The Tin Lizzie Troop

The Tin Lizzie Troop was almost made into a movie by the late actor Paul Newman, who was set to direct this comic Western for his film production company, First Artists, back in 1979. Anthony Perkins was to play the lead role, Lieutenant Stanley Dinkle, and location scouting had been done in Arizona just before Warner Brothers pulled the financing plug on First Artists. Too bad, for it would have been a fun, period Western comedy.


It was an infamous day when, under a scorching Mexican sun, the United States Cavalry went into action mounted not on fine, sleek horseflesh but in Model T Fords. This is the story of events leading up to and beyond that memorable day when bandits raided a U.S. outpost. The time was 1916, during the Punitive Expedition, when some 100,000 National Guardsmen were mobilized to defend America. Among them were six members of the Philadelphia Light Horse, a men's military club to which only the most well-born and wealthy scions of the most well-born and wealthy were elected. 


It was a rascal turn of fate that sent them to train at Glenn Springs, Texas. For there they met what they had never had before -- Lt. Stanley Dinkle. Here was a U.S. Cavalryman down to the shine on the seat of his breeches, and the collision between one Dinkle, two Tin Lizzies, and six Dapper Dans from Philadelphia was as epic as their intimate encounter with the enemy. War is hell, boys. Cheerio!


Delving back into research material he used in his first bestseller, They Came To Cordura, Glendon this time put a very funny, comedic spin to some of the misadventures which happened during the largely unsuccessful Pershing Punitive Expedition into Mexico to chase Pancho Villa and his guerillas. Occurring just prior to America's overseas involvement in WW I, this training exercise of a campaign was also the first time the U.S. Army became mechanized. Hence -- The Tin Lizzie Troop.