Mexican women cooking for the Mexican Revolutionary Army.

Don Bryan's childhood fascination with the history of the Mexican Revolution has turned into a passion for collecting memorabilia of U.S. and Mexican soldiers who clashed along the border during the early 20th century.
   Sixteen years after obtaining his first item - a medal once bestowed upon a national guardsman serving on the border - Bryan still is on the hunt. On Wednesday, the Bishop resident purchased two border service pennants he located via the Internet.
   Bryan's collection includes armbands once worn by Francisco "Pancho" Villa's army, a letter signed by Villa, military swords and border service souvenir pillow shams and hankie pouches. His collection is so extensive Bryan has lost count of all he has. But his personal library alone contains 450 books and periodicals pertaining to that historical time and the items Bryan most enjoys collecting, picture postcards and photos, number about 3,000.
   "It's the history of it," said Bryan, who has traveled to Mexico and throughout the Southwest for items that shed light on little-known soldiers whose lives were uprooted by circumstances that brought them face-to-face with enemy and destiny along the border.
 

A Red Cross nurse tending a Mexican revolutionary.

  Searching for people
   "It's not the Villas and Zapatas and these other big names who did the important work of the revolution," he said. "So it's interesting to search these people out. That's the value of my collection, the personal stories of these soldiers and people along the border at the time.
   "Border service for U.S. soldiers was the training ground for many who went on to serve in World War I."
   After Villa raided Columbus, N.M., in March 1916, two-thirds of the U.S. Army were redirected for a punitive expedition into Mexico. To beef up the military presence along the border, national guardsmen were federalized. At one point, Bryan said, more than 120,000 national guardsmen had descended on the border.
   New York supplied the largest number of border service soldiers, who were stationed in McAllen and Mission. The second largest contingent, from Pennsylvania, was stationed in El Paso, followed by Wisconsin, whose men were ordered to San Antonio.
   Public research
   Bryan has made his collection of picture postcards and other memorabilia available to the South Texas Archives at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, where they are being duplicated or photographed and catalogued for public research.
   The postcards depict troop activities from Brownsville to San Diego, Calif., and from San Antonio to Vera Cruz, Mexico, said Cecilia Aros Hunter, A&M-Kingsville archivist and South Texas Archives preservation officer.

U.S. soldier resting under shade trees at Colonia Diaz in Mexico while in pursuit of Francisco (Pancho) Villa.

   The postcards, the majority taken by photographers W.H Horne and Robert Runyon, are of U.S. soldiers, encampments, battles, mass graves, the burning of the dead, but also of common folk, Hunter said, "trying to live ordinary lives during hard times."
  
  
  

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