After hiding the ponies, MacArthur and his party kept stealthily following the tracks toward Alvarado; as each town approached he would get off the handcar and, with one of the Mexicans as guide (lashed to him to prevent escape), give the place a wide berth, catching up with the handcar on the other side of town.
At last they reached Alvarado at 1 a.m., where they found five engines, three of which, after careful inspection, proved to be “fine big road pullers in excellent condition.” Mission accomplished, MacArthur and his men began their escape back to Vera Cruz. At Salinas, however, they encountered “five armed men … evidently one of the marauding bands,” who ran after them and opened up with rifle and pistol fire. Pumping furiously, MacArthur’s handcar outdistanced all but two of the robbers whereupon, he said, “In order to preserve our own lives I was obliged to fire upon them. Both went down.”
At Piedra, in a driving mist, they ran “flush in” to about fifteen more bandits, who were mounted. Immediately the bandits opened fire on MacArthur, whose clothes were riddled with several bullet holes. His main Mexican man was shot in the shoulder. In turn, MacArthur brought down “at least four of the enemy, and the rest fled.” After bandaging up the wounded man, they “proceeded north with all possible speed,” until, at the town of Laguna, they encountered three more armed and mounted men who again attacked them with gunfire.
Pumping the handcar desperately, they left two of the riders behind, but a lone gunman kept up and actually overtook the handcar, shooting through MacArthur’s shirt. MacArthur fired on the Mexican rider and his horse, which toppled dead onto the track in front of the handcar.
At Paso de Toro they left the handcar, retrieved the ponies, and rode them back to the shack where they had taken them. Only MacArthur and the original Mexican were left, the two others having vanished during the gunfights. At the river they found the boat, but in crossing it hit a snag and sank. In the darkness MacArthur held his wounded companion’s head above water until they reached the opposite shore where they uncovered the first handcar and miraculously made it back to Vera Cruz in one piece.g
MacArthur was put in for the Medal of Honor by General Wood himself, but as he later put it in his memoirs, “The War Department disagreed.”
The rationale was that MacArthur had been acting on his own hook and not under orders from anybody, especially General Funston, who had been told specifically not to conduct the sort of escapade MacArthur had engineered. Nevertheless, the newspapers got wind of the story and made it into a splendid military exploit. For the first time MacArthur found himself a famous national hero. He was promoted to major upon his return to Washington and remained on the General Staff until April 6, 1917, when the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany.
* I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
† A piece of legislation sponsored a year earlier by the Democrats that allowed settlers in U.S. territories to decide whether slavery would be allowed within their borders. It led to much bloodletting between opposing sides and was a precursor of the American Civil War.
‡ First Families of Virginia. See chapter 2 for further explanation.
§ The home was then occupied by the Union general Benjamin Butler who acquired the sobriquet “Beast” Butler while serving as military governor of New Orleans during the war, stemming from an order he issued suggesting that disloyal New Orleans women should be treated like prostitutes.
ǁ “Nowhere” being Albuquerque, 100 miles to the east, a mere Indian trading post in those days.
a Evidently this was one of a large herd of camels brought from Egypt to the Southwest in 1855 by Jefferson Davis when he was the U.S. secretary of war. After a study, Davis had concluded that camels were much more useful in the desertlike terrain than pack mules and so they were used by army surveying crews until the Civil War when all the officers and soldiers returned east to fight and the camels were left to themselves. The last reported sighting was in 1927, in New Mexico, from a train.
b Aguinaldo’s capture is an amazing story. Brigadier General Frederick Funston and three other army officers, accompanied by U.S.-loyal Philippine scouts posing as insurrectos, marched into Aguinaldo’s jungle hideaway pretending that the officers were captives being brought to the rebel general. When they arrived the scouts overpowered the rebel garrison and took Aguinaldo prisoner instead.
c Cunningham soon quit in disgust and wrote an anonymous letter to the New York Sun revealing the brutality of West Point hazing, which prompted a congressional investigation at which MacArthur testified. He declined, however, to name any names except those who had already resigned or been dismissed from the academy.
d Poetry as a general art form has nearly passed from the scene, but in MacArthur’s day—and Patton’s and Marshall’s—it was a common mode of expression among educated people, including big, burly soldiers. Alas, nearly all the large-circulation magazines that featured poetry have vanished, and more’s the pity.
e Insults to the American flag were far more serious then than now. In the days of so-called gunboat diplomacy following the Civil War the flag remained a revered symbol and exemplification of the national dignity, and one trifled with it at his peril. “Flag burning” was a concept that had yet to develop, and wars had been started for less.
f About $3,600 in today’s money.
g The so-called Vera Cruz Affair dragged on for another six months with American troops holding the city and its oil wells hostage until, in November 1914, an agreement was hammered out between the United States and the ABC Powers (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—the three most powerful nations in South America) and President Wilson withdrew the American forces. Two years later, however, with the Mexican Revolution in full swing, U.S. troops were again obliged to invade Mexico.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SOME DAMNED FOOLISHNESS IN THE BALKANS”
For a hundred years historians, politicians, and military scholars have debated the causes of World War I. But one thing generally agreed upon is that the long and tortuous path began in 1871, when Germany organized itself into a nation.
Previously, Greater Germany had been a menagerie of twenty-five principalities and quasi-kingdoms governed loosely by the state of Prussia, which was ruled by the emperor, or kaiser, Frederick William III. In the 1860s, on the advice of the distinguished German statesman Prince Otto von Bismarck, the kaiser began to absorb this collection of domains into the Empire of Germany, thus making it the largest and most powerful country in Europe.
She then immediately began attacking and subduing her neighbors—Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1871). It was the conquest of France that caused the discontent. In the Franco-Prussian War, after laying siege to Paris and reducing its inhabitants to a diet of cat meat, the Germans demanded two French provinces along the Franco-German border: Alsace, rich in coal and iron ore, and Lorraine, an agricultural breadbasket. This humiliation vexed the entire French nation, whatever their class or political affiliation, and spawned a resentful and bitter animosity lasting for generations. It figures prominently among the bitter chemistry that ignited World War I.
With the exception of France, at the time a republic, Europe was ruled by monarchies. To the east lay czarist Russia, which controlled parts of Poland and the Baltic states. To the south of Germany was the Hapsburg empire of Austria-Hungary, including what is now Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of Italy and Ukraine. Southernmost still were the tempestuous and angry states
of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Montenegro.
As Germany unified itself, Great Britain was the foremost industrial power in the world. But soon Germany began to challenge her, aided in no small part by the iron and coal of the conquered French provinces. The industrious Germans quickly eradicated illiteracy and made great strides in modern technologies: the production of steel, chemicals, electronics, transportation, finance, and, ominously, the most up-to-date military armaments. By the end of the nineteenth century Germany’s economy was booming and, in terms of overall effectiveness, she had the mightiest army in the world.
The early twentieth century, however, was a time of peace, the last of the prosperous Gilded Age that saw development of electric lights, motion pictures, automobiles, vast railway systems, and luxurious transatlantic shipping. It also saw enormous improvements in weapons and weapons systems, such as the machine gun. Until nearly the close of the nineteenth century, artillery—with the exception of mortars—was fired “line of sight,” meaning that gunners actually had to see the target. But the invention of high-tensile steel allowed the guns to get longer ranges and far more powerful to preregister fire over nearly every part of a battlefield. The machine gun of course revolutionized modern warfare almost overnight. One fully automatic weapon of the era, served by a three-man crew, could put out the firepower of an entire platoon of riflemen. The effect of these weapons on the battlefield would prove devastating when war broke out, and no one ever truly figured out how to defend against them except by dying in unacceptable numbers.
Winston Churchill summed up these great advances in technology as the nineteenth century came to a close: “Every morning when the world woke up, some new machinery had started running. Every night when the world had supper, it was running still. It ran on while all men slept.” Yet despite this abundance of technology, an undercurrent of discontent roiled the European continent.
Amid the turmoil came both a dramatic rise of nationalism as well as a growing hatred between ethnic and religious groups: Catholic versus Protestant, Muslim versus Christian—and everybody against the Jews. Colonial possessions provoked an outburst of pride, greed, vanity, and mistrust among both the rulers and the ruled. Add into the mixture the rising creed of socialism and it is easy to see how the kettle was overheating. It was especially true in Russia where the iron-fisted czar Nicholas presided over a nation teeming with socialists who kept alive their utopian dream of a classless society where everyone got their fair share—a world without suffering, poverty, or political oppression.
The same was true in Germany, where dissatisfaction among the laboring classes had in fact produced the largest Socialist Party in the world, which was constantly plotting to overthrow the government and the capitalist system. While Germans had the right to vote, the reins of power remained in the hands of the kaiser, no matter what the populous decreed.
Around this same time, European nations undertook a flurry of military alliances, the most threatening of which was when France united in a mutual defense pact with Russia—a treaty under which if one was attacked by an enemy the other would promptly come to its aid. This agreement particularly galled the Germans, being located between the two of them. It also prompted the chief of staff of the German army, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, to draw up his famous battle stratagem under which, if war broke out, the German army would immediately rush through neutral Belgium to conquer France, and then turn on the Russians before they could fully mobilize.
Among the more remarkable things about European diplomacy prior to World War I was the intimate family relationships between the rulers who would ultimately become the belligerents. These unusual associations all began with Great Britain’s Queen Victoria (granddaughter of King George III who reigned during the American Revolution). In 1837, at the age of eighteen, she became queen of England. With her husband, Prince Albert, a German, she had nine children who married into practically every royal house of Europe. Her oldest son, Prince Albert Edward, married a princess of Denmark and became king of England when Victoria died in 1901. His son George V succeeded his father as king of England just before World War I broke out.
One of Victoria’s daughters married a German prince, and her daughter—Victoria’s granddaughter—married Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Not only that, but Victoria’s firstborn daughter became the wife of the German kaiser Frederick III, and upon his death in 1888 their eldest son ascended the throne as Wilhelm II.
Thus, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II, and England’s King George V were all cousins—the descendants of Queen Victoria.
The new German kaiser was something of a military nut, especially regarding the navy, which was relatively small at the time of his ascension. He appointed himself a field marshal, as well as an admiral, and decreed that henceforth the attire for men at court would be the military uniform. He was particularly impressed with the Gatling gun (a gift of his cousin King George of England), and by the time World War I broke out the German army had twelve thousand of the Gatling’s successor, the machine gun, incorporated into their fighting battalions—the equivalent firepower of a 700,000-man army of riflemen.
In 1890 the kaiser fired Bismarck and along with him the old diplomat’s earnest desire to keep the peace in Europe. Not only that, he began treating Russia like an unwelcome relative, refusing to renew financial loans and provide other emoluments. This was where France stepped in with loans from its great House of Rothschild, and the aforementioned mutual defense alliance soon followed.
In the meantime the kaiser embarked on a foreign policy that seemed deliberately designed to vex his perceived enemies, which now included Britain, and he did so out of one of the world’s worst motives—jealousy. Wilhelm coveted Britain’s exalted position among the nations of the world. He desired its great worldwide empire upon which “the sun never set.”
Before long, the kaiser embarked Germany on a worldwide land grab—beginning in Africa with the Cameroons, Togoland, Tanganyika (East Africa), and German Southwest Africa and concluding by going after several strings of islands in the Pacific, including (unsuccessfully) the Philippines, which Douglas MacArthur’s father always suspected Germany had its eyes upon.
These conquests—if one might call them that—proved as much a burden as a boon. Just about everything worth taking in Africa and the Far East had already been claimed by the older imperial nations; the British had India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the choicest colonies in Africa; the French and Italians had most of North Africa; the Dutch had what is now Indonesia; and the Belgians had the Congo.
Then, in the early part of the twentieth century, Britain and France began signing a string of colonial trade agreements that alarmed the German foreign service as it indicated a smoothing of Anglo-French relations, which had been somewhat chilled since the Napoleonic Wars. Also, Britain formed an entente with Russia, which was already allied with France, setting off new suspicions in the Teutonic mind. Now that Russia, too, was in the picture, Germany trundled out her hoary complaint about Einkreisung, or “encirclement” by enemies, a claim she had first developed under Frederick the Great to explain the Seven Years’ War.
The kaiser reacted by authorizing a series of huge military appropriations designed to bring the German navy on parity with Great Britain’s fleet—including construction of several dreadnought-style battleships. This, in turn, alarmed the British, because supremacy at sea was the cornerstone of not only her national defense but also her position of worldwide power and empire. As Winston Churchill remembered: “All sorts of sober-minded people in England began to be profoundly disquieted. What did Germany want this great navy for? Against whom, except us, could she measure it, match it, or use it?” Thus began the greatest and costliest shipbuilding contest in the history of the world, which would continue unabated until the outbreak of war.
In the ensuing years Germany embarked on a foreign policy designed to harass, disturb, intimidate, and bully her neighbors, and the
German press and public became exceedingly hostile to the French and British. As Churchill put it, “All the alarm bells throughout Europe began to quiver.”
During this time the British and French began to surmise that if the Germans attacked France they would do it by coming through Belgium rather than simply crossing the Franco-German border, because after their defeat in 1871 the French had constructed a number of huge fortifications at Verdun, Belfort, and other locations to forestall such a maneuver. One tip-off had come some years earlier, following a conversation that the kaiser had with King Leopold. On that occasion the kaiser had politely asked the Belgian king whether, in the event of war, the German army could use his country as a doormat into France. Just as politely, King Leopold had refused, but in due course he informed the British about the kaiser’s remarkable request.
Meanwhile, the turbulent southern regions—the Balkans—began to boil over. In 1912 they rose up and managed to fling themselves free of the Ottoman Turks, who had cruelly ruled them for centuries. Then they turned on one another in a squabble for territory and hegemony. Back in Germany, an unfortunate transition had taken place in the military hierarchy. Following von Schlieffen’s resignation as the army’s chief of staff, the post fell to Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, the fifty-eight-year-old nephew and namesake of the famous field marshal Helmuth von Moltke who had led the Germans to victory over France in 1871. This present von Moltke had been an aide to the kaiser who dabbled in mysticism and played the cello. But at the same time that Bismarck, even in retirement, was warning that “the Great European war could come out of some damned foolishness in the Balkans,” von Moltke was declaring, “I believe war to be unavoidable and the sooner the better.”