With the US Army Lieutenant refusing to fight in Iraq, there’s an interesting point of parallel in history with the current war on terror (sorry, War on Terror) and the first time the US more or less officially invaded another country. (We’ll discount Canada in 1812, the pre Louisiana purchase stoushes with the French and the US expansion west into various sovereign North American Indian nations. We’ll also discount the invasion of Mexico in 1836, as that was actually the Republic of Texas, which had not yet joined the USA.)
I'm talking about the Mexican War in 1847-48, when a significant number of US soldiers deserted and fought for the other side.
These were the 'St Patricos', mostly is not all Catholics, mostly of Irish descent and many very recently arrived in the US. There were at least eighty involved. (I'd be guessing more, for eighty were captured by the US Army immediately before Mexico City fell, and apparently they fought very hard against the US forces, surrendering only when their ammunition ran out.)
Apparently they objected to fighting against fellow Catholics. (Anybody seeing any parallels here?) To the overwhelmingly Protestant Establishment in the US - (and not just the US and not just in 1848!!!) - Catholics at the time were a despised (rather large) minority, thought to owe their first allegiance to the Pope – and I suppose one could argue that the ‘St Patricos’ proved the point that there was some substance to this belief.
Fifty of those captured were hanged just before the final assault on Mexico City and around thirty, who were considered not to be hard core malcontents, were branded on their cheeks with a rather large ‘D’. I’d be guessing that there would have been some interesting stories to be told about the lives those thirty men lived after their release from military prison with a very prominent brand on their faces for everyone to see.
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Reading about the Mexican War only makes me wonder how history so incredibly repeats itself, over and over and over again. A too small US Army is tasked with an impossible task – to invade another country for what many at the time thought were very dubious reasons (who owned the disputed land along the Rio Grande); the enemy army is far larger than the US invasion force; support from politicians back in Washington is half-hearted to non-existent for the Army; the Army – incredibly – does all and more than is asked of it, conquering the Mexican Army in a matter of months - and then suffers badly from guerrilla attack by Mexican irregulars after the very fast victory over the dictator Santa Anna’s far larger army… need I go on?
At least the US Army of 1848 had the good sense not to disband the existing Mexican Government infrastructure after they took over the Mexican Capital – but then again, that’s what the Army wanted to do this time, isn’t it?