He constantly and lovingly praises her strengths, her numerous talents, and her capacity for dealing with domestic traumas. Never, in his view, does Caroline do anything wrong and seldom does she fall short of perfection. Simple things, like organizing birthday parties and handling Christmas festivities, bring forth paeans of praise; complex affairs, like childbearing, overtaxed his supply of laudatory phrases. The diary makes it abundantly clear that Caroline was all a woman could or should be and Tommy loved her without reservation. Any suspicion that he wrote these things so that she could read them is dispelled by the fact that she was not allowed to read the diary during his lifetime.
By the summer of 1914 Hart had been at the torpedo station for three years, so he knew that the happy period with his family would soon come to an end. They had been interesting, grueling, formative years. The work was not really naval, except that the plant was producing a naval weapon. That meant that he gained intimate knowledge of torpedoes and learned as well some other valuable lessons, including something about politics and politicians. On 4 September, as he prepared to move on to his next assignment, he admitted to being sorry to leave a place that was to some extent “my own creation” but he was leaving with pride in the fact that he had “delivered the goods.” Although he requested another destroyer, he was sent as executive officer in the battleship Minnesota. This was not a command, but he could take some satisfaction in being the youngest executive officer in a “first-rate ship in the Navy.” Revolution was raging in Mexico and almost immediately the Minnesota was ordered to Veracruz, where President Wilson had sent a force ashore to seize that vital customs port.
During his entire term in office, the president’s foreign-policy concerns had been dominated by the Mexican Revolution. He wanted the bloody revolution to end, but more than that he wanted, as he said, to “teach the Mexicans to elect good governments.” Not surprisingly, the government of General Victoriano Huerta resented Wilson’s interference in Mexican affairs, thus inducing the U.S. president to throw his support behind Venustiano Carranza, who, with Pancho Villa, was in open revolt against Huerta. The whole situation reached a fever pitch in April 1914 when, after a confused embroglio involving the Mexican seizure of some American sailors, President Wilson decided to intervene directly by seizing Veracruz, thus denying the Huerta government the customs revenues that normally flowed through that major Caribbean port. Seizing Veracruz turned out to be another of Wilson’s well-intentioned, though misguided, attempts to influence events south of the border.18 When the Huerta government began—as anticipated—to topple, several competing factions arose to share the spoils and contend for power with Carranza. In short, Wilson had succeeded in making the revolutionary situation more, rather than less, confused.
For the American naval and military forces in Mexico the situation quickly deteriorated into a boring routine. Although the initial landing had been contested, once the American presence had been established neither of the contending factions in the revolution had the time or the energy to resist the “gringos.” Action for the Minnesota therefore was minimal and for most of the crew there was not even much liberty ashore. But since Hart had the additional duty and title of chief of staff of Landing Force, U.S. Navy in Mexican Waters, he got ample opportunity to tour the U.S. shore establishments. What he saw did not impress him very much; the army and the marines seemed apathetic and unhappy, consequently they were “drinking a lot and generally going to pot.”
Thomas C. Hart as chief of staff, Landing Force, U.S. Navy in Mexican Waters. Courtesy of Mrs. T. C. Hart
At first, Major General Frederick Funston, the field commander, impressed Hart as “quite a man from a business standpoint” but, after observing him during some evening drinking bouts, Hart determined that the general did not have “the social graces” that his position demanded.19 Several weeks later Hart came face to face with the general’s drinking problem when, accompanied by a lady, he walked over to Funston’s table during a dance. Funston was so drunk that he had “to use both hands and his teeth” to stagger to his feet. Then the general began what Hart called a “maudlin conversation” and was in such a state “that there was nothing to do but turn my back. I went straight for his Chief of Staff with blood in my eye and said ‘This is no place for your General and he has got to get into his quarters as soon as it can be done.’” While Hart tried to keep the curious away, the chief of staff led the general away without too many people noticing. It was not that Tommy was a prude, rather his sense of propriety was offended by the sight of a senior officer demeaning himself in public. A lot of the officers attending the function were far senior to Lieutenant Commander Hart and they, apparently, were not offended enough to take such peremptory action but, as it later became increasingly clear, when setting his course, Tommy often paid little attention to what others did. As to Funston personally, Hart’s judgment was that “it all goes to prove that a man who was pretty good at bush-whacking war-fare among Dagos and who was above all an excellent press agent for himself doesn’t necessarily make a good General to represent us under such circumstances.” It made Tommy mad and although he was aware that letting people know how he felt would not make him popular, particularly with the army, he thought he was right and, as he told Caroline, “on the whole I don’t think it will hurt me.”
Tommy was far more impressed with his own commanding officer, Captain Roy Simpson, whom he considered “one of the Navy’s best.” “He is an excellent seaman,” Hart wrote, and that is a quality he always looked for in a superior. As a leader of men, Simpson was “a sympathetic but firm disciplinarian.” That, too, Tommy admired. Above all he was “a splendid gentleman” and that put him at the top of Tommy’s list as well as in marked contrast to General Funston. But studying Simpson, fishing, and going on shore occasionally was hardly enough to keep Hart satisfactorily occupied. His frequent letters home make it obvious that he was bored and more than a bit lonely. He missed the children, whom he referred to as either “the livestock” or by their pet name “the Dee Dees,” and most definitely he missed Caroline.
There often was not even much to say about the war; his letters on 27 November and 5 December, however, were exceptions. He had commented before about the Mexicans, for whom he had very little respect. In these letters, though, he gave a full picture of Veracruz, lapped by the effects of the revolution. The scenes in the city were to him something like a burlesque on the Latin-American military. With the Minnesota at anchor within a hundred yards of the principal pier for several days, Tommy had a seat in the dress circle. The pier swarmed with soldiers and their camp followers. The latter, he explained, among their other duties served as the quartermaster corps for the army. Each soldadera got a certain portion of the pay each month—when there was pay—to use for supplies and provisions in the barracks or in the field. The soldier took the rest of the money, drank it up, “beats the lady if he feels like it and all hands are happy.” There were men and boys, women and girls, and swarms of horses, none of which were more than skin and bone—a fact that, as a horse lover, Tommy was quick to notice. Uniforms were chosen to suit the whim of the wearer with little uniformity, discounting the fact that all were dirty, wrinkled, and torn. In aggregate, the group presented a distinctly ragtag appearance. Of discipline there was little, of alcohol there was a sufficiency, of organization there was none. The sailors in the “Minnie” watched with ill-disguised humor, for instance, as the Mexican officers loaded, unloaded, and then loaded again two decrepit steamers, all, as Tommy wrote, “in the way of making up their minds.”
Amazingly, there seemed to be relatively little trouble between the Mexican soldiers and the people of Veracruz, perhaps because the soldiers were too busy fighting among themselves. The revolutionary leader, General Carranza, “El Jefe,” along with the leader of his army, General Alvaro Obregón, and his entire cabinet had arrived in town the day before Tommy wrote the above description. Word had it that before leaving Mexico City they had stripped the place pretty well clean, at least “we see train loads of automobiles (a particularly favorite variety of loot) and goods coming in.” The money from Mexico City’s banks was circulating freely around Veracruz except that which was being prepared for
