Exactly a century ago, America was confronted with a major crisis on the Mexican border centering on Arizona. 1911 is an object lesson in inaction.

At Agua Prieta, Mexico, one mile from Douglas, two Americans were killed and 11 wounded,” cabled the Douglas, Ariz., Chamber of Commerce & Mines to the President, “including some children attending to their own business here in Douglas. Thousands of bullets fell in our city, passing through residences and endangering life and property.”

That dispatch was sent 100 years ago to President William H. Taft on April 14, 1911.

In 1911, political instability and violence enflamed the U.S.-Mexico border. It all started the previous November when the Mexican Revolution broke out. The rebel platform in the election “Mexico for Mexicans,” referring to American influences south of the border. 

The following March 6, the exiled rebel leader Francisco Madero crossed over from Texas with 500 men to attack the Mexican town of Casas Grandes. Defeated, he lost 51 troops KIA. That very same day, Taft ordered the U.S. “Army out for maneuvers” to “properly safeguard American interests,” as he put it. Some 30,000 troops assembled in San Diego, Galveston and San Antonio, Texas. Formally activated March 12, this improvised Maneuver Division was the first of its kind. It included 12 infantry regiments and a cavalry brigade. Short-lived, it was disbanded in early August, never having fired a shot in combat.

Heroism in Douglas

Meanwhile, back at the border, Troop K of the 1st Cavalry Regiment had to contend with the situation in Douglas in April.  Arizona Gov. Richard E. Sloan requested that “radical measures” be taken. Taft’s reply: he would not order U.S. troops to take aggressive action, advising Americans there “to place themselves where bullets cannot reach them.”

Matters were so out of control in Mexico then that the British naval vessel HMS Shearwater had to land 30 Marines armed with a Maxim machine gun at San Quentin on the coast of Lower (Baja) California, 125 miles to the south. American citizens residing there requested the landing to pre-empt a rebel assault in the town.

Conditions in Douglas deteriorated rapidly. Undeterred cavalryman on site acted decisively on April 13. Troop K CO, Capt. Julien E. Gaujot, mounted his reliable horse and charged into the raging battle across the border in Agua Prieta. Under heavy fire for an hour, he brought out five American held captive, as well as Mexican Federal soldiers, to safety.

Gaujot’s risky gamble paid off. Personally presented the Medal of Honor by President Taft in one of the earliest such White House ceremonies on Nov. 23, 1912, he is the only soldier ever awarded the medal “for action of a peacekeeping nature.” Gen. Leonard Wood later quipped that Gaujot’s actions warranted “either a court martial or a Medal of Honor.”

Revolution Run Amok

The first full year of the Revolution played itself out in atrocious fashion in far too many instances. On May 13 in Torreon, followers of the infamous Poncho Villa committed “a vicious pogrom, which featured beheadings, disembowellings, death at the horse’s tail and death while naked before drunken firing squads,” wrote Frank McLynn, author of Villa and Zapata.

“As targets of Mexican xenophobia, (Chinese) ‘class enemies’ were considered fair game by the mob,” McLynn wrote. Within 10 hours, 303 Chinese were massacred. In fact, anti-Chinese campaigns persisted in the state of Sonora during the first three decades of the 20th century until their final expulsion in 1931.

American citizens killed inside Mexico between 1910 and 1912 totaled 47. “Many American had been killed, and in each case the Mexican government had done nothing but make superficial investigation,” concluded Walter and Marie Scholes in The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration.

Mexico’s pleas of innocence rang hollow in popular and official circles.  Ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson responded: “No sovereign power can rightfully plead the defects of its own domestic penal statutes as justification or extenuation of an international wrong to another sovereign state.”

‘Shoot on Sight’

Taft’s goal had been to keep the issue of Mexico’s threat to U.S national security out of the 1912 election campaign. He may have succeeded, but he also lost his bid for re=election. And when Taft left office on March 3, 1013, the Mexican “problem” was left unresolved.

As the Mexican Revolution dragged on (it lasted until 1920), American border towns continued to be embroiled in the cross-border violence. Some four years after the original imbroglio in Agua Prieta, Douglas was yet again the scene of spillover violence from a third battle. Villistas (Villa adherents) attacked the Federal stronghold in Agua Prieta in full force, but their ranks were decimated.

Hundreds of stray bullets struck inside Douglas. One of those rounds claimed the life of Cpl. Harry J. Jones of the 22nd Infantry Regiment on Nov. 2, 1915, while he was guarding the U.S. Customs House. The following year Camp Douglas was renamed Camp Harry Jones in his honor. The post remained active until 1933.

During the last round of fighting near Douglas, Gen. Frederick Funston was in command of U.S. troops. His orders were explicit: any armed Mexican crossing the boundary was to be shot on the spot.

Shootings continued along the border through 1919, including two big shoot-outs known as Vera Cruz (1914) and Pershings Punitive Expedition (1916). In all, 58 American servicemen died in various firefights with Mexicans.

A full century later, American are still being killed along the border.

Posted with permission from the April 2011 issue of VFW magazine.