July 3, 1919. But wait, what about Battery F? Battery F, 148th FA, returns home and Bisbee Riots.

One of the purposes of this blog is to correct errors and misconceptions, and we find that here we're victim of one.

Indeed, careful observers here will note that we've reported the 148th as basically mustering out twice. . . once in New York, and once at Ft. D. A. Russell outside of Cheyenne.  We think we figured out the origin of that confusion, however.  The Camp Mills event was the one that released the unit from the Army's rolls, and the Cheyenne one was the one in which the artillerymen were discharged.

That latter date was taken from a source we were relying on, but contained an error.

Battery F of the 148th wasn't home until this day.

For some reason Battery F had been delayed in returning home and just made it on July 3, something I hadn't run across before.  And upon arriving the men of Battery F were the subject of a big July 3 celebration welcoming their return to the state in Cheyenne.

Company F was entirely from the northern part of the state.  So not only were they the seeming last of the National Guardsmen to return home, they had further to go to get all the way home as well.

While celebrations were going on in Wyoming, riots were going on in Bisbee Arizona.

The riot started off as a confrontation between a while military policeman of the U.S. Army and black cavalrymen of the 10th Cavalry.  The town already had a marked racially tense atmosphere in which strong racial prejudices against Hispanics and Asians were highly exhibited.  In spite of this, black cavalrymen from the 10th Cavalry from nearby Ft. Huachuca did frequent the town. 

As with many towns near Army posts, the town had military policemen in it on frequent occasion and it was just such a confrontation that escalated into a riot.  What exactly occurred is not clear, but the main participants in the event seem to have been white policemen and black cavalrymen.

While there were serious injuries they did not prevent the 10th Cavalry from participating in the Independence Day march the following day.

1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, mustered out of service and discharged at Ft. D. A. Russell.

Wyoming and Colorado National Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, those being the Wyoming and Colorado Guardsmen assigned to the 148th, were mustered out of service and discharged on this date in 1919.  The were civilians once again.

June 24, 1919. Marching towards Versailles, on the border, and home.

Wyomingites received the official news on this day that the Germans were going to sign the Versailles treaty.

Clearly, a lot of them were not happy about it and there was some resistance to it still in some quarters.

They also learned that things were still tense on the country's border with Mexico.

Fitting for the day, they also learned that the last of Wyoming's National Guardsmen, those in the 148th Field Artillery, would be arriving back in the state that night.

The Mexican Border War: The Third Battle of Ciudad Juarez. June 15-16, 1919 Part 3.

The Juarez racetrack on June 16, 1919.  The large hole in the cupola was caused by it being hit by American artillery.

And with this, the story of the United States and the Mexican Revolution, which we started following nearly daily with the 1916 Columbus Raid, and which became as story which bled into World War One, while not definitively over, is significantly over.

As we saw first on June 14, the Villistas launched their anticipated attack on Juarez very late in the night of June 14.  That attack first met with success, but by morning the Villistas had been pushed back.  American forces that had moved up in anticipation of crossing the Rio Grande accordingly went back into Ft. Bliss.

Those troops were soon back out.  Villa's renewed attack was proving successful and the troops reassembled to cross the Rio Grande.  This time they also brought up two armored gun trucks, the first time they'd been used by the U.S. Army in this locality.  Searchlights were also deployed to illuminate Juarez's streets and buildings in the night.

As the battle raged in Juarez shots inevitably began landing in El Paso, wounding and killing American civilians.  At first the Americans held their fire, but ultimately after taking a few casualties the U.S. Army intervened.  The final blow for the U.S. Army was when Pvt. Salvatore Fusco was killed by Villista sniper fire and Pvt. Burchard F. Casey was wounded.  With that, the American troops were ordered across the border to restore order.  The armored gun trucks crossed the Santa Fe Bridge followed by the 24th Infantry Regiment.  The 5th and 7th Cavalry, under Col. Tommy Tomkins, crossed the Rio Grande directly and moved to the western part of the city with the goal of creating a pincer movement in which Villa would be caught.  Near the Juarez racetrack the infantry encountered withdrawing Constitutionalist who informed them that the Villistas were dug in at the racetrack, which the 82nd Artillery then shelled.  Cavalry advanced from the east on the racetrack but encountered no Villista forces.

 Pvt. Salvatore Fusco.

At daybreak, the Cavalry returned to the river to water their horses and then moved south into Mexico in hopes of assaulting Villa's base.

They did in fact locate it, shell it and then assault it.  However, the Villistas, while at first surprised while eating breakfast, rapidly abandoned the camp, leaving their wounded as well as horses, mules and equipment.

The American infantry remained in Juarez itself while this was going on and received a protest from the Constitutionalist forces for entering the country without invitation, which was ironic under the situation as they were outnumbered and well on their way to defeat at the time that the Americans intervened.  Indeed, they speant the rest of the battle in their barracks.  The Americans soon  nonetheless withdrew, deeming their mission accomplished.   Three Americans were killed in the battle, Pvt. Fusco, Pvt. Anthony Cunningham of the 24th Infantry and Sgt. Pete Chigas of the 7th Cavalry.

Col. Tommy Tomkins in Juarez, whose brother Frank Tomkins had led American cavalry across the border following the Columbus Raid, and who lead the U.S. Cavalry contingent across the border in the Battle of Juarez. The Tomkins effectively bookended the Border War.

The battle was not only the last battle of the Border War, it was the last battle to be fought by Pancho Villa.  He did not retire thereafter, but instead actually conducted areal warfare through an air corps formed in his service. Although he remained very resentful against the US intervention in the battle, as well as of course earlier American intervention in the Mexican Revolution, he never participated in another battle against American troops and he was not really capable of doing so after the Battle of Juarez.  Villistas may have raided in Arizona as late as 1920, when some Mexican forces attacked Ruby Arizona, but the loyalty of those troops is not known.

Funeral procession for Pvt. Fusco.

While the battle didn't result in Villa's capture and it didn't fully end his activities, for all practical purposes he was done for.  So in a way, the 1919 battle achieved what the 1916 intervention had not.  Villa was effectively destroyed as a force in the field.  Once again, the U.S. Army was frustrated in a desire to capture Villa, but it didn't really matter.  Villa, while sufficiently resurgent to have mounted such a campaign, was not the force he had been earlier in the Mexican Revolution even if the Constituionalist forces in Juarez proved inadequate to contest him.  The American reaction to his presence in Juarez, justified by American troops being in harm's way, ended his career as a serious contender in the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Border War: The Third Battle of Ciudad Juarez. June 15-16, 1919 Part 2.

And so the day by day, so to speak (with a lot of non posts in between) entries on the Mexican Border War, which commenced with the threads on the attack of Columbus New Mexico in 1916, which I posted in 2016, start to come to an end.

And that's because this was the last battle of the Border War.

The battle commenced very late on the night of June 14 (approximately 11:35) when Villa attempted to take Juarez from the Constitutionalist army, putting the city in contest for at least the third time since 1911 and oddly reprising some of the events that had sent the US into Mexico in in 1916.

The attack was not any kind of a surprise and had been expected for days.  Indeed, the presumption that the attack was going to be launched on June 14, which ultimately it was but only very late at night, resulted in newspaper headlines regarding its delay.  Whatever the source of that delay actually was, it would have done speculators well to recall that Villa liked to attack at night.

The attack on the night of the 14th spread into the next day with the Constitutionalist forces withdrawing towards the city center.  But during the day they recovered and forced Villa back to the eastern part of the city.  In the meantime, the U.S. Army ordered up troops from the 24th Infantry, the 2nd Cavalry, the 82nd Field Artillery and the 8th Engineers to a location near a ford across the Rio Grande in case an American intervention proved necessary.  By daybreak it appeared it would not be, so the troops were ordered back to Ft. Bliss.

The battle was not yet over however.  The Villistas would launch another nighttime assault that night.

June 3, 1919: Anarchists bombings and The 148th Field Artillery boards the USS Peerless. . .

bringing their service in the Great War and the following Army of Occupation to an end.

The USS Peerless was the former Steamship Eagle which had been brought into U.S. service as a transport during World War One.  In that capacity, she brought the troops of the 148th FA home to the U.S., including the Wyoming National Guardsmen that served in that unit, their role in the Great War now complete.

In September she'd be returned to her civilian owner, who once again returned her to her civilian name of Eagle.  She'd remain in service as a civilian transport until 1949, when she was scrapped.

The return of the 148th was big long awaited news for Wyomingites as it meant the return of the last of Wyoming's serving National Guardsmen. The news made the front page in Cheyenne, as did the proclamation of Boy Scout Week, if inaccurately, but another big event, a series of anarchist bombings the prior day, not surprisingly became the big headline.

The 1919 anarchist bombings would fuel the Red Scare of 1919 and lead to a rapid crack down on left wing activities in the United States.  Some date the event to the bombings, but it was already ongoing and the strikes of 1919 had already begun to fuel, along with other events, national and international.

May 21, 1919. The birth of Wyoming's cavalry.

Bundling newspapers, May 21, 1919.

The Casper paper reported on this day in 1919 that Wyoming's National Guard would become cavalry now that the Great War was over.

And it was correct.

One of the popular myths of history is that "World War One was the end of the cavalry".  It wasn't. We dealt with that old saw previously here in a couple of posts, those being:

The Horsey World War One Edition

 U.S. Remounts, World War One.

It's commonly stated that the First World War demonstrated what any competent observer should have been able to know by simple deduction, that being that the age of the horse in war, or more particularly cavalry in war, was over.  This appears again and again in everything from films to serious academic histories.It's also complete bunk.In reality, cavalry served effectively on every front during the war and the Army that acted to keep its cavalry fully separate to the extent it could, rather than folding cavalry elements into infantry divisions, had the most effective cavalry, that being the British.  There are numerous examples of cavalry deployments from every front in the war in every year of the war, with some being very effective deployments indeed. Generally, properly deployed, cavalry proved to be not only still viable, but extremely effective.  And it was also shown that not only did the machinegun not render cavalry obsolete, but cavalry was less impeded by machineguns than infantry, and it was more effective at deploying light machineguns defensively than infantry was.

And

Persistent Myths XI: The World War Two Horsey Edition.

The World War Two Horsey Edition.Following on item VI above, its also commonly believed that the retention of horse cavalry in any army, or horses in general, during World War Two was just romantic naivete.Actually, it wasn't.  Every single army in World War Two had some mounted forces they used in combat. Every single one.  There are no exceptions whatsoever.  The simple reason was that there were certain roles that still could be preformed in no other way.One of the major combatants, the Germans, attempted to eliminate independent cavalry formations while retaining organic formations in infantry units and found the need so pressing that it ended up rebuilding its independent cavalry formations and incorporating irregular ones.  The United States and the United Kingdom both ended up creating "provisional" mounted formations in Italy, as they couldn't fill the reconnaissance role there in any other fashion.  One army, the Red Army, had huge numbers of cavalrymen throughout the war.The last mounted combat by the United States, prior to Afghanistan, actually took place in the context, with a mounted charge of sorts being done in late 1944 or early 1945 by a mounted unit of the 10th Mountain Division. The last German charge was in the closing weeks of 1945, when a German cavalry unit charged across an American armored unit, in part of their (successful) effort to flea the advancing Red Army. When the last Soviet charge was I do not know, but the USSR kept mounted cavalry until 1953.In terms of transportation, the Germans in fact were more dependent upon transport draft horses in World War Two than in World War One, which is also true for artillery horses.  Germany, the USSR, China, Japan, France, and Italy (at least) all still used horse drawn artillery to varying extents during the war.

As I've noted elsewhere on this blog, the reestablishment of National Guard unis after the Great War was very badly handled, as the Federal Government simply discharged all of the men in Guard units and didn't actually return them to state control.  This left the Guard having to rebuild without its existing structure intact.  Some states handled it better and more quickly than others.

But something else that did occur, and which was more structured, is that the Federal Government played a greater role on what the post war Guard units would be, thereby making them more useful upon mobilization.  In the case of Wyoming the Guard had been infantry when mobilized for the Punitive Expedition and then infantry again when first mobilized for World War One, but it soon became artillery and transport during the Great War.  

After World War One, and apparently as early as 1919, the decision was made to make the post war Wyoming National Guard cavalry.  That unit became the 115th Cavalry Regiment at some point after its introduction in the early 1920s.  It remained that until it became the 115th Cavalry (Horse Mech), a horse mechanized cavalry unit, shortly before World War Two.  Horse Mech was an experimental cavalry organization which featured both horses and vehicles and which was supposed to combine both types of transportation.  That's what the 115th was upon mobilization in 1940 for World War Two, but the use of the unit for cadre purposes meant that it did not deploy until late in the war, by which time it was the more conventional mechanized cavalry of the post 1943 pattern.

The Wyoming Army National Guard, which it became after the creation of the Air Force, retained cavalry into the 1950s, but by that time artillery units were being reintroduced to the Wyoming Guard.  Cavalry, by which we'd mean armored cavalry at that point, was phased out of the Wyoming Army National Guard at some point after the Korean War.

But from the 20s up until some point during World War Two, it was a horse featuring unit.  While it certainly could be disputed and probably should be, to some extent, that was its glory years.

May 6, 1919: Getting the news, and unhappy with the news.

Muriel Wright, Librarian of the American Library Association, delivers magazine to sea plane pilot who will take them to Marines, May 6, 1919.

Marines were getting magazines a new way on this May 6, 1919.

In Wyoming, part of that news was that Governor Carey wasn't very happy about the 148th Field Artillery staying in Europe on occupation duty.

Sunday, April 27, 1919. Movie releases, Marching Americans in Russia, Disbanding Reds in Limerick, Wyoming National Guardsmen to Remain In Germany

It was a car racing movie.

As we've noted here before, in the teens it was common to release movies on Sunday, taking advantage of the fact that most people had the day off.  The Roaring Road was an exciting car racing movie, in which the protagonist pursued his love interest and auto racing with equal vigor, showing how automobiles were really coming in.

If car racing wasn't your thing, on the same day Select Pictures released "Redhead".

I suspect that this is a lost film as details on the film are really sketchy, but movie taglines for it are really odd.  Alice Brady's character is described as such a tantalizing beauty that men "didn't care what color her hair was".  Eh?  And an alternative poster states "This is the girl he found himself married to".

I suppose a person would have to see it to figure that one out.

Other romances were also released to the sliver screen on this day.

Wow.  What a turgid plot.

Comedies were also in the offering, including a short featuring a wealthy man whose is a victim of mistaken identity.

Well, while people back in the states were seeing the latest pictures, soldiers were doing what they have for time immemorial.  Marching.

31st Infantry marching near Vladivostok.

The area around Vladivostok in this photo looks a lot, quite frankly, like winter scenes in Wyoming.

Those same troops had recently been fighting.  And fighting was still going on most definately, including between the Estonians and the Reds.

Anton Irv

Estonian officer, and former Imperial Russian enlisted man and then officer, was killed in action on this day in 1919 in that conflict.  He'd been one of the organizer of Estonia's armored trains, something that featured prominently in that war and in the Russian Civil War.  In the East, armored trains would continue to be a feature of conflict into World War Two.

Elsewhere some other Reds or proto Reds went home.

Members of the Limerick Soviet

The goofball Limerick Soviet came to an end after a little over week of being in existence when the local mayor and the local Bishop asked them to knock it off. They then voluntarily closed up shop.

Readers of the Cheyenne papers learned that Wyoming artillerymen would not be coming home soon.

Among other things they also read that Carranza could not hold out much longer.  The author of that article suggested American help to keep him in office would be required, which was a shockingly bad suggestion.

Chicago had its selection of Sunday cartoons of course, including ones that were not really intended to be funny.

I's interesting that even in 1919, gas mileage was a topic.

And some folks in Alaska had their portrait taken.

April 24, 1919. Oil Town, 130th Field Artillery arrives, Well Dressed Students

Burkburnett Texas, April 24, 1919.

On this day in 1919, Burkburnett Texas got a formal portrait.  Seems like the oilfield was a bit close.

Officers of the 130th.  The officer on the left, as viewed, is carrying a sidearm with that sidearm being a revolver, probably one of the two M1917 revolver types issued during World War One.  Why he's under arms is unclear, unless of course the revolver is one that he owns, in which case it wouldn't have been a M1917.  He's also wearing private purchase "trench boots", high leather boots, rather than the official issue field boots.  Private purchase boots were common for officers.  The officer next to him wears the regulation leather puttees that were common for artillerymen.

The 130th Field Artillery, part of the 35th Division and an artillery unit made up of Kansas National Guardsmen, arrived in New York on April 23 aboard the Mobile.  the Bain News Service published its photographs of the unit on April 24.

The student staff of the Wyoming Student was photographed for this issue of their paper.  

The Wyoming Student was the paper that became The Branding Iron, the student newspaper today and for many years.  The presentation was quite a bit different, with the presentation both then and now being pretty good.  What surprised me about this issue, and why I put it up, was the high standard of dress exhibited by the student staff.  I don't think this would be repeated in a paper today, as I don't think you could find that many young men who owned suits.  Quite a change in a century.

The Ghosts of Prior Careers

On a Saturday, while working on my now very long term one of nearly thirty years.

March 20, 1919. Pershing has visitors, Villa let's his unwilling guests go, the 148th FA set to return home, Red Army seeking to be unwelcome guests.

King Albert and Queen Victoria of Belgium visited Gen. Pershing on this day in 1919.

In Mexico, Poncho Villa, who had taken a part of Mormon figures prisoner a few days prior, let them go.  The released prisoners were residents of Colnia Dublan and still had a ways to go to get home, as he didn't return them to their town.

And news arrived that the 148th Field Artillery was soon to sail home.

The same news was printed in Cheyenne, along with a photo that appeared here sometime ago of a teenage plowgirl.

Both papers printed distressing news that the Soviets appeared set to invade Germany. That news was not merely a rumor.  As the fronts swung wildly in the Russian Civil War it seems that those who saw the Russian Revolution as a global revolution to occur immediately were indeed planning just that.

From the vantage point of a century later, that goal seems insane, and there were those with in the Soviet power circles who disagreed with it then, such as one Josef Stalin.  Those who backed it, such as Trotsky, were not without their own logic however.

The Reds were in fact gaining in the far north and were about to push the Allied mission in Northern Russia out of the country.  At the same time, however, the White offensive in the east was meeting with huge success and observed from there, there were reasons to hope that the Whites would prevail.  In the west, however, the Soviets were now fighting the Poles, who were doing well, but who also formed a wall between Red Russia and a Germany which seemed to be on the brink of falling into the hands of German Communists any day.

The really amazing thing, in retrospect, is that the Allies were rushing home their forces in Europe in the face of all of this.  A Red victory in Germany, which was a possibility at the time, would have resulted in the spread of Communism throughout Europe fairly rapidly, with other countries teetering on the brink of Communist revolution.  Even seemingly stable countries, such as the UK, were having some problems at this point.

Of course, long term, the Reds would prevail in Russia but not in Poland, although they nearly did.  Their failure to win there meant that they were not able to proceed into Germany.  It also meant that Stalin's star rose while Trotsky's fell.

Blog Mirror: Mont Saint André, March 18, 1919

Mont Saint André, March 18, 1919

Monday, February 24, 1919. Wyoming National Guardsmen in Berlin? Woodrow on the Commons, Wobblies in detention. Working Children result in taxation, temporarily, Wimpy in alcohol. Women in film.

Woodrow Wilson on the Boston Commons.

President Wilson was back in the US and took in some adulation on the Boston Commons. He was about to step into the fight for the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty that would ultimately kill him.

Spanish anarchists arrested by the  New York police under suspicion of harboring a plot to assassinate President Wilson.

At the same time, a group of IWW anarchists were oddly plotting to assassinate Wilson.  Exactly why a century later, is unclear, as he was certainly less unsympathetic to labor and the rights of at least small nations than others in U.S. politics, although he certainly wasn't sympathetic with anarchists or communists as a group.

Child laborers in a furniture factory in 1908.  These boys would have all been of military age in World War One, which may explain the stoicism that seems to have been so common with American soldiers of that conflict.

Speaking of work, Congress passed the Child Labor Tax of 1919 which imposed a 10% income tax on those companies using child labor.  The Supreme Court would strike the law down as unconstitutional in 1922, something that isn't surprising as this was in the pre Lochner era.

The papers were reporting on those events.  And on a rumor that the 148th Field Artillery, which contained Wyoming National Guardsmen, was in Berlin.

It wasn't.

Meanwhile the Federal Prohibition bill was down to .05% being the top allowable level, less than Wyoming's 1% which had just Quixotically passed.

Releasing movies on Monday had become a thing.

Female heroins, both comedic and dramatic, were in vogue.

January 16, 1919 (Other than Prohibition). Back to War? Wyoming National Guardsmen "in the heart of Prussia", Smaller Baseball Salaries?

The Cheyenne newspaper had some shocking headlines, in addition to the expected arrival of Prohibition, on this day in 1919.  Fears of a resumed war in Europe loomed large as German objections to the terms of the peace were developing.

News of a revolution in Argentina had been in the press all week long as well. And now there was news of a revolution in Peru.

And baseball salaries, reportedly huge just prior to this time, but certainly not retrospectively, were in the news.

Officers of the 49th Infantry Division arriving in New York on January 16, 1919.  Note the officer on the left is wearing pince nez glasses, still in style at the time.  The officer in the middle is wearing leather gloves of a type that would continue to see use for decades.

While fears of a revived war were in the press in Cheyenne, troops were none the less still pouring home.

Fantastic "yard long" panoramic photograph of Camp Custer, Michigan, copyrighted on this day in 1919.  Not taken on this day clearly, but a great photo.

Some Gave All: French Military Museum at The Invalides

Some Gave All: French Military Museum at The Invalides:

French Military Museum at The Invalides

These are photographs of the absolutely incredible museum at The Invalides, a structure which was originally a French hospital but which was converted by Napoleon to military use.



All photographs by MKTH.

The amount of material at this museum, including these cannons, is absolutely incredible  Everything from and about French military history can be found there.

These are small artillery models.  Incredibly detailed.

Model soldiers depicting Napoleonic Wars era troops.

Martial musical instruments.

Coat and hat of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon's hat.

Napoleon's horse.

Portrait of Napoleon as Emperor of France.

Russian uniforms of the World War One and civil war period.

This uniform reflects the typical French uniform of the Franco Prussian War period on to early in World War One.

Uniform of German landser, World War One, post 1915, with Maxim 08 machine gun.

M1916 German helmet with death's head, as used by Freikorps units.

Polish uniforms circa World War One.

American Army uniform as worn in Siberia by American troops committed to Russia during World War One.

Flag of French forces that were committed to Russia from 1914 to 1919.

World War One era French cavalry display.