Free The General and the Jaguar by Eileen Welsome Page B

Villa’s
     infantry and cavalry. Villa’s artillerymen lobbed shell after shell into the enemy camp. The shells hit their targets but
     they were so poorly constructed that they did little damage. Nevertheless, Obregón’s center began to weaken and Villa ordered
     his men to charge in “one great onslaught.” As they raced across the fields, Villa noticed that the ground had been inundated
     with water, which had probably been piped in from the drainage ditches. While his soldiers floundered through the water, Obregón’s
     cavalry engulfed the Villistas in a brilliant pincer movement. Villa’s right flank weakened and broke, then the center, and
     finally the left. Villa rode out onto the field and drove back the enemy long enough for his troops to rescue most of their
     cannons and begin an orderly withdrawal. “We abandoned our dead; we collected our arms; we gathered our wounded and carried
     them to the trains of my health service, where they were taken aboard and sent to my hospitals in the north.”
    Another general might have surrendered, but Villa still had enormous energy and confidence. Over the next few days the two
     opposing forces swelled in strength. By the time the second titanic battle of Celaya began, a week later, there were perhaps
     fifteen thousand men in Obregón’s camp and twenty thousand in Villa’s.
    The battle began at noon on the thirteenth of April and continued all day and throughout the night, which brought heavy rain.
     Villa did not alter his suicidal strategy at all. “Our attacks were thin and weak, but a single instant of weakness at a single
     point in the enemy line might give us a chance,” he said later. Once again, his artillery shells, made in his shops in Chihuahua
     and lacking the proper mix of chemicals, inflicted little damage. Then an eerie replay of the first Celaya battle occurred:
     Obregón’s line once again began to weaken; Villa’s infantrymen charged, and Obregón’s cavalry—six thousand horsemen who had
     remained hidden for two days in a mesquite thicket—enveloped their flanks. The once-mighty Villistas threw down their guns
     and began to run for their lives.
    In the two battles, approximately three thousand of Villa’s men were killed and six thousand were taken as prisoners. He also
     lost a thousand horses, five thousand rifles, and thirty-two cannons. But the bitterest blow of all came in the milling confusion
     afterward. Smiling pleasantly and glowing with success, the apple-cheeked Obregón asked the captured Villista officers, clad
     in the same muddy clothes as their troops, to come forward. Some 120 brave men stepped forth and were promptly executed.
    Distraught by the carnage, on June 2, 1915, President Wilson sent a lengthy public letter to Mexico City in which he urged
     the revolutionary factions to settle their differences. “I feel it to be my duty to tell them that, if they can not accommodate
     their differences and unite for this great purpose within a very short time, this Government will be constrained to decide
     what means should be employed by the United States in order to help Mexico save herself and serve her people.”
    Wilson’s appeal fell on deaf ears. Villa and Obregón were locked in a death struggle and neither intended to stop until the
     other was destroyed. The two armies lumbered north. Near the town of León, northwest of Celaya, Obregón played the defense
     again, ordering his troops into a protective square and preparing for more suicidal attacks. This time Villa heeded the advice
     of Felipe Ángeles to “outpatience” Obregón and fought more defensively himself, ordering his infantry to dig in along the
     edge of a wide, level plain. The battle stretched over forty days. During one of the skirmishes, an artillery shell struck
     a tower where Obregón and his generals were observing the battlefield and blew off Obregón’s right arm. Obregón reached for
     his pistol to shoot himself but an aide had