March 9th: Today in 1916 the forces of Mexican revolutionary Doroteo Arango Arámbula, better known as Pancho Villa raided the small New Mexico town of Columbus and destroyed it. The raiders struck early in the morning and caught the town and a nearby garrison of cavalry by surprise. Villa’s men destroyed the commercial center of the town before the cavalry managed to deploy a couple of machine guns and began to inflict heavy casualties on the raiders. By 7am the raid was over, leaving some twenty five dead American’s and nearly a hundred dead raiders. Villa had been hoping to provoke a a response from the American government and he did, ten days later a retaliatory column chased him into Mexico but never caught up with him.

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