Pancho Villa — Fourth Horseman of the Mexican Apocalypse Part II

It was one of the most remarkable feats in the annals of Frontier Partisan warfare — hell, in all of military history.

In March 1913, Pancho Villa crossed the border from the U.S. into Mexico leading eight men. He sent a telegram to the Huertista governor of Chihuahua, General Antonio Rabago:

“Knowing that the government you represent was preparing to extradite me, I decided to come here and save you the bother. Here I am in Mexico, resolved to make war upon the tyranny which you defend. Francisco Villa.”

He proceeded to do just that. Gathering followers, first by the handful, then by the hundreds, he raided haciendas and hijacked trains, once capturing a shipment of 122 bars of silver. He traded rustled cattle and stolen silver for arms in the United States.

In a year’s time, he had built commanded the mightiest army in the western hemisphere, the storied Division del Norte, storming into the Mexican heartland, moving from triumph to triumph to overthrow the usurper, Victoriano Huerta.

The strategically critical objective of the revolutionary war in Chihuahua was control of the railway that ran from the U.S. border at El Paso down into the interior and eventually to Mexico City. Villa employed night attacks and cunning misdirection to take the garrisons of cities on that route. In perhaps his most brilliant exploit, he abandoned a faltering siege of Chihuahua City, moved north around the federal garrison and hijacked a train. Pretending to be the train operator, he sent a distress telegraph message, saying that the rail line had been cut by Villista rebels and requesting instructions. The command in the border city of Juarez ordered the train to back up the line to safety.

Villa ran it all the way to Juarez. Arriving in the dead of night, the Trojan train disgorged hundreds of Villista fighters, who took the train station, the police headquarters and other strategic points in the city with scarce a shot fired. Villa also took over the roaring casinos and bordellos that served the gringo tourist trade and raked in massive amounts of coin.

With that special operations coup, the bandit general seized control of the vital border point of entry for supplies of arms and other materiel of war.

Villa’s Division del Norte was made up of cowboys and miners, idealistic intellectuals and disgruntled federal officers, like the brilliant Felipe Angeles, who commanded Villa’s growing artillery contingent. Angeles was a noble soul, whose social-democratic outlook would have fit right in with the European intelligentsia of the day. It also attracted natural-born killers, like Villa’s old compadre of the Sierra Madre from his bandit days, Tomas Urbina, and the man who would become Villa’s bodyguard, head of railroad operations and executioner, Rodolfo Fierro.

The Mexican Revolution was a brutal affair. All factions executed prisoners by firing squad and civilians often suffered abuse or atrocity at the hands of federals or rebels — or each in turn. However, Villa’s Division del Norte was exceptionally disciplined. While he did confiscate land and money from those he deemed enemies of the revolution, Villa forbade drunkenness and looting and was especially careful to protect American property. He was, after all, receiving funds and arms from the north and he did not want to alienate the Americans. The general outfitted his military trains with medical cars, rolling hospitals with the latest equipment and the best medical professionals. Villa was a genuine friend of the poor and he was especially committed to building schools and seeing to it that children in his area of operations received an education.

Though he would degenerate morally under the pressures of defeat and the increasing savagery of what would soon become a civil war, Villa during the 1913-1914 Revolution lived down his fearsome reputation as a bandit.

The general placed himself under the civilian control of Venustiano Carranza, the self-proclaimed First Chief of the Constitutionalist faction that was seeking Huerta’s overthrow. It was an unhappy relationship. Carranza, vain, aristocratic and inscrutable, disdained the rough bandit chieftain from the sierra, even as that bandit won the big battles that would secure for Carranza the presidency. Villa first grew impatient with the interference of the bewhiskered First Chief, then resentful. By the time Huerta bailed out of Mexico a beaten man, Villa hated The Beard’s guts.

Following the tragic pattern of so many 20^th Century revolutions, the triumph over tyranny almost immediately disintegrated into a civil war that proved far more savage than the revolutionary conflict. In early 1915, Carranza’s favored general, Alvaro Obregon, squared off against the triumphant Villa, who looked invincible.

But Villa had a unique capacity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The same audacity that had allowed him to spit defiance with only eight men at his back made him overconfident at the head of 20,000. Obregon, a canny customer, was paying close attention to the military developments of the First World War raging across Europe, and he had German advisors who helped refine the lessons of the Western Front and apply them to the Mexican Civil War.

Obregon provoked the mercurial Villa into battle at Celaya in the Laguna country in the center of Mexico. In the biggest battle in the western hemisphere since Gettysburg, he smashed the Division del Norte.

Some have argued that Celaya marked the failure of machismo in the face of interlocking fields of fire and to some extent, that’s true. Villa thrived on the offensive, he believed himself born to attack and attack he did, into machine guns, flooded cotton fields and trenches. Like Lee at Gettysburg, he believed his troops capable of doing the impossible. They proved not to be invincible after all. They were flesh and blood, to be rent and broken by a storm of steel.

But it must be noted Villa’s failure at Celaya was little different from that of the British at the Somme or the Germans at Verdun. Tactics for attack had not evolved a solution for the sheer potency of defensive positions and firepower. Attacks could break into a defended line, but could not hold in the face of counterattack.

Villa limped away, only to be goaded into another battle at the city of Leon. The battle there lasted 40 days and closely replicated the hellishness Western Front. Again, Villa was beaten.

It was all downhill from there. The general rallied the remnants of his command and marched across the Sierra Madre into Sonora, hoping to change his fortunes by taking the Carrancista garrison at the border town of Agua Prieta. But by this time, the U.S. had decided to recognize Carranza’s government and they allowed the transport of Carrancista reinforcements across U.S. territory. When Villa launched a night attack on the city’s defenses, searchlights powered by electricity run across the border lit up the desert and spotlighted Villa’s men, who were again mowed down in droves.

After a last fight deeper in Sonora, Villa disbanded the tattered remains of the Division del Norte, and with a handful of loyal followers disappeared into the sierra. He was nursing a profound rage at the United States, whom he believed had betrayed him. Villa had always preserved U.S. interests, protected U.S. property. He had had good relations with several U.S. Army officers, particularly General Hugh Scott. Why had they turned on him to help the hated Bearded One?

Betrayal on any level stoked the latent paranoia that stalked Villa the bandit’s psyche. It drove him literally mad. He discovered that his old compañero had not only failed to rally to him at Celaya but had also absconded to his fortified hacienda with a horde of revolutionary gold. Villa was practically berserk in his fury. He and a picked force descended upon Urbina’s hideout and slaughtered his followers. Yet, Villa couldn’t make the call to execute his old friend. He sent him toward Chihuahua for medical treatment for the wounds he suffered in the assault.

Fierro shot him to pieces enroute.

So… first old Tomas, now the Americans. Villa was beside himself with frustration, humiliation and rage. Come March of 1916, he would give vent to that rage in spectacular fashion. His target: the sleepy American border town of Columbus, New Mexico.