Julie yeah, so, the mexican expedition and the border needs to be understood in the context of the mexican revolution. That is a conflict begins in 1910 with the ouster of a longstanding dictator of mexico. He is ousted by a man named francisco madero. He himself is killed soon after, and after he is killed, several revolutionary factions emerge from that. One of the factions that emerges is a fraction under a man that is called the constitutionalist. One of the people who is aligned with the constitutionalist is Francisco Pancho villa. Now, by 1914, the contitutionalists had become successful. They have largely managed to control a large part of the country. And at this point of success, pancho villa breaks with the constitutionalists. He is successful militarily against carranza for a long time, but during 1915 he actually has a series of military reverses against the current government. So he goes from having an army that is about 30,000 to 50,000 people operating mostly in the north of mexico, to having about 500 to 1000 troops under his command. And it is sort of this low point in his military career. He decides to start attacking americans at the border. He does this for a couple of different reasons. One is to stay relevant in the fight, in the revolution. The other is that Woodrow Wilson, who is president of the u. S. At that time, recognizes the current government in mexico as the rightful government. And pancho villa believes that this is due to a corrupt bargain that essentially carranza has given Woodrow Wilson secret claims to mineral rights or land rights in northern mexico in exchange for being recognized by the government. This allows carranza to actually buy arms from the United States, whereas pancho villa cannot. That is why he starts stepping up attacks on the border. First he attacks a train, leading to loss of life of americans. And then on march 9, 1916, his forces attacked the town of columbus, new mexico in the middle of the night. One column attacks the town and largely burns down the downtown. And one column attacks an Army Garrison at the camp right outside of town. Steve so we are going to watch the film in just a moment, but in order to better understand the border and what it was like back then clearly it is in the headlines today with the debate over the wall, but what was it like in 1916 . What would we have seen if we traveled to that area . Julie so, on the u. S. Side, you would find a remarkably safe border, considering that there was a very large war going on on the other side. Much of the mexican revolution, many of the major battles take place over the border around northern mexico. Many of the revolutionary leaders end up being from sonora, which is also in the north. The north of mexico is a very dangerous place. There arent many refugees coming over the border at that time to escape the fighting in northern mexico. On the u. S. Side, there are not that many attacks, considering the danger and the longstanding conflict that happens very, very close by to american soil. So there is the columbus, new mexico raid. 10 civilians are killed in that raid, eight soldiers are, before the mexican expedition is sent into new mexico to try to capture and kill pancho villa in retribution for the loss of life at columbus. There is a raid that happens also in may a little bit after that, so 1916, in a smaller town also pretty close by to columbus. But there are not really a whole lot of other raids that happen around that time. There are some shots that sometimes make it into the u. S. , but it is actually shockingly safe considering the scale of the conflict. Steve and yet, do you find it ironic that a century later, a different type of conflict, but still some of the same issues. Julie yeah, it is definitely interesting we are having a lot of the same issues today. Of course, the border is a different place. At that time, there was no border fence. Obviously there was no border wall. The border was relatively open. You could just walk across in most places. There were even some places in el paso and other towns where they had bars straddling the border so you could walk into the bar on one side and drink on the other side of the border. So it was really very open to back and forth travel between the two countries. Steve so lets roll the silent film. And if you are in a movie house in 1916 in the audience, what do you think the theatergoers would have thought about this . What would have been going through their minds . Julie i think they would have thought that it was a grand adventure, actually. Because the mexican expedition is a unique and interesting transitional point for the u. S. Army. Because it is really the last major Army Operation that uses horse cavalry. So, you have horses hitting the trail, camping for months at a time, really independently, as opposed to world war i, which happens right afterwards, which is large, major operations in trenches and in many ways doesnt have that sort of romantic, frontier feel that the mexican expedition certainly had. The mexican expedition though is interesting too, as youll see, because it is really the first time that the army uses trucks and airplanes in the field. So i think that people would have been interested in the sort of spirit of adventure and change that it embodies. Steve and of course all of this is chronicled in your book. The cover of your book, do you know where it was taken . Julie i do not know exactly where it is taken. It is march, 1916 in northern mexico. So it would have been somewhere in chihuahua. But you can see in the film, there is a Similar Group of men around a camp fire. Steve the film begins with a march to one of those encampments. So as we watch this, give us a sense of what are we looking at. Julie we are looking at infantry, and we are looking at mounted artillery. And i think we are going to see calvary first. This is what i am talking about, in terms of the sort of adventure that the mexican expedition would have held for people, because horse calvary had been used very extensively in the indian wars in the southwest of the u. S. From the 1880s to about this time. But this is really the last major Army Operation that uses them. And you can see the units are although this looks like a lot of people, having 100, 200 people together in a group of horse calvary is a much smaller unit than what would have been used in, say, world war i. So, it was a small number of men on horses on the trail. Steve arriving from where . Where do the recruits come from . Julie these are probably not recruits, these are probably regulars in the u. S. Army. These are career people, and they would have been coming from probably elsewhere in the southwest at first. So initially in the expedition, you have that 4800 troops. By the end, you have about 10,000 come down. So, some of them might have come from somewhere else besides the southwest. But at least initially, that is where they are coming from. The other thing is that the army at this time is much smaller than it is during world war i. There are only about 25,000 troops in the continental u. S. At this time, regulars. And the whole army is around 120,000, 130,000 people, compared to the millions who were fighting in france. This is actually a very small force. Steve and i ask you this in terms of context as we see these men arriving at their camp. The civil war ended in 1865, world war i was beginning to hover in europe in 1913, 1914. What was the u. S. Military like . How prepared were we for these kinds of conflicts . Julie well like i said, it is very small. A lot of the army is actually in farflung, remote places. A lot of them are in the philippines. A lot of them are in the panama canal zone. So you had these very small units in sort of farflung small camps in the United States, often times in the west. So you had the sort of small garrisons that in the southwest, at least, are really focused on capturing indian tribes. So, in the 1880s, they were essentially crossing the border back and forth between the u. S. And mexico, trying to catch the last of the apaches. Steve this appears to be a training mission. Is that correct . Julie this does look like training. So, before, you could see the signal corps, and they were they seemed to be setting up a portable telegraph machine. Now you see calvary training. So, again, this is a relatively small unit. Probably training and practicing how to move together in the field. Probably outside of either on the border at fort bliss or at the main camp that general pershing set up in northern mexico, which is their main headquarters through most of the mexican expedition. Steve and again, this is how they saw it back in 1916 in movie houses, correct . Julie that is a good question. So, this might have been seen in movie houses, it might have been seen as part of the newsreel. It was filmed by the signal corps. They do seem to have cut this together to essentially show the material both that the u. S. Army used during the mexican expedition and the material they needed Going Forward in world war i. So, part of the point of this film seems to have been to show some of the deficiencies in armaments and materials, and to make a case presumably for receiving more of it, and receiving more funding. Steve do you have any insights into how they trained the horses to carry the arsenal and the personnel . Julie that is a good question. I really dont know how they trained all of the horses. The used horses pretty extensively. They also used mules. You can see earlier in the film, we did not remark, but they used a lot of pack mules as well. Now you dont see them. But anyway, you do see a lot of pack mules as well. There was a lot of animal power that went into the old army and the functioning of the old army. Although i will say that pack mules, even though they were used extensively in the expedition, were pretty problematic in terms of what they could do, because they could, of course, carry large amounts of material down from the border to the advance headquarters for pershing. But because chihuahua is a desert, it is very dry, the mules actually had to carry their own fodder down to mexico. So they cant carry as much materials, which is part of why pershing turned to using trucks for the first time as part of the expedition, instead of just relying on animal power, even though trucks had really been untested as far as the u. S. Army was concerned. Steve general pershing, they called him blackjack pershing. A significant player in the modern military, correct . Julie yes. A very significant player. He had up until now an illustrious career. He had also been governor in the philippines. This is the first time he is really given a large army to command. So this is sort of a testing ground also, not only for new material for the army, but for John Pershing himself. He is able to prove himself in the field, he is able to command large units. He like i said, he tests new material, and he is able to show that he is an innovative leader and that he is able to attract a large degree of talent to him and loyalty from the soldiers, which was something that not every commander could do in the field. Steve they are going for their morning bath and had their own barber. Looking at all of this, there had to be a tremendous amount of support staff to handle the horses and all that came with that, of course, and just the basic needs of the men in the military. And they were all men at that time. Julie they were all men. So, there is a huge amount of support staff. There were so many, and they had to gear up so quickly that they actually do have to hire civilians to do some jobs, which caused a lot of resentment. Because civilians do ultimately have to do things like drive trucks and they are paid more than the soldiers at first. So pershing does try to eliminate civilian labor as much as he possibly can. Steve and of course indoctrination is key because they were in close quarters, especially during the time of the year where there could have been infestations of mosquitoes and hot temperatures along the u. S. mexico border. Julie right. There are really extremes of temperatures in chihuahua because chihuahua is a desert. But it also has high elevation. The men also encountered snow, cold weather, dust storms, in addition to desert weather later on in the year, in summer, and they would have been inoculated against typhoid fever and possibly smallpox in camp. And there is a relatively low rate of disease because of the armys vaccination schedule. Steve did others learn from that, did civilians learn from these vaccination programs . Julie that is a good question. I think to some degree, yes, it was a good testing ground for vaccinations in general and the efficacy of vaccinations. Especially in these places where you had large groups of people in close quarters. Steve and these soldiers who needed three meals a day. Julie they did, although the horse cavalry were often sent off with only three days of rations. They went out with very little food, very few supplies. And oftentimes, when they are not in camp, they are responsible for supplying themselves. So they are responsible for either finding cattle and slaughtering them and cooking them in the field, or purchasing whatever they can. So sometimes, they are able to purchase things in hard currency. Sometimes, they have to issue ious, which makes it very hard for mexicans to receive compensation. Steve is this a form of hazing back in 1916 . Julie that is a good question. I hadnt actually seen this before, but it looks fun. I will say, even though a lot of these sort of regulars that participated were career army soldiers, you do have a lot of National Guardsmen who are coming into the National Guard for the first time. Lots of college students, lots of young men who are looking for adventure and to have a good time. Steve and some down time, including playing with the mascot. Julie yeah, the army has dogs. The navy always adopts they always seem to adopt animals on the trail. Steve how do they keep them motivated . It seems based on what you wrote in their book, there was a lot of downtime. They had to train, but there was not always a battle they had to go to. Julie most of the time they didnt always have a battle to go to and they spent most of their time training, especially after june. From march to june, they are on the trail actively searching for pancho villa. But after that, they really spend a great deal of their time in camp training. And for the National Guardsmen, that is true really of the nine months that they are there. They really do not see action, but they do spend every day usually hiking, doing six to seven miles of hiking a day, doing drills, and that kind of thing. Steve i want to jump in, because as we look at the modern air force and navy pilots today, and what they operate, this was only 100 years ago. And yet look how far we have come. What is this . Julie so, this is kind of interesting because this is the captain, who was the commander of the first aero squadron in the mexican expedition. You can see him there in the center, sitting down in the hat. But this plane was not on the expedition. This looks like a Wright Brothers model a. And in fact, the planes that they took on the expedition were jm3s called jennys from the curtis company. And even those planes that they nys, were really quite inadequate for military use at the time. This is an even older plane that we see here. This is a plane that is about six, seven years older than that. So this is really not a plane that had a lot of military use, but even the jn3s, the jennys, they came in with eight to begin with. They only really are in service in mexico for about a month and a half. Six of them crashed. Two of them are cannibalized for parts. They really dont do well in the field. And part of the reason for that is that they go into spin very easily. They cannot climb past 10,000 feet. And in fact, the peaks in chihuahua are about 10,000 feet. So they cannot clear the crest of the mountains. And because of that, they really do crash relatively quickly. Steve we move from the planes to another part of the silent film. As we look at this screen and these gentlemen sitting front and center outside their camp. Explain this office and what they represent. Julie the two men that are sitting there, one is general hoyt, he is in command of the department of texas for a time. He retired, i believe, right after this. So he is, as you can see, he is quite aged already. But the department of the south is commanded by frederick. He is not in here. But he would have been the superior to hoyte. Steve and now we move from that to the supply wagons and the equipment train as they try to move it from one part of the country to these Training Camps and then to the front lines. Julie yeah. So here, you have wagons that are drawn by horses. Wagons, like i said, are used in the early part of the expedition. So, wagons, pack mules, trucks are used later. Wagons can only carry a certain amount of material, a little bit over a ton, but they really cannot carry a lot of material up steep grades. Which is part of the reason why pershing turns to trucks instead of wagons. Steve how common were these trains used by the military . Julie trains are used very commonly by the military north of the border. They are not allowed to use the mexican railways south of the border after march 18. So about a week into the expedition, they are prevented of doing so by an order by an orde by carranza. They actually do have to use pack animals instead. Steve we move from that to the doughboys, which many would associate with those troops in world war i, but also associated with these troops along the u. S. mexico border. Julie yeah. So, they have an explanation for where the term doughboy came from. The term it is unclear actually what the origin of the term is. It seems to be older than the civil war. But it is usually used to refer to American Expeditionary forces in world war i. There are a lot of stories of how they got that name. There is one there. Sometimes people say it is because of the dirt that soldiers got on their uniforms so it looked like flour. Some people say it is because of the fried dough that they ate. Maybe also on the trail or in the field, but it is not entirely clear where that comes from. Steve and generally speaking, were they well taken care of . Were there complaints or did most of the soldiers feel that they had what they needed . Julie they do have some problems early on with supplying troops. So troops do not have proper uniforms when they go into mexico. Mexico much of the time. They had summer uniforms. They are going to fight the fight in the desert, so the army does not bother to supply them with things like will the firstankets for few weeks. It is cold in mexico in the north, i