I've written on this episode in the past, but this nice little piece by the fine folks at Forgotten Weapons stirred my interest yet again. This colorful little town is not far away from my new home and I've spent many a lazy desert afternoon wandering around the old place. As you can see in the short film, it looks much as it did in 1916, the ruins left by the battle still in place. I've learned to take the tactical descriptions with a grain of salt, because every writing on the battle seems to be wildly different than the next. I suppose it was just that sort of battle, a late night raid where nobody (on the American side at least) knew what was happening beyond their own tiny piece of the fight. Of great dispute is 'who shot who' with many claiming that the bulk of the civilians killed were in fact not killed by Villa's men, but by the 20,000 Hotchkiss 1909 rounds fired down the streets. The hotel fire (which illuminated the downtown and changed the tactical situation in favor of the defenders) may also have been a result of oil lamps hit by that fusillade. Of course, it played well in the aftermath to accuse Villa of atrocities to justify the subsequent punitive raids into Mexico. More importantly, this battle and the subsequent Pershing expedition accelerated the US army into a modern mechanized force. Some American officers (Patton, most notably) who participated became the kernel of the new army doctrine that took hold about 1940.
More notably directly involved than Patton of course was 1st John P. Lucas, commander of the 13th Cavalry's Machine Gun Troop. He was later Major General Commanding the V Corps in the Italian Campaign from the Volturno to Anzio.
