The Tin Lizzie Troop — Glendon Swarthout

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.

Reviews --
"The Tin Lizzie Troop will make an entertaining movie by today's standards. It has all the ingredients; a little sex, a little violence, the classic chase, colorful characters, cavalry vocabulary and a light and humorous touch throughout...Swarthout's book is most entertaining and is recommended light reading."
Bill H. Cantrell, Sunday News & Leader, Springfield, Missouri

"A charming, comical fictionalized version of the very unpublicized unhistorical first time the U.S. Army ever went into action on wheels....A whimsical melancholy undercuts the dazzling pace and farcical scenario." Kirkus Reviews

"Here is another of Swarthout's successful books: and not only is it good, it's delightful....The pursuit of a Mexican bandit by the cavalry boys in Model T Fords is superb. The characterization is perfect; the writing is a joy. The book reads well and fast, and one regrets finishing it."
Edward H. Jones, Jr., the Library Journal

"Mr. Swarthout has revisited the scene of an earlier triumph with equally felicitious results. However, the dramatic heroics of They Came To Cordura give way to the mock heroics of the cadre of "cavalrymen" who people the Tin Lizzie Troop. It's a fun story, suspenseful to the end, yet not in the least implausible.... The Tin Lizzie Troop is lighthearted summer fare -- a pleasure to read."
Ralph Hollenbeck, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A savagely ironic novel...ordinarily war is no laughing matter, but it is when Swarthout writes about the whimsical misadventures of these Beau Brummels. Beneath the laughter there is of course the seriousness that pervades everything Swarthout writes."
Murrah Gattis, the Los Angeles Times

"Successful author Glendon Swarthout has won again with his new novel, which is a wild romp along the Mexican border in the early 20th century. The Tin Lizzie Troop is a rakish adventure story with lots of guffaws and a punch that turns those laughs into large sighs of compassion for man's humanity as well as his inhumanities."
Joan Gatz, O