The Battle of Tomochic_The Battle of Tomochic Memoirs of a Second Lieutenant

by Heriberto Frías

  Then he relived the dialogue between them in the shadows as he ruthlessly pursued her, hunting her down with the fury and wanton desire of a drunken satyr.

  Afterward the lasso, the trap of tenderness, oaths, his word of honor, and invocation of God Almighty, all to satisfy his appetite, to quench the thirst of his feverish blood!

  God Almighty! God wills it! Those hallowed words that served fanatics and deceivers alike, the same for a people who will not bend to the yoke as for a woman who will not surrender! He remembered his prey fainting away in the dank closeness of that den: her sighs, tears, moans of love, the cry of pleasure at the height of ecstasy, the delicious agony of their bodies and souls. An unforgettable, shining, purifying union. Poor Julia.

  He recalled that afterward she told him her sad story in a few short words: her life of servitude in Tomochic, the interlude of civilized life in Chihuahua, where she had learned to read and think, and then her abrupt return to days of slavery and nights spent passively, coldly, in the arms of the repulsive Bernardo.

  “He is the cross I bear, God wills it … as you put it,” she murmured as she ended her story.

  After that she told him that she, Doña Mariana, and Don Bernardo would be leaving the next day at three o’clock in the morning for Tomochic. Directly ahead of the troops, they would travel along the most tortuous paths of the Sierra.

  Then the two innocents, despite their shared misfortune, chatting like lifelong friends confident of the future, agreed to meet and make love again in Tomochic.

  As he thought about the adventure that could have cost him his life—if, for instance, the old derelict had returned to his dungeon to find the second lieutenant embracing Julia, his favorite slave, in Bernardo’s own bed—he continued looking at the closed door of the hut and the empty corral. Only a decrepit, sway-backed she-donkey, little more than skin and bones, wandered about the place forlornly.

  Then he heard from far away the melancholy notes of the 9th Battalion bugles sounding the second call to march and rushed back to his post to face the rows of troops that were ready to file out.

  Dressed in their blue wool uniforms, the soldiers had packed up all their gear. Meanwhile, the officers were attaching sun flaps to their kepis or packing supplies, knowing that as they passed through the sierras they would have only what they carried with them.

  A few dragoons of the 5th Regiment led the 9th Battalion officers’ withered, gloomy-looking horses out onto the Alameda. Then the officers began to load their baggage and rifles and girded themselves with their cartridge belts, a hundred cartridges in each.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon, under a magnificent sun, the troops moved out. Their pant cuffs rolled, the first soldiers crossed the river and then turned left to await the three remaining columns to join them.

  The first column included 2nd Company of the 9th Battalion and a unit of the Chihuahua state public security forces. The second comprised the 9th Battalion’s 4th Company, plus a unit from the 11th Battalion, and the third counted with twenty horsemen from the 5th Regiment and a number of irregulars recruited from towns dotted throughout the region. Indeed, these adventurers were decked out like local ranchers, wide red ribbons tied jauntily around their hats.

  The cannon traveled on mule back between the first and second columns. The entire force consisted of five hundred men.

  Followed by the general staff, a few close friends, and some recently enlisted adventurers, General José María Rangel passed on horseback at the head of the forces as the men presented arms.

  Then everyone waited for the arrival of Commander in Chief Rosendo Márquez, who was received with even greater solemnity, to the beat of marching drums. General Márquez, his face ruddy, his gestures imperious, restrained his rearing horse as he yelled out, “Sections! Right face!”

  The second row of soldiers, facing south and spread out in march formation toward the Sierra, gave a “step back.”

  “Right!” yelled the general seconds later.

  The troops immediately pivoted to the right while the even-numbered soldiers advanced to the right of the odd-numbered ones to form a long column, four men abreast.

  “Forward! March!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Crossing the Sierra Madre

  The slow ascent toward the west began with the troops clambering up the first foothills of the Sierra, leaving the village of Concepción, Guerrero, below. From above, the houses scattered along the banks of the twisting river paled in the dying light as the sun sank directly in front of the marching column.

  It was a splendid afternoon, colored in autumn’s ochre hues. Toward the east, the river appeared clad in shadows. At sunset the road spiraled upward through reddish terrain partly obscured by thick brush.

  A tall cloud of purple dust enveloped the column while the endless woods of the Sierra Madre rose just ahead. On either side, ravines cut into the red earth of the mountain like bleeding wounds.

  Miguel stood up in his stirrups and peered behind, where Julia’s house was still visible.

  As the Sierra began to curve, the valley below disappeared from view. Decked out in their splendid woodlands, the mountains revealed their austere majesty to the ascending troops. The first cold gusts of the oncoming night set the tall pine trees whispering.

  The young second lieutenant was astounded was by the beauty of the strange mountain landscape. Ordered not to ride ahead of his position, he slackened the reins and let his horse stumble unguided up the rocky terrain.

  The cool winds helped dispel his dark thoughts, and he gave himself over to the slow, voluptuous march of his fragmented column along the sheer mountain passes. He contemplated the dark undulations of the gullies from whose depths emerged swirls of snow, and his heart fairly surged when the brambles and thickets opened and he caught a glimpse of the violet sky. The enchantment of that powerful, untamed wilderness restored his ailing nerves. “This is astonishingly beautiful,” he murmured from time to time.

  When the men overheard Miguel talking to himself and saw him raise his arms to the skies, overcome with ecstasy and wonder, they tittered among themselves.

  At nightfall the forces set up camp in a clearing surrounded by forest, called La Generala. The company was in a lively mood and fires were lit. The tall flames projected towering shadows onto the pines.

  The troops started out quite late in the day on October 18, due to a curious incident. The horses of the 5th Regiment, sensing they weren’t far from their stables in Guerrero, broke loose and stampeded back the way they had come. In wild disorder they galloped until they reached the outskirts of town, where they were stopped and brought back to camp.

  The austere and robust life of the mountains appealed to the sensitive young officer; they spoke to him of pride and liberty and love.

  Miguel abandoned himself to his solitary meditations. He looked toward his future and felt faith in existence. Why should he die so young, when he still had work to do? He might accomplish something useful, achieve an important undertaking, perhaps even know the joy of victory.

  His momentary optimism belied a premonition that he would witness a terrible drama that would temper his soul. He felt he might experience epochal events, visions he would never forget. Possibly the memory would fortify him during crises and conflicts yet to come.

  The prodigious spectacle of the Sierra Madre continued to unfold majestically before Miguel’s contemplative eyes. The moment had come for the hazardous climb up the rocky paths and the vertigo of looking down into the black abyss on either side when, during the rest periods, the soldiers perched on sheer overhanging cliffs. Meanwhile, they marched in single file, one by one, along impossibly narrow passes or through great canyons above whose vertical walls, as though from the bottom of a black well, they could glimpse the brilliant sky far, far away.

  Realizing the imminent peril, Miguel wondered why the enemy didn’t polish them off right here, where ten men could destroy an army. Their adversaries knew these m
ountains like the back of their hand—why didn’t they attack now, when the men were stretched over the steep, stony terrain at the bottom of the deepest canyons?

  Indeed, it wouldn’t require much daring against so little resistance; however, certainly the brave rebels of Tomochic would prefer to wait until they were attacked on their home turf. They wouldn’t want to leave their holy ground, where they knew they were invincible.

  The general knew this all too well, so despite his painful past experiences, he was not overly cautious.

  Sometimes the irregulars were deployed on the flanks of the columns, where they nimbly climbed on ahead to scrutinize the terrain. But it was evident to all that if an attack came they would serve as the doomed heralds of catastrophe.

  At one o’clock in the afternoon the troops stopped to rest in the outpost of Peña Agujerada. A steer was slaughtered, and flour and meat handed out to the troops. This would be the extent of their rations for the day.

  At four o’clock the troops resumed the march. They had to cross the river several times, which slowed them so much that they had to continue marching until eleven o’clock that night. That bold march in utter darkness had a negative affect on Miguel’s mood.

  They had to press blindly on, groping their way between pine trees and boulders that seemed twice their normal size in the blackness. Panting with fatigue, their feet leaving bloody trails in the crevices between the boulders, the troops pressed on silently. They stumbled, fell, and then rose only to stumble and fall again.

  The laughter had long since died away, and with it the jokes, the happy chatter, and the singing that had transformed the harsh, tedious march across the hard rock into a festive occasion. Now, from the long, attenuated column came the painful sounds of labored breath, clomping footsteps, and rifles clanking against metal canteens.

  “No lagging! No lagging!”

  “Forward, forward!” yelled the officers mechanically to the stragglers; even on horseback, they felt as tired as the foot soldiers.

  A few guides, paid in gold by the general, went ahead of the others.

  The soldiers continued up and down tortuous, thicketed paths, sometimes leaping from rock to rock as they crossed the deep ravines, their feet, bloodied and sore, sinking deep into the glacial waters, an invisible lymph that rippled sinuously through the bottomless chasms.

  Some of the soldiers threw themselves down to drink, impassively withstanding the furious blows of rifle butts as the sergeants tried to get them to their feet again.

  The horses resisted going up and down the steep grades, their hooves striking sparks on the rocky ground. Sometimes they halted altogether, their eyes shining like huge phosphorescent orbs in the darkness, on the brink of exhaustion. Breathing noisily in the blackness of the trees on the vertiginous cliffs, they pricked up their great ears to the mystery of the night, as the stars sparkled icily in the black sky.

  “Keep moving! No lagging!” the officers shouted again, hurling rude insults at the exhausted, terrified men dragging themselves through the rugged mountains to meet their death in battle.

  “Caramba!1 Why don’t they cut us down right here? Those Tomochic devils must be imbeciles, with as many rocks in their heads as we’ve got underfoot, if they haven’t thought of finishing us off in this place!” said Castorena to Miguel.

  When he wasn’t drinking, the poet was a pessimist. Having exhausted his bottle of tequila, he was beginning to feel a little frightened. “A few shots from the cliffs and there’d be nothing left of us. Can you imagine the rout?”

  “I see it perfectly … it would be absolute panic, utter defeat,” chimed in Miguel, alarmed by the fear that Castorena exhaled with each word. “They’d wolf us down too fast to even taste us!”

  “So, we didn’t even know the first thing about them!”

  Miguel made no response. He knew the toll a nighttime raid in the Sierra would exact on the troops after their hard day’s march. The soldiers would be desperately hungry and disoriented. They wouldn’t know where they were being led or to what end, where the enemy was coming from, or how many there were.

  The most tragic national catastrophes came to mind, maybe another fiasco like the one at Cerro del Borrego. There was enough cruel irony in the tragic name itself: the Hill of the Lamb. A few brave men had surprised the weary troops as they slept, half dead from exhaustion, and got the better of the Mexican military, a heroic army under strong leadership, yet set adrift like miserable beasts.

  More than ever Miguel understood the difficult responsibilities of a commander, and how urgently Mexico needed a well-trained, disciplined officer corps.

  A magnificent panorama took shape in his mind … From the depths of an endless valley walled in by high, blue mountains, the Chapultepec fort2 rose out of a thick plot of leafy fronds. Chapultepec, with its presidential citadel and military academy; the classrooms where students acquired knowledge and strength and learned how to fight; the palace where the victorious were lodged.

  Only from this modern, heroic Chapultepec could come the seeds of a Mexican army worthy of the bravery and patriotism of its men.

  Suddenly the pensive officer’s horse stopped dead in its tracks.

  “Rio Verde! We’ve arrived. We’ve arrived. Finally!” scattered voices exclaimed.

  It was nine o’clock at night. The day’s march had come to an end.

  CHAPTER 16

  Recalling the Campaign against the Apaches

  In anticipation of a surprise, two lines of advance guard posts were established in Rio Verde, with troops blocking all access points to the camp. Miguel, with ten trustworthy men from his company and two irregulars from Chihuahua, was delegated to the rear guard.

  One of the Chihuahuans was an old man of seventy whose youthful eyes shone brilliantly out of his furrowed face. Tall, thin, strong, he was bursting with enthusiasm. Chatting like old friends, rifles in hand, the second lieutenant and the old man set out together through the thickets and brush that surrounded the guard posts.

  On these rounds the old soldier recounted campaigns against the savage Indians, a triumphant entry into Chihuahua on a certain April morning, for one. The energetic old man evoked the scene with such vividness and color that in his mind’s eye Miguel saw the poignant scene clear as day.

  He could almost see the victorious procession of that heroic cavalcade: under the canopy of Chihuahua’s lovely azure sky, a splendid sun warming the street below, which was suddenly bustling with excitement on that fine spring morning. He witnessed the brave men returning victorious from the ferocious campaign against the savage Apaches. Townspeople lined the sidewalks, families gazed from open windows, and storekeepers jumped over their counters to stand in their doorways while the large parish bells rang out through the clear air.

  The brave cavalry troops strode slowly in formation, four abreast. Broad hats covered faces darkened with the bushy growth of new beards. The troops sported gray shirts or leather jackets, yellow antelope-hide pants, and high boots; their makeshift saddles were made of deerskin and the hides of mountain animals.

  The horses were small and thin but nimble and bursting with energy, as steadfast and brave as their riders. The long, sharp-tipped spears pierced the dazzling blue beyond. Those spears! For Miguel, they stood for the campaign itself, in all its savagery and glory.

  Along the sturdy lances, from top to bottom, dangled long shocks of blood-spattered black hair: scalps ripped from the skulls of savage Indians to festoon the spears of the victors who had hacked them off in the desert. Each trophy represented a feat of selfless heroism. The long manes swayed in the wind as they hung vertically from the shafts. It was impossible to distinguish which locks hung from which spear. As they moved along, the clanking throng was transformed into a moving forest of black, bloody hair. On the horses’ rumps rode tall bundles of sturdy riding pants once worn by comrades who met their death in the immense solitude of the Sierra or the arid plains of the north.

  In turn, Apache ch
iefs decorated the empty skulls of fallen soldiers and used them in their orgies as vessels for corn liquor and sotol. Those chiefs, that is, whose hair was not hanging from the spears of the valiant Chihuahuans, thought Miguel.

  Some years before, the Chihuahua state government had organized a campaign against the Apaches after they attacked settlements, sacking and looting with the invasive power of a natural disaster.

  The government offered three hundred pesos for each Apache scalp recovered in battle. The leader of that particular campaign was none other than Colonel Terrazas, a wily veteran who was thoroughly familiar with the northern regions and the customs of the Indian inhabitants.

  More than five hundred spirited mountain dwellers set out, hungry to avenge the death of loved ones, seeking only to wipe out the savage hordes who had brought fear and lamentation to the homes of hardworking, peace-loving people.

  Such a long campaign … such unparalleled savagery!

  No, it wasn’t only the heroic combat—man to man, spear to spear, machete against machete, valor against valor; it was the hunger too that gnawed at the entrails, the feverish thirst that could drive men mad on those interminable days spent crossing the desert under an African sun.

  And then the cruel winter, the nocturnal chill of the guard post, the shivering, and the hostile whiteness that blanketed the black crests. Those grimy winds off the Sierra brutally slicing at their faces with steely gusts; the fatigue, the insomnia, the hunger … the marches—climbing, tripping, slipping, always on your guard, wary eyes trained on every rock and tree, expecting at any moment an Apache arrow.

  But what bliss when the enemy was cornered at the bottom of a ravine! The soldiers fell on them, spears in hand. With what terrible rage and superhuman effort they flung themselves into the fray!

  In vain the painted Indians howled their frightening, malevolent war cries. Their burnished faces, painted in black and red, grimacing ferociously, they gestured menacingly as they leaped like tigers rattling their necklaces of human teeth. But it was all in vain. There was no escape, no way out, at the bottom of the ravine. They fell, pierced through by the spears of the valiant Chihuahua mountain men, who charged them as though defending their fathers or the family ranch.