It was towards the middle of May that I or rather, "Frank Wachendorf" enlisted. After a stretch of recruit-training at Fort Slocum I was assigned to the Nineteenth Infantry, then at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
I learned my drill shades of Gross Lichterfeldel with extreme ease. That is the only single thing that I was officially asked to do.
But early in my short and pleasant career as a United States soldier something happened which gave me special occupation. My small library was discovered. Among the volumes were Mahan's "Sea Power" and Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" not just the books one would look for among the possessions of a country lout hardly able to stammer twenty words in English. But the mishap turned in my favour. My captain sent for me.
"Wachendorf," he said, "you probably have your own reasons for being where you are. That is none of my business. But you don't have to stay there. If you want to go in for a commission you are welcome to my books and to any aid I can give you."
Thereafter life in the Nineteenth was decidedly agreeable. I set myself sincerely and wholeheartedly the task of winning a commission in the United States Army. I believe I might eventually have won it, too. But Fate revealed other plans for me when I had been an American soldier some nine months.
That winter of 1913, you remember, had been a stormy period in Mexico. Huerta had made his coup d'etat. Francisco Madero had been deposed and murdered. President Taft had again mobilised part of the United States forces on the border, leaving his successor, President Wilson, to deal with a Southern neighbour in the throes of revolution.
The Nineteenth Infantry was ordered to Galveston, Texas. And in Galveston the agents of Berlin suddenly put their fingers on me again. It happened in the Public Library. I was reading a book there one day when a man I knew well came and sat down beside me. We will call him La Vallee--born and bred a Frenchman, but one of Germany's most trusted agents.
"Wie geht's, von der Goltz?" was his greeting.
I told him he had mistaken me for someone else. He laughed.
"What's the use of bluffing?" he asked, "when each of us knows the other? Just read these instructions I'm carrying." He laid a paper before me.
La Vallee's instructions were brief and outwardly not threatening. Find von der Goltz, they bade him. Try to make him realise how great a wrong he was guilty of when he deserted his country. But let him understand, too, that his Government appreciates his services and believes he acted impulsively. If he will prove his loyalty by returning to his duty his mistake will be blotted out.
I read carefully and asked La Vallee how I was expected to prove my loyalty at that particular time.
"You know what it is like in Mexico now," he said. "Our Government has heavy interests there. Your services are needed in helping to look out for them."
"But," I objected, "I am a soldier in the United States Army. You are asking me to be a deserter."
"Germany," said La Vallee, "has the first claim on every German. If your duty happens to make you seem a deserter, that is all right. Frank Wachendorf must manage to bear the disgrace. Speaking of that," he added, carelessly enough, but eyeing me severely, "were you not indiscreet there? Suppose some enemy should find out that you made false statements when you enlisted? I believe there is a penalty."
La Vallee knew that he had me in his power. I had to yield, and was told to report to the German Consul at Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. So in March, 1913, Frank Robert Wachendorf, private, became a deserter from the United States Army and a reward of $50 was offered for his arrest.
Before I crossed the border I had one very important piece of business to attend to, and I stopped in El Paso long enough to finish it. Mexico, under the conditions that prevailed, was an ideal trap for me. As the lesser of two evils I had decided to risk my body there. But I had no mind to risk also what was to Berlin of far more value than my body namely, that document which, a year before, had led to my abrupt departure from Germany and her service.
In El Paso, where I was utterly unacquainted, I had to find some friend in whose stanchness I could put the ultimate trust. Being a Roman Catholic, I made friends with a priest and led him into gossip about different members of his flock. He spoke of a harnessmaker and saddler, one E. Koglmeier, an unmarried man of about fifty, who kept a shop in South Santa Fe Street. He was, the priest said, the most simple-minded, simple-hearted and utterly faithful man he knew.
I lost no time in making Koglmeier's acquaintance, on the priest's introduction, and we soon were on friendly terms. When I crossed the international bridge I left behind in his safe a sealed package of papers. He knew only that he was to speak to no one about them and was to deliver them only to me in person or to a man who bore my written order for them.
I reported to the German Consul in Juarez. He asked me to carry on to Chihuahua certain reports and letters addressed to Kueck, the German Consul there. From Chihuahua Kueck sent me on to Parral with other documents. And a German official in Parral gave me another parcel of papers to carry back to Kueck.
I had no sooner reached Chihuahua on the return trip than I was put under arrest by an officer of the Federal (Huertista) forces, then in control of the city. I asked on whose authority. On that, he said, of General Salvador Mercado. I was a spy engaged in disseminating anti- Federal propaganda. I had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of that, and asked what proofs he had to sustain such charges.
"The papers you are carrying," he said then, "will be proof enough, I think."
Chihuahua was under martial law. I had not the slightest inkling as to what might be in those papers I had so obligingly transported. I had put my foot into it, as the saying goes, up to my neck, the place where a noose fits.
They marched me up to the barracks and into the presence of General Mercado. That was June 23, 1913, at 9 o'clock in the evening.
General Salvador Mercado, then the supreme authority in Chihuahua, with practical powers of life and death over its people, proved to be a squat, thick, bull-necked man with the face of an Indian and the bearing of a bully }
His first words stirred my temper to the bottom, luckily for me. If I had confronted the man with any other emotion than raging anger I should not be alive now.
"Your Consul will do no good," he told me sneeringly. "He says you are not a German. You are a Gringo. You are a bandit and a robber. You have turned spy against us too. I am going to make short work of you. But first you are going to tell me all you know."
As the completeness of the charge flashed upon me I went wild. There was a chair beside me. I converted one leg into a club and started for Mercado. The five other men in the room got the best hold upon me that they could. By the time they had mastered me Mercado had backed away into the farthest corner of the room.
The remainder of our interview was stormy and fruitless. It resulted in my being taken to Chihuahua penitentiary, the strongest prison in Mexico, and thrown into a cell. It was two months and a half before I came out again.
There is small use going in detail into the major and minor degradations of life in a Mexican prison. I pass over cimex lectularius and the warfare which ended with my release. There are more edifying things to tell. For instance, how I came into possession of half a blanket and a pair of friends.
I was confined a sentry with fixed bayonet standing before my door in an upper tier in the officers' wing. Usually confinement in the officers' wing carried one special privilege in which I, the desperado, did not share. During the day the cell doors were left open and the prisoners had the run of the corridor and galleries. My sentry's bayonet barred them from me, but could not keep them from talking of the new prisoner who claimed to be a German and was suffering because he was suspected of attachment to the Constitutionalist cause.
On my third or fourth night there I was attracted to my cell door by a sibilant "Oiga, Aleman!" and something soft was thrust between the bars.
"German," whispered a voice in Spanish out of the blackness, "it is cold to-night. We hav
e brought you up a blanket."
So began my friendship with Pablo Almandaris and Rafael Castro, two young Constitutionalist officers. Almandaris, in particular, later became a chum of mine. He was a long, lank, solemn individual, the very image of Don Quixote of La Mancha. I remember him with love, because he was the man who gave to me in prison, out of kindness of heart, a full half of his single blanket.
This is how it happened. He and Rafael Castro, who were cell-mates, had contrived a way to pick their lock and roam the cell block at night, stark naked, their brown skins blending perfectly with the dingy walls. They had already heard the story of my plight. That night Almandaris had cut his blanket in two, and the pair, with the bit of wool and a bottle of tequilla they had bought that day when the prison market was open, sneaked up to the gallery and my cell. They gave the liquor to the sentry, who, being an Indian, promptly drank the whole of it down and became blissfully unconscious.
The blanket was the first of many gifts, and many were the chats we had together, all with a practical purpose.
"If you ever escape or are released," Almandaris kept telling me, "go to Trinidad Rodriguez. He is my colonel. And if you ever get out of Mexico go to El Paso and hunt up Labansat. He is there."
So they contrived to alleviate the minor evils of my predicament, and I shall never forget them. The major difficulty was beyond their reach. The trap had closed completely round me. The charge of spying and Mercado's general truculence were only cloaks for a more subtle hostility from another quarter. The reason for my imprisonment was soon revealed openly.
I had made various attempts to communicate with Kueck, the German Consul. Always I met the retort that Kueck himself said I was no German. At the same time, managing to smuggle an appeal for aid to the American Consul, I was informed that etiquette forbade his taking any steps on my behalf. Kueck himself, he said, had told him the German Consulate was doing all it could to protect me. It did not need a Bismarck to grasp the implications of those contradictory statements.
After I had been in prison for about three weeks Kueck came to see me and made the whole matter thoroughly plain.
"Von der Goltz," he opened bluntly, "you are in a bad situation."
"Do you think so?" I asked him significantly.
"I have every reason to think so," he said. "My hands are tied. I positively can take no steps in your behalf, unless--" he looked straight at me "unless you restore certain documents you have no right to possess."
They had me nicely. The surrender of my letter was the price I must pay for my life. Acting under instructions, he had made me a definite offer. I had to take it or leave it.
I could not give the letter up. It was my guarantee of safety. As long as Kueck did not know where it was I was valuable to him only while alive. Furthermore, I had some hopes of being freed by outside aid. Through Almandaris I had learned that the Constitutionalists were attacking Chihuahua, with good hope of taking the city. I knew that if they succeeded, the German whose suffering for their cause, I was told, was known throughout their forces would be well cared for. So I reached my decision.
"Herr Consul," I said, "I will not give up the papers you refer to. I am not a child. Those papers are in a safe place. So are instructions as to their disposal in case of emergency. Let anything happen to me, and within a fortnight every newspaper in the United States will be printing the most sensational story within memory."
On July 23, 1913, I was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. That led to a bitter personal quarrel between General Manuel Chao, the Constitutionalist commander attacking the city, and Mercado, who defended it.
Chao sent in a flag of truce, absolving me from any connection with his cause and threatening that, if I were killed, Mercado personally would have to pay the score when the Constitutionalists took Chihuahua. The Indian bully retorted that if the Constitutionalists ever captured the city they would not find their pet alive there.
Three times in the weeks that followed the Constitutionalist forces seemed on the point of capturing Chihuahua. Have you ever walked out with your own firing squad and spent an endless half hour on a chilly morning in the company of an officer with drawn sword, five soldiers with loaded rifles and a sergeant with the revolver destined to give you your coup de grace? Three times that happened to me, at Mercado's orders! My profession has seldom permitted me to indulge in personal hatreds, but as I was marched back from that third bad half-hour my mind was filled with one thought: If ever I got Mercado where he had me then I would let him know what it felt like.
Then matters came to a crisis. Reinforcements were brought up from Mexico City and the Constitutionalist besiegers suffered a crushing defeat. I could put no more hope in them.
Kueck came again to see me.
"Give me an order on Koglmeier for those papers," he demanded. "There's no use saying Koglmeier hasn't got them, for I know he has."
I could see he was not bluffing, and knew the game was up. I signed the release for the papers. There had been no personal animosity between Kueck and myself. I had seen too much of life to be angry with a man simply because he was obeying his orders.
About September 12, 1913, Kueck came to escort me out of prison, and in his own carriage drove me to the railway station, bound north, out of Mexico. I had a sheaf of letters, signed by Kueck, which recommended me, as Baron von der Goltz, to the good offices of German Consular representatives throughout the United States, and requested them to supply me with funds.
The last man who spoke to me in Chihuahua was Colonel Carlos Orozco, commander of the Sixth Battalion of Infantry, and General Mercado's right-hand man, though his bitter enemy. His farewell was a threat. "You are lucky to get out of Mexico," he told me. "If you ever come back and I see you I will have you shot at once." My next meeting with Colonel Carlos Orozco occurred on Mexican soil.
Escorted by Consul Kueck out of Mexico I went up to El Paso, determined to return to Mexico as soon as possible. But before I did anything else I felt a very great desire to square accounts with General Salvador Mercado.
So I stepped off at El Paso to look for Labansat, the Constitutionalist about whom my friend Pablo Almandaris told me while I was in prison. I lost no time in getting into touch with him and other members of the Constitutionalist junta.
Another acquaintance made at that time proved very useful to me later. Dr. L. A. Rachbaum, Francisco Villa's personal physician, was a fellow guest at the Ollendorf Hotel.
We were an earnest but impecunious bunch. Juan T. Burns, afterwards Mexican Consul- General in New York, may recall a morning when he and I found ourselves with one nickel between us and the necessity of getting breakfast for two at an El Paso lunch counter. That lone "jitney "bought a cup of coffee and two rolls. Each of us took a roll and we drank the cup of coffee mutually.
I also renewed my intimacy with Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe Street. He told me a man he did not know had come with my written order for the papers I had left in his safe and he had given them up.
Despairing at last of obtaining results at El Paso, I availed myself of my consular recommendations and went on to Los Angeles, California. There I received help from Geraldine Farrar, whom I had known in Germany, and in November, 1913, directly after the battle of Tierra Blancha, Chihuahua, I received a telegram saying: "Dr. Rachbaum proposition accepted; come with the next train," and signed "General Villa." My way lay open before me and I was free to start.
I reached El Paso on November 27 and went on to Chihuahua, which had fallen into the hands of the Constitutionalists. Once there, I looked up my friend of the half blanket, Pablo Almandaris, and by him was introduced to Colonel Trinidad Rodriguez, commanding a cavalry brigade, who promptly attached me to his staff, with the rank of captain.
The Federalists had retreated across the desert northwards and settled themselves in Ojinaga, the so-called Gibraltar of the Rio Grande, a tremendously strong natural position.
Towards the middle of December we received
orders to proceed to the attack of Ojinaga. Our brigade and the troops of Generals Panfilo Natira and Toribio Ortega were included in the expedition, some 7,000 men. The railway carried us seventy miles. The rest of the journey had to be made on horseback. During four days of marching in the desert I made acquaintance with Mexican mounted infantry, the most effective arm for such conditions and country the world has seen.
Arriving before the outer defences of Ojinaga we began our siege of the city. Soon afterwards I got my first sight of Pancho Villa.
Of a sudden, one evening, Trinidad Rodriguez told me that "Pancho" had just arrived, and we must ride over for a conference with him.
We found Villa lying on a saddle blanket in an irrigation ditch in the company of Raul Madero, brother of the murdered President, a handful of officers who had come up with them, and our own commanders, Natira and Ortega.
My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent Page 8
