PAUL L. ALLEN

Heavily armed vigilantes peer through the desert underbrush, looking for illegal border crossers and fearing there may be foreign terrorists among them.
It's a familiar scenario - and one that is older than you might think. Turn the calendar back to 1917, make the terrorists German, and you have an accurate historic flashback.

The fear was so great that the county bought a machine gun and trained local civilians to use it. Far from being viewed as "loose cannons" by governmental agencies, the vigilantes of the World War I era were encouraged, even supplied with ammunition.

Mayor O.C. Parker, a quiet man who was an undertaker, assembled a posse to watch for German agents who might try to infiltrate the United States - or perhaps even German-backed troops launching a full-blown armed attack.

Referring to an organizational meeting of one of the vigilante groups, the Arizona Eastern Drill Corps, in the Citizen of April 21, 1917, a reporter wrote:

"At the meeting, the Colt machinegun, purchased this week by the safety committee with the county funds, and now located at the firehouse on the chassis of the Ford machine donated by (automobile dealer) Monte Mansfeld will be exhibited and the members of the organization will be instructed in the operation of the gun during the week as well as drill under the direction of Sergeant Black of the military department of the university."

The late historian-author C.L. Sonnichsen, in his book "Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City," quoted an Arizona Daily Star article:

"Ninety fighting men in 24 autos with a driver and four armed men with sawed-off shotguns in each car, will dash about the roads leading into the city to be the first to fight off any attack from without or to warn the city of approaching danger ... .

"The Red Cross, all ambulances in town, motorcycles and wagons have all been put into commission for an emergency at a moment's notice."

The Germans were causing a furor in Europe, attacking the French and British and declaring that no ship (including those of the United States) would be immune to torpedo attack by German submarines.

The Lusitania was sunk May 7, 1915, claiming 128 American lives. The American ship Lyman W. Law was sunk Feb. 14, 1917, and another, the Algonquin, on March 12.

On Feb. 24, 1917, British intelligence revealed a decoded telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, offering to return U.S. territory to Mexico if it would join the German cause.

That ominous note was lent credence by the fact that Mexican forces had launched attacks into the United States, including an armed incursion by forces under Francisco "Pancho" Villa into Columbus, N.M., the previous year and an aerial bombing of Naco, Ariz.

On April 6, 1917, America declared war against Germany.

Mayor Parker apparently felt Tucson was ready for an attack from the south, but the Citizen took a skeptical view of the two groups of armed men, Arizona Eastern Drill Corps and Tucson Rifle Club:

"When the hour arrives for them to defend the city, they may be found to be shooting at each other by mistake."Whether the mayor's posse ever encountered any Germans is not noted in Sonnichsen's book.