Battle of Tierra Blanca

Let's Go With Pancho Villa

Translation is always a delicate topic, and when I first saw Adolfo Arrioja Vizcaino’s biographical work on Ivor Thord-Gray’s service with the Mexican Revolution: “El.Sueco Que Se Fue Con Pancho Villa” – (which literally translates as “(The Swede Who Went With Pancho Villa)”, it struck me as perhaps a little sensational, since most of Ivor Thord-Gray’s service in the Mexican Revolutionary Army was with Carranza, serving under Generals Lucio Blanco and General Álvaro Obregón. 

Ambrose Beirce, the Battle of Tierra Blanca and The Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Beirce was a remarkable wit under any account, but the ambiguity of his fate cast a long shadow on history. If we take the most common account, by no means certain, then he was last seen headed in the direction of the Battle of Tierra Blanca, where, if we take Carlos Fuentes conjuring of what might have been, he was an imaginary witness to the actual Ivor Thord-Gray's lucky shot, as he was trying to make the most Pancho Villa's only pair of 77mm canons, as portrayed in the movie "Old Gringo"

John Reed and Ivor Thord-Gray in Mexico, France and Russia

Ivor Thord-Gray and John Reed might not have been acquainted, but they sure came close: they were both with Pancho Villa in Mexico, were both in France for the Great War, and were both packing arms in the Bolshevik revolution, although not on the same side.

"I realized at once that this was the acid test..."

After the battle of Tierra Blanca, Pancho Villa  asks Ivor Thord-Gray to go to Tucson, Arizona to pick up a shipment of guns:

“I realized at once that this was the acid test, the work of that murderous Fierro standing there smirking and anticipating, no doubt, my falling into the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol, for “El Carnicero” hated all gringos.”

Thord-Gray in the Battle of Tierra Blanca

The battle of Tierra-Blanca was the first engagement for Ivor Thord-Gray in the Mexican Revolution. Although it wasn’t the most important fight, the most enduring imagery of the entire revolution arguably comes out of this engagement, and Thord-Gray has a hand in it: Villa’s right hand man, the old railroader Rodolfo Fierro, straps dynamite onto the cattle catcher of a captured train, and runs the detached engine full speed into loaded Federal troop trains. Tell me you havn’t seen this image. This obligatory cinemagraphic scene was set up in reality by Thord-Gray:

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