Search for A One-Armed, Disarming Woman

In June, 1915 Alvaro Obregon ("O'Brien") Salido, trying to get an overview of the battlefield around Silao, Mexico, ascended a bell-tower in the Santa Ana hacienda, a key strategic center midst the horrific surrounding warfare. One of Pancho Villa's shells immediately tore off Obregon's right arm, and --convinced that he was mortally wounded-- the Irish-Mexican from Sonora took out his pistola...to put an end to himself.

Click. Turns out that Obregon's aide-de-camp kept him from giving himself the coup de grace. For... the adjutant had cleaned that handgun the day before, neglecting to replace the bullets which he had taken out.  Chamber of horrors? Depends upon what your take is on what crazed and unbalanced Obregon did to his countrymen following this turn of events in Mexico's Civil War. Depends, in part, on how you see warfare.

My father, Blaise Cendrars, lost one of his arms in September of that same year midst bloody Champagne on the Western Front. Yet...come WWII... he was back in the thick of it all -- this "son of Homer" (Dos Passos), our ultimate anarchist... serving in an important, albeit peripheral, capacity for the British. This, in spite of the fact that my two brothers had been devoured midst the insanity of warfare by 1940.

What moves men so? Books on the subject don't tell the truth. They can't.

Children --males-- in their teens (young adults?) have also been known to lose a limb, and then return to the field of battle. Kids don't know any better.

Women have certainly made their "contributions" on battlefields. Yet, throughout history, I have yet to discover one example of a woman losing an arm or leg...and returning to the pitch of battle. (1)

I wonder why that's so.

The answer's not blowin' in the wind any longer. It's lost in a heavy mist.

And we are slurring our speech midst blurred vision.

Footnote:

(1) There may very well be examples of such women which could be found among the plethora of warrior leaders for Emiliano Zapata and others (worldwide), BUT...let me know if you find any documentation to that effect. I haven't been able to do so thus far.


Marcelle Cendrars, bcendra@yahoo.com, encourages one and all to read Howard Zinn's chapter on "Violence and Human Nature" (in Declarations of Independence). She also welcomes feedback on all her writing.