they also had radio wagons...horses at first and then motor powered...
George Patton was an aide to Pershing...ordered his Colt single action pistol from El Paso...I believe...used it to good effect in taking one of Pancho’s ...leaders...
I believe Erwin Rommel(later Desert Fox) was a young aide to the Mexican Federal Army...please correct if I am wrong...
The invasion continues on our soil. No Woodrow Wilson or Pershing to take it under control.
My great-uncle John was around in those days. There was actually considerable sympathy for Villa. He said they were just hungry.
Blackelk relayed a story to me about Pancho Villa crossing the border incognito, getting into a card game with U.S. soldiers, and winning big. When the soldiers thought they could welch on a lone Mexican, they found themselves surrounded by shooters, and paid up.
A fiend of mine who is a student of the history of cinema told me that Pancho Villa actually had a movie crew follow him to bank holdups, and couldn’t market the products, as they were not realistic enough, in the silent movie era!
Quite the character.
Wow, that’s something to think about. My mother was born 100 years ago on this past Monday, and I was looking at how things have changed. One hundred years seems like a long time, but in the big picture it isn’t.
I visited Columbus in 2002. Interestingly, the local branch of the county library was still using a card catalog. It is also noteworthy that the site of the 1916 raid—Pancho Villa State Park—is named for the perpetrator.
My grandfather served in the US Army in this conflict before later heading to Europe for WWI
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-george-patton
My Regiment Association is sending a small delegate to Camp Fulong where they will dedicate a memorial plaque. The 16th Infantry impressed General Pershing and they were one of the regiments who went with him to France a year later.
My grandfather was working inside a railroad yard in Mexico at the that time. He was twelve years old but had the responsibility of moving the boxcars with whatever type of locomotive that would be used for this. He was eventually forced to drive elements of Villa’s army to and fro until he escaped six months later. He remembered being very frightened by the bodies of people who were hung on the telegraph poles along the train tracks. He finally got home and the whole family bugged out to Yuma, Arizona, where they had family ties.
My grandfather spent 9 months on the TX-Mexican border as a member of Co D, 1st ND State Militia.
Prior to the pershing expedition, Life Scout Indiana Jones went into Mexico and thence to Belgium where he fought in the Belgian Army in WW I
Tonight We Ride
Tom Russell
Panhco Villa crossed the border in the year of ought sixteen
The people of Columbus still hear him riding through their dreams
He killed seventeen civilians you could hear the women scream
Blackjack Pershing on a dancing horse was waiting in the wings
Tonight we ride, tonight we ride
We’ll skin ole Pancho Villa, make chaps out of his hide
Shoot his horse, Siete Leguas, and his twenty-seven brides
Tonight we ride, tonight we ride
We rode for three long years till Blackjack Pershing called it quits
When Jackie wasn’t lookin’ I stole his fine spade bit
It was tied upon his stallion, so I rode away on it
To the wild Chihuahuan desert, so dry you couldn’t spit
Tonight we ride, you bastards dare
We’ll kill the wild Apache for the bounty on his hair
Then we’ll ride into Durango, climb up the whorehouse stairs
Tonight we ride, Tonight we ride
[solo]
When I’m too damn old to sit a horse, I’ll steal the warden’s car
Break my ass out of this prison, leave my teeth there in a jar
You don’t need no teeth for kissin’ gals or smokin’ cheap cigars
I’ll sleep with one eye open, ‘neath God’s celestial stars
Tonight we rock, Tonight we roll
We’ll rob the Juarez liquor store for the Reposado Gold
And if we drink ourselves to death, ain’t that the cowboy way to go?
Tonight we ride, tonight we ride
Tonight we fly, we’re headin’ west
Toward the mountains and the ocean where the eagle makes his nest
If our bones bleach on the desert, we’ll consider we are blessed
Tonight we ride, Tonight we ride
[solo]
...Tonight we ride, tonight we ride.
Woodrow Wilson sounds like a socialist and an evil man from all I’ve ever read about him...
My grandmother was born on a ranch in W Texas near the border-she told us stories of living in fear that Villa and his men would visit the area-as a young girl, she and one of her sisters had accompanied their father to the nearest store for some ranch supplies and food staples-which all the kids took turns doing-as she and her sister were carrying stuff their wagon, they saw everyone standing around looking at some mounted, armed and rough looking men riding down the middle of the road, and someone whispered “Pancho Villa”.
To the day she died, my grandmother claimed to have seen Pancho Villa, but in that time and place, it could have been any bandito or tough guy...