experiences when they selected Pershing
in May 1917 to lead the AEF, as we see in the next entry.
© 2008 by David V. Holtby
Fred W. Fisher at the Ruins of the Commercial Hotel in which five Americans were shot
as they left the building after it had been set on fire by Villistas on Thursday morning
March 9, 1916 at 4:30am. 000-742-0169, William A. Keleher Collection, Center for
Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.
General Pershing and Soldiers. 986-015-001, Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, 1916
Collection, Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of New
Mexico.
Armored Machine Gun Trucks in Review, March 6, 1917, El Paso, Texas. 986-0150022, Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, 1916 Collection, Center for Southwest Research,
University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.
Caterpillar tractor pulling heavy artillery on a wagon through muddy field. 986-0150027, Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, 1916 Collection, Center for Southwest Research,
University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.
A typical military camp on the border. 986-015-0043, Pershing’s Punitive Expedition,
1916 Collection, Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of
New Mexico.
Pancho Villa and his wife, Luz Corral de Villa, January 1, 1914. 986-015-0020,
Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, 1916 Collection, Center for Southwest Research,
University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.