3.

Hunting Pancho

VERDUN WAS COVERED EXTENSIVELY in American newspapers, and on March 6, 1916, the El Paso Morning Times, which General John Pershing read on a regular basis, ran two front-page accounts of the battle. The longer one, sent in by the Associated Press, declared: GERMANS MOWN DOWN BY DEADLY FRENCH FIRE—GRUESOME PRICE PAID FOR SIX MILES OF GROUND. The article estimated that the Germans had brought up 250,000 reinforcements but that they were being wiped out at an astonishing rate by machine-gun fire. “It must be demoralizing to the Germans,” the AP reporter noted, “to see some 40,000 to 50,000 corpses of their comrades lying before the French lines.” There was no tally of French casualties (and no reference whatsoever to the presence of American soldiers like Eugene Bullard), but the last two paragraphs did describe another weapon relatively new to warfare that was killing the French in a horrific manner.

“The Germans, in their assaults, are using several sorts of burning liquid projectors. One of these is in the form of a small tank, which is carried on the back, filled with a composition liquid which seems to be mostly kerosene.” The reporter was referring to a Flammenwerfer (flamethrower). “Some French soldiers have been burned to a crisp by the flaming liquid.” It was a particularly ghastly way to die because death wasn’t instantaneous. The streams of burning fuel often covered the entire body, and the victims flailed about madly for up to a minute as they were roasted alive. So despised were German troops who used flamethrowers that if they tried to surrender, Allied soldiers executed them on the spot instead of taking them prisoner.

But of greater interest to General Pershing was another front-page story in the El Paso newspaper: VILLA TROOPERS ARE REPORTED MARCHING ON EL TIGRE. Whatever goodwill had existed between Pancho Villa and Pershing when they were photographed together with General Álvaro Obregón in late August 1914 had evaporated by January 1916. Villa was furious at President Woodrow Wilson for supporting his political rival, Venustiano Carranza, to be president of Mexico. Wilson had continued to send Carranza military arms and supplies from the United States, while halting similar shipments to Villa.

Feeling betrayed by Wilson, Villa and his band of Villistas began harassing and killing U.S. citizens in Mexico. El Tigre was a mining town seventy-five miles southwest of the border, where about two dozen Americans lived. They had every reason to be afraid. Less than three months earlier, on January 10, approximately fifteen Villistas stopped a train outside Santa Isabel, Mexico, and commanded the American passengers to get out. Most of them were workers on their way to the silver mines of Cucihuriacic, an area that President Carranza had assured the United States was safe. Pablo Lopez, one of Villa’s most trusted and vicious officers, told the eighteen Americans to strip to their underwear and group together. (Villa himself wasn’t there.) Lopez then selected two of his men to shoot every one of them. Within seconds the firing began. “The Americans lay on the ground, gasping and writhing in the sand and cinders,” an eyewitness named José Maria Sanchez recalled. “The suffering of the Americans seemed to drive the bandits into a frenzy. ‘Viva Villa!’ they cried, and ‘Death to the gringos!’ Colonel Lopez ordered the ‘mercy shot’ to be given to those who were still alive, and the soldiers placed the ends of their rifles at their victims’ heads and fired, putting the wounded out of their misery.” The Villistas stole everything of value off the victims and left their bodies to rot on the side of the tracks.

Villa denied having anything to do with the killings, and President Carranza told President Wilson that because the incident had taken place inside Mexico, his federal troops would bring the perpetrators to justice. Wilson, not wanting to spark a larger conflict, initially did nothing.

For Pershing, the weeks and months between August 26, 1915, when his wife and daughters were killed, and March 9, 1916, were essentially a blur. “I have been trying to write you a word for some time but find it quite impossible to do so,” he wrote in an October 1915 letter from Fort Bliss, apologizing to a friend named Anne Boswell.

I shall never be relieved of the poignancy of grief at the terrible loss of Darling Frankie and the babies. It is too overwhelming! I really do not understand how I have lived through it all thus far. I cannot think they are gone. It is too cruel to believe. Frankie was so much to those whom she loved and you were her best friend. . . .

I am trying to work and keep from thinking, but oh! the desolation of Life! The emptiness of it all, after such fullness as I have had. There can be no consolation.

Affectionately yours,

John J. Pershing

In December 1915, three months after the fire, Pershing confessed to another friend that he still could not bring himself to tell his son the truth. “Warren doesn’t know his loss, but includes Mama and Helen and Anne and Mary Margaret in his prayers every night. I just cannot tell him [they are gone]. He thinks they are in Cheyenne [with Frankie’s parents].” As he had told his aunt Eliza before, Pershing was burying himself in his work, and the turmoil in Mexico was, almost mercifully, requiring much of his attention.

Pershing was getting reports from the War Department about Pancho Villa’s whereabouts, but most were false leads. The March 6, 1916, story in the El Paso Morning Times about Villa possibly attacking El Tigre turned out to be incorrect as well. Villa and four hundred of his men had in fact set their sights on the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Their plan was to charge into Columbus in the dead of night and steal horses, weapons, food, money, and anything else they could get their hands on. The raid started on March 9 just after 4:00 a.m. (The railroad depot clock was hit by a stray bullet, stopping the hands at exactly 4:11.) Villa expected the residents to offer little to no resistance. He had sent spies into Columbus the day before, and they informed him that there were only about fifty U.S. soldiers at Camp Furlong, which was right next to the town. There were actually five hundred members of the 13th Cavalry garrisoned there.

An excerpt from Pershing’s letter to Anne Boswell.

The soldiers were initially caught off guard and groggy from sleep, and it took them time to scramble around and find their rifles, including a Hotchkiss machine gun, in order to save Columbus. The fighting went on for almost two hours, but once the sun began to rise, Villa called for his men to retreat, and they galloped back into Mexico. Eight U.S. soldiers and ten civilians lay dead, among them a Mrs. Milton James, who was pregnant. Several bullets had passed through the coat of a young girl named Edna Ritchie, but she escaped unharmed. Moments earlier, however, she was forced to watch her father beg the Villistas to spare his life if he gave them everything in his pockets, a total of $50. They accepted the money and then shot him anyway.

Even with the element of surprise, Villa and his men sustained massive casualties. Estimates ranged from 160 to 200 killed, and many more injured, including the man who had massacred the 18 American miners in January, Pablo Lopez. Lopez had been shot badly in both legs. Months later, still crippled, he surrendered to President Carranza’s troops, who treated his legs enough so that he could stand up in front of a firing squad. Brash to the end, he refused a blindfold, and his last words were an order to his executioners to take careful aim: “In the breast, brothers! In the breast!”

Villa’s brazen assault on U.S. soil and the deaths of eighteen soldiers and civilians ignited widespread condemnation throughout the United States. (There was one exception: the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper actually scolded Columbus in a front-page editorial for “being [too] close to the border,” thus all but inviting an attack.) President Wilson knew he had to respond militarily, but he was still concerned about an action escalating into full-blown war. And President Carranza was an unreliable ally. Carranza recognized that Villa had crossed a line, but he was also aware of how popular Villa was in Mexico, and striking the United States had only made him more of a folk hero.

March 9, 1916, when the Columbus raid occurred, also happened to be the very day that a man named Newton Baker became America’s new secretary of war. Within minutes of starting his job, Baker found himself embroiled in one of the most sensitive diplomatic situations the country had faced since the Lusitania was torpedoed in May 1915. Baker hadn’t wanted the position and had even tried to talk Wilson out of appointing him. He insisted he knew virtually nothing about the military and described himself as a “pacifist,” claiming that he had “never even played with tin soldiers” growing up. The two men had been friends for almost fifteen years, starting in 1891 when Wilson was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and Baker was one of his students. Baker went on to become a successful lawyer and politician in Ohio, and he was elected the mayor of Cleveland in 1911. When Wilson ran for president in 1912, Baker helped him win over critically needed delegates from the Buckeye state, enabling Wilson to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination. Wilson asked him to join his cabinet, but Baker refused because it would have meant quitting as mayor. When his term was over, he finally relented and accepted Wilson’s offer. Completely lacking in expertise in military affairs, Baker nevertheless had other attributes Wilson admired. He was decisive and willing to take risks, and he excelled at finding and delegating authority to the brightest and most competent people.

After a cabinet meeting on March 10, the White House announced that an “adequate force will be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the object of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays.” The statement emphasized that “this can and will be done in entirely friendly aid of the constituted authorities in Mexico and with scrupulous respect for the sovereignty of that republic.”

Now President Wilson and Secretary Baker had to select who would lead this unprecedented operation, the largest manhunt in U.S. military history. Major General “Fighting Fred” Funston and the general who served under him, John Pershing, were the top two contenders.

Funston was not only in charge of Fort Sam Houston, he was responsible for the entire Southern Department of the Army. Those who saw him for the first time could be forgiven for thinking his nickname was intended as a joke; Funston stood barely five-foot-four and weighed just over a hundred pounds. But despite his diminutive stature, he was a whirlwind of energy and had extensive combat experience.

His path to leadership was an unusual one. After being rejected by West Point, Funston worked a series of jobs—train porter, botanist, journalist—before, almost on a whim, he decided to go to Cuba at the age of thirty-one to join the Cuban revolutionaries rebelling against their Spanish rulers. Malaria forced him to return to the States, but for his actions in Cuba, Funston was made a full colonel with the 20th Kansas Infantry and shipped to the Philippines in 1898, where he fought Filipino nationalists. Funston was daring in combat: during one especially heated battle, he swam across two rivers, under fire, to single-handedly overwhelm an enemy position. He was also responsible for capturing the leader of the Filipino insurgents, Edward Aguinaldo, receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions.

Unlike General Funston, John Pershing seemed destined to become a soldier since childhood. Born in January 1860 in Laclede, Missouri, he had vivid memories of Confederate troops storming into his hometown and almost killing his father during the Civil War. As a boy, Pershing delighted in dressing up in a little Army uniform and marching around Laclede saluting veterans and joining in Fourth of July and Memorial Day parades. He applied to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and by correctly answering a grammar question that stumped his one remaining rival, he went on to gain admission to the school in 1882. To get in, Pershing even claimed his birthday was September 13, 1860; if he hadn’t fibbed, he would have been rejected for being too old.

But in truth, Pershing never intended to make a career as a soldier. What he most aspired to be was a lawyer, and the sole reason he applied to West Point was for the free education. Although he did eventually attend law school, Pershing found himself increasingly drawn into a military life. His first assignment was with the 6th Cavalry, fighting against Lakota Sioux tribes throughout the West. Pershing became an officer at the age of thirty-two, taking command of troops in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, comprised of African American soldiers serving under white officers. After the Spanish-American War broke out, Pershing distinguished himself in Cuba, where he and Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders confronted Spanish forces on the San Juan heights in July 1898. When Roosevelt became president in 1901, he so admired Pershing that he made the unprecedented move of promoting the young major three full ranks, to brigadier general, a decision that generated considerable bitterness among the large group of officers he had leapfrogged. There was much speculation that Pershing’s father-in-law, Senator Francis Warren, played a role, forcing Roosevelt to publicly deny any favoritism in vehement terms.

Pershing had also served in the Philippines as the governor of the Moro province. The Moros were indigenous Muslims who had been notoriously hostile to Americans, but Pershing made an effort to learn about their culture and treat them with respect, which led to better relations. (He had also made it very clear that he would fight if attacked.)

Wilson and Baker ultimately chose Pershing because the Punitive Expedition was to be as much of a diplomatic mission as a military one, and Funston, for all his experience, was also hotheaded and rash, while Pershing was known for his political sense and cool demeanor.

Pershing’s aide was an eager lieutenant from a prestigious military family named George Patton who was hell-bent on participating in the hunt for Villa. Patton had camped out in front of Pershing’s office every morning to insist, respectfully, that he go along. Partly annoyed by Patton’s persistence but also impressed by his zeal, Pershing relented and gave him the assignment.

Though Pershing was given close to twelve thousand soldiers to hunt down one man, the odds were in Villa’s favor. There was no contingency plan for such an expedition, and Pershing had to improvise on a daily basis. Villa knew the terrain intimately, while Pershing and his men were given maps from the War Department that were so useless a soldier went out and bought a more accurate one published by Rand McNally for fifteen cents. Villa had runners and scouts who could get messages to him quickly. Pershing had “wireless sets,” but their range was less than thirty miles and his cavalrymen were covering upward of a hundred miles in a day. Telegraph machines required an actual wire to run between the devices, and the government-issued wire was fragile and uninsulated. A single misplaced horse step or a few drops of rain and all communication would be cut off until the wires were patched up again.

President Carranza hindered Pershing at every turn. He refused to let him use Mexican railroads to move troops and supplies, forcing Pershing to rely on horse- and mule-drawn carts as well as new Dodge trucks and Ford cars that had never been used in a military operation of this size. They also added an extra $450,000 to the expedition’s cost, and, by law, only Congress could approve such a purchase. But when the request came to the desk of the Army’s assistant chief of staff Tasker Bliss, Bliss knew there wasn’t time for a lot of bureaucratic back-and-forth, so he just put in the order with the quartermaster and the vehicles were shipped off to Pershing. Bliss told Secretary of War Newton Baker what he had done, and Baker applauded his actions and offered to take responsibility for any backlash, saying: “If anybody goes to jail, I’ll be the one.” Congress let the matter slide, and neither man was punished.

President Carranza may have loathed Pancho Villa, but he was deeply suspicious of Pershing as well, and he questioned why President Wilson was sending into Mexico a force the size of a division—with artillery, infantry, and cavalry—for one individual. To Carranza, it reeked more of an invasion than a manhunt.

Pershing was ordered not to occupy any town, and so he set up his first headquarters outside Colonia Dublán, a Mormon community 116 miles south of Texas. (Members of the Church of Latter-day Saints had been settling in Mexico since the mid-1880s, after the United States outlawed polygamy in 1882.) Pershing’s men were astonished by how erratic the weather could be. One day the desert was a furnace, broiling hot even in the shade. Sandstorms came whipping through with such violence that the men had to scurry into their tents and lie down flat on their stomachs, with goggles covering their eyes and handkerchiefs over their mouths. A day later, it would snow.

To cover as much ground as possible, Pershing sent columns of troops to spread out across Mexico. On March 28, Colonel George Dodd was traveling with the 7th Cavalry, George Custer’s old unit, through the town of Bachiniva, more than 250 miles south of Texas, when he learned that Villa had been shot in the leg by Carranza’s troops and was hiding in Guerrero, only 20 miles away. Unbeknownst to Dodd, his Mexican guide was sympathetic to Villa, and he took the 7th Cavalry on an intentionally meandering route, allowing Villa time to escape. The delay was critical to Villa because his wound was causing him to move slowly.

“The leg of his pants and drawers were cut away nearly to the hip, leaving his leg bare, and after some days it turned very black for about twelve inches above and below the wound,” recalled Villa’s driver, a Mexican farmer named Modesto Nevares. Nevares recalled that Villa “would cry like a child when the wagon jolted and curse me every time I hit a rock. After we . . . started south through the mountains, he got so bad that he could not stand the wagon any longer.” Villa instructed his men to attach poles to his bed and carry him on foot. Sixteen men were required to take Villa 110 miles east to the town of Parral.

Conflicting rumors about where Villa was hiding sent Pershing’s men chasing numerous dead ends, and they suspected that many of the Mexicans provided them with erroneous information on purpose. There was also speculation that Villa was already dead. President Carranza jumped on that idea, calling for Pershing to abandon the entire expedition and return to the United States.

Pershing doubted Villa was dead, but he understood how delicate the diplomatic situation was, and, on April 3, he issued the following statement to the press: “After having progressed 350 miles into the interior of Mexico it is very gratifying to be able to state that our relations with the Mexican people, both military and civil, have been exceptionally cordial and friendly. From the military forces of the de facto [Carranza] government we have received hearty co-operation.” In fact, relations with Carranza were worsening by the day.

On April 1, Pershing traveled to Bachiniva to confer with one of his senior officers, Major Frank Tompkins, who proposed heading to Parral. When Pershing asked why, Tompkins said, “The history of Villa’s bandit days shows that when he’s hard pressed he invariably holes up in the mountains in the vicinity of Parral. He has friends in that region.” The hunch was no better or worse than any other that Pershing had heard, and he put 175 soldiers from the 13th Cavalry under Tompkins’s command and equipped them with five hundred silver pesos, a dozen mules, and about a week’s worth of rations.

Tompkins and his men arrived outside Parral on the morning of April 12. They had been told the night before, by a messenger from the town, that the local Mexican commander, General Ismael Lozano, would be there to greet them, allow them to stock up on provisions, and then take them to a habitable spot just outside Parral where they could set up camp.

When neither General Lozano nor any of his aides were present to meet him, Tompkins rode into Parral, found Lozano at his headquarters, and discovered that the general had no intention whatsoever of helping him. Lozano said that if Tompkins came into town with all of his men, it would be perceived as a hostile act by the townspeople and they would respond accordingly. A crowd was already assembling in the main plaza, and it began chanting, “Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!” One of the more vocal agitators looked to Tompkins like a German spy. Hundreds of Germans had allegedly infiltrated Mexican villages to stir up anti-American sentiment and, ideally, provoke another war with the United States.

Tompkins also cried out “Viva Villa!” to break the tension, but whatever laughter it elicited vanished the moment that gunshots rang out. Tompkins realized that Mexican soldiers were emerging from the crowd and forming into lines around the Americans. And these were Carranza’s troops, not Villa’s. General Lozano told Tompkins that he had no control over the mob or the soldiers and that he and his men should retreat immediately. Whether it was meant as a warning volley or actually to hurt someone, a shot was fired by a Mexican soldier in Tompkins’s direction and ended up killing a young sergeant named Jay Richley. Tompkins and his men rode out of Parral, with Carranza’s troops close behind. As Tompkins crested a ridge that swerved to the right, he quickly set up an ambush, placing twenty of his soldiers behind the hill. When the unsuspecting Mexicans came around the corner, dozens were struck down by a hail of bullets.

Tompkins and his men reached Santa Cruz before the Mexicans could catch up with them. From half a mile away, they watched as the Mexicans rode cautiously toward the town. A captain named Aubrey Lippincott, known as a crack shot, lay down on the roof of a house, aimed his rifle at the first Mexican in the group, and fired. The man slumped over, dead. All of the Mexican soldiers behind him pulled up on their reins, turned around, and hightailed it back to Parral.

Tompkins never found out if Villa had even been there.

Pershing, upon hearing that Carranza’s troops had fired on and killed some of Tompkins’s men, was apoplectic. The New York Tribune’s Robert Dunn, who had been following the Punitive Expedition, started to write about what had happened at Parral, calling it an “ambuscade.” When Pershing saw the draft, he crossed out “ambuscade” and replaced it with “treachery.”

Dunn pushed his luck and typed out a fake headline he thought would amuse the general: PERSHING DECLARES ALLEGHENY MOUNTAINS AT ANY COST MUST BE DEFENDED, referring to the mountain range safely located four thousand miles away in the eastern part of Appalachia.

Pershing didn’t crack a smile. Another reporter, from the Kansas City Journal, published a story that did go to press, and it was explicitly mocking the whole expedition and the myriad rumors surrounding Villa. “Since General Pershing was sent out to capture him, Villa has been mortally wounded in the leg and died in a lonely cave,” the article began.

He was assassinated by one of his own band and his grave was identified by a Carranza follower who hoped for a suitable reward from President Wilson. Villa was likewise killed in a brawl at a ranch house where he was engaged in the gentle diversion of burning men and women at the stake. He was also shot on a wild ride and his body cremated. Yet through all these experiences which, it must be confessed, would have impaired the health of any ordinary man, Villa has not only retained the vital spark of life but has renewed his youth and strength. He seems all the better for his vacation, strenuous though it must have been.

Pershing was beginning to hate the whole country. “[Mexico] is given over to banditry,” he wrote to a friend, “the main purpose of the bandits being to live without work and have first call on all the young girls as they arrive at the age of puberty or even before.” After telling another friend, General Enoch Crowder, who was back in Washington, that he felt like a man “looking for a needle in a hay stack with an armed guard standing over the stack,” he remarked, “I do not believe these people can ever establish a government among themselves that will stand. Carranza has no more control over local commanders or states or municipalities than if he lived in London.”

This line of reasoning, coupled with his anger over Parral, prompted him to send a telegram to General Funston with a bold idea on how to solve the Villa problem once and for all. “The tremendous advantage we now have in penetration into Mexico for 500 miles parallel to the main line of railway should not be lost,” he cabled Funston on April 18. “With this advantage a swift stroke now would paralyze Mexican opposition throughout the northern tier of states and make complete occupation of entire Republic [a] comparatively easy problem.”

Unable to catch one man, Pershing was now suggesting taking over all of Mexico.

The recommendation went to President Wilson, and he dismissed it out of hand. As he told the journalist and historian Ray Stannard Baker, he believed that the first “Mexican-American War was a blot on our nation’s honor,” and, regardless of the country, the citizens of a nation had the right “to do what they damned [well] pleased with their own affairs.”

Pershing vented his frustrations privately and kept his cool in public and with the press, just as President Wilson had hoped. Wilson, nevertheless, was worried about how events were unfolding, and he sent the Army chief of staff General Hugh Scott to the border to meet with General Funston and high-ranking representatives from Carranza’s government, including General Álvaro Obregón. Talks went on and off for weeks. Obregón insisted that Villa was dead and Pershing’s troops should be pulled out immediately. Scott and Funston countered that there was no proof Villa had been killed, and that attacks on border towns in the United States had to end before American forces withdrew. (In early May, even as the negotiations were taking place, Mexican bandits crossed into Texas twice and murdered four people and kidnapped two others.)

Funston ordered Pershing to move the bulk of his troops to the district of Namiquipa, northwest of Chihuahua City. Funston was hearing reports that President Carranza had deployed twenty thousand soldiers to Chihuahua City and was bringing up thousands more to the west. Carranza claimed it was to go after the Mexican bandits Funston had expressed such concern about, but Funston suspected Carranza was, in fact, preparing a massive strike against Pershing and his men.

•   •   •

FRUSTRATED AT HOW LITTLE his Punitive Expedition had accomplished during the two months it had been in Mexico, Pershing finally received some good news. On May 14, Pershing told Lieutenant George Patton to take three cars and fourteen other men to find food for the troops. After securing a whopping six-hundred-plus acres’ worth of corn, Patton realized that they had ventured close to the ranch where Pancho Villa’s bodyguard and second in command, Julio Cárdenas, was suspected of hiding out. In this case the rumor was true. Cárdenas and two other Villistas were inside a hacienda, and when they saw the American cars driving up, they all jumped onto their horses with guns in hand. Patton yelled at them to halt, and three shots came back in response, one kicking up dust right in front of him. Patton unloaded his pistol on the first man, about twenty yards away, hitting his arm. Patton then remembered the advice of a friend who had said that when confronted by cavalry, aim for the horse; he brought a second bandit down by shooting his horse in the hip. The animal fell on top of the man, and Patton—“impelled by misplaced notions of chivalry,” he later said—let the man stand up before riddling his body with bullets.

General John Pershing during the hunt for Pancho Villa.

By the end of the firefight, Cárdenas and the two other Villistas were dead. Patton and his men tied the bodies to the front of one of their cars like hunted deer and drove back to headquarters to show off their “trophies.” Upon his return, Patton dashed off a short letter to his wife, Bea, about his first experience shooting a man. “As you have probably seen by the papers, I have at last succeeded in getting into a fight,” he wrote. “I have always expected to be scared but was not nor was I excited. I was afraid they would get away. I never heard a bullet but some say that you do not at such close range. I wondered a little at first that I was not hit, they were so close.”

Several days later, the incident still very much on his mind, Patton sent Bea another letter. “Gen [Pershing] has been very complimentary telling some officers that I did more in half a day than the 13 Cav. did in a week. He calls me the ‘Bandit,’” Patton wrote on May 17. “You are probably wondering if my conscience hurts me for killing a man. It does not. I feel about it just as I did when I got my sword fish, surprised at my luck. From the latest news we may stay here some time. I hope not as it is very stupid unless we have war.”

Another month passed, with the War Department frequently reminding Pershing to act “conservatively” so as not to trigger a larger clash. Pershing was also being warned by General J. B. Treviño, commander of Mexican troops in Chihuahua City, that he had orders from his government “to prevent American forces that are in this state [of Chihuahua] from moving to the south, east or west of the places they now occupy.”

Outnumbered two to one, Pershing refused to be intimidated. “I shall,” he replied to Treviño’s June 16 message, “use my own judgment as to when and in what direction I shall move my forces in pursuit of bandits or in seeking information regarding bandits. If under these circumstances the Mexican forces attack any of my columns the responsibility for the consequences will lie with the Mexican government.” In the diplomatic equivalent of “Go to hell,” Pershing ended his cable to Treviño by stating unequivocally, “I do not take orders except from my own government.”

Hunkered down near his original headquarters at the Mormon missionary in Colonia Dublán, Pershing learned on June 18 that a large force of Carranza’s troops were advancing on Ahumada, just to his east. Pershing tasked Captain Charles Boyd with gathering a small scouting party to head toward Ahumada. “This is a reconnaissance only,” Pershing sternly instructed Boyd, “[and] I want you to avoid a fight.” Pershing didn’t want Boyd to go directly into Ahumada itself, but stay as far away as possible while still being able to determine the size of the Mexican forces. Pershing’s orders could not have been clearer.

En route to Ahumada, Boyd and his men rode past the Santo Domingo Ranch, and an American foreman there who knew the area told him that there were more troops in Carrizal, five miles south, and they were tough fighters. Lieutenant Henry Adair, in Boyd’s company, mocked the very idea of “Mexican courage” and assured Boyd that if they encountered Carranza’s soldiers, the Mexicans would drop their guns and flee at the first sign of real trouble.

Boyd’s scout, a bilingual Mormon named Lem Spilsbury from Colonia Dublán, disputed this. “You’re just mistaken,” Spilsbury said. “I know Mexicans that are just as brave as any Americans I have ever heard about.”

After heading out of the Santo Domingo Ranch at 4:00 a.m. on June 21, Boyd was within a mile of Carrizal by 7:30 a.m. Using Lem Spilsbury as his translator, Boyd told Major Genevo Rivas, a Mexican officer who had ridden out to meet them, that Boyd and his men were going to enter the town.

“There are no Villistas in this part of the country,” Major Rivas said to Boyd with a sneer, “and if there are any enemies of yours over here, we’re them!”

At this point, another one of Major Rivas’s commanders, General Félix Gómez, appeared on the scene. His tone was more cordial, but he nevertheless informed the Americans that they could not continue any farther. Gómez said that he would, however, be more than happy to go back to Ahumada and send a cable to the senior general in the region, J. B. Treviño, for a final decision.

But before Gómez left Carrizal, Carranza’s troops began stealthily taking positions behind walls and barricades around the Americans. Perhaps hoping for his own Patton-like moment of fame, Boyd marched up to Lem Spilsbury and demanded that he translate the following to Gómez word for word: “Tell the son of a bitch that I’m going through,” Boyd exclaimed, spittle flying out of his mouth. “God damn you! I’ve never disobeyed an order yet, and I’m not going to now.”

Boyd’s words didn’t have to be translated.

“You might pass through the town,” Gómez replied calmly, “but you’ll have to walk over my dead body.”

Boyd was convinced by Lieutenant Adair’s assessment of Mexican troops that once the Americans made a move, the Mexicans would run away. Seconds later, Boyd and his soldiers raced directly into the Mexican positions, and were shot down like penned hogs. Boyd’s low regard for the fighting spirit of the Mexican soldier cost him his life. General Gómez was also killed in the shoot-out. With several of their officers dead, the remaining Americans realized they were outgunned and without leadership, and they retreated as rapidly as possible. In the end, nine Americans were killed, a dozen injured, and twenty-four more taken prisoner.

President Wilson, Army Chief of Staff Scott, and General Funston had all thought that tensions were deescalating in Mexico, but the catastrophe at Carrizal reminded them that they were still one needless firefight away from a full-scale war. President Wilson called up 110,000 National Guard troops to protect the American side of the border and assured Carranza, as best he could, that this was not the buildup to an invasion. It was also insurance that Mexican troops would not suddenly surround and massacre Pershing and his relatively smaller force of 12,000. Pershing remained close to Colonia Dublán. Carranza by this time had more pressing matters to deal with: south of Mexico City, 20,000 heavily armed rebels under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata were conducting hit-and-run strikes against Mexican troops.

Pershing’s Punitive Expedition had for all intents and purposes run its course. While they never captured Villa, the operation wasn’t a total failure. By June 30, 1916, of the estimated 485 Villistas who had raided Columbus, New Mexico, four months earlier, approximately 270 had been tracked down and killed, more than 100 were seriously injured in firefights, and 60 had been brought in by the Carranza government, which left only about 25 of the original attackers at large. Still, Pershing was a proud man, and he believed that if Carranza had actually helped him, they could have caught Villa.

One of Pershing’s greatest disappointments was the ineffectiveness of the airplanes assigned to the operation. The impressively named 1st Aero Squadron consisted of a mere eight planes. The first one broke apart on its way to Colonia Dublán, and the other seven didn’t have enough power to fly above the mountainous terrain, rendering them useless. Days and weeks of agonizing marches could have been spared by even one plane able to dart miles in advance to find Villa’s men.

Pershing doubted that planes would ever be of much use in warfare. He wasn’t alone in underestimating their influence; General Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander in chief, had considered airplanes “very well for sport” but not “for the army.” By June 1916, aviators on all sides of the war were proving the generals wrong.