100 years ago yesterday morning, Pancho Villa and his Mexican rebels invaded the United States at Columbus, New Mexico, about 100 kilometers west of El Paso, coming in across the border from the adjacent village of Palomas (next to Laguna Palomas, one of the dry desert lake beds that occasionally floods and also is a regular source of massive dust plumes- all things we're researching). That set in motion the "Punitive Expedition" led by General Pershing, or, as my grand-pappy called it, the "Mexican Fracas." Records of the campaign discuss how the stifling dust storms of the Chihuahuan Desert created a great challenge for the American forces, and allowed the Mexicans to take cover and escape or hide (a tactic now used by ISIS and other forces in the Middle East).
My grandfather Henry F. Kamps (photo below in the Army uniform, near the end of his career) was one of Pershing's sidemen, chasing Pancho into Mexico. As a little boy, Grandpa would entertain me with tales of riding his horse in the wild West in the Army- for a young lad, that was a double dip of awesomeness, whoa, Grandpa was a soldier AND a cowboy! About a decade ago, long after Grandfather died (he passed in the early 1970s), my mother and I were looking through some old family records, and found out that Grandpa was the first member of my family to live in El Paso- he was stationed at Fort Bliss- and could be said to be amongst the first Americans to do on-the-ground field reconnaissance of the Chihuahuan Desert terrain, as well as undoubtedly observe its arid landforms and dusty winds. My oldest sister tells me that Grandpa Kamps told her that since he was young and just starting his military career at the time, they wouldn't let him carry a gun, but instead, he was one of the mounted troops carrying the American flag in the Punitive Expedition. Grandpa was apparently quite a good cavalry officer: we found records that he took part in equestrian competitions at Fort Bliss on his faithful stallion "Rex," and won awards for horsemanship.
General Pershing liked Grandpa well enough that (lucky him?) Henry was chosen to go over to Europe with "Black Jack" and the Allies when the USA entered World War I, and he supposedly helped survey and lay out some trenches (via the US Army Corps of Engineers or equivalent) in the last days of trench warfare; he participated in at least one of those infamous battles, and luckily survived. Grandpa Kamps had a long career as an army officer, rising to Lieutenant Colonel, and staying on active duty through World War II (as an administrator/manager of a military depot in Oregon, as well as in the Army justice/legal system) and finally retiring after the Korean war, living in the Cleveland area before moving to California.
The last photo below is me, little "Tommy," apparently a horsethief as well as rebel (notice my "Texas Stallion"?), perhaps pretending that he was one of Pancho's men firing back at Grandpappy's forces. Little boys in the USA like to play Cowboys and Indians, or, perhaps, soldiers and revolutionaries?
And now Henry Kamps' grandson is using satellites from space, lasers, and atom smashers to study that same dusty terrain Grandpa traversed with the flag on horseback. How far we've come.
For our local newspaper retrospective, see this: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/history/2016/03/08/100-years-later-columbus-remembers-pancho-villa/81465718/
And as a coda, here's a video clip of one of my favourite songs ever. It's got Pancho, Lefty (I can't remember if my grandpa was left-handed or not?), "the desert down in Mexico," dust (bit down South), and Cleveland. I have to admit I feel like Pancho (in this song) sometimes- after all, I almost indeed met my match, you know, on the desert down in Mexico a dozen years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment