In the morning darkness of March 9, 1916, a band of 400 to 500 troops under the command of the legendary revolutionary general, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, raided the small American cavalry outpost of Camp Furlong, near Columbus, New Mexico, three miles north of the Mexican border. While Villa had become well known for heading bold charges throughout the Mexican Revolution, still raging in 1916, this time he led from the rear, dividing his forces and sending an advance guard of eighty men ahead into the town. Although the raid was not a total surprise – Villa had not been sighted for a month and there had been reports that he was planning a raid on a border town – the cavalry at Camp Furlong were caught unprepared. Many of the troops had been up reveling late into the night, and most of their rifles and ammunition were under lock.

The cavalry finally mobilized and set up two machine guns on opposite sides of the town, trapping the Villistas in the crossfire. Interestingly, the army camp did not receive the brunt of Villa’s attack; it was instead a classic plundering and pillaging venture, as Villa’s men went house-to-house searching for precious stores of weapons, horses, and money that they could shunt back across the border. Yet, with a population of roughly 350 men, women, and children, Columbus had little to offer in terms of treasure for these desperate Mexican revolutionaries. Instead, the settlement was a “cluster of adobe houses, a hotel, a few stores and streets knee deep in sand, combined with the cactus, mesquite, and rattlesnakes.”