Free The General and the Jaguar by Eileen Welsome Page A

trenches of Europe and apply them to the bloody
     civil war that raged on beneath the hot Mexican sun.
    Following the historic meeting between Villa and Zapata in Mexico City, Felipe Ángeles had urged Villa, together with Zapata’s
     Liberating Army of the South, to capture Veracruz, where Carranza had his headquarters. Villa disagreed, pointing out that
     his home base in the north was being threatened and that other cities were also in danger of being overrun by the Carrancistas.
     Responded Ángeles, “I understand you, my General; but those lesser dangers will disappear when the great danger that Carranza
     represents has passed. These other chiefs are like hats hanging on a rack; the rack is Carranza, and the best use of our forces
     is not to pick off the hats one by one but to topple the rack, because then all the hats will fall.” Though Villa valued Ángeles’s
     advice, he ignored it this time and sent troops to Guadalajara, Saltillo, and Monterrey. The Carrancistas were vanquished
     in all three cities. Although the victories were of little strategic importance, Villa’s sense of invincibility grew.
    Álvaro Obregón, meanwhile, was busily reorganizing his army. He drilled his troops, recruited new soldiers from the nascent
     labor movement, and pondered his opponent’s crude military tactics. In April of 1915, Obregón was ready to launch a major
     offensive and he loaded his army onto a train and began chugging toward the town of Celaya. Located about 130 miles northwest
     of Mexico City, Celaya was surrounded by green fields that were irrigated by a network of ditches and canals. Obregón, who
     happened to have a German adviser on his military team, immediately saw how the waterways could be used to erect a formidable
     defense against his reliably hotheaded rival. He unrolled barbed wire in front of the ditches and placed nests of deadly machine
     guns and cannons behind them. Then, with his combined forces of six thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry, he sat back
     and waited for
el jaguar
to enter the deadly web.
    Villa’s network of spies had informed him of the buildup of troops in Celaya, and true to Obregón’s prediction, he wanted
     to rush there immediately and give the “little banty rooster” the thrashing of his life. But Felipe Ángeles had more respect
     for Obregón’s military skills and urged Villa to avoid a direct battle. He suggested that Villa instead taunt Obregón, leading
     him away from his supply base before launching his own ground attack. Villa argued that a defensive posture would tarnish
     “the prestige of my troops and my own reputation would suffer in the eyes of the enemy. . . . When have I not gone out to
     fight him, shattering him with my momentum, putting him to rout?”
    On April 6, Obregón’s advance guard accidentally ran into a much larger contingent of Villistas and Obregón himself steamed
     out in an armored train to rescue them. The following morning, the full-fledged battle began. Sitting astride a horse, Villa
     ordered his cavalry and infantry and artillerymen to assemble along a line about three miles in length. Once his troops were
     in position, Villa sent in the first wave, shining and gold-colored in the sun. As Obregón’s machine guns and artillery fire
     cut them to pieces, another wave rose up through the haze and rode out to be butchered. At dusk, the Villistas halted their
     assault. Obregón’s artillerymen kept up their bombardment through the night and Villa watched the shells exploding in the
     darkness, marveling at the wasteful use of ammunition. He slept little, frequently interrupted by generals who came to him,
     voicing their fears about their own dwindling arsenal. He tried to comfort them, saying, “The city will fall under the fury
     of our first assault, and if not then, under the second.”
    The following morning brought even bloodier fighting. Obregón’s Yaqui riflemen, well hidden in dugouts, picked off