Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946; Mexico -- History -- Revolution, 1910-1920
Then he listened to the report of some staff officer who dashed up on
horseback, gave a concise order without hesitating, and the officer rode
off. He told Señor Calzado, General Manager of the Railroad, in what
order the trains should proceed south. He indicated to Señor Uro, the
Quartermaster-general, what supplies should be distributed from the
troop trains. To Señor Munoz, Director of the Telegraph, he gave the
name of a Federal captain surrounded by Urbina’s men a week before and
killed with all his men in the hills near La Cadena, and ordered him to
tap the Federal wire and send a message to General Velasco in Torreon
purporting to be a report from this Captain from Conejos, and asking for
orders.... He seemed to know and order everything.
We had lunch with General Eugenio Aguirre Benavides, the quiet,
cross-eyed little commander of the Zaragosa Brigade, a member of one of
the cultivated Mexican families that gathered around Madero in the first
Revolution; with Raul Madero, brother of the murdered President, second
in command of the Brigade, who is a graduate of an American University,
and looks like a Wall Street bond salesman; with Colonel Guerra, who
went through Cornell, and Major Leyva, Ortega’s nephew, a historic
full-back on the Notre Dame football team....
In a great circle, ready for action, the artillery was parked, with
caissons open and mules corralled in the center. Colonel Servin,
commander of the guns, sat perched high up on an immense bay horse, a
ridiculous tiny figure, not more than five feet tall. He was waving his
hand and shouting a greeting across to General Angeles, Carranza’s
Secretary of War—a tall, gaunt man, bareheaded, in a brown sweater, with
a war map of Mexico hanging from his shoulder; who straddled a small
burro. In the thick dust-clouds, sweating men labored. The five
American artillery men had squatted down in the lee of a cannon,
smoking. They hailed me with a shout:
"Say, bo! What in hell did we ever get into this mess for? Nothing to
eat since last night—work twelve hours—say, take our pictures, will
you?"
There passed by with a friendly nod the little Cockney soldier that had
served with Kitchener, and then the Canadian Captain Treston, bawling
for his interpreter, so that he could give his men some orders about the
machine guns; and Captain Marinelli, the fat Italian soldier of fortune,
pouring an interminable and unintelligible mixture of French, Spanish
and Italian into the ear of a bored Mexican officer. Fierro rode by,
cruelly roweling his horse with the bloody mouth—Fierro, the handsome,
cruel and insolent—The Butcher they called him, because he killed
defenseless prisoners with his revolver, and shot down his own men
without provocation.
Late in the afternoon the Brigada Zaragosa rode away southeast over the
desert, and another night came down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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