David Traub:
A Casualty of Animosity
Blog by Michael Ackermann
"I am attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and it is my intention to become a citizen of the United States and to renounce absolutely and forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to the Present Government of Russia of whom at this time I am a subject, and it is my intention to reside permanently in the United States."
On September 5, 1918, in San Antonio, Texas, a 21-year-old soldier signed his name beneath those words. He was five feet four inches tall, with black hair, brown eyes, and a ruddy complexion. The clerk noted that the nails were gone from two of his fingers. On the form, his name was written David Troib. His family would carve it on his gravestone as David A. Traub.
He had pledged to stay in the United States forever. Less than four months later, he was dead on the Mexican border.
David's Petition for Naturalization, filed in the U.S. District Court at San Antonio, Texas, in 1918. Here his name is spelled Troib.
David was born on January 28, 1897, in Volhynia, a region of the Russian Empire that is now part of Ukraine. His Hebrew name, carved on his stone, was David Aharon, son of Avraham. In the summer of 1913, at sixteen, he left from Rotterdam aboard the steamship Ryndam and arrived in New York on September 3. In December 1915 he went to court in New York and declared that he intended to become an American citizen.
In June 1916 he enlisted in the United States Army at Fort Slocum, New York. The Great War was raging in Europe, though America had not yet joined it. David left no letters or diaries, so we cannot know his reasons. But many young immigrants of his generation saw the Army as a road to belonging. For a teenager who had built a new life in three short years, it was a way to prove himself and earn his place.
He could not have known that his road would lead not to France, but to Mexico.
Since 1910, Mexico had been torn apart by revolution. That year, rebels rose against Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled the country as a dictator since 1876. In 1911 Francisco Madero united the revolutionary forces, drove Díaz from power, and was elected president. His government pleased almost no one, and he faced revolts from both the old regime and from revolutionaries who wanted more. In February 1913, the same year David came to America, Mexico City became a battlefield during the Decena Trágica, the Ten Tragic Days. Madero was overthrown and, days later, killed while being moved between prisons.
The United States was never far from the fighting. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to occupy the port of Veracruz to help push out Victoriano Huerta, the general who had seized power. Venustiano Carranza emerged from the chaos as Mexico's leader, and in 1917 he oversaw a new constitution that tried to satisfy the warring factions. Many Mexicans had good reason to distrust American intentions.
Along the border, the mistrust ran both ways. In 1912, rebels under Pascual Orozco forced the Mormon colonists who had settled in northern Mexico since 1885 to give up their weapons, and the colonists fled to El Paso. On the American side, Mexicans faced brutal prejudice. In 1910, in Rocksprings, Texas, a white mob dragged twenty-year-old Antonio Rodríguez from jail, lynched him, and burned his body. He never received a trial.
In March 1916, Pancho Villa's men raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Wilson sent General John J. Pershing into Mexico with thousands of troops to hunt Villa down. Carranza objected, then reluctantly allowed it. The Americans dug in at Colonia Dublán, one of the old Mormon colonies, where they struggled with long supply lines and broken communications. One account noted that the Mexicans "made a sport of cutting the wires." Villa was never caught.
The 16th Infantry digging trenches at Colonia Dublán, Mexico, during the Punitive Expedition of 1916. Bain News Service, Library of Congress.
In June 1917, two months after the United States declared war on Germany, David entered active duty. In February 1918 he was sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, assigned to the Medical Department. Fort Sam Houston was the great staging ground for the troops that guarded the border. Every day David would have lived and worked among soldiers who patrolled it. He had joined the Army hoping to become an American. Now he was standing guard over the edge of the nation he wanted to join.
The country offered him a faster way in. In May 1918, Congress passed a law allowing foreign-born soldiers to become citizens quickly, without the usual waiting period. David's petition, filed that September, was made under that new law. It is one of the last records he left behind.
By then, the border was boiling. On August 27, 1918, fighting broke out between the twin towns of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora. No one could say who fired first. Within hours, soldiers and civilians were shooting from upper windows, and International Street became a no man's land. By the time it was over, scores of people were dead or wounded, most of them on the Mexican side. Each side blamed the other. An American captain, Frederick T. Herman, later insisted that most of the Mexicans who fought were soldiers in civilian clothes. The Battle of Ambos Nogales led to the first border fence between the two towns.
Fear of Germany made everything worse. In 1917 the British had intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram, a secret German message offering Mexico an alliance and the return of the lands it had lost to the United States in the Mexican-American War. After Nogales, American newspapers reported that Germans had been found fighting on the Mexican side. To many American soldiers, it felt as if the Great War had come to their own doorstep.
The war in Europe ended on November 11, 1918. On the border, the tension did not.
On December 27, 1918, David was at El Paso, where the Rio Grande separates Texas from Ciudad Juárez. Just across the line, a Mexican lieutenant named Juan Azpieta shot him. David was unarmed. Witnesses from both countries said so. He was 21 years old. A United States Senate report later listed his death in a single line: David Troib, U.S. Army, killed by a Carranza lieutenant.
The United States demanded answers. Azpieta was held for a court-martial in Chihuahua and claimed he had fired in self-defense. Even in death, David was not allowed to rest. He had been brought home and buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, and the Mexican authorities insisted that his body be exhumed for evidence. According to the newspapers, he was taken from his grave three times. The examinations showed that he had been shot from the side, at close range.
At his preliminary hearing, Azpieta admitted the shooting but still claimed self-defense. In the weeks before his trial, he was moved to Chihuahua City to be closer to the court. On November 30, 1919, newspapers reported that he had vanished. Americans charged that he had never been properly held at all, and that his transfer had been a ruse to avoid a real trial. The United States raised the case again and again in its dealings with Mexico. No record has been found that Azpieta was ever caught or tried.
David Traub came to America at sixteen with nothing but the hope of a home. He put on the uniform of his new country, swore to make it his forever, and died guarding its border. His family chose the words for his stone. They wrote that he died in service for his country.
David A. Traub's gravestone at Mount Hebron Cemetery: "Died in service for his Country on Dec. 27, 1918. Age 21 Years."
May his memory be a blessing.
Works Cited
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. "Causes of Disaffection in Mexico." History of Mexico: Being a History of the Mexican People from the Earliest Primitive Civilization to the Present Time, The Bancroft Co., 1914, pp. 268-77.
"Battle of Ambos Nogales Led to the First Fence Separating the Two Towns." YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaiUZzp_lck. Accessed 14 May 2022.
Contreras, Russell. "Mexican Americans Faced Racial Terror from 1910-1920." AP News, Associated Press, 26 July 2019, apnews.com/article/texas-us-news-ap-top-news-az-state-wire-ca-state-wire-b8516a3d80ef40da97afd3a9e4f7d706.
"Courtmartial Mexican Who Shot US Soldier." Nevada State Journal, 3 Feb. 1919.
"Exhume Body for Evidence." Times Union, 13 Sept. 1919.
"The Fort Sam Houston Museum." U.S. Army Center of Military History, history.army.mil/museums/fieldMuseums/FSHMuseum/index.html. Accessed 11 May 2022.
"The Mexican Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1910-40." Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/The-Mexican-Revolution-and-its-aftermath-1910-40. Accessed 11 May 2022.
Petition for Naturalization of David Troib. Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21, National Archives at Fort Worth, Texas.
Pulido, Elisa Eastwood. "Mormonism in Mexico." The Mormonism and Migration Project, 23 Jan. 2022, research.cgu.edu/mormonism-migration-project/study-resources/mormonism-in-mexico/.
"Slayer of U.S. Soldier Missing on Trial Date." San Antonio Express, 30 Nov. 1919, vol. 54, no. 331.
Stover, Philip R. "The Exodus of 1912: A Huddle of Pros and Cons; Mormons Twice Dispossessed." Journal of Mormon History, vol. 44, no. 3, 2018, pp. 45-69, doi.org/10.5406/jmormhist.44.3.0045.
Telegram from Ambassador Walter Page to President Woodrow Wilson Conveying a Translation of the Zimmermann Telegram, 24 Feb. 1917. General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives at College Park, www.docsteach.org/documents/document/translation-zimmermann-telegram.
Traub, David A., gravestone. Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York.
"Two Germans with Carranza in 1918." The Kingsport Times, 13 Feb. 1920.
United States, Congress, Senate. Investigation of Mexican Affairs. Vol. 1, Government Printing Office, 1920, p. 880, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/gdc.21020652v1/?sp=880.
Yockelson, Mitchell. "The United States Armed Forces and the Mexican Punitive Expedition: Part 2." Prologue, Winter 1997, National Archives, www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/winter/mexican-punitive-expedition-2.html.
