by Frank McLynn
At the last moment Villa pardoned the doctors and did not make good his threat to attack Douglas, but the anger did not go away. Having lost to Obregon and Carranza, Villa displaced his rage on to the yanquis, concentrating on the fact that they had embargoed arms and allowed Carranza's troops to be transported across US territory to thwart him at Agua Prieta. Villa seems genuinely to have believed his own propaganda to the effect that US recognition of Carranza was all part of a sinister plot whereby Carranza had agreed to cede Mexico's railways and oil fields to the gringos. Villa also cynically calculated that playing the anti-American card might revive his prestige and his moribund political movement. For the first time in the Revolution there was genuine anti-American xenophobia and the yanquis now joined the Spanish and the Chinese in the demonology of the movement.
The force of Villa's rage against the United States in early 1916 has led some sober commentators to conclude that he was suffering from temporary insanity. It is certain that a letter he wrote to Zapata on 8 January was more than curious. Villa began by outlining the master conspiracy whereby Carranza and Wilson intended to dismember Mexico; the chicanery by which he had been defeated at Agua Prieta was all part of this. He then conceded that Zapata had been right to be so angry when Wilson sent the Marines into Veracruz in 1914. And why did he withdraw them just as Carranza was about to arrive there, almost as though by pre-established harmony? He then asked Zapata to bring his armies north so that together they could defeat the gringos. Why should Villa imagine Zapata would consent to operate in the north, when he had always made it clear he was interested only in the patria chica of Morelos? Why would Zapata automatically share his mania about Wilson? How did he expect Zapata to solve the logistics of a 2,ooo-mile trek through Carranza-held territory for a quixotic attack on the Americans? None of it is rational, but it does indicate Villa's maniacal desire to go for the yanqui jugular.
Villa soon showed he meant business. On ig January 1916 seventy villistas under Pablo Lopez stopped a train travelling between Chihuahua City and the US-owned Cusihuiriachic mine at the Santa Ysabel river. On board were eighteen mining engineers. Lopez ordered them off the train then left them to the mercy of his Mauser-toting cut-throats. Within minutes seventeen lay dead, riddled with bullets; only one survived, through feigning death. When the news filtered over the border there was outrage, and Wilson came under extreme pressure to send military units into Mexico. Villa claimed publicly that the commanding officer had exceeded orders, and Lopez himself said that he had intended only to rob the Americans, but that when they ran away his men lost their heads and opened fire on them. Clearly, Lopez was lying, but did he order the massacre on his own initiative or on Villa's orders? Villa disclaimed responsibility and to `prove' it executed two of his officers and displayed their bodies publicly in Ciudad Juarez. The problem was that the dead man displayed in Juarez who had allegedly ordered the killing was Jose Rodriguez; the real culprit, Pablo Lopez, was one of Villa's new favourites, so he was shielded. Despite Villa's protestations about `exceeding orders', the probability is that Lopez had indeed received the nod from Villa and was acting under a general mandate from him to attack Americans.
The day before the Santa Ysabel massacre, Villa assembled his 200 dorados and told them their next target was Presidio, the US border town next to Ojinaga. However, the men were unhappy and the march to Ojinaga turned into a fiasco, with massive desertions. On 30 January Villa bowed to the inevitable and aborted the mission. To prevent further desertion, next day he stopped a train and allowed his men to plunder at will; the spate of desertions suddenly dried up. The debacle over Ojinaga convinced Villa that if he was to attack US targets, he could no longer confide in his men. He decided to draft men for special, unspecified missions and to this end sent his aide Candelario Cervantes to his home town of Namiquipa to press-gang all former villista troops. Having dragooned his quota, Villa refrained from telling them where they were going, but simply threatened to shoot their families if they deserted.
Having trained and prepared his motley force, Villa set out on 24 February for an unknown destination. In his expeditionary force were two regiments, one formed of Chihuahua veterans, the other a mixed outfit containing men from Durango, Sonora (including some Yaquis) and the farther reaches of Mexico. For two weeks the force marched towards the US border through remote regions, moving mainly at night, so that they did not run into carrancista patrols. The few Mexican civilians they met were taken prisoner so that they could not give the alarm, but any Americans encountered were roughly handled. Villa executed three American cowboys who simply had the bad luck to have known him from his earlier days; he also captured a woman named Maude Wright, but kept her with them until after the attack. Finally, on 8 March, Villa learned that he was just four miles from his target: Columbus, New Mexico, an undistinguished town of a few hundred inhabitants living in wooden shacks.
Why did Villa attack Columbus? Four very different motives have been suggested, in ascending order of probability. It has been asserted that the raid was an act of purely personal revenge, because Villa bore a grudge against an arms dealer in Columbus called Sam Ravel. It seems that Ravel took money as an advance against delivering a consignment of arms and then welched on the deal. In favour of the story is the fact that during the raid on Columbus the villistas wrecked Ravel's property before retiring; against it is the awkward fact that Villa's original target was Presidio, that he chose Columbus only as a pis aller after the fiasco of mass desertion on the march to Ojinaga.
A more ingenious idea is that Villa was a pawn in unseen hands. The usual candidates offered for consideration are US business interests or the Germans. The business lobby scenario implies extreme machiavellianism: that US capitalists would consent to see Columbus shot up and lives lost simply to provoke Woodrow Wilson into ordering an occupation of Sonora and Chihuahua, where their capital assets were. Though not necessarily impossible on that score, the theory founders on Villa's extreme and insensate anti-Americanism: it is simply implausible that in his then state of mind he would have colluded with any gringo, no matter what the motive. The Germans are more promising as conspirators. The motive would be to inveigle the USA into Mexico and make it impossible for her to intervene in the war in Europe on the Allied side; also to impair arms sales to Britain and France, as weapons and munitions would be needed by the US expeditionary force in Mexico. It is true that Germany was in favour in general terms of getting Villa to attack the USA and supported him after Columbus, but there is no evidence or proof that they set up or fomented the attack. Moreover, it was likely that the State Department could read such transparent intentions and therefore refrain from intervention, thus ruining the entire plot.
The third option is that Villa acted alone. It is possible that he acted on pure impulse and entirely spontaneously - that the raid on Columbus was simply his personal satisfaction for the insult offered by Wilson's recognition of Carranza - but more plausibly, he probably intended to provoke US intervention and discredit Carranza. So far Villa alone had inveighed massively against the yanquis: if they invaded, he would be proved right and his propaganda claim that Wilson and Carranza were in secret partnership triumphantly vindicated. Fourthly, it is possible that he really did believe that the USA intended to annex Mexico in due course, and thought it better to ignite the war over that issue in the here and now rather than the future.
On paper Columbus seemed a pushover for the villistas. Apparently there were horses, machine-guns, and Springfield rifles there, banks full of money, stores full of food, and just fifty soldiers to defend it all. However, when Villa himself did a reconnaissance of the town, he found that his spies had seriously misled him. There were not fifty troops in the garrison there, but 6oo. He returned, dubious about the enterprise, but this time it was his commanders who persuaded Villa. Candelario Cervantes pointed out that if they withdrew without attacking after coming so far, the men would desert in droves. Villa shrugged, and gave the order to attack
during the night of 8-9 March. He addressed his 400 fighters and told them that the assault was revenge for Agua Prieta. To fire them up, he mentioned the many cases in the lower Rio Grande valley in recent weeks when chicanos were lynched by the gringos, and the notorious true incident in El Paso where twenty Mexicans were doused with kerosene and burned alive. Allegedly he said: `The United States wants to swallow Mexico; let's see if it doesn't get stuck in their throats.'
Villa then divided his forces, detailing one section to strike into the southern part of the town and attack the garrison at Camp Furlong, while the other boiled into central Columbus, there to rob the bank, kill Sam Ravel and gut his properties; Villa himself remained on the Mexican side of the border with a small reserve. The attack went in at 4.45 a.m. The garrison was taken completely by surprise, even though there had been repeated warnings that Villa might attempt an adventure like this. Neither General John J. `Blackjack' Pershing, commanding all US troops on the Mexican border, nor garrison commander Herbert J. Slocum, had taken the warnings seriously. Not only was the garrison not put on alert but officers were routinely allowed to go home to their wives. In so far as Slocum did believe Villa was coming to Columbus, he appeared to think that he was coming alone to seek asylum and to explain that the Santa Ysabel massacre was nothing to do with him.
Although Camp Furlong was caught unawares, the two officers on duty managed to rally their men, helped by a colossal blunder by the villistas. Underestimating physical spaces in the garrison, they assumed that the stables were dormitories for the enlisted men. Raking the `sleeping quarters' with rifle fire, they killed horses rather than soldiers. Once the American defenders opened up with machine-gun fire, the villistas beat a hasty retreat, but not before there had been some sanguinary hand-to-hand encounters, especially in the mess-hall. When the villistas broke into the kitchens, the cooks assailed them with axes, knives and boiling water; one Mexican died after being clubbed with a baseball bat.
In central Columbus meanwhile there was panic when the raiders arrived firing wildly and shouting: `Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!' They smashed their way into Sam Ravel's Commercial Hotel and killed four guests, one of whom foolishly opened fire on the marauders, but they could not find Ravel - not surprisingly, as he had gone to El Paso to see his dentist. His brother Louis managed to bury himself under a pile of hides, but the villistas found another brother, Arthur, aged fifteen, and threatened him with death if he did not reveal the combination to Ravel's safe. The youth was genuinely ignorant of it, so the raiders took him across the road to the Commercial Hotel. Later, as they emerged from the hotel, the boy's captors were gunned down by American snipers. The boy ran off into the night, unharmed.
Soon American troops in two separate detachments were converging on central Columbus, one unit with machine-guns, the other consisting of the best sharpshooters. In the pre-dawn darkness it was difficult to counterattack or distinguish raiders from civilians. However, the villistas made the mistake of torching the Central Hotel, which had the effect of floodlighting the fighting; the American troops were then able to open up on clear targets. At 7.30 the bugle sounded the retreat and the villistas withdrew in good order. US troops crossed the border in pursuit but ran into heavy resistance from Villa's reserves and returned to Columbus. Seventeen Americans, mostly civilians, had been killed in the skirmish and over ioo villistas. In the short run the raid was a failure, for Villa came away with no guns, stores or money from the bank. However, the long-term repercussions of this first foreign invasion of US territory since 1812 would give him a new lease of life.
The raid on Columbus caused a sensation in the United States. Woodrow Wilson was up for election in the autumn and an angry Congress and enraged public opinion forced him to act. Wilson himself was reluctant to intervene in Mexico, as he thought this was to play both Villa's and Germany's game, but after discussions with his Cabinet, who unanimously urged military action, he grudgingly accepted that he would have to do something. A number of points were made by the secretary of state and others. There was the obvious argument that unless something was done, Villa would be tempted, and almost invited, to raid US territory again. The administration's credibility in Latin America and Europe was also on the line; a particular fear expressed was that inaction would encourage Germany to step up its submarine campaign in the Atlantic. Most compelling of all arguments, though, was that a feeble response would hand the Republicans the 1916 presidential election on a plate.
Wilson still needed to be sure he would not be dragged into a full-scale war with Mexico, which would prevent his intervening in the war in Europe. He contacted Carranza, explaining his dilemma, and assuring him that any expedition sent south of the border was not a prelude to a wider attempt at US annexation. Carranza was prepared to accept a small expeditionary force sent south with the limited aim of searching out and destroying Villa - he even helpfully cited the precedent of US-Mexican collaboration against the Apaches in the i 88os - provided he received from Wilson a pledge that Mexican sovereignty and the dignity of the Mexican people would be respected. Wilson gave the necessary assurances. On io March he ordered General Pershing to take 5,ooo men into Mexico, there to find and extirpate Villa and his band.
On 15 March Pershing crossed the Rio Grande with three brigades. His was the classic mission impossible. To catch Villa he had to fight a war of counterinsurgency, and this meant burning villages, taking reprisals, shooting prisoners. Sooner or later this was bound to involve collision with Carranza's armies, especially since Carranza made it clear he would not cooperate actively with what came to be known as the `Punitive Expedition'. In Washington experts gloomily predicted that war with Carranza was inevitable. War plans were drawn up which envisaged the naval blockade of all Mexican ports and the military occupation of Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas; for this huge task no less than 250,000 troops were earmarked in contingency planning. Wilson also had a war chest of millions of dollars with which he planned to recruit a quisling army to fight Carranza; from this fifth column he hoped a future Mexican president, friendly to the USA, would emerge.
Supplying the Pershing expedition was a logistical nightmare. Two hundred trucks were commandeered to drive supplies from Columbus south along an ever lengthening supply line. American pioneers were set to constructing a road into the heart of Chihuahua, for the so-called roads were so bad that the lorries could almost never get out of first gear. For the troops themselves the worst hardship was the desert weather, where men fried and baked at noonday temperatures of ninety degrees plus. Exhausted, dehydrated, with lungs choked with dust during the day, the troops then had to endure Arctic conditions at night, when the water in their canteens would freeze solid. So gruelling was the march that Pershing had to allow a ten-minute halt for every hour of trekking. Cavalrymen threw away their old-fashioned regulation sabres in disgust, expressing the wish that they could have been water-bottles.
By the end of March Pershing was deep into western Chihuahua, already 350 miles from the border. Carranza continued to take a tough line in public, adamant that he would not allow the expedition to be resupplied by rail, but privately conniving at the sleight of hand whereby fresh supplies were sent from the USA, not to the expedition as such but to named individuals in it. Yet though Pershing was well supplied, he could make little headway against a sullen or hostile population. The carrancista governor of Chihuahua, Ignacio Enriquez, exhorted the people to support the Americans, but they conspicuously did not do so. In difficult and unfamiliar terrain Pershing was at the mercy of local goodwill and know-how, but the villagers were uncooperative, refusing to sell anything to the invaders or even give the most elementary directions. Guides hired at great expense invariably led Pershing away from Villa, and the locals continually fed the Americans disinformation. Pershing began the long series of epistolary complaints to Washington that would consume most of his energies in 1916.
None the less, even with the active and passive support of Chihuah
ua, Villa's position was perilous. By the end of March Pershing commanded 7,000 troops and an air squadron of eight planes, and he was assisted in his sweep by Carranza's commanders. As the villistas retreated into the sierras, morale in the ranks was low; nothing seemed to have been achieved and they could not even stop to tend their wounded. The inevitable bitter recriminations broke out between Villa's lieutenants, with Cervantes and Nicolas Fernandez each blaming the other for the debacle. Yet Villa, by his sheer force of personality, charisma and the fear he inspired, kept his band together. At each pueblo they passed, Villa would harangue the villagers, calling on them to resist the yanquis, since Mexico and the United States were now at war. There was a particularly warm response at the village of Galeana, where the locals took Villa's wounded off his hands and cared for them, so that his progress would not be impeded by non-effectives. The only worry was that there were few recruits to his banner and he was forced to press new `volunteers'.
There were signs that Villa was beginning to win hearts and minds with his anti-gringo propaganda. On 16 March the villistas encountered a large force of carrancista troops who could probably have finished them off, but the regulars rode on as if blindfolded. In the village of Matachic there was a revolt by the garrison who demanded to be allowed to join Villa and defend Mexico's sacred soil against the yanquis. There were many tales of Carranza's troops sheltering, hiding and even feeding the villistas to save them from hot pursuit by Pershing. Carranza was angry at all such stories of collaboration and sent several reiterated `search and destroy' orders to his commanders. On 17 March there was the first skirmish between Villa and federal forces. Ten days later Villa hit back hard, taking Ciudad Guerrero and attacking the villages of Minaca and San Ysidro in the old Orozco heartlands. The federal commander at San Ysidro beat off the villistas, then became overconfident and tried to retake Guerrero. This gave Villa a significant victory, in which he took eighty prisoners and hundreds of weapons.