Madero, to my mind one of the ablest Mexicans alive, was clad in the dingiest of old grey sweaters. Villa, unkempt, unshaven and unshorn, was begrimed and weary from his ride across the desert. But he seemed full of bottledup energy, and when General Rodriguez and I came up he was giving General Ortega a talking to because so little had been accomplished in regard to the taking of Ojinaga.
While we talked I fashioned a cigarette, and all at oree he broke off abruptly. "Give me some of that too," he demanded. I handed him "the makings," and he attempted a cigarette. He was so clumsy with it Jbhat I had to roll it for him. Then for the first arid last time in my acquaintance with him I saw Pancho Villa smoke. Contrary to the stories that have gone out about him, he is a most abstemious man with regard to alcohol and tobacco.
On Christmas night, 1913, happened the adventure which made me, quite by accident, and without intention^ a hero. Also, I underwent the greatest fright of my life.
My commander, Rodriguez, had received orders to make an attack that night straightforward towards Ojinaga. After it was completely dark we formed and advanced, finding ourselves very soon among the willows lining the bank of the Rio Conchos, which we had to cross.
It was my first taste of genuine warfare, and I cannot begin to tell you how it affected me, how ghastly it was among the willows in the vague darkness through which the column was threading its way with the utmost possible quietness. The beat of hoofs was muffled in the soggy ground, and the only sound to break the utter stillness of the night was the occasional clank of a spur or thin neigh of a horse.
Then all at once, to the front and in the distance, came a boom the single growling of a field-gun. Ping! Ping! Ping! broke out a volley of rifle shots, and then with its r-r-r-r-r! a Hotchkiss machine-gun got to work. A staccato bam! bam! bam! as a Colt's machinegun joined the chorus. Somewhere troops were going into serious action. That was no skirmishing.
We finally crossed the river and dismounted. Part of the brigade had gone astray. Rodriguez cursed impatiently and incessantly under his breath until he joined us. He was a born cavalry leader, mad for action. Any sort of waiting lacerated his nerves.
In line, with rifles trailing, we moved across the unknown terrain of low, rolling hills. On our front there had been no firing. Then all at once, directly before us and not far ahead, sounded a startled "Qui vive?" and an instant's silence while the surprised outpost of the enemy waited for an answer. "Alerta! Alerta!' sounded his shrill alarm.
Hell broke open around us then. Rifles, machine-guns and cannon opened fire all at once. Bullets whined above our heads and bursting shrapnel fell around us. We had just come to an irrigation ditch, six feet wide, with a high wire fence on the farther bank of it.
"Stay here till they're all across and look for skulkers!" Trinidad Rodriguez gave himself time to order me, then leaped across the ditch and began to run towards the fence. "Come on here, boys!" he shouted.
The men were quickly across. I followed, or tried to, and just as my front foot touched the farther bank the clay crumbled. Down I went into the ditch.
When I recovered myself in that four feet of mud and water and poked my head up over the bank the fence had been demolished. Beyond it countless rifles spat tongues of fire towards me. But not a living soul was near. The night had swallowed up the very last one of our men.
Fright had not come yet. I was bewildered. I still had my rifle and began to use it. After a few discharges there came a violent wrench and the barrel parted company with the rest of the weapon. It had been shot to pieces in my hands. I threw the stock away and got out my revolver a Colt .44 single-action, of the frontier model.
Boom! There was a roar like a field-gun's and a flash that lit up the night all round me. The wet weapon was outdoing itself in pyrotechnics, and I was unnecessarily attracting attention to myself. So, half swimming, half wading, I moved down the ditch in the direction of the high hill which, looming vaguely, seemed half familiar to me.
I was lost, you understand. I had come at night into unknown terrain. I welcomed that hill, which seemed to give me back my bearings.
I reached the base of it, got out of my ditch and began to climb, with some caution, luckily for me. For just as I stole over the crest a roar and a flash obliterated the night. Two enemy fieldpieces had been discharged together, almost into my face.
Deeming it more than likely that the flash had shown the gunners one startled Teutonic face, I rolled down that hill and was once more in my ditch. But panic had full possession of me. I climbed out on the far side and ran among the scattered trees there until I realised that no racer can hope to outpace a bullet. Then I stopped.
Phut! Phut! Bullets were hissing into the soft irrigated ground all round me, for by accident I had gotten into a very dangerous zone of dropping cross-fire, while overhead shrapnel was searching out blindly for our horses.
By good luck I knew the trumpet calls. Whenever the signal to fire sounded I took what cover I could, going on again in what I decided was the direction of the Rio Conchos as soon as the bugles called "cease firing."
After a while I found a small grey horse standing dejectedly by a tree. I mounted him and eventually got among the willows on the river bank. There the horse collapsed under me without a warning quiver or groan, and when I had wriggled myself loose and groped him over I discovered the poor brute must have been shot as full of holes as a flute before I ever found him.
But I had small sympathy to spend on fallen horses just then. Cleaning my gory hands as best I could on breeches and tunic, I stumbled on through the bushes. After a long time I came, by accident, to the place where the brigade had dismounted to go into action. The mounts were mostly gone, but a few still stood there, with perhaps a score of men and one officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick), who was vastly surprised at my sudden appearance from the direction of the front.
Our brigade had been withdrawn within twenty minutes of the beginning of the action as soon as it was quite certain the surprise had failed. Patricio was waiting there because his brother had been killed, and he wanted, if possible, to take back his body.
"But," cried the colonel, suddenly warming into emotion, "you where have you been? You, valiant German, refused to come back with the others! All night, all by yourself, you have been fighting single-handed. Let me embrace you!"
He flung his arms about me, to receive a fresh surprise. "You are all sticky with something," he cried. "What is it?"
"Blood," I told him simply and truthfully. My reputation was made.
Bravado stirs a Mexican as nothing else can. Counterfeit bravado is just as effective as any so long as the substitution is not suspected. Young Captain von der Goltz, in his first real engagement, had got stupidly lost and very badly frightened. But of Captain von der Goltz Colonel Patricio and his troopers sang the praises for days thereafter to every officer and every peon soldier they met. He had fought on alone for hours after every comrade left him. He had bathed himself in the blood of his enemies, up to his hips and up to his shoulders. You could see it on his clothes.
By the time Ojinaga fell "El Diablo Aleman" "the German devil" had become a tradition of the Constitutionalist Army.
Ojinaga fell at New Year, 1914, the Federalists retreating across the Rio Grande into the United States. We pursued them. And on the bank of the river I had a little adventure. You remember that when I left Chihuahua, a released prisoner, the last person who spoke to me was Colonel Carlos Orozco, commanding the Sixth Infantry Battalion, and his farewell was a threat (see p. 117).
That Sixth Battalion had been engaged in the defence of Ojinaga and had retreated with its fellow-organisations. When I came up to the Rio Grande a small body of fugitives was in midstream. My handful of troopers rode in, surrounded them and brought them back to Mexico. Their heroic commander, who had offered no show of resistance, proved to be Orozco, with the colours of his outfit wrapped round his body, under his blouse!
The provocation was too much for me. "Don
Carlos," I asked him, "is it possible you have forgotten me? When we parted last time you promised to shoot me if ever we met again. I am naturally all on fire to learn whether you are thinking of keeping your promise now."
Prominent prisoners were getting short shrift in those days, and Orozco preserved a sullen silence. But I let him ford the river to safety. He eventually got back to Mexico City and Huerta, by way of San Antonio, Galveston and Vera Cruz. The story of his exploit at Ojinaga, the sole Federal officer to come out of it alive, un wounded, and bringing his colours with him, furnished columns of copy to El Impartial and the other papers. Friends and admirers of his who heard the lion roar at that time may find some interest in this less romantic record of his adventure.
I had another account to settle with my old acquaintance, Consul Kueck of Chihuahua. During the last battle before Ojinaga an officer struck up a rifle which he saw a peon aiming at my back. The ball whistled over my head. The soldier later saw fit to confess the reason for his act. He said that a big, fat German Kueck's secretary, he thought had come to him just before we left Chihuahua on our expedition and had given him 500 pesos to attempt my life.
Returning to Chihuahua very soon after New Year's Day, I made it my business to call on Consul Kueck. He had cleared out across the border to El Paso just before we got in.
Failing the principal, I took the liberty of arresting Kueck's secretary inside the sacred precincts of the Foreign Club. After my adjutant and he and I had had three or four hours' private talk, and he understood how likely he was to occupy the cell in Chihuahua penitentiary which had once been mine, he helped me obtain copies of certain documents in the consular archives, particularly the letter Kueck had written to the American Consul affirming himself to be fully responsible for my safety, at the very time When he was setting Mercado on and telling me that he could and would do nothing for me. Once I got hold of that I felt fairly certain that Kueck would be moderate in his dealings with me thereafter.
Only General Salvador Mercado stood wholly on the debit side of my account book. I had heard that he had been captured on United States soil, along with numerous other fugitive Federal officers, and been put for safe keeping into the detention camp at El Paso.
It chanced that Villa and Raul Madero went up to the border for a few days of the winter race-meet at Juarez, just across the river from El Paso. Don Raul was kind enough to invite me, too, and I went along in fettle, with a new uniform. Our army was in funds and I had all the money I wanted.
From Juarez it was merely a matter of crossing the international bridge to be in El Paso. I went over. I wanted to see Koglmeier, the saddler in South Santa Fe Street, and I wanted to visit the detention camp.
I chose to see the camp first, and had the forethought to fill one of the pockets of my overcoat with Mexican gold pieces, very welcome to my whilom enemies. Poor fellows, they were, most of them, in the tattered clothing they had worn when captured. Their faces were wan and meagre and they were glad enough to accept, along with my greeting, the bits of gold I contrived to slip into their hands.
In the centre of the camp we came upon a tent more imposing than its mates, though by no means palatial.
"This," said my cicerone, "is the quarters of General Mercado, the ranking officer here. Do you wish to pay him your respects?"
As I have said, Salvador Mercado is squat and thick in build, with a bull neck. Some day, I fear, he is going to die of apoplexy, if he does not fall, more gloriously, in action. He shows certain apoplectic symptoms. For instance, as we stepped inside his tent and he saw who one of his visitors was, his neck swelled till it threatened to burst his collar.
"My General," I assured him warmly, "it is indeed a pleasure and an honour to see you again. I trust the climate up here agrees with you?" I did not offer him a gold piece when he said good-bye.
From the detention camp I went to Koglmeier's shop in South Santa Fe Street. Both front and rear doors were standing open, and through the back of one I could see Koglmeier's horse, a beast I had often ridden, switching its tail in the yard, which was its stable. I went into the store. "Koglmeier!" I called. "Oh, Koglmeier!"
From the side of the shop stepped out a man on whom I had never set eyes before.
"Koglmeier ain't here."
"But he must be here," I insisted. "I can see his horse out there in the yard."
"Yes," said the man, "the horse is here, but Koglmeier ain't. Nor he won't be. It just happens that Koglmeier's dead."
"When did he die?"
"The 20th of last December," said the man. "But he didn't die. He got murdered."
On the night of that 20th of December, Koglmeier, the quietest, most inoffensive man in El Paso, had been murdered in his shop. It looked, said my informant, "like his head had been beat in with a hatchet, or something." Robbery apparently had not been the motive, for his possessions were untouched. If he had made an outcry it had not attracted attention, perhaps because a carousal was going full blast in the vacant lot beside his place of business. The authorities were utterly at sea, and still are. The United States Department of Justice agents told me they could find no motive for the murder. I knew the motive. Koglmeier had kept "my documents "for me; therefore Imperial Germany had willed he should die.
Koglmeier was the only German in El Paso who was a friend of mine, and knew of the existence of those documents which I had been forced to give up through the agency of Mercado's firing squads.
His end subdued the festive spirit in me, and I was not sorry when we started back for the interior of Mexico.
Torreon was taken by Villa on April 2, 1914, and we settled down there for a brief period of rest and recuperation. Rest! Torreon stands out in my memory as the scene of the most hectic activity I have indulged in. Raul Madero and I have since laughed over the ludicrousness of it. But at the time it was deadly serious. My reputation was at stake. I managed to save it barely by the skin of its teeth.
Chief Trinidad Rodriguez got twenty machineguns down from the United States and turned them over to me. "Train your gun crews and get the platoons ready for field service," he ordered. "You can have three weeks. Then I shall need them."
Without a word I saluted and turned on my heel. I could not very well tell my General that I had never in my life applied even the tip of one finger to a machine-gun.
The guns arrived next day, as promised. They had been sent to us bare, just the barrels and tripods. There were no holsters, no pack saddles for either guns or ammunition, not one of the accessories which equip a machine-gun company for action. I had to start from the ground, in literal truth. And I had not a soul to advise me how to begin.
We loaded the guns on to our wagons, took them over to camp, and laid them side by side in a long row down the centre of an empty warehouse in Torreon.
That satisfied me for one afternoon. I went over to General Rodriguez's quarters.
"I've got the guns," I reported.
"Good!" he cried. "I shall want the platoons ready for action in three weeks. Not a day later."
It was up to me to have them ready. So I got busy at once.
My first move was an abduction. There happened to be in Torreon jail at that time a firstclass bank robber named Jefferson, who was being held for the arrival of extradition papers from Texas. The day after my guns arrived Jefferson escaped, and though the authorities made diligent search they failed to find him. He knew more about machine-guns than I did. His profession had made him an excellent mechanic. Furthermore, he had Yankee ingenuity and American "git up and git." We soon had all twenty guns set up in working order.
Then came the problem of the gun crews. Our Indians, slow, thick-headed, stubborn and stolid, were no fit material for such highly specialised work. Machine-gun manipulation requires very peculiar qualifications in every man concerned. Three men compose the crew. One squats behind the shield and pulls the trigger. The second, prone, slides the clips of cartridges into the breach. The third passes up the supply of ammunitio
n. At any moment the gun may heat and jam. Also at any moment any one of the trio may fall, yet his work must be carried on. I had seen a gunner sit on the dying body of a comrade and coolly aim and fire, the action being so hot there was not time to drag the wounded man aside. You cannot take an Indian wild from the hills and in twenty-one days fit him to do such work as that by any course of training.
My only resort was to get my gun crews ready made.
A brigade not far away from ours possessed machine-gun platoons which were the pride of its heart. I looked at them, and broke first the Tenth and then the Eighth Commandment.
To a wise old sergeant I gave a hundred pesos.
"Juan," I told him, "get the men of those machine-gun crews drunk in this quarter of Torreon. And encourage them to be noisy."
Juan obeyed instructions. Once the beer and mezcal took hold, the men I wanted became boisterous enough to justify our provost guard in running them all in. The rest was simple. The breach of discipline was condoned by General Rodriguez only on condition that the culprits were turned over to him for further discipline.
My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent Page 9
