A carpenter freezes on the border line, and Nogales erupts in gunfire

By August 1918, the U.S.-Mexico border at Nogales was thick with wartime suspicion, patrolled by soldiers on alert for German agents and armed revolutionaries. That afternoon, carpenter Zeferino Gil Lamadrid tried to cross back into Mexico carrying a bulky, uninspected parcel, and froze as U.S. and Mexican officials shouted conflicting orders at him. Pvt. William Klint raised his rifle, and a shot rang out, though it remains unclear who fired it. Within minutes Klint and two Mexican customs officers were dead. Armed citizens on both sides had already joined the fighting by then…