Talk:Battle of Ambos Nogales

Hoax
This article looks like a hoax, it is clear that this event did not happen. There was no recorded battle of WW1 in N. American soil, and the casualties listed are very suspicious, only 7 Americans againts 30 Mexicans. It also looks that the 2 Germans listed in the article were not present, contrary to what is stated.189.159.228.214 (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you serious? The American, Mexican and German governments all acknowledge it... and there are tons of contemporary newspaper accounts.  The fact is the Mexican Army was absolutely mauled during nearly the entire Border War because of minimal training and forcible conscription leading to indifferent soldiers with abysmal morale.  While the Americans that participated in the battle were professional soldiers and not draftees.  http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/huachuca/HI2-06.htm

Newspaper articles are here: http://newspaperarchive.com/tags/nogales?py=1918 --   Alyas Grey   : talk 21:54, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I am the grandson of Pvt William Clint (Pvt William Klint ) the stories he told our family are that there where numerous German military advisors visible from the border. A few days before they had stopped someone crossing with $100k cash and confiscated it. He told me that while trying to stop someone from escaping back into Mexico the customs agent and another soldier where shot first and while he returned fire he was shot seven times. He couldn't open the fingers on his left hand they where closed in a fist but his thumb worked, the bullet that entered his face went into his neck and stayed there until worked it's way closer surface and was removed in the 1940s. So the person that called this a hoax is an idiot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richardppll (talk • contribs) 00:48, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

part of issue
I know most historians would say that no battles of World War I occurred on N. American soil. After much research I have found this not to be true. During the battle of Ambros Nogales, at least two German military advisors were killed by U.S. soldiers during the fight, thus meaning that fighting between Germany and the U.S. from 1917-1919 did in fact take place in North America. Please do not argue this or make changes to the infobox, I could walk to the battlefield of Nogales right now if I wanted to, thanks.

Sources issue
I am new at wikipedia so I have had problems labeling my sources, they are there, I am not sure what exact info is needed when it comes to providing sources. Please help if you can by finding the listed sources on the internet and by correctly listing them in this page. PLEASE DONT DELETE THIS PAGE, IT IS IMPORTANT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TJ13090 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Somebody changed the box
I know their are plenty of people on wiki unwilling to accept that Germans and Americans fought a battle of ww1 in N. America. But I can assure you all that one did take place. To whoever changed this page I have written, Your attempt to distort historical fact has been discovered. So please do not delete the German flagicon or the German casualties from this article or erase and rewrite the different parts of the page. Thanks to whoever corrected my spelling mistake, It is Ambos not Ambros.
 * Extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources. So far, you have provided no sources that any Germans actually participated in the battle, let alone that there was an actual German sponsered attempt at invading the US.  I have also removed the pic you added that was labeled as being milita.  As the place the picture came from shows  it is a picture of American soldier of fortune who fought in the Mexican revolution (not any form of militia), the picture is taken near Douglas, Arizona (which is not even in the same county as Nogales) and was taken years before the battle of Ambos Nogales. Edward321 (talk) 22:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Among the problems are you listing unproven reports as if they were proven facts. You've also deleted places I asked for citation tags without giving any sources.  Your casualties figures do not match sources - I've found a source that give more fatalities for one America unit than you give for the entire American force.  You keep deleting info that the shows the date for the alleged German invasion had already passed before this battle and provide no sources that prove such a invasion was planned, let alone that it was thwarted by this battle.  Even those sources that claim 2 Germans were killed do not say that the bodies were recovered by the Americans, let alone prove that the 2 men were actual agents of the German government. The article also badly needs information from Mexican sources to mantain a nuetral point if view. Edward321 (talk) 23:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup
I cleaned up the article and cited references properly. Copyright issue mute due to allowance by major reference cited to allow non-commercial/non-profit use. See references cited. I also removed {Refimprove|date=May 2009} and fact check dups becaue of this cleanup. With ome more work this article will be B class rated or better.Jrcrin001 (talk) 22:32, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Not the bloodest battle on the border.
Sorry but this does not appear that "The battle was the bloodiest engagement fought between U.S. and Mexican forces during the Mexican Revolution." It was bloody, but ...

On 9 March 1916, General Pancho Villa ordered nearly 500 Mexican members of his revolutionary group to make a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico. ... They attacked a detachment of the 13th Cavalry Regiment (United States), seizing 100 horses and mules, and setting part of the town on fire. 18 Americans and about 80 Villistas were killed. Click here for details.

Compare this to about 6-7 American dead and 30 to 130 (the higher number highly unlikey) Mexican dead for the Battle of Ambos Nogales. It is obvious that the American reports of the various dead in Mexico were inflated. Even doubling the lower figure of 30 to 60 still seems to indicate that this battle was less bloody in the terms of death. In the terms of those wounded, we don't know because of the lack of good reporting on those wounded from both battles. Jrcrin001 (talk) 06:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Questions.
I don't know this event well enough to comfortably edit it. Bellow, please find comment and question.

“Aftermath” section, paragraph 1. “Because the battle began as a minor shooting incident and not as a full scale assault, the Mexicans and German advisors (SIC) were defeated before they could launch their attack.”

This article consistently presumes that the Mexicans would have attacked the US. The case for that argument seems less than airtight. Maybe that presumption could be removed from other sections and be addressed in its own section.

“Battle” section, Paragraph 2 “After observing the situation for a few moments, Lt. Colonel Herman ordered an attack on the Mexican and German hilltops overlooking the border town.”

Did Germany own property near Nogales, or were all the hilltops Mexican? Josephfjohnson (talk) 02:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)Johnson

Parra
It seems clear that the author C. F. Parra in 2010 has information that is in direct conflict with previous books, articles and reports on this incident. For example; That US troops were prevented from taking the heights on the Mexican side of the border where it is clear from many other sources the Americans clearly took the heights. he rewritten article appears to has a direct bias toward the Mexican view of events. I have made an attempt to provide a more neutral article. More work needs to be done.

The following was removed from the lede because it is misleading and biased. "According to accounts by some U.S. participants in the battle, the confrontation was instigated by a group of German military advisors who fought alongside the Mexicans, although the official U.S. military investigation on the battle indicated that the main cause for the violence was the U.S. Army's abuse of Mexican border crossers, including the killing of at least two Mexican nationals in the year before the 1918 incident."

All in all the article is heading toward a decent report of the incident with the new info. Jrcrin001 (talk) 11:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Jan. 2013 Edits
This event did indeed take place in 1918 and it was not the first battle to take place in the border communities of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, during the 1910s (although the earlier 1913 and 1915 battles were very different in nature in terms of who the main belligerents were). User Alysas Grey (Cabazap) was right to cast doubt on the claims of German agents in this incident, as documentation for that - beyond post-facto claims by some participants such as Lt. Col. Fred Herman - is unavailable. Herman, the acting commander at Nogales during this incident, was extensively interviewed by U.S. military officials only hours after the battle took place. At no point does he mention - at least so far as the transcripts, findings, and other investigation-related documents demonstrate - that he had possession of a letter from a disgruntled Villista sympathizer or intelligence information suggesting that an attack on Nogales was imminent. The letter cited in 1921 by Glass (whose claims were later repeated verbatim by Wharfield and Finley) did not appear as an attached document in General Cabell's investigation nor was it mentioned by Commander Herman. As that document (allegedly received in mid-August 1918) indicated that August 25, 1918, was the date for the supposed invasion/attack it would have made sense for such a detail to still be vivid in Lt. Col. Herman's mind not to mention on hand at his office at the army post in Nogales, Camp Little. Furthermore, why weren't there more U.S. troops patrolling the international border in Nogales within its immediate vicinity as opposed to having almost all U.S. forces located nearly 2 miles away from the border itself when the fighting erupted? Also, why would Commander Herman hide such an incriminating letter against the Mexicans at this point, particularly from his superior officers? The fact that this letter does not appear in the actual investigation of Aug. 28-30, 1918, but instead later and after the fact makes this source cited by Glass (and again, by Wharfield and Finley) very problematic at best.

Jrcrin001, Your long-term interest in this article as seen from your earlier work on this topic is to be commended. Nevertheless, your critiques of Parra's article from the Journal of Arizona History seem to be based more on an ad hominem attack against that author's (as well as my contributions') perceived bias towards the Mexican point of view as opposed to providing significant primary source refutations to establish you points. You did, after all, title your last post to this Talk Page "Parra" and you insinuated that his peer-reviewed work (and by extension any referencing to that study's conclusions, such as my extensive edits) is untrustworthy. To be sure, he presents a different take on a topic that, as some of the posters above have indicated, is very obscure. Within the very sparse U.S. historiographical treatment of this topic authors such as Glass (who, to be fair, did not intend to write a study of the Battle of Ambos Nogales, but rather a 50-year overview of 10th Cavalry history), Wharfield, and Finley have ignored outright any nuance to this story. Except for Miguel Tinker Salas's In the Shadow of the Eagles (with its very brief treatment of the Battle of Ambos Nogales), no U.S. scholarly work has addressed the social or geopolitical context of the battle. Even key details of what happened on the Mexican side - like the major incident of the killing of Mayor Penaloza in the violence - have been completely left out of the discourse on this issue by U.S. history enthusiasts. While his conclusions - like that of all social scientists - may be debatable, Parra at least provides primary source documentation for his claims (one might not agree with him, but he provides a traceable paper trail for his claims unlike the phantom Villista letter described by Glass et al).

The documentation cited by Parra makes reference to primary U.S. documents such as the Aug. 28-30 army investigation findings, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and other sources. Glass, Wharfield, et al, also use primary documents (such as Thomas Jordan's memoirs of the battle), but none of them make mention of the Cabell investigation, the multi-day diplomatic talks between Cabell and Calles, or the agreement between the U.S. and Mexico over a border fence. Glass et al formulate their arguments almost exclusively on the experiences of some military personnel and assumes that the alleged Mexican-German invasion of the U.S. to take place at Nogales was a given, as opposed to considering nuance and utilizing a variety of sources from different perspectives from which to weigh the events of August 1918. It should not be construed that sources like Glass, Wharfield, and Finley are bereft of value (as a contributor I certainly do not intend that), but they are not the final (or only) word on the topic. It also bears mentioning that Parra's research underwent peer-review through the Arizona Historical Society's external readers prior to its publication in the still-running Journal of Arizona History in 2010 as opposed to Wharfield's 1965 self-published book Tenth Cavalry and Border Fights or James Finley's "Battle of Ambos Nogales" in the limited-series Huachuca Illustrated journal published by the Fort Huachuca Museum. As Parra and Glass/Wharfield/Finley rely on different primary sources and methodologies their conclusions are, by nature, necessarily different. That being said, it is pretentious and intellectually-lazy to suggest that Parra's work is less valid than others solely on the basis that it disagrees "or is in conflict" with previous writings on the Nogales topic (particularly when that critique's premise is largely based on one specific detail from a military maneuver discussed within a larger 32-page sociohistorical study).

Furthermore, the claims of German involvement made by Glass et al (repeated uncritically in older versions of this Wikipedia article) are very serious allegations that cannot be substantiated beyond the shadow of a doubt by any extant documentary evidence in Mexico or the United States. The evidence added to this article by myself (citing Parra and the primary documents in his study, all of which are viewable by the public at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum in Nogales, AZ) profoundly problematizes the German involvement claim by showing its flimsy documentary support and calling into question previous versions of this article that accepted those very dubious claims as unassailable. Previous versions of this article held up the Battle of Ambos Nogales (with links to it placed in other articles such as in the "Historical Post-Script" section of the article on the Zimmerman Telegram) as a stunning example of German subversiveness and as the only point in North America where U.S. forces killed German military personnel during World War I. That claim is very powerful for obvious reasons, but it is not supported by primary source evidence (newspapers, local oral histories, and official, tangible U.S. military documents) which instead collectively indicates that the August 27, 1918, incident was the culmination of simmering, long-standing local problems in which issues of race and citizenship were clearly key factors. It bears to mention that no previous version of this article troubled itself to at least superficially question the validity of a Mexican-German invasion of the U.S. happening in Nogales in 1918 (which we are expected to believe was stopped just in the nick of time by the 10th Cavalry and 35th Infantry), much less consider how Mexicans might have perceived that event.

That being said, Jrcrin001, your critique of my contributions to this article (contributions which collectively form an almost complete rewriting of the previous version of this Battle of Ambos Nogales article), brought to my attention areas in my contributions could which have been better-worded and better-argued. We will have to agree to disagree as to what constitutes "direct biases" particularly when a wide breadth of primary documents "directly challenge" the traditional historiography of this obscure topic as established by U.S. writers like Glass et al and dominated by the U.S. perspective thereafter, including older versions of this Wikipedia article. We may further disagree as to what constitutes neutrality as it, like "bias", is a subjective matter varying from person-to-person (no author/source is without some level of bias) especially when outlandish and uncorroborated claims of German malfeasance are made and accepted as true because they emanated from (some) U.S. sources. Nevertheless, we can and ought to continue working to make this article even better with its problematizing of the older and incomplete historiography of these events. We ought to allow individuals to see for themselves the larger issues involved in this topic with the aim of each reader arriving at her or his own conclusion based on their reading of evidence from multiple sources and perspectives.

I hope that the collective contributions that different Wikipedia posters in the future might provide this article - through stringent analyses based on readings of varying primary documents (which can and should be contradictory) - can help generate further interest and knowledge on this obscure historical event in the borderlands. In that respect, a warm salutation to the original Feb. 26, 2009 author of this article, "AZ8196", is in order. Although very short - only a sentence long - AZ8196's short article helped generate this evolving article and its discussion here on Wikipedia. Elnogalense (talk) 06:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems theres enough evidence to list Germany as alleged in the infobox, one point that seems to be overlooked by both you and the camp that states german advisors were present is that there were a signifigant number of German mercenaries working in mexico during the revolution there. Its plausible that the germans killed were there but not under the direct command of the German authorities in the region. It should also be noted that it is very possible that the conflict started due to the agatation of German agents even if said agents were not directly involved in the conflict, it is well documented that there were several german agents in Mexico during the first world war and german agents and advisors in other regions of the world often tried to stir up trouble in neutral and colonial ares (Iran, Afghanistan, Morocco, Libya, South Africa).XavierGreen (talk) 01:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Of course the 10th Cavalry was at Nogales rather than in France
The claim is made that the 10th Cavalry was in Nogales because they were black and the US didn't want to send blacks to Europe. Let's ignore for the moment that the 10th Cavalry had been posted in the Southwest for decades by this point. Let's even ignore the black units, such as the 369th Infantry, which fought in France.

Let's examine the real reason: THERE WAS NO NEED NOR USE FOR CAVALRY IN FRANCE. Only 4 of the 25 Cavalry Regiments that existed in 1917 went to France as Cavalry, twice as many ended up being converted to Artillery. Most --- white as well as black --- ended up on the Mexican border where Cavalry was useful and even necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.221.254.164 (talk) 12:43, 26 January 2013 (UTC)