Whipped Cream Difficulties

Today is the 106th anniversary of Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico (also known as the Battle of Columbus).

KXAN has offered us a nice summary of the commemorative events going on in the area.

Short summary: Villa was bouncing around during the revolution, had just lost a battle, and his army was short on everything. He thought it would be a swell idea to do a cross-border raid, especially when he was told there were only about 30 soldiers in Columbus.

There were actually about 350 soldiers in Columbus. Villa sent “about 600” of his people (since he didn’t have enough supplies and ammo for everyone) and his troops had the initial advantage of surprise. However, the American forces rallied and drove off Villa’s forces.

In addition, many of the townspeople were armed with rifles and shotguns.

Armed citizens for the win!

In spite of Villa proclaiming that the raid was a success by evidence of captured arms and equipment from the camp, which included over 300 rifles and shotguns, 80 horses, and 30 mules, the raid was a tactical disaster for him with ill-afforded casualties of 90 to 170 dead from an original force that had numbered 484 men, including at least 63 killed in action and at least seven more who later died from wounds during the raid itself. Of those captured during the raid, seven were tried; of those, one sentence was commuted to life in prison; and six were convicted and executed by hanging. Two were hanged on June 9, 1916; four were hanged on June 30, 1916.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve liked Jeff Guinn’s other books, so I’ll mention War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion (affiliate link), which comes out in trade paperback in May.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2022 at 9:00 am and is filed under Books, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.