Overview

Just before dawn on March 9, 1916, a band of Mexican revolutionaries loyal to General Francisco “Pancho” Villa crossed the border into the United States and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Within a matter of hours, seventeen Americans and 67 Mexicans lay dead. The next day, President Woodrow Wilson announced the formation of the Punitive Expedition under the command of General John “Blackjack” Pershing. Within three months over 150,000 U.S. National guardsmen and Army regulars would be mobilized, in what was the largest troop deployment in the United States since the Civil War. “The Hunt for Pancho Villa” recounts the events that brought the U.S. and Mexico to the brink of war in the early part of this century.