A century after American troops crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico, the memory of the 1916 border war with the guerrilla fighters of revolutionary leader Pancho Villa has faded.
But after the men of Hampton's Battery D, 1st Virginia Field Artillery were called up to support the increasingly serious incursion in late June, the Mexican Punitive Expedition quickly surpassed the news from war-torn Europe as the most talked-about story in the local papers.
Report after report filled the Daily Press as some 200 National Guardsmen hurriedly settled affairs with their families and employers. Business leaders, civic groups and churches rushed to mark the departure with patriotic banquets, dances and prayer services.
So caught up were the people of the lower Peninsula that more than 15,000 turned out early on June 27, when Civil War veterans, fire companies, civic organizations and military bands led Battery D on a mile-long parade from their Sunset Creek armory to the downtown train station.
Dozens of extra streetcars fueled the never-before-seen crowd, which stood seven and eight deep to watch the gunners and their escorts.
"Men and women cheered wildly and cried at the same time," the Daily Press reported, and "when the train slowly pulled out from the station the cheering was deafening."
That resounding send-off was just the beginning, however, of a nine-month adventure that would lead a green group of clerks, mechanics and businessmen to the wild desert country of southwest Texas, where weeks of rigorous drills with their guns and horses transformed them into battle-ready artillerymen.
"It wasn't a combat mission. They didn't cross the border. But they did learn to move in large formations and fire and maneuver their guns in ways that prepared them for World War I," former Virginia National Guard Command Historian John W. Listman Jr. says.
"The Mexican crisis was a gift. And the war in Europe would have lasted a year longer without the training and experience it gave the guardsmen."
Report for duty
Organized in late summer 1915, Battery D descended from the Peninsula Guards, which in 1898 had served in Cuba as volunteer infantrymen during the Spanish-American War.
But so new was the unit when Villa's raiders crossed over into New Mexico on March 9, 1916, burning the town of Columbus, stealing 100 horses and killing 18 Americans — including 10 U.S. cavalrymen — that it had only logged only two months of weekly drills with its recently delivered field guns and horses.
Responding immediately, the regular Army marched into the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua with nearly 5,000 troops.
But as Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing pushed deeper into the back country, his increasingly vulnerable supply lines required the Army to reposition the forces originally left behind to protect the Texas border.
That led to two more attacks in May, prompting President Woodrow Wilson to mobilize about 120,000 men of the National Guard.
"Mexico was in chaos. We'd just sent a couple of thousand troops to Vera Cruz in 1914," Virginia War Museum Educator Chris Garcia says.
"Nobody knew what was going to happen. So calling out the National Guard was a prudent decision."
Battery B received orders on June 19, and its members began reporting for duty early that evening.
The sense of urgency sparked by the crisis spread far beyond the armory.
"The city was thrown into a state of excitement by the announcement that Capt. Couch had received orders from the adjutant general directing him to hold his command in readiness for mobilization in Richmond," the Daily Press reported.
"Enthusiasm is at a high pitch among the artillerymen, who are anxious to proceed at once."
Still, eight days passed before their departure, during which the town not only staged a banquet, dance and outdoor prayer service but also raised funds to help meet the battery's costs.
Merchants National Bank President Hunter R. Booker led an effort to ensure the guardsmen would not suffer financially during their absence, vowing to give his clerks the "same pay while away with the battery as if they were left here at the bank."
Dozens of new recruits signed up, too, spurred by the thrill of the send-off.
More than 2,000 people attended a June 22 banquet at St. John's Church Parish House, where the men of the battery marched in through two columns of "beautiful young women wearing American flags as aprons … the uncrowned queens of Hampton."
A thousand more crowded a June 26 benefit dance that raised nearly $2,000.
Earlier that day, "the continual clatter of the iron-rimmed wheels and noise of the heavy gun wagons passing along the streets made the situation one which will long be remembered," the Daily Press reported.
The following morning Union veterans from the National Soldiers Home in Phoebus and Confederate veterans from the local R.E. Lee camp joined Spanish-American War veterans, several fire departments, 50-plus trolleymen, the band from Fort Monroe and numerous fraternal groups for the parade to the train station, which was kept in close order by marshals communicating through mounted Boy Scouts.
"Nearly every person on the Virginia Peninsula yesterday morning joined with the people of Hampton in the tribute to Battery D," the paper reported.
"Not since the days of the Spanish-American War, if even then, did the spirit of patriotism run higher," the Hampton Monitor added.
At Camp Henry C. Stuart outside the State Fairgrounds in Richmond, the 200-odd-man roster of Battery D shrank immediately, starting with 22 who failed the physical examination.
Dozens more left over the following weeks.
"They had more men than they needed, and they wanted to keep the best," Garcia says.
"So they started purging and sending people back."
Inducted into federal service on July 5, the Hampton men began training right away alongside batteries from Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond.
Weekend passes enabled them to visit their families and homes, while wagon-size care packages from Hampton kept them well-supplied with such treats as ice cream, cigars, cantaloupes and cigarettes, the Daily Press reported.
Though the battery was relatively well-equipped — possibly because of Hampton Clerk of Court Harry Holt Sr.'s close ties to Thomas B. Martin, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee — it still lacked all the uniforms it needed, and the long delays in fully outfitting the Virginia Guard delayed the 1st Field Artillery's departure for three months.
"Some of them had no uniforms. Some had no equipment," Garcia says.
"It shows you how poorly prepared Virginia and the Army were for such a massive call-up."
Not until Oct. 2 did the artillerymen finally set out for Texas, with Battery D traveling in rail cars marked up and down with the words, "HAMPTON VA."
Some sang a war song composed by two of the men, vowing to "knock the 'ell out of Villa's name and put the ran in Carranza!"
"This trip is quite a treat for a lot of the boys in the Battery," Sgt. Edgar Outten wrote.
"Some … have never been far from home and did not know what the mountains looked like."
Honed by Texas
Panoramic pictures from the Library of Congress show Camp Wilson near San Antonio as a vast expanse of thousands of tents housing Guardsmen from all across the nation.
Battery D occupied its own dirt street, which billowed with dust when it was dry and — according to both letters home and photos from the Virginia War Museum — grew so muddy when it rained that every square inch was riddled with boot prints.
Despite the often wet and hot conditions, the men trained every day "in the care of the horse, manning of the piece and reconnaissance instruction," the unit's official history notes.
By Nov. 2, they progressed so far that they broke camp and set out on a 25-mile march through the scrub live oaks, mesquite and cactus to Leon Springs, where live-fire and maneuvering drills took place day and night and pushed their training to a new level.
"Go to the movies and see a western scene, the horsemen galloping over the plains, then climbing hills, some so steep they have to dismount and lead the horses carefully over the rocky ledges," one artilleryman wrote in letter published by the Daily Press.
"And you will have a picture of what we did this afternoon."
Brushing off occasional threats from scorpions and rattlesnakes, some Battery D men flourished in the Texas outback, with one writing that "I never felt so well before in my life."
Others grumbled about the weather, which ranged from heat and humidity to sleet so heavy it covered the men and horses with ice, producing manes and tails like "solid bunches of icicles" and "rain coats so frozen they could stand up on their own."
What no one disagreed about as the constraint drills wore on, however, was the rapid transformation of the men into capable gunners and soldiers.
Though they never fired a shot in anger at Villa and his guerrilla band, the rounds they learned to discharge with previously unthinkable accuracy and speed made Battery D well-prepared when World War I erupted just three weeks after their March 11, 1917 return to Hampton.
"By the time Woodrow Wilson called up the Guard, he'd already made his decision about entering World War I — and he was looking for a way the Guard could train and flex its muscles," says John V. Quarstein, who describes the expedition in his book "World War I on the Peninsula."
"Just being in camp made a huge difference. Training in live-fire situations made a huge difference. Maneuvering and drilling on the border made a huge difference. We had to get ready for war — and, as it turned out, the war was not long in coming.
"Every one of these Guard units gets called up for World War I."
Erickson can be reached by phone at 757-247-4783.
ONLINE: Go to dailypress.com/history to see a photo gallery of Battery D's expedition to Texas.