Iowa’s flagging Mexico?

29 June 2024

(sombrero tip to John Kirsch)

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson mobilized the entire National Guard and sent it to preserve order along the Mexican border, and if possible, apprehend the Mexican revolutionary/bandit, Pancho Villa, who had been leading raids into United States territory.

The Iowa troops that accompanied this force never saw battle, but the many hours of training and experience they received would be beneficial in one very short year. (Iowa National Guard has proud history)

Iowa is pretty much your standard US state… with one exception. While the state was admitted to the Union in 1845, and had military units (precursors to today’s National Guard) serving in all US wars in some capacity since then. But, while that would be pretty much the same thing you could say about any state in the US, Iowa lacked one thing the other states didn’t. A state flag. And for that, perhaps they need to credit, not Mrs. Dixie Cornell Gebhadt, the flag’s designer, but Pancho Villa.

While Villa’s raid into Columbus, New Mexico in March 1916 was has been credited (or blamed) for the paranoia that led to Woodrow Wilson sending National Guard units to the border (and the National Guard as a formal part of the US Army had only existed for a few months at that time), the Zimmerman Note’s publication a week before Villa’s raid had more to do with it. Wilson had long before lost any trust in Villa (whose favor in the US was mostly due to his reputation as a teetotaler — something seen as making him the most “moral” among the Mexican Revolutionary leaders by Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan — as well as Villa’s carefully crafted public relations, favoring the New York Times and other “establishment” media of the era). The Wilson Administration was more worried that Venustiano Carranza — said to be pro-German (or, at the very least, anti-gringo… which he was) — might just take Zimmerman up on his offer.

At any rate, Wilson called for “watchful waiting” — just in case — and dispatched National Guard units to the border. For the Iowa National Guard, this meant dispatching 65 youngsters (some only 17 at the time), mostly from Cedar Rapids, to guard Brownsville, Texas… about 900 miles away from New Mexico… but you never know.

Less said, Wilson had probably already decided to bring the US into the World War and the Iowans, like the other National Guard units mostly just went through training for that eventual fight. As it was, without all that much to do, the Iowans were visiting and meeting troopers from all over the United States, their encampments distinguished by their state flags.

No one had ever noticed it, but Iowa was the only state that had never had a state flag of their own. They might have seen 47 different state flags, but they also … looking across the border… would have seen one that maybe, with a bit of tweaking, might work if they were to have a state flag of their own: