Uncle Sam's Unknown Heroes Of The Border Patrol.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 13, 1913:
While Everybody Has Been Following the Thrilling News About Mexico Our Cavalrymen Have Been Watching the Rio Grande Frontier, Amid Hardship and Danger, with Scarcely a Word of Praise or Thanks — and There They Are Yet.    MEXICO during the last three years has been what the newspaper man terms a "first-page yarn." All who read the news of the day are more or less familiar with the turbulence, disorder and chaos that have marked the progress within these years of the republic to the south of the Rio Grande. Every well-informed man and woman knows about the struggle of Madero, that ended in the capitulation of Ciudad Juarez and the banishment to European exile of old Porfirio Diaz, the "iron man" of Mexico; they know how Madero entered Mexico City in triumph, how he failed to make good, how he died a miserable death at the hands of the men he had trusted. They know about the little skirmishes, ofttimes approaching the dignity of military engagements, that have been fought along the American border; they have read about the killing of American men and women and all that, but there is one thing connected with the Mexican troubles about which the average American knows little.
    That is the American patrol, the splendid body of cavalrymen who have silently and gallantly ridden their tortuous way along the Rio Grande or the desert boundaries of New Mexico, Arizona, and California — always courteous, always merciful, always considerate, yet always ready for any emergency, the men to whom the Government of the United States intrusted the enforcement of neutrality and the protection of Americans on the American side; the men who rode into the desert country, stayed there and are there yet; the men who have made good so noiselessly that only a few people have found it out.
    They have, within the last four years, ridden more than 1,000,000 miles along the banks of the historic river that becomes international at El Paso and which enters the Gulf near Brownsville. Passengers by day on the Sunset Limited have seen the little three-tent camps that dot the American side of the border wherever the railway comes within hailing distance of the international line. They have seen the flag fluttering in the wind and have returned the cheery greeting of the cavalrymen as they slowly galloped along their lonely beat, their eyes on the border, ready at the first moment's notice to assert their authority as representatives of law and order.
    From Matamoras in the State of Tamaulipas, opposite Brownsville on the American side, all the way to Yuma, the little adobe town that stands near the spot where California, Arizona and Mexico touch, and on to San Diego, is the line of the American border patrol, and it is along that arid stretch that the men in khaki have been riding for the past three years with no present signs of relief, of a return to pleasanter duties further north.
    At the present time there are six regiments of cavalry on the border, whose presence means the suppression of filibusters, the keeping in their own "backyard" of warlike Mexicans, and, lastly, the protection of American frontiersmen and their families all the way from the point where the Rio Grande ends in the Gulf to the Mexican boundary line to the south of San Diego.
    These regiments are the Second at El Paso, one of the crack horse commands of the army; the famous Third Cavalry, now at San Antonio, the regiment that led the way into Mexico in 1847, and which would have had the honor of repeating the feat had the United States intervened a few months ago when Mexico City was being riddled with shot and shell; the Fifth and the Ninth, both of which are held ready for instant service in Arizona; the Thirteenth, which is patrolling the troublesome New Mexico side of the border, and the Fourteenth, which is scattered all the way from Fort McIntosh on the American side, opposite Neuvo Laredo, to the little plains town of Marfa, one of the stopping places between San Antonio and El Paso.
    They are a fine aggregation of fighting men, these of the six regiments. Far removed from the glitter of the cities, with the exception of those that are in San Antonio and El Paso, they are yet a contented lot — every one is an American of the fighting type, making the best of a situation that a civilian, were he compelled to change places, would term what Sherman once called war. Of all these regiments the Third has seen the most border service. Its story is one of hardship borne with a smile, of sleepless nights beneath the semi-tropical heavens, of lonely rides along the banks of the sluggish Rio Grande, or across the desert plains of New Mexico and Arizona, every man among them responsible for the dignity and honor of the Nation to whose colors they are pledged, and, as the records will show, every one of them worthy of the confidence reposed in them.
    Matamoras, Hidalgo, Laredo, Eagle Pass, Piedras Negras, which before the ascendency of Madero was Ciudad Porfirio Diaz; Del Rio, Ojinaga, Presidio, El Paso, Douglas, Naco, Nogales, Yuma, and Calexico are names that these guardians of the border will never forget. Every one of them recalls a memory of something that thrills or disgruntles, and at each and every one of them the border patrol is a household word.
    They are the by-way stations where the east-bound and west-bound patrols cross each day, and each has played a part more or less prominent in the turbulent life on the border since that day in the early Winter of 1910, when Francisco Madero crossed back into Mexico and started the fighting that was to prove that the apparently impossible could be accomplished.
    Imagine yourself on duty in a country where the nearest moving picture machine is a couple of hundred miles away, where the number of those who speak your own language are as one to ten, where only mesquite trees and the cactus are alive to tell the passerby that the land is not entirely dead, where every mountain is as bare of life and vegetation as the rock of Gibraltar, where newspapers come not once a day but once a week or even once a month, where the mails are correspondingly few, where settlements of a hundred or a couple of hundred people look to you like big cities, where the days are always hot, in some places, the water is so scarce that baths are a luxury of the first order — imagine all this and you have a picture of the land where the American border patrol works. Imagine that you can see, here and there, at intervals of fifty or a hundred miles, those little camps of two, three, or four tents, the American flag flying above each — each the home of a detachment of the patrol. Do that, and you will know what the "border" is.
    Take the Pecos Bridge, the great railway structure that spans the Pecos River at a height of 321 feet, a height nearly the equal of a block and a half on an ordinary New York street. The bridge is at Viadut. 785 miles west of New Orleans and 406 miles east of El Paso. The destruction of this bridge in the event of intervention in Mexico would almost paralyze the rail communication with the sunset country to the west of San Antonio. Therefore the War Department took cognizance of that possibility and ordered a company of regulars to camp on either side of the structure. Now and then some venturesome soldier among them threaded his way down into the canyon to fish for a holiday dinner for himself and his comrades. The river below was so far away that the water was brought to them by trains, and there is a story that, the railroad whose property was being protected charged the Government for the water its soldiers drank in order to live.
    There are a few among the border patrol stations that stand out from among all the others. One is Presidio, a little half-Texan, half-Mexican village, on the Rio Grande opposite Villa de Ojinaga in Mexico. Presidio rejoices in a population of ninety people and to get to it the patrol had to ride a hundred miles over dangerous, unknown mountain trails, taking their supplies, packed army fashion, on the backs of faithful, sure-footed, little burros.
    Why anybody ever wanted to capture Ojinaga is one of the comic-opera puzzles of the various Mexican revolutions, but it is a fact that every time there is a fresh outbreak both sides scamper for the poor little place, and, once there, begin a bombardment, the only purpose of which, so far as can be ascertained, is the completion of the demolition that began near the end of Madero's western campaign and kept up intermittently to the present day. It was at Ojinaga that Madero's men used, with more or less effect, the old War of 1812 cannon that was taken from the plaza in El Paso. Off and on for three years they have been fighting around Ojinaga, and a detachment of the patrol is always on hand to see to it that the play is staged entirely on the Mexican side of the river.
    Then there is Laredo. It is in a country full of spots favored by filibusters, both American and Mexican, and the patrol in that region is ever on the alert to enforce neutrality. On one occasion Lieut. Johnson of the Third Cavalry and a couple of his men were riding along the border line when they saw a fine touring automobile headed for the river. It was the dry season and the machine could have easily crossed into Mexico. Johnson halted the machine, searched it, and, in addition to two Mexican rebel officers, he uncovered several thousand rounds of ammunition and enough rifles to arm a platoon of soldiers. The rebels were arrested and the automobile, unless it has since been auctioned off, is still the property of the United States.
    One day there came into El Paso a bronzed veteran of the patrol. He was a cavalryman from the New Mexico detachment. He seemed lost in a city — it had been so long since he had seen a real one. He was surrounded by a crowd. People asked him about the life in the desert.
    "Oh, it's all right," he said, languidly," and if you know how, you don't mind much. You see, I took a book on astronomy and at night I got acquainted with the stars. They're always bright where I have been.
    "Say," he added with a twinkle in his eye. "I believe I know every star in the heavens by its first name now."
    The next day he was back on his way to the desert. In all probability he is there now. alert and watchful, to see that Uncle Sam is not taken advantage of by what he terms "the greasers."
    Brig. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, who has just assumed command of the border patrol, with headquarters in El Paso, was, until his promotion a few weeks ago, in command of the Third Cavalry, in point of service the veteran command on the border. Recently he referred affectionately and with a show of pride to the splendid service rendered the Nation by the troopers of his famous old command.
    "On one of their border assignments," he said, "the troops of the Third were sent into the field and distributed singly from Brownsville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, to old Fort Hancock, less than fifty miles east of El Paso.
    "The length of the line, measured along the main roads and trails, was about 1,100 miles, but the ground actually covered by the troops was about 800 miles. Of the 300 miles along the river not patroled by those troops, some portions were covered by detachments of other regiments, while other portions could not be patroled at all because of precipitous mountains and canyons.
    "The patrols were small, and after the country was finally explored and known by the organizations that had to cover it, every part of the river assigned to the Third Cavalry troops was patroled at least once a day and in many cases twice, while in addition numerous special patrols and detachments were used for night work, to watch fords and for other special purposes.
    "Each troop on the border had an average of about four sub-stations on a front of eighty miles, from which substations patrols were sent out daily to connect with patrols from adjoining stations or sub-stations. These sub-stations were commanded by noncommissioned officers, who were relieved by others from time to time. The reports from both civilians and officers who happened to visit those sub-stations, concerning the zeal, the alertness, the intelligence, and practical good sense shown by those noncommissioned officers who were often suddenly confronted by some difficult or delicate situation, on which they had to act without advice, are without exception most complimentary."
    The story of the Third is the story of the Second and the Fifth and the Ninth and the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth. Each has a story of self-sacrifice, of strict attention to duty, of rigid discipline, and, with it all, of contentment and loyalty to the flag under any and all conditions.