Mr. Bailey entered the U.S. Border Patrol at Camp Chigas, El Paso, Texas as a member of class #11. In addition to those mentioned in his report, other members of his class included Charles Beechie, Haldon Binegar, James Greene, and Walter Hayfield.

The interview for this oral history was taped by Anita King on May 11, 1988 in Duncanville, Texas and transcribed by Mary Anne Wright on October 5, 1988 at the National Border Patrol Museum. The original copy is maintained as a permanent archive at the Museum.

AK - Virgil, when and where were you born?

VB - I was born July 8, 1907 , at the Hard Luck coal mine near Kenmire, North
Dakota.

AK - Will you briefly tell us what education you have?

VB - I had eight grades of education in Canada, in Alberta, ant through high
School in Wichita, Kansas

AK - Why did you go into the Border Patrol?

VB - Well, Mr. Tenney, who gave me my oral interview, asked me “Virgil, why in
in the hell do you want to go into the Border Patrol?” Actually, the reason was I had been eight years a policeman in Wichita, Kansas, and while it was during the time of Pretty Boy Floyd Dillinger, and what were their names?

AK - Bonnie Parker?

VB - Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barron, her boyfriend, it was still a very mundane job, where you were answering complaints about chickens in flower beds and dogs barking and I thought, I’d get into something where everything would be a felony, be investigating or working on felony cases. Besides that, it was a $150.00 a month and I was only making $140.00, so I had been interested in the Border Patrol. Some of the policeman had gone on before me and I thought I’d like to try that.

AK - Did you attend the Border Patrol Training School in El Paso?

VB - Yes.

Ak - When did you enter the school?

VB - It was August 27th, 1941 and lasted till September 30, 1941.

AK - Where was your first station?

VB - First station was McAllen, Texas, but I had worked nine days before I went to
school at Fabens, Texas, going each day from El Paso to Fabens and working
the night there.

AK - Who was your senior Patrol Inspector on your first assignment?

VB - On my first assignment the Senior Patrol Inspector was Howell Norwood at
Kingsville, Texas.

AK - Where did you go from Kingsville?

VB - Moved from Kingsville in January, 1942 to Mission, Texas.

AK - I went from Mission to Rio Grande City.

AK - Who was your Senior there?

VB - My senior there was Jesse Perez.

AK - And from Rio Grande City, where did you go/

VB - To Roma, Texas.

AK - And who was your senior at Roma?

VB - Mr. Stetson, I do not remember his first name. He as known as Whispering Stet.

AK - Can you talk about some of the people you worked with at those Stations? At Kingsville and Mission.

VB - My first station in the McAllen sub-district was Kingsville, Texas, under Senior Patrol Inspector Howell Norwood who is now retired and lives in California. It was a road checking station and there wasn’t much going on there at that time. If you are interested in something that happened there, one day Senior Norwood got down to look under a patrol car for some reason and one of the boys, noticing this broad back end, up and kicked it. Howell Norwood backed out from under the car and turned around as calm and quiet as you please and looked at this man and never said a word. The patrolman thought he was kicking somebody else.

At Kingsville at the same time and in charge of a patrol unit that worked ranches and highways was Cap Kilburn. I do not know his initials . He was an old-time patrolman, pretty crusty but a quiet, laid back man who I think would have been very good to work under. Howell Norwood was also and we became very good friends. Even today, even though we can only correspond periodically, like Christmas.

I was still stationed in Kingsville when WW II started. Soon after that, January, 1942, I was transferred to McAllen, Texas, under Senior Patrol Inspector D.E. Phillips. While there, we made two trips to South America by boat and brought enemy aliens back to the United States. We took them to White Sulphur Springs West Virginia, where they were housed in a very expensive hotel until they could be traded off and transferred for American or Alied citizens in the power of the Axis countries. This, as I remember it, was accomplished by loading enemy aliens – Japanese, Italians, Germans – onto the liner Gripsolm where they were transferred to Cape Horn where they met an enemy ship bringing Americans or Allied people from Axis countries. The exchange was made there. I was at the time a probationer, and missed my 10 ½ month examination which was given to me, individually then, by Inspector Rawls, who was Chief Border Patrol Inspector, McAllen district. Along on those trips was Dee Marshall, Joe Staley, Beechie, among the ones I remember. We made this trip in passenger ships. They were small, and on the way down, as far a Panama we carried American soldiers. We traveled with the lights out and dodged enemy submarines. Then we went through the canal. At the Canal they docked the ship and painted American flags on the sides of it and hung lights out to show the flags so that we wouldn’t be fired at by submarines on the Pacific side. We went as far south as Ericka, Chile, and back to Lima on these trips.

While stationed in the McAllen sub-district, Jim Cottingham was our pistol instructor. Jim was an old time Border Patrolman who had worked with his brother Jack on the Patrol and had been in many shooting scrapes. He was said to have had just about a half a lung left, the rest of them had been shot out. He was a man in his 50s at that time, and as far as I can remember he did not do any river work or anything other than pistol instructions. Another I worked with was Dee Marshall who was for a time the only Border Patrolman who wasn’t a probationer under T,E. Phillips. I worked with Joe Staley, Mono Davis, Bill Davis, both deceased. Mr. Peavey was our assistant chief at the time.

I met Tom Allen on detail in Kingsville from Rira, Texas, shortly after WW II started. I met Dempsey King at McAllen after I transferred to Immigrant Inspector at Hidalgo.

From Mission I was transferred to Rio Grande City and lived there about six months. I figured it would be my permanent station. I worked under Jesse Perez there and there were three men at the station. Jesse was a native Texan whose father had been a Texas Ranger. Jesse told me of having an alteration with a wetback one day and Juarez was then the fort at Rio Grande. He and another Patrolman were patrolling in the car when they met this Mexican coming out of the brush. The Mexican has a pistol and pulled it on them. Jesse shot him, he fell, and the gun fell out of his hands. He said he walked over to the Mexican and he was trying to reach the gun and he kicked it out of his reach. The man lived two or three days in the hospital and admitted that he would have killed Jesse if he could have gotten a hold of his gun, and that had been his intention. A Mexican Consul decided that it was a case that should be prosecuted and hired a special attorney to prosecute the case. During the trial, the prosecutor ask Jesse if he had ever shot a man in the back. Jesse said, “Well, when I was in the Army,” (this happened in WW I). He said that they had given him a 37mm gun and he was shooting at the Germans, and the Germans was running and he didn’t know how many he shot, and if he shot any, it would be in the back. All this time the prosecutor was trying to get him to shut up. Anyhow, Jesse was cleared. (A footnote: The Mexican that Jesse shot, while in the hospital, admitted that he tried to shoot Jesse and that the only reason he hadn’t was he couldn’t get a hold of the gun.)

Jesse was about 5’7” and almost as big around as he was tall. He could just get under the wheel of the Ford car that we used for patrolling. He would roll his own cigarettes, Bull Duram, and smoke. The ashes would fall on his shirt and his shirt had specks, burnt specks through them. Every Sunday afternoon, Jesse would pick me up and he would set back in his car and rub his stomach with his hands and say, “Bailey, I has the beeeest dinner.” He said, “Yesterday I went and got a calf’s head and I took it to the bakery and last night after the got done with the bread, they put it in the oven and it baked all night and it was good.

He told me of the time when Mr. Gay was Chief Border Patrol Inspector and the headquarters was Brownsville. He told of going on a hunting trip with Mr. Gay in the back country. Many of Jesse’s stories had to do with greenhorn Border Patrolmen. One was that they were working in the back country one evening and was asked to stop at this ranch for the evening meal. He had this greenhorn with him and said everything went well until, at the end of the meal, this Mexican rancher pushed his chair back and called “muejer, trigeme los ojos” (Women, bring me the eyes). Said that the woman set two calves eyes on the plate in front of him and the old boy salted them and peppered them, then stuck a fork in one of them, and a knife, and at that time the greenhorn hit the door, headed for outside. He couldn’t take it.

From Rio Grande, I was transferred to Roma under Whispering Stetson. I was there approximately 9 months during 1943 when I took a transfer as Immigrant Inspector at Hidalgo and from that time on I do not know much of the Border Patrol. Roma was just about the jumping off place. I have heard that there were worst stations, but it didn’t seem the place to raise a family. As far as Mr. Stetson was concerned, I didn’t find him to be a very bad boss. We worked long hours but we did a little bit of fishing, too. One of the stories told, they has a Patrol Inspector named Nolan and a probationer, I do not know his name, but he had been a policeman in San Antonio, Texas. They went to the river one night and Mr. Nolan told the probationer to lie along side of this fence and watch for Mexicans while he would go on down the river a ways at a crossing and check it out and watch there. After two or three hours, Mr. Nolan came back and got this probationer and said, “Did you see anything?” He said “Yes, there was seven Mexicans walked right up that fence.” Nolan hadn’t told him what to do with the Mexicans that come along.

Among other Border Patrolmen that I knew, some that I worked with and some that I didn’t, was Dempsey King, who I became very good friends with later. Ned Henderson, who was our autogiro pilot who flew the river was killed when his autogiro hit a wire. Gene Harvey was in my class and was transferred to Kingsville at the same time I was. He, his wife, my wife, and myself went to Matamoros and all Gene could say when he was trying to make a buy would be “de mas sejado” which was of course “too much”. He jewed them down quite a bit that way.

Assistant Chief John Peeve wrote a book about the Border Patrol. I’ve never seen it or read it, but I imagine it would be very interesting. Gene Harvey died about 5 years ago suddenly of a heart attack. There was another in my class, Lou Bisallion, who was transferred to New Your. I last saw him there about 30 years ago. Tom Allen died of a heart attack in 1969. Dempsey King died October 7, 1987.

As far as excitement was concerned, in the Patrol or the Immigration Service afterwards, I have never been in a gun battle or shot at. I carried a gun for 36 years. While working here in Alice, we arrested a man wanted for murder in Mexico. He had a pistol, but he didn’t have any ammunition for the pistol because this was after the assassination of President Kennedy and he would have had to sign up to get ammunition. A year or two ago, I received a telephone call asking me for information about a Frenchman we arrested who was wanted in France for collaborating with the Germans and had been tried in absentia and sentenced to death. Howell Norwood and I made the arrest and this person was writing an article or a book and wanted to include it. I was unable to tell them anything further than that we had made the arrest. I could remember that. In fact, we didn’t know anything about what happened after the time we arrested him and brought him to the office.

As far as the work on the river was concerned in 41, 42, and 43, there was very little crossing of aliens, not the wholesale crossing that there is today. I remember one arrest on the river, three of us, all probationers, were scattered out along the trail and we heard somebody moving up the trail, chickens squawking. When they came abreast of us there were two of them and they were carrying about 6 chickens, two cabbritos, and they had some sugar. They also had a kerosene can. This being 11 of 12 o’clock at night, they evidently were going to go into town and trade their chickens and goat for kerosene and maybe for a little bit of cash. That was about as big a deal as happened while I was on the river during that two year. (End of interview). Prepared for web page application from original documents by Gene Wood. Oral history contains six pages and 2,457 words