The Dusty Trail
The Pancho Villa Punitive Expedition, 1916-1917.

by MAX BOOT
Monday, May 13, 2002 12:01 A.M. EDT

(Editor's note: This is chapter 8 of Mr. Boot's new book, "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power." You can order the book from the OpinionJournal bookstore. To read the table of contents, click here.)

Lucas had graduated from West Point in 1911 and promptly been dispatched to the Philippines. He liked his tour of duty there and was dismayed when three years later, at age 24, he found himself transferred to the 13th U.S. Cavalry Regiment based at Camp Furlong, New Mexico, near the international border. Life in neighboring Columbus (population 350) did not compare with the excitement of the Orient. "There was little to do and plenty of time to do it in," he later recalled, amid "the sand storms, the heat and monotony of existence in this sun-baked little desert town," with its "cluster of adobe houses, a hotel, a few stores and streets knee deep in sand." All around was the vast desert with its "cactus, mesquite and rattle snakes."

In search of excitement, he went off for a week's leave in March 1916 to El Paso, Texas, where he played polo against fellow cavalry officers. "On a hunch" Lucas decided to return to Columbus on the last train of the night, known as the "Drunkard's Special," on March 8 rather than wait till morning. He reached Columbus at midnight and stumbled to his quarters in the dark; the town had no electricity. He found his tiny adobe shack empty; his roommate, another young officer, was away. His .45 caliber revolver was empty--his roommate had taken the ammunition--and on another hunch Lucas decided to reload before falling asleep.

He was awakened at 4:30 A.M. on March 9 by "some one riding by the open window" of his room. He looked outside and saw a man with a black sombrero on horseback. The night air rang with shouts of "Viva Mexico" and "Viva Villa." Lucas instantly realized the invaders were followers of Francisco "Pancho" Villa, the legendary Mexican revolutionary and outlaw who had lately been carrying out a vendetta against the United States. "I got hold of my gun and stationed myself in the middle of the room where I could command the door, determined to get a few of them before they got me." Lucas was saved when a sentinel on duty opened fire on the Mexicans, distracting them from Lucas's house. The guard was killed, but Lucas took advantage of the opportunity to dash out in search of his men.

Columbus had been caught completely by surprise. There had been unconfirmed reports that Villa intended to attack a border town, but Colonel Herbert J. Slocum, the 13th Cavalry's experienced commander, had not been able to learn much about Villa's movements because standing orders from Washington forbade him from sending scouts south of the border. Slocum had only 500 men to cover 65 miles of border, and just 350 of them were in camp. No one had sounded the alarm when, earlier on the night of March 9, more than 400 Villistas had slipped across the border and headed for Columbus. The pistoleros had divided into two parties, one group attacking the town of Columbus, the other heading for Camp Furlong, located just south of the town across the railroad tracks.

The raiders cut a swathe of destruction through the Columbus business district. Some of them ran into the Commercial Hotel, the only one in town, where they grabbed what loot they could and shot five guests. They set fire to the grocery store across the street, and the flames quickly engulfed the hotel as well. The Mexicans also fired into private homes, killing and wounding more residents of Columbus.

Many of the officers with families lived nearby, outside Camp Furlong. Captain Rudolph E. Smyser barely managed to get himself, his wife, and two children out the back while Villistas battered down his front door. The Smysers hid in an outhouse until it was safe to come out. Lieutenant William A. McCain, his wife, and little girl hid in the mesquite behind his house, along with his orderly. Before long, they were joined by Captain George Williams. The sounds of battle seemed to be dying down when an isolated Mexican stumbled upon this little clump of Americans. Before he could do anything, McCain shot him with a shotgun, but the birdshot didn't kill him. The men grabbed the wounded Mexican and realized he had to be silenced before he could give the alarm. They tried to cut his throat with a pocket knife, but it proved too dull. They finally killed him by hammering his head with a pistol, as a distraught Mrs. McCain and her young daughter watched in horror from only a few feet away.

Aside from a few sentries, the only Americans who were already awake in Camp Furlong were the cooks. The Villistas who tried to invade the kitchen shack were in for a nasty surprise. The cooks fought them off with pots of boiling coffee, axes, and shotguns normally used for hunting up meat. Meanwhile, the stable hands fought back with pitchforks and baseball bats.

There were only two officers in camp that night--2nd Lieutenant Lucas and 1st Lieutenant James P. Castleman, the officer of the day. Castleman had just put down a book around 4 A.M. when a bullet smashed through his window. He grabbed his revolver, flung open his door, and came face to face with a Mexican pointing a rifle at him. The Mexican fired and missed. Castleman made no mistake; he practically blew the Mexican's head off with a heavy .45 caliber slug. Then he ran to the barracks where he began to round up the men of his outfit, Troop F. The soldiers advanced toward town in the dark, firing at muzzle flashes. When the troopers entered Columbus, they found that the burning hotel illuminated the silhouettes of Mexican attackers, and their rifle fire began to take a deadly toll.

Before long, Troop F bumped into the only other organized group of defenders, Machine Gun Troop, commanded by John Lucas. Running over the rough ground barefooted, Lucas had managed to reach the guard tent, where the machine guns were kept. With two men, he set up a Benet-Mercier machine gun. After a few rounds, the weapon--which had a history of unreliability--jammed, but they simply grabbed another gun. Lucas's men eventually set up four of the bipod-mounted machine guns. Together with Castleman's riflemen, they delivered a withering cross fire that drove the Villistas out of Columbus just as dawn was breaking, three hours after the attack had begun.

Colonel Slocum, the 13th Cavalry's commander, climbed atop Cootes Hill to watch the retreat. Major Frank Tompkins, itching for revenge, approached the colonel and asked for permission to pursue the raiders. Permission was granted, and within 20 minutes Tompkins had 29 men from Troop H riding for the border, soon to be joined by 27 more men from Troop F led by Lieutenant Castleman. Villa's rearguard tried to stop the pursuit by digging in on a hill, but Tompkins simply ordered his men to charge. Amid the roar of horse hoofs and the crackle of gunfire and the screams of men, the cavalry broke the Mexican line and killed many of the retreating Villistas.

Tompkins soon realized that he was in Mexican territory and wrote back to Slocum for permission to continue. Slocum told him to use his own discretion. Tompkins did not hesitate: He continued chasing the Villistas until they were about 15 miles into Mexico, by which time both men and mounts had grown too exhausted to continue. The weary troopers returned to camp, having killed 70–100 Villistas. No Americans were killed in the pursuit, though both Major Tompkins and his horse received slight wounds and a bullet passed through Tompkins's hat.

Despite having the element of surprise, Villa's attack on Columbus had been a disaster. He lost some 100 men killed and 30 captured (some of whom were hanged following a New Mexico state trial)--at least one-third of his command in all. On the American side, eight civilians and ten soldiers had died; another seven soldiers and two civilians were wounded.

What had motivated Villa to undertake this seemingly foolhardy assault, the most serious invasion of American soil since the War of 1812? That question remains hotly debated to this day; it is one of many mysteries that still swirl around the enigmatic figure of Pancho Villa.

The man who would become Pancho Villa was born Doroteo Arango in 1878 in the Mexican state of Durango. His parents were poor sharecroppers on a giant hacienda, and his father died at an early age, leaving his mother to support five children. As a teenager Doroteo turned to banditry. Legend (probably created by Villa himself) has it that he was forced to become an outlaw after he killed a rich man who raped his sister. Francisco Villa--the name he adopted to elude the authorities--proved a successful bandit. He robbed mainly from the rich and, he later claimed, gave some of his proceeds to the poor. Historians differ on the extent of his generosity, but about his ruthlessness there is little dispute. Villa did not hesitate to murder those who crossed him.

When the Mexican revolution broke out in 1910, Villa was 32 years old and living in the northern state of Chihuahua, next door to his native Durango, supporting himself with a combination of legitimate jobs and cattle rustling. Here he was recruited by an emissary of Francisco Madero, the wealthy, slightly otherworldly idealist who was leading the rebellion against the aging dictator Porfirio Diaz. It is not clear why Villa joined the revolution, but it is a good bet that the rebels promised him amnesty for all the criminal acts he had committed. He may also have been motivated by hatred of the ruling oligarchy, by a desire to help the downtrodden from whose ranks he sprang, and by loyalty to his idol, Madero. A desire for booty probably did not motivate him; he took greater care to prevent his men from looting than did most other revolutionary leaders, and he did not acquire significant riches during his political career. Power he did acquire. It did not take this onetime bandit long to become one of the leading men in Mexico.

His rise was due entirely to his native magnetism, shrewdness, and energy, for he had little ideology and less education; though he displayed great reverence for learning, he himself was virtually illiterate. E. Alexander Powell, an American author who met him in 1911, described Villa as "stockily built and of medium height--not over five feet ten, I should guess--with the chest and shoulders of a prize fighter and the most perfect bullet-shaped head I have ever seen." His black hair was "as crisp and curly as a negro's" and "a small black mustache serves to mask a mouth which is cruel even when smiling." Observers agreed that his most extraordinary feature was his prominent brown eyes. "Indeed," wrote Powell, "they are really not eyes at all, but gimlets which seem to bore into your very soul."

Villa epitomized the Mexican ideal of macho. Although he did not drink or smoke, he was a world-class womanizer, marrying one woman after another without bothering to divorce his previous wife. He also had a reputation as a superb horseman--he came to be known as the "Centaur of the North"--and as one of the best gunfighters in Mexico. His cruelty (to his enemies) and his generosity (to the poor) added to his legend. Highly emotional, he could weep publicly one minute, and the next instant be gripped by cold, murderous rage. Writers who met him often compared him to a "wild animal," a "lion," or a "jaguar."

His men loved him and feared him in equal measure; and he in turn was devoted to their welfare. Starting out with just 14 followers, Villa swiftly rose to become one of the top military leaders of the revolution, helping Madero assume the presidency in 1911. Villa then took a break from politics to run, of all things, a string of butcher shops. His incongruous foray into the bourgeois society of Chihuahua City, the provincial capital, did not last long. In 1912 he was summoned back to the colors to help the Madero government and the federal army put down a counterrevolution. Villa, the passionate man of the people, clashed with the ambitious and imperious army general Victoriano Huerta, a holdover from the Diaz regime who viewed him as a dangerous rival. Huerta had Villa arrested and nearly executed. After seven months in prison, Villa managed to escape by sawing through the bars of his cell with a saw smuggled in by a sympathetic court clerk. Francisco Madero was not so lucky. In 1913 the president was overthrown and murdered in a military coup led by the bloodthirsty General Huerta.

Many of the forces that had originally risen up to overthrow Diaz now took up arms against Huerta. While the revolution was a complex sociopolitical phenomenon, and ideological debates often took a backseat to clashing personal ambitions, three major strands stand out. First, dispossessed peasants in southern Mexico led by Emiliano Zapata. The most radical of all the major revolutionaries, he was determined to break up the giant haciendas (some owned by Americans) and redistribute their land. Second, poor farmers, miners, cowboys, and Indians in northern Mexico led by Pancho Villa, who pressed for regional autonomy as well as land reform. And third, progressive members of the middle and upper classes ("men who have always slept on soft pillows," in Villa's contemptuous phrase) who had turned against the oligarchy. They constituted the most moderate elements of the revolution. Madero had been one of these disillusioned hacendados (landlords); the new leader of the revolution, Venustiano Carranza, was another. Carranza, the white-bearded, 53-year-old governor of the northern state of Coahuila, refused to recognize Huerta's usurpation. To unite the opposition, he organized the Constitutionalist Party and appointed himself its Primer Jefé (First Chief).

Pancho Villa nominally recognized Carranza's leadership, but this was nothing more than a marriage of convenience. After briefly taking refuge in El Paso, Texas, Villa returned to northern Mexico to organize a formidable new army, the División del Norte (Division of the North), built around the ultra-brave, ultra-loyal dorados (men of gold), his version of Napoleon's Old Guard. His men soon proved their worth by routing the federales in Chihuahua. The unlettered guerrilla leader spent the tumultuous month of December 1913 running the state personally. He expropriated the largest landowners, turning over much of their property to his followers. But he was no wild-eyed Bolshevik. He protected the middle class and foreign property owners, and kept his troops firmly under control. After four weeks of surprisingly effective administration that sent his prestige soaring, Villa set off again to make war against the Hueristas.

In 1914, the Constitutionalists, with a little assist from the U.S. occupation of Veracruz, finally succeeded in toppling Huerta. But with victory in their grasp, the revolutionaries fell out among themselves, setting the stage for the greatest bloodletting of the entire civil war. The conflict pitted the peasant caudillos Zapata and Villa against the patrician Carranza. Villa and Zapata occupied Mexico City (the First Chief took refuge in Veracruz after the American evacuation), but they had little desire to govern the country themselves and before long evacuated the capital. In 1915 Villa's División del Norte fought a series of four climactic battles against Carranza's army, led by General Álvaro Obregón, a self-taught soldier with a genius for organization. Time after time, the overconfident Villa launched reckless frontal attacks on Obregón's carefully prepared defenses, modeled with the help of German advisers on those of the Western Front in Europe. But horses were little use against machine guns, and the División del Norte was shattered in the ensuing slaughter. At the beginning of 1915, Villa had commanded some 40,000 to 100,000 men organized in a regular army with infantry, cavalry, and artillery. By year's end he was left with no more than a few hundred guerrillas.

This was not the only transformation Villa underwent that year. At one time, he had been the most pro-American of all the major Mexican revolutionaries. Unlike Carranza, he did not protest Woodrow Wilson's occupation of Veracruz; Villa told his followers, "It is Huerta's bull that is being gored." Many Americans, especially those of a liberal bent, in turn admired Villa. The journalist John Reed dubbed him the "Mexican Robin Hood" and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan described him as "a Sir Galahad." Hollywood even glamorized him in a movie filmed on location with Villa's cooperation. But then the gringos turned on Villa. President Wilson decided that the U.S. had to have stability south of the border, and the man most likely to deliver it was Venustiano Carranza, notwithstanding his well-advertised antipathy to the U.S. On October 19, 1915, Wilson extended de facto recognition to the Carranza government and placed an embargo on all arms shipments to anti-Carrancista forces.

Two weeks later, on November 1, 1915, Villa's forces attacked Agua Prieta, in the state of Sonora, just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Villa thought that this isolated Carrancista garrison would be easy picking. He was dismayed to find a powerful force entrenched behind barbed wire and machine gun nests. His men were repulsed with heavy losses. He later learned that President Wilson had allowed the Carrancistas to move reinforcements into Agua Prieta across U.S. territory. Pancho Villa began to focus his formidable faculty for hatred on the Colossus of the North.

As usual, Villa's rage found murderous expression. On January 10, 1916, a band of Villistas stopped a train near the town of Santa Isabel, Chihuahua. They robbed all the passengers but did not harm the Mexicans. Seventeen American mining engineers aboard the train were executed. Less than two months later came the raid on Columbus.

Villa's reasons for the attack remain mysterious. Multiple explanations have been mooted: He was driven by irrational hatred of Americans; he was trying to punish Sam Ravel, owner of Columbus's Commercial Hotel, to whom he had given money to buy arms that had never been delivered; he was hoping to steal war supplies and loot from Columbus; he was a pawn in a German conspiracy to provoke a war between the U.S. and Mexico (there is evidence that such a German plot did exist, but no evidence that it influenced Villa's actions). There is probably some truth in most of these explanations, but his foremost biographer, Friedrich Katz, argues that Villa's dominant motive may have been more cunning: He apparently wanted to provoke the U.S. into a limited intervention. Villa figured that such an incursion would discredit the Carranza regime just as the occupation of Veracruz had discredited Huerta, and allow Villa to rally patriotic sentiment to his side. As a captured Villista officer told an Irish correspondent, Villa "said he wanted to make some attempts to get intervention from the gringos before they were ready and while we still had time to become a nation."

If this was Villa's intent, the attack worked as planned.

News of the Columbus raid was flashed across the country almost immediately by an Associated Press correspondent who happened to be in town. Woodrow Wilson heard about it late on the morning of March 9, 1916. The president was reluctant to intervene in Mexico, for he did not want the U.S. distracted with a German threat looming, but he realized that this was an election year and the public would demand a strong response to this violation of American soil. Accordingly, Wilson announced that an army expedition "will be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the single object of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays."

This public statement from the president was to cause considerable confusion about the actual mission of the expedition. When the newly installed Secretary of War Newton Baker relayed this order to the army, the army chief of staff, grizzled old Major General Hugh Scott, asked him, "Mr. Secretary, do you want the United States to make war on one man? Suppose he should get into a train and go to Guatemala, Yucatan, or South America; are you going to go after him?"

"Well, no, I am not."

"That is not what you want then," General Scott explained. "You want his band captured or destroyed."

"Yes, that is what I really want."

Accordingly the orders sent to Major General Frederick Funston, commander of the army's Southern Department, specified that the expedition's mission "will be regarded as finished as soon as Villa's band or bands are known to be broken up." But the public remained under the impression that the expedition's goal was, as the Hearst papers screamed, GET VILLA ALIVE OR DEAD--a considerably more difficult task.

To give an air of legality to this invasion of another country, President Wilson invoked an old U.S.-Mexico treaty that gave each side the right of "hot pursuit" into each other's territory on the trail of bandits. First Chief Carranza agreed to allow American troops to enter Mexican territory as long as the United States would agree to let Mexican troops enter U.S. territory in a similar situation in the future. Despite this tentative agreement, there was considerable risk that the American incursion could trigger a second war with Mexico. The Punitive Expedition accordingly needed a leader with tact to match his military skills. "Fighting Fred" Funston, the hot-blooded Philippine War hero, was out. The man selected for this delicate mission was a 55-year-old, ramrod-straight brigadier general popularly known as "Black Jack."

John J. Pershing was born in rural Missouri in 1860 of what he described as "upstanding, though humble, European stock." His earliest memories were of the Civil War. Young Jack, son of a stalwart Unionist store owner, worshipped the bluecoats who rode through town, but he would probably never have joined their ranks if it had not been for the Panic of 1873, which wiped out his father's business. The only way Jack could afford to attend college was to win a position at West Point. His academic record at the Point was mediocre--he finished thirtieth out of a class of 71. But his soldierly bearing and leadership qualities were unsurpassed. He became first captain of the Corps of Cadets, the same post that Robert E. Lee held before him and that Douglas MacArthur would hold after him.

Upon graduation in 1886, 2nd Lieutenant Pershing was assigned to the 6th Cavalry at Fort Bayard, New Mexico. This provided him with a good introduction to the Old Army, 25,000 Indian-fighting, whisky-drinking, poker-playing, expletive-spewing men scattered in dusty outposts along the Western frontier. The officer ranks were still dominated by graying Civil War veterans. The era of the Old Army, designed for constabulary work in Indian territory, was drawing to a close. Young Pershing got to participate in its last campaigns, first against the Apaches and then against the Sioux Ghost Dancers in 1890.

In the next few years Pershing shuttled through a number of assignments, including a stint with the 10th Cavalry, a unit whose enlisted men were black, before winding up as an instructor at his alma mater. His martinet manner so grated on the cadets that they called him "Nigger Jack"--a nickname that stuck, though it was later softened to a more genteel "Black Jack." When the Spanish-American War broke out, Pershing wrangled an assignment back with the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 10th Cavalry and helped storm San Juan Hill. A commanding officer said he was "cool as a bowl of cracked ice" under fire.

Afterward he was assigned to the Philippines, and it was here that Jack Pershing made a name for himself. He was sent to the island of Mindanao, populated by Muslim Moros who had never really been subdued by the Spanish. The Moros still practiced polygamy and slavery and fiercely defended their way of life, even unto death, with suicidal charges with razor-sharp weapons known as the kris and barong. Captain Pershing preferred to win over the Moros with outstretched hand rather than mailed fist. So successful was his campaign that he was made a datto, or chieftain. When he left the Philippines in 1903, suffering from malaria, he was already one of the most famous officers in the army.

Pershing was 45 years old, and though he had a reputation as a ladies' man and a fine dancer, he had never been married. In his next posting, Washington, he met an enchanting, if plain-looking, 25-year-old woman named Helen Frances Warren, who happened to be the daughter of Francis Warren, not only the richest man in Wyoming but also chairman of the Senate's Military Affairs Committee. Jack fell in love with "Frankie" at first sight. They were married in 1905 at a ceremony attended by Theodore Roosevelt, who pronounced it a "bully match."

The next year, Black Jack received a belated wedding present. President Roosevelt promoted him straight from captain to brigadier general over the heads of 862 more senior officers. Roosevelt explained that it was the only way he could reward merit; in those days all promotions short of general officer rank had to be done on strict seniority. But seeing the son-in-law of a powerful senator promoted out of turn caused no end of resentment in the officer corps. It even led to the publication of rumors, adamantly denied by Pershing, that he had fathered children out of wedlock with a Filipino woman while serving in the archipelago. His young bride stood by the newly minted general, and he survived the storm.

Brigadier General Pershing was sent back to the Philippines in 1907, where he became commander of the Department of Mindanao and civil governor of Moro Province, giving him dictatorial authority over 500,000 people. He spent five happy years mainly preoccupied with the tasks of civil administration. When military action was called for, he showed himself capable of acting with restraint. He stormed one Moro stronghold with a loss of only a dozen Moro lives. His predecessor, General Leonard Wood, the old Rough Rider, had accomplished the same feat only by killing hundreds of men, women, and children.

The Pershings, who by now had four children, left the Philippines in 1914 and set up house at the Presidio near San Francisco. Pershing was in command of the 8th Brigade, which was soon transferred to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, because of growing unrest in northern Mexico. His family stayed behind at the Presidio.

Before dawn on August 27, 1915, the phone rang at Pershing's Fort Bliss headquarters. The general picked it up himself. It was an Associated Press correspondent calling with news of a fire at the Presidio. "Oh, God!" Pershing cried. "My God! My God! Can it be true?"

Earlier that morning, a blaze had broken out in the general's home. In the flames and smoke, Pershing's 35-year-old wife and his three young girls, the oldest only eight, were killed. Only his six-year-old son, Warren, survived.

Pershing--who had once written to his wife, "I cannot live without you. And I shall not try. It is only half a life. It's so incomplete, so aimless"--cried in anguish as he journeyed to San Francisco to bury his family. Though he soon resumed his stony facade, his grief was almost unbearable. He was still plagued by loneliness and melancholy when, seven months later, he received orders to organize an expedition into Mexico.

Trying to bury himself in his work, the general wasted no time. At noon on March 15, six days after the Columbus raid, an army column crossed into Mexico from Columbus, with Major Frank Tompkins, who had earlier pursued the Villistas, given a position of honor in the lead. Just after midnight, another column crossed over the border from Culberson's Ranch, New Mexico, this one led personally by Black Jack Pershing on horseback. The two columns were supposed to meet at Colonia Dublan, a Mormon colony 85 miles south of the border, and then fan out in search of Pancho Villa. On its face it appeared to be a hopeless task: Pershing initially had only 4,800 men (his force would eventually exceed 12,000 men) to search the state of Chihuahua, 94,000 square miles of rough, arid land that Villa knew intimately. The Americans, by contrast, did not even have adequate maps.

They found it tough going. The days in the desert were broiling, the nights freezing. The War Department had not equipped the men properly; nobody seemed to have realized that they would need warm coats in this "tropical" climate. It had not rained for nine months, so dust was everywhere, often kicked up by sandstorms. "Disagreeable, dusty march," noted one major. A sergeant wrote that "dust hung over the road like a curtain. The alkali got in our eyes and down our throats, it sifted into our shoes and through our clothing."

The striking arm of the expedition was its four cavalry regiments--the 7th, 10th, 11th, and 13th Cavalry. Also along were two infantry regiments (the 6th and 16th), mainly to protect supply lines. Extra firepower was provided by the 6th Field Artillery with its eight Vickers-Maxim mountain guns. Once at Colonia Dublan, Pershing unleashed his cavalry in a series of "flying columns" cut off from supply trains. He was using essentially the same tactics and over the same ground that his army precursors had used in pursuit of Apaches.

Pershing pushed his commanders mercilessly, and they in turn pushed their men to the edge of endurance. Colonel George A. Dodd, an indefatigable, cigar-chomping 63-year-old who had spent his career chasing Indians, marched the 7th Cavalry--Custer's old outfit--400 miles over 14 days. This despite low rations and difficult conditions. Along the way, Dodd got information that Villa was camped 230 miles south of Columbus in the small town of Guerrero, where the Mexican warlord had defeated a Carrancista garrison on March 27. The 7th Cavalry's 370 officers and men picked their way gingerly over icy trails through the Sierra Madre mountains, but, misled by unhelpful Mexican guides, did not find the most direct route to Guerrero. It was not until 8 A.M. on March 29 that Dodd, after riding all night, could begin his attack. His troopers charged into town. Many of the Villistas escaped into the mountains but 56 were killed, including one of Villa's generals, and 35 wounded. Only five Americans were wounded, none killed.

At first blush, the battle of Guerrero looked like a triumph for the Yanks, but later it was seen as a disappointment. For Pancho Villa had almost certainly been in Guerrero just before the 7th Cavalry entered. He had received a nasty leg wound during his battle against the Carrancista garrison a few days earlier (some said it was one of his own men who shot him). If the 7th had not been misled, probably deliberately, by its guides, it could have captured Villa and ended the Punitive Expedition in triumph after only a week. As it was, Villa and some 150 men escaped from Guerrero. Villa lay up for two months thereafter, hiding in a well-concealed cave high in the Sierra Madres while his leg healed. One day he was able to watch some of