D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2006
D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
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The Last Raid
By Jesse Wolf Hardin
It gets cold at 3 a.m. in March, even in the tail's end of the New Mexico desert. If there were enough moon to see more clearly, you'd notice a small sleepy town intersected by railroad tracks. The landscape is primarily "tortilla flat," with only a few seductive hillocks. Just to the south of town, a five-strand barbwire fence stretches all the way from one side of the state to the other. It would be hard enough to see from the high ground where you sit, even in the middle of the day. The ground on either side of the fence looks exactly the same: white sands speckled with cholla, prickly pear and golden snake brush. Sticker-laden coyotes chase jackrabbits back and forth beneath the wire, and a desert eagle high in the sky crosses over on his way north. And yet, permeable as the fence may be, its cedar posts and taut strands were erected as a barrier, a border: where one government's dominion ends, and another country begins.
The town was founded as a border crossing and rail stop on the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad. It was named after Columbus, the very same Italian fortune hunter who in 1492 first laid eyes on the American continent, imagining he was in India. The word "Columbus" has since come to be synonymous with discovery, and it was no doubt the hope of the town promoters and developers that an increasing number of folks would "discover" the benefits of moving to such a fine little town. "Town property in Columbus is one of the best possible investments," asserted a McClughlan & Dexter Realty ad. "See Columbus before going elsewhere!" "Elsewhere," in the first two decades of the 20th century, is a world apart. While you sit under the stars, surrounded by what appears to be a vast and incorruptible emptiness, greater society is remaking itself faster than ever before. Cultural transformations and technological innovations that used to take hundreds of years now happen in a single generation. This is the year, 1916, that kids nostalgic for the disappearing frontier first got to play with a new toy called "Lincoln Logs," and some guy named Albert Einstein will publish what he calls his "Theory of Relativity." Jazz is hot in New Orleans, back east Margaret Sanger has been jailed for giving out pamphlets on birth control, and race driver Gil Anderson has just set a new automobile speed record by going an amazing 102.6 mph in a souped-up Stutz. In Europe, Germany is using helium-filled Zeppelins to firebomb historic French cities. America's involvement in World War I is only a year away. General John Taliaferro Thompson has just invented a handheld, fully automatic weapon that will in time be called the "Tommy Gun." In out of the way places like Arizona and New Mexico, however, the Old West lives on. Folks still pack "Western" arms and are more likely to settle disagreements personally rather than resort to the insular objectivity of the law. On into the 1920s there will still be more horses than cars in these borderlands, more cowboys than tourists, more deer than registered voters. Apart from trendy Phoenix or Albuquerque, folks still dress much as their grandparents did, in wide-brimmed hats and dusty chaps. They continue to believe in the same standards of hard work and hearty play, of necessity and right. They've flourished like cactus in even the harshest environments, unconcerned with modernity and generally seeking no one's help but their own. Some are resilient "whites," homesteading land and working on huge lowland ranches. Many are Mexican or Mexican-American, recent immigrants in search of better-paying work. Other Latinos are the descendants of families that had already lived here for hundreds of years. If people in this part of the country are anything in 1916, it's scarce. Columbus never had more than a few hundred civilian residents, and most of its 600-man army detachment was likely to be gone on leave to El Paso at any given time. Tonight there are only a handful of electric lights or oil lamps burning. The only sign of activity in the army camp is a single small campfire in one of the ditches, around which a few sleepy sentries huddle to stay warm. It's then that you see what first appear to be shadows, weaving through the brush below. The whippoorwills are quiet all of a sudden, as you hear what you figure are a bunch of spike-jawed javelina spooked by the unexpected passage of serape-clad men. You know immediately who they are, and you've had reason to expect them for awhile now. For weeks you've been hearing rumors of impending trouble from the Mexican side, and a mere 35 miles away you had yourself ridden within rifle range of a camp of what could have been 500 or more Villistas: the soldiers of that fabled renegade revolutionary, Pancho Villa! Word is that he's muy pissed-off. The US has continued to supply rounds to General Carranza—that other self-serving contender in the continuing Mexican Revolution—but not to him. And then they really set him off by transporting Carrancista troops on a US rail line. Politicians felt they had to put all their money on one or the other of the contenders, and they'd placed their bet on the probable winner. More than once you'd tried to warn the camp commander—"that fool Slocum," as you put it—but he dismissed you with a wave of his hand like you were some wet-behind-the-ear pup! Others had warned him about the recent influx of suspiciously behaving Mexicans no one had ever seen before. Some Latino patriarchs had even moved their families to other towns in anticipation of what they called the "big trouble." Quickly you slip back to where your horse is saddled
and tied, intent on giving the alarm. But you've barely started to
slip your boot into the stirrup when you hear the first shots being
exchanged below. A flurry of rounds follow, mostly random and ineffective.
One stray bullet strikes directly above the "6" on the wall
clock in the Columbus train station, stopping its hands forever and
fixing the exact time of the attack at 4:11 a.m. The albazo (surprise
attack) is at least temporarily successful. For the first time since
the British sacked the White House during the War of 1812, the United
States of America has been invaded.
The last skirmish with Indians in the Southwest is said to have been instigated by a small band of incorrigible Apaches back in 1886, and the battles for the Great Plains were essentially over by 1878, unless you count that one-sided affair at Wounded Knee in 1890. But for the millions of indigenous and mixed-blood people of what is now known as Mexico, the Indian wars never really ended. With no foreign support, no sustaining treasury or arms factories, the natives nevertheless continued their fight—first against the Spanish, its colonial financiers and intruding allies, and then against the US. Indeed, the last time a force of Indians confronted the US Army was neither Geronimo's final hurrah nor Wounded Knee—but rather, the raid on Columbus in 1916. At the time of the Mexican Revolution, more than 80 percent of the nation's population had a preponderance of native Indian blood. And the raid is, in nearly every way, a Western affair: The raiders are dressed in roughly woven pullovers and vests, with reddened faces and glossy black hair. Feathers and bandannas. Villa's men arrive on horseback and retreat the same way, at times turning to fire at their pursuers from the saddle. Their women remain back at camp, wrapped in blankets decorated with symbols that could stand for an eagle, a phoenix, the magical thunderbird born of Earth and sky. The "modern" army they are attacking has only a few motorized vehicles itself, and so continues to rely heavily on horses and wagons for its deployment. The word "cavalry" still indicates an ability to ride, and ride well, and most of the soldiers have had prior experience either as horsemen or working cowboys. Their boots are made of mule hide just as they were in the days of Custer and Crazy Horse, and the troopers' skin is darkened and hardened as it always had been, by a relentless Western sun. As with the men facing Sioux and Cheyenne 40 or 50 years earlier, they will stand against a variety of antagonists displaying generally poor marksmanship—but who nonetheless come with the passion needed to propel them towards a distant dream, the courage to take unreasonable risks, the resolve to kill, and the willingness to die for what they believe is "the good fight." A few of the raiders carry 7mm bolt-action Mausers, either plundered
from the centralist forces they'd long been fighting in Mexico, or purchased
from the same German agents who sold arms to their enemies. Most attackers,
however, carry guns that evoke Western hunts and shootouts with cattle
rustlers more than the killing fields of Europe. The majority of their
rifles aren't bolt-actions but lever guns—mostly Winchester Model 1894s
along with a lesser number of Model 1892s, and even some obsolete 1873s—leading
one official to chide the Winchester company for being the preferred
arms manufacturer of Villa's pain-in-the-butt banditos. Villa's personal
favorite was the Model 1895, with its distinctive box magazine, a model
it's said he liked even more than the fabled '94. Twice as many people were killed during the long and convoluted Mexican Revolution as died as a result of our own Civil War. In one way, the raid on Columbus was a predictable outgrowth and extension of this internecine conflict, along with its original high-minded principals of egalitarianism and peasant rights. Rather than being a manic and uninformed terrorist striking back blindly that cold March night, Pancho Villa had a well-defined strategy, provoked by some harsh international realities. Among the papers found on a slain Villista after the attack was a letter to his revolutionary cohort and sometime ally in the south, Emiliano Zapata, clearly and intelligently articulating both Villa's reasoning and his goals. His intention was to continue the war against the corrupt and "counterrevolutionary" Carranza, in spite of Carranza having won the financial and logistical support of the United States. To accomplish his goals, Villa intended to consolidate control of Chihuahua and then join with Zapata in a grand battle for the state of Sonora.
After dragging 42 cannons over the rutted burro trails of the Sierra Madres, Villa's men arrived at Agua Prieta to discover that a fresh reinforcement of 5,000 Carrancista troops had been transported ahead of them through US territory, by American rails. It required "an excessive stroke of delicacy and dignity," Villa wrote, "preventing my forces in attacking against American territory like they wanted to do with all justification: to punish the ones who made fun of our sacrifices with the right of force." Pride and "machismo" are neither archaic, nor something new. The US backing of Carranza, wise or not, guaranteed an increase in reprisals against American interests south of the border. "You're an honored Mexican patriot. . . and Indian blood runs in your veins, like ours," Villa wrote. "I'm sure that you will never permit that our land be sold and will join the defense of our country. "We can only do it by the North," he explained, "as we don't have boots." Nor—we might point out—trucks, nor planes, nor gas, nor either a floating navy nor a rail line not firmly in the control of the enemy. A hundred or more years of unequal financial and political relations with various corporations and different Washington administrations had coupled with recent events to lead "all the generals and structures. . . who are in my leadership, [to] become convinced that the [common] enemy against Mexico is actually the US and that the integrity and independence of our country is about to be lost if [we don't] join together with weapons in our hands to prevent the sale of our native land." Mexican property was already being marketed wholesale to foreign interests, and rumors flew of plans to sell a hundred-year lease on the Baja to the United States—for exploring what many on both sides believed would prove to be an exploitable oil reserve. Earlier the US had fanned Mexican paranoia when Marines briefly occupied the petroleum fields of Vera Cruz. Already oil, even the mere possibility of oil, was fueling not only buses and automobiles but also regional and international conflict. We might recall how in the 1700s the brazen citizens of the American colonies discovered a fresh identity and new reason for pride as heroic underdogs, valiantly opposing the economic and military manipulations of the then much richer and more powerful country of Great Britain. In much the same way the Mexican identity has been cast and formed under the pressure of thousands of years of domination, by the Aztecs, the Mayan kings and the Spanish conquistadores. And to this day they largely define themselves in resistance to both the threat of globalization and America's incomparable economic might. Let there be no mistake, Villa was an unapologetic glory-hound and blatant economic opportunist—always as much the "bandito" as the patriot. But his steady stream of volunteers were both inspired and steeled by far more than money, and it was only by riding the heated winds of their political idealism and emotional fervor that this desert eagle could have ever risen to power. Like Jesse James at the close of the Civil War, like those pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries who handily mixed patriotism and profiteering, Villa is perhaps best described as a ruthless outlaw—with vision and ideals. Not that Pancho was what you would call a "Robin Hood," in spite of having been dubbed that by American filmmaker John Reed. But even the most generous or politically inspired robbers have historically kept the bulk of the spoils for themselves, and the only equitable distribution is usually amongst their loyal men. Villa and Robin Hood did share a similar vision of a redistribution of the wealth. And the inequality that precipitated anger and bloodletting was much the same in medieval England as in Villa's—with the bulk of the country's wealth lining the banks and pockets of a tiny fraction of its population. To make matters worse, the often-starving English peasants had to witness property and title being handed out to privileged nobles from other nations and lands. Similarly, Mexican peasants increasingly found themselves being paid a pittance to work the ranches of haughty Spanish lords, or dying pick-in-hand in underground gold mines owned and operated by American conglomerates. On both sides, the perceived enemy was all too often reduced to a repugnant one-dimensional caricature. Anglos were typecast as the greedy "gringo," since a high percentage of the few Americans that came to Mexico seemed to be there to profit and exploit—even if the majority of Americans residing just north of the border were actually as humble, caring and sometimes as impoverished as Mexicans. From the Villistas' limited perspective our country represented not a cornucopia so much as an open maw, poised to render and consume. The odds were impossible beyond belief, but Villa remained undaunted. He'd survived dozens of battles, always leading his men from the front, always braving the thick of battle. His was the strategy of a true cavalryman: When in doubt, charge! If "they want to swallow Mexico," Villa was reported as saying,
then "let's give them something to choke on." Back on your perch above town, you watch the night light up with red flashes of rifle fire. Some of the men on watch have been knifed, and at least two of the fellows at the campfire were stalked and clubbed before you heard the first ominous shots. Those initial half-dozen rounds prove to be an exchange between the guard at Post 3 at the regimental headquarters and some Villistas he'd challenged. Before crumpling and dying, the guard dropped at least two of them. Almost immediately the firing in town becomes general. Many of the men and most of the officers are away on leave, and Col. Slocum himself has just returned from an event in Deming. Most of the soldier's weapons are under lock, and no one seems to have the keys. The majority of the camp buildings are thin clapboard, offering no protection from the incoming bullets, and terrified medics won't let anyone else into the only safe structure, their adobe-walled hospital. Meanwhile Mrs. Parks, the wife of the editor of the Columbus Courier, is busy telling the world what's happening even as the bullets and glass fly—on her proud town's new telephone switchboard! One of the first to respond is Lieutenant James P. Castleman. Stepping out of his quarters he's surprised by a raider who fires at him from only a few feet away, amazingly missing. The Villista isn't nearly as lucky, as Castleman kills him with a single pistol round. Rallying about 30 riflemen, Castleman quickly breaks into the arms lockers. The US troops begin moving against the Mexicans looting (as is later learned) previously targeted businesses. The westward flanking movement diverts the scattered raiders from the military installations and gives the Americans charge of the main thoroughfare. At one point raiders bust into an army kitchen, only to have boiling water poured on them by a cook, and another killed with a kindling axe. The chefs then grab shotguns, kept for hunting small game near camp, and send the rest of the group running. Shopkeeper James T. Dean is shot 17 times while racing to put out the fire spreading to his store, and nearby Charles Miller is killed trying to protect his little drugstore. Bessie James, several months pregnant, takes what's probably a stray bullet through her side, and both she and her unborn child die. The home of the schoolteacher, Mary Field Page, is hit with more rounds than any other structure, putting some 40 or 50 holes in her piano alone. The Mexicans repeatedly start portions of her house afire, and each time her husband chances being shot to take a bucket of water and put the flames out. Residents will later speculate that Mrs. Page was singled out because she was believed to dish out stiffer punishments to her Mexican students than their Anglo counterparts. Both she and her husband miraculously survive. Young Lieutenant John Lucas had always hated his posting, in charge of a machine gun troop in such a "podunk" town—but tonight he gets some of the excitement he seemed to crave. Only just returned from an El Paso polo game on the railway's "drummers and drunkards" special, he's nonetheless one of the few men to rouse and engage in the desperate fight. He sets up and fires, first near the railroad tracks and then from a point downtown opposite Castleman subjecting the raiders to a withering fire. One Villista decides to empty a spindle of rope by grabbing the end and walking out into the street with it. The gunners handily shoot him down, as well as the three other unfortunates who take turns trying the same stunt. The French-made Benet-Mercier 7mm machine guns repeatedly jam, but Lucas and his men are able to clear them each time. The raiders may have set fire to the Commercial Hotel first, or perhaps they torched the Lemon & Romney Store and then an exploding drum of gasoline on the porch spread flame across the street. Either way, the arson turns out to be not such a great idea, given what great targets the now-silhouetted figures make. Each of Lucas' four full-automatic weapons burns an average of 5,000 rounds in the 90 minutes it's in action. Together with Castleman's riflemen, the machine guns account for nearly all the Villista losses. Col. Slocum later will insist there are "over 2,000" men in the attacking force, but it is doubtful there are more than 400 Villistas at or near Columbus at the time. Between the initial fight and the immediate pursuit, more than 100 raiders are killed and an unknown number wounded—likely half of the Villa force, not counting those held in reserve who never actually see action that chilling March night. Slocum finally appears on the scene at 5:30 a.m., after most of the raiders have already been driven from town. Rumors immediately fly that the commander had "laid low," and it doesn't help that he then takes a safe position on a nearby hill to direct fire on the retreating Villistas. By 7:30 the withdrawal is complete, although there are four more separate engagements as a Major Tompkins leads the pursuit a few miles into Mexico proper. They scatter the rearguard so fast that it isn't long before they stand facing both Villa's raid survivors and what must have been their posted reserves—possibly 300 men in all. Tompkins withdraws 400 yards, and when the expected counterattack never occurs, he and his troopers return to headquarters. Another 50 to 100 raiders have been killed, with American soldiers receiving only two minor wounds. Following the Confederacy's early Civil War victories
over the North, one rueful Southern general remarked, "I fear we have but awakened
the sleeping giant." So indeed had Villa.
Following the raid, speculation was rife that Villa and his men might not only be quickly captured, but summarily tried in Santa Fe under US laws. In the first week after the raid newspaper headlines remained naively optimistic: "Col. Slocum and the 13th Cavalry to follow bandits until all are taken." "President orders army to get Villa dead or alive." "Commanders say chance of escape slim." President Woodrow Wilson authorized General John "Blackjack" Pershing to launch a "punitive expedition" over the international border as quickly as he could gather his divisions, whether Carranza and other Mexican authorities liked it or not. Rather than a quick capture and return, however, Pershing's army marched and drove around the Sierra Madres for months without a single decisive battle. There were even calls in Congress for turning the search into a full-scale war with Mexico. On March 13, Sen. William Edgar Borah urged his colleagues to prepare for the possibility of war, while detailing just how many American boys he thought it would take to successfully pacify and then occupy the entire country. The Anglo population of Columbus and surrounding area was generally forgiving and tolerant of the Mexican and Mexican-American communities after the raid, not only because of long-standing friendships, relationships and intermarriage, but also because the locals increasingly vented their umbrage at Col. Slocum instead. General Hugh Scott, Army Chief of Staff, told journalists that the colonel had no reason to be on alert, in spite of recent alarming intelligence reports. The civilians, on the other hand, tended to hold Slocum responsible for failing to heed and react to earlier warnings, or to post an early lookout outside of town. They were especially irate that he apparently hadn't dared come out of hiding until the battle was well underway. According to survivor Edward Carson of Columbus, "The fact that his military superiors turned a deaf ear to our demands for punitive action against the colonel served only to elevate our anger toward Slocum, which appeared to be exceeded only by our hatred of Villa." Immediately after the raid, the wire services included a boast by Slocum that if Villa "comes again, we will give him a worse whipping than we gave him yesterday." That went without saying, since American soldiers had been able to repel an attack for which no preparations had been made, with their weapons under lock and key and their commanding officer slow to respond. The Carranza government released a report claiming Villa's intent was to force the intervention of the US by invading Mexico, although it's hard to imagine any real advantage to that. A Carrancista informant claimed Villa had decided ahead of time that their rallying cry would be "Death to Americans." There are contradictory accounts of the Villista battle cry that night. Some said that besides the usual "Viva Villa!" they also heard "Muerte a los gringos!" But if inflicting casualties had really been their primary intention, there probably would have been a lot more American deaths in Columbus than 10 civilians and eight soldiers. The raiders' main interest was in obtaining horses, small arms and machine guns from a US Army they were more than happy to antagonize and humiliate. As much as anything else they were an army in need of "boots," and newspapers told of Villa's men using up valuable time trying on footwear they'd stolen. They hoped to go home having avenged the Wilson government's support for their enemies the Carrancistas—and having struck yet another symbolic blow against what they deemed to be mammoth, colonial business interests "colonizing" or "meddling" with their beloved country. As for their treatment of the civilians of Columbus, none of the Hispanic population was bothered—not so much because they shared a common ethnicity as the fact that they were all fundamentally impoverished with little or nothing to take. And scant attention was paid by the raiders to residential homes, including those owned by Anglos. Their number-one target was Sam Ravel, a shrewd businessman and owner of the town's largest hotel and store. The buildings that headlines reported were heinously burned to the ground were those adjoining his Commercial Hotel. Legend has it that Ravel may have been the mysterious "Anglo-Saxon" from Columbus whom Villa suspected of "hoodwinking" his men in a shady business deal. It's said that the man sold ammunition to both Villa's buyers and Carranza's right-hand man, General Alvaro Obregon, but that the cartridges delivered to Villa were deliberately underloaded, resulting in the victory of Obregon at Celaya. According to local historian Richard Dean, Ravel told his son that Villa was mad he would accept only payments in gold, instead of the previously accepted Villista currency notes. The Ravels may have simply been scapegoated, with prejudices being what they were in those days, and they being the only Jewish merchants in town at the time. But whether the accusations and rumors were true or not, their store was sure to be singled out—the most obvious prize ship for any aspiring land pirate. Villa was never the worst of villains, nor was he anything approaching a "white knight." He dealt savagely with his own people and eliminated his enemies at every opportunity. He was unquestionably despotic, but doubtless that was what was required to hold together his ragtag army of contentious generals and Indian troops drawn from competing regions and tribes. For all Villa's past barbarity, the fact is that no children were hurt and only one woman killed in Columbus—and her death was believed to be unintentional. When the retreat got going in earnest, Villista guards released their captive, the black cowboy Bunk Spencer. Hours earlier, Spencer's fellow captive—Mrs. Maude Hawk Wright—was told she was free to go by Villa himself. Held hostage since the killing of her husband nine days before, she at first didn't believe the smiling bandit was serious. She made it to the house of some friends and only one week later got her baby back, it having been first tenderly cared for by the revolutionaries and then given to a local Mexican family for safe return. Prior to the Columbus raid, near Santa Isabel, a band of Villa's men had pulled 15 US citizens off a train and summarily shot them. But even then, apparently Villa had previously warned the Americans not to work for the Cusi Mining Co. and to stay away from its properties. Carranza tried to appease Washington by sending a "rescue" column to what was believed to be a threatened colony of expatriate American Mormons, only to discover they were fine as yet, and had in fact been recently trading with the Villistas. Villa and his men could be called thieves for sure, but they operated in a country ravaged by war, with food production nearly at a standstill and no jobs besides working for the rich rancheros or joining one of the competing armies. In this way the Villistas were little different from the "foragers" of the Union and Confederate forces, or the Vikings or Macedonians who came before them: taking what they needed from the resident people and their land, in order to resupply their soldiers and further their aims. The raid itself has been referred to as a "cowardly act." But stealth and surprise are internationally respected military strategies. Removing the sentries silently with knives, before they could give an alarm, was as prudent as it was vicious. If anything, the Villistas were markedly courageous, marching with archaic arms and little training against one of the most powerful countries in the world. Courage is a matter of willingness rather than ability or skill. These impassioned peons in their sugarloaf sombreros had certainly proven they were willing, if unable. And the 30 or 40 American soldiers who did the vast majority of the fighting were unquestionably heroes. Without their spirited efforts the raid could have turned into a true scene of death, destruction and rapine. They rallied, prevailed and killed more than 100 of the enemy with only eight losses. They accomplished this in spite of many of the men and officers being absent on recreational leave, their guns inaccessible under lock and key, and their commander possibly caught up in his own internal war. In order to justify and come to peace with the terrible things one must do in times of war, it is only normal for adversaries to at least temporarily deny the humanity of those who have harmed them. History, psychology, personal and national trauma hardly matter to those who have been shot at, watched their homes fired at the touch of a torch, or lost friends or loved ones. To those Columbus residents who lived through the terrifying raid, Villa could have no credible motivation or redeeming qualities. To Ed Carson he was a "cattle rustler, horse thief, bank robber, polygamist, bandit and sadistic murderer." Likewise, even today, to Richard Dean, grandson of the slain James T., Villa was "anything but a hero," and no New Mexico state park should ever have been allowed to bear his name (see the March 2005 Desert Exposure). Similarly, for many Mexicans then and now Pancho
Villa is a symbol of resistance and racial and cultural pride. To them,
his personal faults and violent excesses were simply regrettable aspects
of a noble and necessary struggle. A tourist visiting the Pancho Villa
museum in Ciudado Chihuahua can still stand awed before a large bronzed "Centaur of the North" striking
an eternally proud pose atop one of his smartly charging horses.
Villa's raid signaled the beginning of the unraveling of President Woodrow Wilson's unrealistically pacifist policies. On a side note, it also hastened legislation that federalized the National Guard, meaning that what had once been state militias could now be called out by Washington politicians to serve the federal government's aims and intentions. And the press would be censored as never before, with war correspondents facing severe repercussions for filing even the most innocuous battlefield reports. To quote Major W. R. Sample, acting commander of the Columbus camp, "The man who gets a scoop is an arch-criminal." While the 11-month-long, $140 million "punitive expedition" pursuing Villa may have been largely ineffective, it served as training ground for the tools and techniques of a new kind of war—and a new kind of world. Pershing's incursion in 1916 was the last time that American soldiers went into battle without helmets, and the first time that motorized vehicles were used as the main means of transport for troop insertion and evacuation, ordinance and resupply. Hundreds of 1 1/2-ton trucks and dozens of motor ambulances made the long trip south, manufactured by the likes of Kelly-Springfield, Dodge and White. Orders were sent not by courier, heliograph or telegraph but via two-way radio and the rapidly expanding stateside telephone system. The deadly machine gun spray that cleared a Columbus' street of firelit Villistas was an ominous precursor to the never-before-seen carnage of wartime Europe. Some Rebel yells and Indian whoops would still be heard ringing out from our trench lines in Belgium and France, and a country boy like pacifist Alvin York would use a Springfield rifle to take out German machine gun nests and singlehandedly round up scores of war-weary Huns. But soon the battlefield would belong to the depersonalized weapons of mass destruction: the yellow fog of poisonous mustard gas blowing back and forth between the lines, clanking tanks blowing up targets too far away for positive recognition. The JN-3 planes that flew for the Punitive Expedition signaled the militarization of the air, and conflicts would no longer be fought solely on land and on sea: What began with observers firing pistols at one another like cowboy shootists at 5,000 feet, evolved quickly enough into bombers obliterating entire neighborhoods below. Truck drivers used to horse and wagon often embarrassed themselves yelling "Giddy-up!" or "Whoa, Mule, Whoa!" to their vehicles. For all his sins, Villa could take pride in having successfully eluded the combined strength of two armies, Mexican and American. US agents reportedly hired Japanese agents to poison him shortly after the Columbus raid, but this plot failed. He'd escaped execution several times, and was finally brought to bay not by force but through appeasement. In order to get Villa to leave them alone, the new federalista government awarded him a ranch and a rich bounty in gold, and even agreed to pay the wages of his hand-picked bodyguard! But though he remained uncaught, now he too looked into the mirror and found himself a settled man— not unlike those other gents with money and haciendas he'd so long fought. By 1923 things had calmed down a good deal in Mexico, with most of the populace less revolutionary than resigned. Indeed, Villa had reason to hope that short memories and lengthy pardons could guarantee him something like a normal life, but it just wasn't to be. He was driving with his friends and bodyguards on the afternoon of July 23 when several assailants opened fire from their places of ambush. Villa's Dodge convertible ran over the curb and into a tree, as 16 rounds tore through his abdomen and chest. Even as he drew his last breath, he rested his revolver on the car door for one last act of bravado, dropping one of his assassins, Roman Guerra, with a perfect shot to the heart. The death of Pancho Villa was one of the closing chapters of the Western frontier, and in many ways he was a true Western character: self-reliant, self-advised and sure of himself. True to a cause, whether right or wrong. Relentless and unapologetic. A man capable of good-natured humor as well as unspeakable violence. A masterful horseman with the bravado we'd expect from a Wild Bunch outlaw or a John Wayne character. His Dorados ("Golden Ones") were known to hang informers from the nearest tree in the style of Montana and Arizona vigilantes, and on more than one occasion roped and dragged their victims, cowboy style, behind galloping Spanish horses. When it came Villa's time to perish, he still managed to shoot one of the enemy as he went down. On May 16, 1923, the wounded Pablo Lopez, one of Villa's top men, stood before a Carranza firing squad. He wrote a deposition right before signaling them to shoot by tossing his crutches to the side: "Yes sir, Pancho Villa is a man, a real man. I know he has not died. He is peacefully resting in the mountains waiting for the time to come back and act. . . and all of Mexico will be on his side." The raid on Columbus stands as far more than a bold
but minor invasion of our country's hard-won borders, as more than just
another example of our citizenry bravely passing the test. March 19,
1916, marks the true end of an era—and the last organized armed conflict
of the great American West.
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