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Global Analysis, History, North America

100 Years Ago: Veracruz 1914 (Part 2)

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Sailors Parading through Veracruz (Naval Historical and Heritage Command)
Sailors Parading through Veracruz (Naval Historical and Heritage Command)

This is the second installment in a three part series on the American occupation of Veracuz in 1914.  The first article can be found here.

On the morning of 21 April 1914, Rear Admiral Frank F. Fletcher, commander of the U.S. Navy task force offshore Veracruz, Mexico, complied with the order he had received from from Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels the night before. Fletcher ordered the landing of 1200 Marines and sailors from his ships to seize the customs house in Veracruz in order to prevent the delivery of the weapons onboard the German freighter Ypiranga to the Mexican Army, even before he was reinforced by ships commanded by his counterpart off Tampico, Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo, and the Atlantic Fleet’s steaming from Norfolk. According to John Eisenhower’s Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, the Americans anticipated resistance from the Veracruz garrison of 600 soldiers, and 2000-3000 other Mexican troops in the region that could be augmented by militia and freed prisoners. Fletcher hoped that moving ashore quickly  would preempt a defense by local troops, enable a potential occupation, and allow him to avoid using his ships’ big guns to obliterate the city.

According to another account of the Veracruz operation, Jack Sweetman’s the Landing at Veracruz: 1914, the “Naval Brigade,” commanded by Captain William Rees Rush, the commanding officer of USS Florida, was composed of two regiments: the First Marine Regiment (22 officers and 578 men assembled from Marines onboard Fletcher’s ships) and the First Seaman Regiment (30 officers and 570 sailors from Florida and USS Utah).  They went ashore from their ships anchored in the harbor onboard whaleboats towed by motor launches to Pier Four in the port.

As soon the landings started, the American consul in Veracruz telephoned General Gustavo Maass, the local Mexican commander, encouraging him not to fight back and allow the Sailors and Marines to come ashore unopposed.  Maass, in a rage, instead immediately informed 100 men from a regiment billeted nearby to engage the Americans.  After a conversation with the Minister of Defense, Maass was forced to reverse himself, however, as the Minister instructed him to withdraw his troops ten miles inland to the town of Tejería.  The Mexican Army’s involvement in the fight thus almost immediately ended, with the bulk of resistance over the next few days conducted by Veracruz’s civilian residents, who had some military training and organization as a militia (the “Society of Defenders of the Port of Veracruz”) as part of a program Huerta had implemented the previous year.

That same morning, Ypiranga was sighted steaming towards the harbor and was interdicted by crew from USS Utah.  The master cooperated and provided shipping documents to the boarding team, which ironically showed that the weapons on the ship had not originated in Hamburg, but were Remingtons made in the U.S. that had been routed through Europe to evade Wilson’s embargo on arms exports to Huerta’s army.

With the Mexican Army out of the fight, one of the main sources of resistance left was from the Naval Academy, where cadets fired at the at the Americans landing at Pier Four.  They emulated the example of the niños heroiques, cadets at the Mexican military academy in Mexico City in 1847 who threw themselves to their deaths from the cliffs of Chapultepec to save the flag and avoid surrender to a previous generation of American invaders.  The cadets defending the Naval Academy in 1914 soon joined the ranks of the honored dead after fire from the guns of Fletcher’s ships silenced their resistance (enabled by Chief Boatswain John McCloy, who drove the motor launch he commanded towards the Academy, fired against it to draw a response, thus allowing the location of the defending cadets to be spotted and engaged by the ships’ guns, an act earning McCloy his second Medal of Honor).

That afternoon Admiral Fletcher cabled Washington with his first report of the landing stating that

“Mexican forces…opened fire with rifle and artillery after our seizure of the Custom House…Ypiranga arrived Veracruz two PM anchored in outer harbor and [was] notified he would not be allowed to leave port with munitions of war aboard.  Holding Custom House and section of city in vicinity of wharves and Consulate.  Casualties two PM four dead twenty wounded.”

The following day on 22 April, additional forces flowed into Veracruz with the arrival of ships and Marines from both Tampico and the Norfolk-based Atlantic Fleet, with the additional Sailors and Marines augmenting the Brigade ashore and expanding the American occupation throughout the whole city by engaging in fierce house-to-house fighting.  The famous Marine hero Smedley Butler, then a Major, described a urban battle scene not particularly different from those in which Marines would fight throughout the next century:

“The sailors who traveled openly through the streets were badly shot up, not only by Mexicans but in at least one instance by their own men, but the Marine casualties were slight.  Two of my men were killed and four or five wounded.  We Marines decided on different tactics than the sailors.  Stationing a machine gunner at one end of the street as a lookout, we advanced under cover, cutting our way through the adobe walls from one house to another with axes and picks.  We drove everybody from the houses and then climbed up on the flat roofs to wipe out the snipers.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan apologized to the German government for the unlawful detention of Ypiranga.  Bryan, like President Woodrow Wilson and Navy Secretary Daniels was well known as a devout Christian with a pacifist reputation and opposition to the military adventurism of the previous Republican administrations in Latin America and the Philippines, but was ironically overseeing the violent invasion of one of the U.S.’s closest neighbors on remarkably flimsy grounds.

By 23 April Admiral Fletcher had transferred his command ashore with most of the resistance having melted away, but, according to Sweetman’s account, was unable to convince any of the local authorities to restore some form of government, as a law passed in the wake of the 1862 French invasion of Mexico made holding “office under a foreign power occupying Mexican soil” a criminal offense.  The official casualty figures by 24 April listed 126 Mexicans killed and 195 wounded (an amount probably significantly lower than the actual total, since these numbers were based only on wounded and dead recorded by local hospitals), with 17 killed and 63 wounded Americans.

Although the Naval Brigade had been reinforced and occupied virtually all of Veracruz, Admiral Fletcher was concerned that the Mexican Army was massing up to 16,000 troops in the vicinity of the city, dwarfing the number of Marines and Sailors ashore, many of whom were also needed back on ship in case of future operations at sea.  Therefore the U.S. Army’s Fifth Reinforced Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, was dispatched from the U.S. on 24 April, arriving a few days later.  After negotiating the status of the Marines, the Army troops went ashore and took responsibility for the city from the naval units in a ceremony on 30 April (the debate over who “owned” the Marines foreshadowed future arguments over task organization in a joint force.  Ultimately the Marines that were attached to Navy ships returned to their afloat commands, while the rest of the force “chopped” to Army control).  Despite significant support for a broader war with Mexico in the press and segments of Congress, Funston led an uneventful, combat-free, occupation of Veracruz for another seven months as the machinations associated with a diplomatic solution to the crisis were worked out.

Stay tuned for the third and final installment of this series, which discusses the aftermath of the occupation.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff. He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

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America Should End Mercenary Contracts (Part II)

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This feature is special to our Private Military Contractor (PMC)’s Week – a look at PMCs’ utility and future, especially in the maritime domain.

By Tim Steigelman

Assume America’s vital interests are threatened by a distributed network of tribal insurgents Country Orange. The American government needs to close with and engage the enemy. The Orange government agrees to either openly willingly allow or silently cooperate with American military actions in Orange.

American military planners can either send in uniformed military, or PMCs. Preferring to privatize this operation, the government hires (the fictitious) “Mercenaries ‘R Us” to handle the job. To maximize its profits, Mercenaries ‘R Us declines to armor its contractors’ wheeled vehicles or aircraft, obviates back-up communications devices, decides against individual body armor, and arms its mercenaries only with pistols and long guns. They keep a light footprint and send small teams out into known hostile territory. The inevitable happens, and the enemy successfully ambushes the contractors, with many killed and wounded.1

If the injured PMCs were instead American servicemembers, they would be given medical treatment and rehabilitation through military medicine. The VA, for all its flaws, would attempt to help the wounded recover and restart their life after their injuries. If the fallen were uniformed military, their survivors would be taken care of with survivor benefits. All of these benefits were enacted by Congress to support the men and women who go abroad to do the nation’s work in harm’s way.

In our example, Mercenaries ‘R Us sent its employees downrange to do America’s bidding. That is where the similarities to the uniformed military members end. PMCs are not entitled to use military medicine.2 There is no VA for contractors. Death benefits are limited to whatever Mercenaries ‘R Us has arranged for its employees and their survivors—likely very little.3 As long as the stock price stays high and the dividends keep coming, the shareholders are unlikely to have very much concern for the human toll of warfare.4 Battles fought in the name of the American people may not be watched particularly closely by a group of investors primarily concerned with the bottom line.

In other words, by hiring Mercenaries ‘R Us to fight its battles, America has externalized the cost of war, particularly caring for its combat wounded and the survivors of the fallen. No congressional committees to answer to, no pictures on the nightly news honoring the fallen, no unpleasant reminders of the horror of war. The policymakers get to conduct their military expedition, and the economic cost is borne by the shareholders of Mercenaries ‘R Us.

But even on the economic front, hiring PMCs may not be wise in the first place, as contractors may not cost any less overall than uniformed servicemembers.5 Nor does outsourcing insulate the government from responsibility for its actors, because when the government contracts out to private actors to perform public services, those actors become agents for the state.6 Moreover, contract warfare seems to skirt at least the spirit of mandatory Congressional oversight of the nation’s military.7 For all these reasons and as the hypothetical above shows, the inherent tension between public, military service and private ends is fraught with peril.

Private military contractors are one facet of the military-industrial-congressional complex that ought to be dismantled. The profit motive is out of American prize courts, and letters of marque have fallen into disuse. The modern renaissance of PMCs seems an anachronism, perilously like the “large Armies of foreign Mercenaries” that so offended the founders. As disparate personalities as Machiavelli and Washington well understood, mercenaries introduce a host of problems that outweigh their seeming availability as ready, armed manpower. America should get out of the mercenary business.

Tim Steigelman is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Oceans and Coastal Law at the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, Maine. He practices business law and admiralty at the Portland firm Kelly, Remmel & Zimmerman, and is a reserve naval officer. The opinions above are solely his own, and do not purport to express the views of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor any agency or department of the United States, nor any other organization or client.

1. This hypothetical is drawn from Burke v. Air Serv. Intern., Inc., 685 F.3d 1102 (D.C.Cir. 2012).

2. Out of necessity, injured contractors do receive medical care from military doctors when in theater, which is both a cost driver to the government and a point of contention.  Once stabilized and sent home, the gratis health care ends and the injured mercenary is left with private medical insurance.

3. Citing Jimmie I. Wise, Outsourcing Wars: Comparing Risk, Benefits and Motivation of Contractors and Military Personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan (2009–2011), MBA Professional Report, Naval Postgraduate School (2012), available here.

4. A private company is generally required to maximize return for its shareholders, and corporate officers who make decisions at the expense of shareholder returns may face liability. Corporate oversight, such as it is, is exercised by shareholders.

5. See Isenberg, “Are Private Contractors Really Cheaper?”.

6. See, e.g., West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, nn. 14-15 (1988).

7. See U.S. Constitution, Article I § 8 (requiring biannual reauthorization for the raising and supporting of armies).

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America Should End Mercenary Contracts

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This feature is special to our Private Military Contractor (PMC)’s Week – a look at PMCs’ utility and future, especially in the maritime domain.

America Should End Mercenary Contracts

By Tim Steigelman

Over the course of the last decade or more, scholars and pundits have debated the feasibility and legality1 of employing private military contractors2 (“PMCs”) in lieu of uniformed American military forces. What follows will be a two-part post looking at the historical antecedents and contemporary problems with mercenaries.

 I. Historical View of Private Warfare

 Historical Mercenaries

Mercenaries long predate modern PMCs. Perhaps the best known example from European history is the condottieri, the soldiers for hire who would fight for one prince or another as their paymaster dictated. One well known Florentine had quite a bit to say about condottieri, blaming them for failing to defend Italy against the invading French led by King Charles in the late fifteenth century. He explains the underlying problem:

“if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure . . . . Mercenary captains are either excellent soldiers or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, since they will aspire to their own greatness . . . but if the captain is without skill, he usually ruins you.”3   

Nevertheless, the title condottieri lives on today as part of a PMC trade name.4

Mercenary soldiers in America predate the republic itself. Hessian soldiers were famously dispatched from their German homeland to fight George III’s war against the rebellious colonists. This use of mercenary force was such an affront to the political wing of the Continental resistance that it declared King George had transported “large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat [sic] the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.”5 Having fought the “large Armies of foreign Mercenaries” himself, George Washington echoed Machiavelli and “warned that ‘Mercenary Armies . . . have at one time or another subverted the liberties of almost all the Countries they have been raised to defend.’”6

 The American Civil War saw its share of the private hiring of soldiers, albeit not in a classic mercenary context. Previous mercenaries like the condottieri and Hessians were complete units that would be hired to go into combat as a unit. The Enrollment Act of 1863 established a draft for military service, and permitted conscripts to hire a substitute, a person who, for a fee, would take that draftee’s place, allowing the paying customer to avoid the draft.7 The Civil War system of substitutes kept the essence of the mercenary relationship—soldiers for hire, paid under a private agreement to fight—but these were retail, rather than wholesale mercenaries. Although the draft was reinstituted for several decades of the 20th century, it is telling that the substitute system was never reintroduced.8

 Privateers Profiting from War at Sea

The profit motive once enjoyed a prominent if relatively small role in American military power. At the founding, Congress was (and arguably still is) empowered to issue letters of marque and reprisal.9 While no match for a ship of the line, privateers were effective at least as an irritant to British commerce during the revolution.

A privateer was not a pirate because a sovereign nation issued a letter of marque allowing the privateer to take the enemy’s commercial vessels and keep them as prizes.10 Perhaps surprisingly to a modern audience, the earliest versions of American prize law even allowed American naval officers to retain some of the proceeds of prizes taken by commissioned American warships.11 That profit motive is no longer on the books.12

Even so, private, for-profit companies like Blackwater (now Xe), Triple Canopy, and others have provided contract military and related services to the United States. While proponents will point to their successes and opponents point out failings, their efficacy or lack thereof is beside the point. America should not use mercenaries because it distorts the relationship between an elected government and the people by privatizing inherently governmental services.

With this predicate the next post will examine more closely contemporary problems with mercenaries and war for profit.

Tim Steigelman is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Oceans and Coastal Law at the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, Maine. He practices business law and admiralty at the Portland firm Kelly, Remmel & Zimmerman, and is a reserve naval officer. The opinions above are solely his own, and do not purport to express the views of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor any agency or department of the United States, nor any other organization or client.

1. See, e.g., Theodore T. Richard, Reconsidering the Letter of Marque: Utilizing Private Security Providers Against Piracy, 39 Public Contract Law Journal 411 (2010); see also Claude Berube, Contracts of Marque, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine, 2007 Vol. 133.

2. The term “contractor” or “military contractor” has been long used in defense circles to encompass much more than the subset of commercial mercenary armies, to include private people and entities of all kind providing goods and services to the DOD under a contract, differentiating “government contractors” from civilian government employees. Take, for example, Edward Snowden, widely and properly reported to be an NSA contractor at the time of his heroic and/or infamous acts. For purposes of this piece “contractor” will be used in the narrower sense of armed private forces, and interchangeably with PMC.

3. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Peter Bondanella & Mark Musa, eds. & trans.) Penguin Books, 1979, pp. 116-17.

4. Condottieri Contractors. http://www.condottiericontractors.com/

5. The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).

6. Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 , n.43 (1957)(quoting 26 Writings of Washington 388 (Fitzpatrick ed.)).

7. http://michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-54463_19313-125416–,00.html, a Michigan state government website with a good introduction and access to records of principals and substitutes from the Civil War.

8. While the availability of deferments during Vietnam was much debated and reeked of much of the same inequality as directly hiring substitutes, the deferment process at least had the sparing virtue of eliminating private commercial transactions from the process.

9. U.S. Constitution, Article I § 8. The arguable part comes from international treaties and state practice—or rather, lack of practice.

10. See, e.g., The Schooner Adeline, 13 U.S. (9 Cranch) 244 (1815)(a prize proceeding brought by a privateer).

11. See Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 170 (1804).

12. 10 U.S.C. § 7668.

Global Analysis, History, North America

100 Years Ago: Veracruz 1914 (Part 1)

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Sailors Ashore at Veracruz, 1914 (Naval History and Heritage Command)
Sailors Ashore at Veracruz, 1914 (Naval History and Heritage Command)

This April marks the 100th anniversary of one of the strangest episodes in the history of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, the mostly forgotten 1914 occupation of Veracruz.

A relatively minor event during the lengthy and violent Mexican Revolution, it is also overshadowed by another American armed intervention in Mexico, the 1916 “Punitive Expedition” led by General John Pershing in pursuit of Pancho Villa.  The Veracruz occupation is remembered, if at all, for the embarrassingly large quantity of medals awarded to its participants, and as one of the numerous “small wars” conducted by the Marine Corps in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The roots for the 1914 occupation of Veracruz started a few years earlier, in the chaos caused by the Mexican Revolution.  Porfirio Díaz had ruled Mexico as a dictator since the 1870s (re-elected as President through periodic sham elections), but was finally forced from office in 1911 in the face of an opposition coalition that represented the whole spectrum from liberals to warlords and bandits.  His successor, the aristocratic but principled liberal Francisco Madero, was soon overthrown and murdered during a 1913 coup led by General Victoriano Huerta, who proceeded to declare himself President.

The U.S. first began creeping towards possible military intervention in Mexico in 1911, with President Taft instructing the Army to create a “Maneuver Division” for use in potential contingencies south of the border.  Madero’s death during the Ten Tragic Days (La Decena Trágica) of February 1913, weeks before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration following his defeat of both Taft and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election, resulted in the deployment of U.S. Navy ships to ports on both the east and west coasts of Mexico to observe the situation and protect American citizens and interests.

A month later, in March 2013, Venustiano Carranza established the “Constitutionalist” opposition to Huerta’s government by bringing together another coalition of liberals, regional leaders, and warlords/bandits.  By the next spring, Constitutionalist forces had made their way to the vicinity of Tampico, where there was a substantial American presence (mostly due to Tampico’s central role in the Mexican oil industry).  Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo commanded the U.S. Navy forces offshore Tampico.

A Farewell to Grog (and a Hello to Joe)
A Farewell to Grog (and a Hello to Joe)

The direct cause of the U.S. seizure of Veracruz was enabled by the convergence of the U.S. Navy and Constitutionalist army on Tampico.  On 9 April 1914, personnel from USS Dolphin were mistakenly and briefly detained by Mexican soldiers (Federales loyal to Huerta) while buying fuel from a warehouse along the river near the front line between the two opposing Mexican armies.  Although the Mexican General in command of Huerta’s forces quickly released the American sailors and apologized, Mayo would only be appeased by the Mexicans giving a 21-gun salute to the U.S. flag after it was raised ashore in Tampico; a stipulation that would be unacceptable to any Mexican patriot.

In the following days, tensions were also raised by additional minor insults to U.S. honor, including the arrest of a “mail orderly” from USS Minnesota ashore in Veracruz, and the detention of a courier working for the embassy in Mexico City.  In response, on 14 April, President Wilson, whose personal and political distaste for Huerta and his manner of assuming power in Mexico was well known, ordered that the entire Atlantic Fleet immediately proceed from Norfolk to Mexico’s Gulf coast.

By 20 April the stakes had been raised even higher, as the President secretly informed a small group of Congressional leaders that he had been informed by the U.S. consul in Veracruz that a shipment of arms for Huerta’s army was on its way to Veracruz onboard a German cargo ship, Ypiranga.  Although Wilson wished to ask for congressional authorization for the use of force against Mexico, he did not wish to publicly disclose his knowledge of the Ypiranga shipment.

Later that night, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels (most historically notorious for outlawing drinking onboard Navy ships) sent a warning order to Rear Admiral Frank F. Fletcher, commander of the ships off Veracruz, to “be prepared on short notice to seize customs house at Vera Cruz.  If offered resistance, use all force necessary to seize and hold city and vicinity”   The following morning, Fletcher received the order from Daniels to “Seize customs house.  Do not permit war supplies to be delivered to Huerta government or any other party.”

This is the first of a three part series on the 1914 invasion and occupation on Veracruz.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff. He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS Essex (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.