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Authors: Eileen Welsome
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to kill as many of the foreigners as they
could. Armed with Mausers and machine guns and ancient dueling pistols, they climbed up onto the roofs and took up positions
around the plaza. Silently, they watched as American sailors and marines disembarked and advanced slowly, passing by cantinas
and pulquerias. The marines were dressed in floppy hats and khakis and the sailors had dyed their navy whites with coffee
grounds so that they would make less conspicuous targets.
The marines were to take the railroad station, the cable office, and the ice plant. The sailors were charged with securing
the telegraph office, post office, and the Hotel Terminal, where they would set up a semaphore on the roof to communicate
with Admiral Fletcher. A young naval officer named George Lowry was given the plum assignment of capturing the customhouse.
As he and a small contingent of men advanced across the broad promenade toward the building, the warmth seemed to have gone
out of the air and an eerie silence reigned. Then a sniper’s bullet whizzed through the air. All at once, gunfire roared from
parapets and rooftops, windows, doors and alleys. One sailor was shot in the head and toppled over dead. Several others were
wounded and fell to the pavement, writhing and screaming in agony. Lowry and his men raced for cover, dragging their injured
and bleeding comrades with them. They broke a window on the side of the customhouse and heaved themselves inside. Fletcher,
monitoring the battle from the deck of one of the battleships, heard the small-arms fire and sent four hundred additional
men ashore. Over the next two days, another three thousand men would be ordered into the city.
The U.S. forces fought block by block, house to house, basement to rooftop. One Veracruzaño sat on his balcony and calmly
read his newspaper, periodically stopping midsentence to shoot at the passing Americans. Other residents fired at the passing
troops from their basements. Both sides fought with extraordinary bravery.
In the midst of all this, the
Ypiranga
arrived. An American officer boarded the ship and explained that the customhouse had been seized to prevent the ship’s huge
cache of arms from reaching the Huerta government. The German captain agreed to remain in the outer harbor and then he quietly
set sail for another Mexican port, where he unloaded more than a thousand crates of munitions. Ironically, the munitions had
been purchased from the Remington Arms Company in the United States and then routed through Hamburg to escape the embargo,
since lifted.
The fighting in Veracruz continued for nearly two days. By the time the U.S. forces gained control of the town, 126 Mexicans
lay dead and another 195 wounded. The Americans also suffered significant losses: 17 marines or sailors were killed and 63
wounded. In Washington, members of the press corps noticed that President Wilson appeared to become almost physically ill
as reports of the carnage rolled in.
Carranza condemned the invasion as an attack upon Mexico’s sovereignty. But Villa reassured George Carothers that he wasn’t
going to let Huerta draw him into the conflict. “As far as he was concerned,” Carothers reported, “we could keep Veracruz.
. . . He said that no drunkard, meaning Huerta, was going to draw him into war with his friend.” To his followers, Villa gave
a more practical and less obsequious explanation: “It is Huerta’s bull that is being gored.”
Losing a million pesos a day in revenue, his army demoralized by losses, Victoriano Huerta finally resigned his post in July
of 1914 and departed for Europe, arriving just in time to witness the outbreak of World War I. The resignation may have saved
both his dignity and his neck. “By precipitating a conflict with the United States,” wrote one observer, “he retires with
a shred of honor; beaten by the Constitutionalists, he would have been disgraced definitely, if not
could. Armed with Mausers and machine guns and ancient dueling pistols, they climbed up onto the roofs and took up positions
around the plaza. Silently, they watched as American sailors and marines disembarked and advanced slowly, passing by cantinas
and pulquerias. The marines were dressed in floppy hats and khakis and the sailors had dyed their navy whites with coffee
grounds so that they would make less conspicuous targets.
The marines were to take the railroad station, the cable office, and the ice plant. The sailors were charged with securing
the telegraph office, post office, and the Hotel Terminal, where they would set up a semaphore on the roof to communicate
with Admiral Fletcher. A young naval officer named George Lowry was given the plum assignment of capturing the customhouse.
As he and a small contingent of men advanced across the broad promenade toward the building, the warmth seemed to have gone
out of the air and an eerie silence reigned. Then a sniper’s bullet whizzed through the air. All at once, gunfire roared from
parapets and rooftops, windows, doors and alleys. One sailor was shot in the head and toppled over dead. Several others were
wounded and fell to the pavement, writhing and screaming in agony. Lowry and his men raced for cover, dragging their injured
and bleeding comrades with them. They broke a window on the side of the customhouse and heaved themselves inside. Fletcher,
monitoring the battle from the deck of one of the battleships, heard the small-arms fire and sent four hundred additional
men ashore. Over the next two days, another three thousand men would be ordered into the city.
The U.S. forces fought block by block, house to house, basement to rooftop. One Veracruzaño sat on his balcony and calmly
read his newspaper, periodically stopping midsentence to shoot at the passing Americans. Other residents fired at the passing
troops from their basements. Both sides fought with extraordinary bravery.
In the midst of all this, the
Ypiranga
arrived. An American officer boarded the ship and explained that the customhouse had been seized to prevent the ship’s huge
cache of arms from reaching the Huerta government. The German captain agreed to remain in the outer harbor and then he quietly
set sail for another Mexican port, where he unloaded more than a thousand crates of munitions. Ironically, the munitions had
been purchased from the Remington Arms Company in the United States and then routed through Hamburg to escape the embargo,
since lifted.
The fighting in Veracruz continued for nearly two days. By the time the U.S. forces gained control of the town, 126 Mexicans
lay dead and another 195 wounded. The Americans also suffered significant losses: 17 marines or sailors were killed and 63
wounded. In Washington, members of the press corps noticed that President Wilson appeared to become almost physically ill
as reports of the carnage rolled in.
Carranza condemned the invasion as an attack upon Mexico’s sovereignty. But Villa reassured George Carothers that he wasn’t
going to let Huerta draw him into the conflict. “As far as he was concerned,” Carothers reported, “we could keep Veracruz.
. . . He said that no drunkard, meaning Huerta, was going to draw him into war with his friend.” To his followers, Villa gave
a more practical and less obsequious explanation: “It is Huerta’s bull that is being gored.”
Losing a million pesos a day in revenue, his army demoralized by losses, Victoriano Huerta finally resigned his post in July
of 1914 and departed for Europe, arriving just in time to witness the outbreak of World War I. The resignation may have saved
both his dignity and his neck. “By precipitating a conflict with the United States,” wrote one observer, “he retires with
a shred of honor; beaten by the Constitutionalists, he would have been disgraced definitely, if not
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