Thomas C. Hart as chief of staff, Landing Force, U.S. Navy in Mexican Waters. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart
At first, Major General Frederick Funston, the field commander, impressed Hart as “quite a man from a business standpoint” but, after observing him during some evening drinking bouts, Hart determined that the general did not have “the social graces” that his position demanded.19 Several weeks later Hart came face to face with the general’s drinking problem when, accompanied by a lady, he walked over to Funston’s table during a dance. Funston was so drunk that he had “to use both hands and his teeth” to stagger to his feet. Then the general began what Hart called a “maudlin conversation” and was in such a state “that there was nothing to do but turn my back. I went straight for his Chief of Staff with blood in my eye and said ‘This is no place for your General and he has got to get into his quarters as soon as it can be done.’” While Hart tried to keep the curious away, the chief of staff led the general away without too many people noticing. It was not that Tommy was a prude, rather his sense of propriety was offended by the sight of a senior officer demeaning himself in public. A lot of the officers attending the function were far senior to Lieutenant Commander Hart and they, apparently, were not offended enough to take such peremptory action but, as it later became increasingly clear, when setting his course, Tommy often paid little attention to what others did. As to Funston personally, Hart’s judgment was that “it all goes to prove that a man who was pretty good at bush-whacking war-fare among Dagos and who was above all an excellent press agent for himself doesn’t necessarily make a good General to represent us under such circumstances.” It made Tommy mad and although he was aware that letting people know how he felt would not make him popular, particularly with the army, he thought he was right and, as he told Caroline, “on the whole I don’t think it will hurt me.”
Tommy was far more impressed with his own commanding officer, Captain Roy Simpson, whom he considered “one of the Navy’s best.” “He is an excellent seaman,” Hart wrote, and that is a quality he always looked for in a superior. As a leader of men, Simpson was “a sympathetic but firm disciplinarian.” That, too, Tommy admired. Above all he was “a splendid gentleman” and that put him at the top of Tommy’s list as well as in marked contrast to General Funston. But studying Simpson, fishing, and going on shore occasionally was hardly enough to keep Hart satisfactorily occupied. His frequent letters home make it obvious that he was bored and more than a bit lonely. He missed the children, whom he referred to as either “the livestock” or by their pet name “the Dee Dees,” and most definitely he missed Caroline.
There often was not even much to say about the war; his letters on 27 November and 5 December, however, were exceptions. He had commented before about the Mexicans, for whom he had very little respect. In these letters, though, he gave a full picture of Veracruz, lapped by the effects of the revolution. The scenes in the city were to him something like a burlesque on the Latin-American military. With the Minnesota at anchor within a hundred yards of the principal pier for several days, Tommy had a seat in the dress circle. The pier swarmed with soldiers and their camp followers. The latter, he explained, among their other duties served as the quartermaster corps for the army. Each soldadera got a certain portion of the pay each month—when there was pay—to use for supplies and provisions in the barracks or in the field. The soldier took the rest of the money, drank it up, “beats the lady if he feels like it and all hands are happy.” There were men and boys, women and girls, and swarms of horses, none of which were more than skin and bone—a fact that, as a horse lover, Tommy was quick to notice. Uniforms were chosen to suit the whim of the wearer with little uniformity, discounting the fact that all were dirty, wrinkled, and torn. In aggregate, the group presented a distinctly ragtag appearance. Of discipline there was little, of alcohol there was a sufficiency, of organization there was none. The sailors in the “Minnie” watched with ill-disguised humor, for instance, as the Mexican officers loaded, unloaded, and then loaded again two decrepit steamers, all, as Tommy wrote, “in the way of making up their minds.”
Amazingly, there seemed to be relatively little trouble between the Mexican soldiers and the people of Veracruz, perhaps because the soldiers were too busy fighting among themselves. The revolutionary leader, General Carranza, “El Jefe,” along with the leader of his army, General Alvaro Obregón, and his entire cabinet had arrived in town the day before Tommy wrote the above description. Word had it that before leaving Mexico City they had stripped the place pretty well clean, at least “we see train loads of automobiles (a particularly favorite variety of loot) and goods coming in.” The money from Mexico City’s banks was circulating freely around Veracruz except that which was being prepared for shipment to Paris and other points east. At a banquet held in his honor, Carranza was reported to have heartily applauded a speech in which it was proposed to rob and kill all foreigners. To Tommy this seemed hardly appropriate, since all the foreign consuls were present at the banquet, or likely, since Carranza did not need a war going on inside Veracruz when he still had so many enemies outside. In any case, it made for interesting speculation and fascinating viewing.
Several weeks later a chance came to get closer to the stage and he duly reported what he saw thereon to Caroline. The admiral allowed him an afternoon’s shore leave and, even though he knew the town would be almost dead in the afternoon, Tommy leapt at the chance. What he found was a very dirty, very sleepy community absolutely crawling with Mexican soldiers. They were not acting like soldiers and most of them looked exactly like what they were—farmers carrying guns. They had set up housekeeping under the broad eaves of the warehouses along the waterfront. It was rudimentary housekeeping, to be sure: “no bedding—a serape [blanket] or two to break the wind—for it doesn’t occur to them to put up screens to hide their very domestic and private affairs—one or two battered cooking utensils and that’s about all.” Most of the shops were shuttered because the merchants did not care to do business with the rabble, not because of their appearance or personal habits, but because of their method of payment. The money from Mexico City had apparently run out because now the army had set up a printing press which was turning out bills as the need arose. Obviously this “currency” had no present or future value, but it took real courage for a shopkeeper to tell that to a Mexican soldier.
Tommy did hear something about what had happened in Mexico City. It seems that when it became clear that the counterrevolutionaries under Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata were going to be successful in driving Carranza and the “constitutionalists” out of the capital, Carranza made a calculation of sorts. Why not pull out quickly and let Zapata, who was closer to the city than Villa, be the first “liberator”? Among the advantages was the fact that Zapata was renowned as a bandit, so he could be counted upon to rob and pillage indiscriminately. That being the case, or so the story went, before they left, the “constitutionalists” could commit whatever outrages they liked because the whole mess would ultimately be blamed on the Zapatistas. Therefore, the “constitutionalists” had taken as much loot as they could carry, only to find out later that the Zapatistas had behaved themselves admirably.
Tommy could not vouch for the truth of that story, but he did know that Veracruz was overrun with automobiles in all sorts of conditions. There seemed to be little mechanical talent in Carranza’s army; when a problem arose with one of the cars they simply parked it. For about $200 Tommy was assured he could buy an excellent—eminently repairable—vehicle. One of his friends was offered a nearly new Packard for $750. The reason it was on the market? One blown-out tire, blown out when a friend of the present owner cut it with a knife.
To Hart it appeared that General Obregón was the real strong man and that El Jefe was just a figurehead. But there was still a lot of maneuvering for position. The United States was now supporting the bandit, Pancho Villa, but Tommy thought it unwise to intervene and try to squeeze the “constitutionalists” out of power. There seemed no leader who could command