Chasing Villa

The world got its first glimpses of what 20^th century warfare would look like in May of 1916 when the U.S. sent troops to Texas in pursuit of Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. Officers who once pursued or fled from Apaches and Comanches on the frontier now fought a series of skirmishes that included automobiles, airplanes, machine guns and movie cameras— all for the first time. Future 20^th century miliary leaders like Gen. George S. Patton first tasted combat in the mountains, deserts and borderlands of Mexico, chasing Villa and his band of revolutionaries. 

The U.S. got involved after Villa launched a string of violent attacks along the Mexico-U.S. border, including a raid on Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916, that killed 17 Americans. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who had earlier rejected Texas Governor Jim Ferguson’s request for troops to patrol the border, now sent 100,000 soldiers to the state’s Big Bend region. 

The Mexican government balked at letting the Americans use the Mexico North Western Railway, so the Americans sent supplies to Gen John J. “Black Jack” Pershing’s headquarters on trucks, the first time the U.S. ever used trucks as part of a military operation. The First Aero Squadron sent eight Curtiss JN3 airplanes to provide aerial reconnaissance, the first time the U.S. military used airplanes in a military operation. 

Though the pursuit of Pancho Villa survives with a frontier patina, Pershing and Villa both drove Dodge touring cars during the expedition. Major George T. Langhorne had a Cadillac. After Mexican raiders attacked the Texas border towns of Glenn Springs and Boquillas, Langhorne led a second expedition into Mexico to rescue hostages, exterminate banditos,and secure plunder. In their spare time the troops were to build a telephone line from Marfa to the Rio Grande. 

The detachment that plunged into Mexico on May 11, 1916, included 100 mounted cavalry, 20 extra horses, two Fords and Langhorne’s chauffeur-driven Cadillac. Two correspondents, including James Hopper of Collier’s magazine, were present because the Army’s only supply truck got stuck and the journalists had cars, which were soon commissioned to carry weapons and equipment across a muddy crossing. A movie crew was there to film the action for the folks back home. 

At one point, near Rosita, Hopper recorded for posterity one of the earliest military actions involving an automobile. Langhorne was in his Cadillac, riding shotgun, when they flushed a group of bandits. The chauffer accelerated in pursuit while Langhorne fired away from over the dashboard. The chauffer gave Langhorne a running play-by- play of each shot. 

“A foot to the right, sir!”

“A little too high!”

“You almost got him! Just an inch to the left!”

“Aaaaagh!”

The chauffer was so involved with recording Langhorne’s marksmanship that he steered the Cadillac into an arroyo. Hopper wrote: “The entire party paraboloed through the air, and there was joy all around.” The joy must have come from the fact that the chauffer, journalists, and major survived the exciting accident. Unfortunately, the movie cameras weren’t rolling. 

While the American army had its film makers, Pancho Villa had his. Recognizing the hero-making possibilities of motion pictures, Villa sold the revolution’s movie rights to the Mutual Film Corporation of New York for $25,000 and a share of the profits. Mutual decreed that Villa was to fight his battles between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., which might have struck Villa as unfair since the U.S. fought with no such restrictions. 

We know that Villa’s crew canceled one attack in favor of a second take, but we will never know which take the director chose because the movie’s final cut was, by all accounts, terrible and has not survived the test of time. 

Other historical relics did survive. Villa’s Dodge Roadster, riddled with bullet holes from a fatal ambush in 1922, sits now in the courtyard of his former mansion in Ciudad Chihuahua, Mexico as part of a museum exhibit. Pershing’s Dodge is a museum piece in West Point, N.Y. A car that Patton drove in pursuit of banditos along the border is likewise on display in a museum at the Aberdeen, New Mexico Proving Grounds, but Langhorne’s Cadillac is nowhere to be found.