They Came to Cordura

They Came To Cordura was Random House's Pulitzer Prize nominee for Fiction in 1958. The novel became a NY Times bestseller and was bought by Columbia Pictures. The studio quickly made this war novel into a major motion picture and released it in December, 1959. Cordura starred Gary Cooper in his next-to-last film, Rita Hayworth in one of her better, later roles, the always good Van Heflin, and young Tab Hunter in one of best performances. Cooper, however, had been diagnosed with cancer but neglected to tell the studio. Consequently his acting was stiffer, more wooden than usual, due to his declining health while filming and "Coop" died a few years later from his illness. The film wasn't the big hit Columbia was hoping for, but this novel has continued to sell well over the years in foreign editions and to the British Book Society Club. 


They Came To Cordura was also the first novel to be set against the backdrop of 1916's American Army campaign into Mexico to capture or kill the bandit Pancho Villa, whose irregular troops crossed the border on the black night of March 8th at Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 8 civilians and 7 American soldiers posted there, wounding 7 more. America was outraged and President Woodrow Wilson forced to act, authorizing General John J. Pershing to lead a punitive expedition of 4 regiments of Cavalry and support units after these Villistas. For 11 hot months they chased them all over northern Mexico by horse, truck, train, motorcar, and aeroplane, never catching Pancho, but fighting a number of largely forgotten engagements, including a battle at Ojos Azules (Blue Eyes), which was the last mounted charge against an enemy in the history of the U.S. Cavalry. 


They Came To Cordura details the results of that last battle, as a disgraced Major (Gary Cooper) is ordered to take 5 soldiers who have distinguished themselves in the fight back to base at Cordura and write them up for Medals of Honor, which they'll be shipped home to the States to receive. An American woman prisoner, the ranch owner who aided the Villistas, is also being sent home for trial, and it is in their confrontations with the bandits and increasingly, each other, that this grim, historically-based adventure across a burning desert for six days is made of. While trying to keep his men alive so they can receive their medals for valor, harsh circumstances reveal all 5 "heroes" to be pathetic, corrupt, hypocritical, cowardly, and degenerate. Cordura describes with unsparing accuracy the conduct of the human spirit under stress. Its setting is a small corner of military history, but its concern is with war and the qualities that it unchangingly demands. It is a remarkable book for its creation of tension and its probing into the motives which make men behave courageously and selflessly on the battlefield. 


This novel was published to rave reviews and later, in 1980, appeared on the Western Writers of America's initial list of the 30 Greatest Western novels ever written.