Pancho Villa's forces departed from Plaza de Namiquipa and disappeared. They would not be fully heard from again until March 9.
The German garrison at Mora surrendered after a year and a half long siege.
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Hmmmm. . . I wonder if this caption is correct:
Destruction of liquor by order of Pancho Villa, Columbus, New Mexico, ca. 1916.
The city depicted looks far larger, and more developed, than those I've seen of Columbus, New Mexico in this time frame.
Thoughts?
Officially, by this date in 1922, the Mexican Revolution was over.
On the ground in northern Mexico, and at the border, things didn't quite appear that way.
It was news in other venues as well.
The long delay may have worked in these prisoners favor as well as obviously evolving views on their role in the raid. Those tried rapidly were tried in the heat of the immediate events, which as we know included these men, received much less favorable results.
President Harding had spoken the day prior and that was front page news everywhere, including on the USS Arizona.
Jury Acquits 16 Mexicans of Columbus Raid Murders
So read the headlines of the New York Times on this day in 1921.
This is an aspect of the raid, which started off the day by day habit here, i.e., posts in "real time", a century removed, that we still haven't broken. We probably should have considered it before.
Villa declared the raid a success in that his forces took over 300 longarms, 80 horses, and 30 mules, from Columbus and Camp Furlong by way of the raid. While that may be so, he directly lost 90 to 170 dead, thereby paying a steep price for low returns it its considered that the raiding force had been made up of 484 men. Sixty-three of his men were killed during the raid and the remainder died of their wounds thereafter, explaining the imprecise tally.
Some were captured and tried rapidly, with six being sentenced to death.
Other captured men, however were tried later on with differing result, but the overall results are, unfortunately, quite unclear to me. It hadn't occurred to me that any were tried at all, as I would have regarded Villa's army as that, an army, albeit an irregular one. Prisoners from armies aren't tried and aren't executed for simply participating in a military action, irrespective of the action itself being illegal.
Indeed, that logic later caused at least one prisoner to have a death sentence commuted to a life sentence. But there were at least three trials and many of the men tried were those who had been taken prisoner by the Army following the launching of its expedition into Mexico. As far as I can tell, some death sentences were carried out. A shocking number of the prisoners simply died in captivity due to the horrible condition, in part, of the county jail in which they were held. We have to recall here that the 1918 Flu Epidemic was ongoing.
As things moved along there came to be a fair amount of sympathy for the prisoners, some of whom were in bad physical shape, and many of whom had only vague connections with what had occurred. Soldier witnesses for the trial ended up being deployed to France so conducting the trials became difficult. One defendant was only twelve years old and was released.
Other than the citation to this headline, I can't find any evidence of trials occurring as late as 1921, but apparently they did. By this time, it was probably too late to really convict many. In this trial, apparently there were twenty defendants, and sixteen were found not guilty by the jury.
Should any have been tried at all?
Well, some appear to have been tried because of direct murders of civilians, something that's illegal in any war. That's another matter. But the wisdom of trying soldiers, at least one of whom was a conscripted Carranzaista who was sent into action on that day without ammunition, is and was questionable. What to do with them no doubt was also problematic, something we've learned again in recent years due to our wars with the Taliban and Al Queda.
On this same day President Harding, who seems to have been photographed with visitors nearly every day, posed with Pop Anson and Anson's daughters. Adrian "Pop" Anson had been a professional baseball player and later a vaudeville performer. In his vaudeville role, he performed with his two daughters depicted here, Adele and Dorothy. Anson would have been about 68 at the time this photograph was taken, and both of his daughters were in their 30s. Anson died the following April at age 69.
The dog was Laddie Boy, an Airedale. He was the first White House dog to be followed by the press. He wasn't even one year old when photographed here, and would outlive his master.
Of interest, and probably depending upon whether you were receiving a morning or evening newspaper, the violence in Ireland may have focused on one side, or the other, in the strife going on there.
On the same day Woodrow Wilson, acting as the arbiter on where the boarder between Turkey and Armenia was to go, issued his decision. It was a moot point, the Turks, who had prevailed in their war against Armenian, would dictate where that border would be to Armenia's detriment.
DuPont bought a giant share of General Motors.
Governor Octaviano Larrazola pardoned sixteen Mexicans who had been imprisoned for the March 9, 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico noting that they appeared to have no real connection with Villa and were press ganged by the Villista's at the time of the raid and forced to participate.
Governor Larrazola had been born in Mexico to then wealthy parents who had suffered under the French rule and who ultimately went bankrupt. He entered the United States with a Catholic Bishop as a teenager intending to study theology, which he did do, and then become a Priest. Ultimately, he determined he was not called to the Priesthood and became a teacher in El Paso, Texas. In El Paso his focus turned to the law which he studied and then stood for the bar in Texas. He moved to New Mexico in 1895 where he practiced law and entered politics, becoming the state's Governor in 1918. He'd ultimately serve a term in Congress. As he was highly independent and tended to anger his own party, his political career was intermittent.
As can be seen from my entry yesterday, there's some indication the Guard entrained on September 26, 1916. And I've reported that elsewhere, years ago. And maybe some did leave on September 26, but I now doubt it.Mid-Week at Work: U.S. Troops in Mexico.
All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman just to give him a line of talk
He said "If you got money, boy, I'll see that you don't walk
I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
"Get off, get off, you railroad bum" and slammed the boxcar door
He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I'm on my way from Frisco, going back to Dixieland
My pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
I'm a thousand miles away from home just waiting for a train.
Jimmy Rodgers, "Waiting for a Train".
Columbus attacked this morning, 4:30 o’clock. Citizens murdered. Repulsed about 6 o’clock. Town partly burned. They have retreated to the west. Unable to say how many were killed. Department of Justice informed that between 400 and 500 Villa troops attacked Columbus, New Mexico about 4:30. Villa probably in charge. Three American soldiers killed and several injured; also killed four civilians and wounded four. Several of the attacking party killed and wounded by our forces. Attacking party also burned depot and principal buildings in Columbus. United States soldiers now pursuing attacking parties across the line into Mexico. No prisoners reported taken alive
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