Black Jack Pershing’s Futile Chase —The Last Cavalry Campaign
A fool’s errand. That’s what General John J. “Blackjack†Pershing was sent on by President Woodrow Wilson. On March 15, 1916 the General rode off at the head of about 12,000 troops of the Punitive Expeditionary Force on a mission to find and destroy Pancho Villa and his rebel army in Mexico.
Doroteo Arango, alias Francisco “Pancho†Villa, was born in 1877 in San Juan del Rio, the State of Durango in Northern Mexico. He was an outlaw by 16 and the head of his own gang of banditos shortly after. Because he frequently clashed with the forces of the hated dictator Porforio DÃaz, he began to be regarded as a folk hero by the dispossessed and landless peons of his home state.
When the Mexican Revolution installed democratic hero Francisco Madero as President, Villa offered his services to battle a turncoat Revolutionary commander Pascual Orozco. He led his División del Norte in the defense of the President he actually deeply admired. He fought along side another general, the ambitious Victoriano Huerta. Huerta, however betrayed him and almost succeeded in having him executed.
Read more at: http://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2016/03/black-jack-pershings-futile-chase-last.html
From the article, Obregon, Villa and Gen. Pershing.
