The 8th Cavalry Crosses into Chihuahua. The Battle of Pilares. March 26, 1918.

Troop A and Troop G of the 8th Cavalry, under the command of Captain Henry H. Anderson, following the raid on Neville's Ranch on March 25, crossed into Chihuahua Mexico in pursuit of the raiders who had committed the raid on this day in 1918.  It was a classic cavalry force, made up of cavalrymen supported logistically by mules.  The cavalry force tracked and closed with the raider over a course of seventy miles until they Mexican force doubled back towards the border and to Pilares, Chihuahua.  Then apprised to the fact that they were being pursued they staged an ambush for the cavalrymen.

It didn't work and the Mexican force soon broke, with the battle turning into an eleven mile running fight.  As it went, townspeople from Pilares joined the raiders in defending their town.  Oddly, some contemporary reports had, however, statements from a local Mexican Federal officer both claiming to have driven the Americans out of Pilares but also to have aided them against, presumably, Villistas. Given that Villa war far from beaten at the time, and Carranza's government proving to be far from stable, perhaps that also isn't too surprising.  In reality, the Mexican Federal troops arrived just as the Americans were ready to depart, and after the Mexican commander, present with 500 Mexican cavalrymen, protested their presence the Americans, the Americans did indeed depart.

The fighting in Pilares was fierce and in fact the cavalry charged the town, which is where the sole American casualty lost his life, shot out of his saddle in that event. Anderson wasn't really driven out of Pilares, but he did withdraw, but not before searching it very completely and then issuing an order to burn the town, which was done.  In the town, a large cache of German 98s were found, but again while that was deemed significant it isn't terribly surprising.   American forces also recovered materials linking the town to the Raid on Brite's Ranch and the Neville Ranch, the latter of course making perfect sense under the circumstances, including Glen Neville's chaps, which were found on the body of dead Mexican combatant.  Materials linked to the mail driver killed in the Brite's Raid, however, were also recovered and harder to explain.  Items belonging to the Mexican Federal army were recovered, but they were likely items that had been captured by Villistas in other raids.  The Mexicans sustained 33 deaths in the American counter raid, with the 8th Cavalry suffering the loss of a Pvt Carl Albert, A Troop, 8th Cavalry.  Some of the dead were identified including at least one known Villista but also several former Porvenir residents, including some who were teenagers.   One house was left standing due to the pleas of the owner, a Mexican woman with children who was desperate to keep her house intact.

As for the village of Pilares, victims of the Porvenir Massacre were buried there, so it would be logical to assume that they had some fear about Americans being in the vicinity, no matter what their allegiance may have otherwise been.  But later reports indicated that some of the Neville raiders may have been former Porvenir residents who had taken refuge there, it was not far away.  The town was close by and intimately impacted by the Porvenir Raid and therefore the Neville Raid is not illogically tied to it.

So what does this event tell us?  Well, while all the country now was focused on France, and with an Army that remained mostly in the US in training and which was now, huge, things continued to be very heated on the border.  The presence of German arms in northern Mexico could easily have lead to a furor which would have refocused attention on Carranza's Mexico in a way that would have been devastating for him, given the present size of the U.S. Army, but also for the fortunes of the Allies in the Great War.

But perhaps more than that, it focuses us on a conflict that had now evolved into a low grade guerilla war.  A man had lost his son, a group of Mexican villagers had lost their small town, a husband and his children had lost their wife and mother.  And to them, it probably all seemed far removed from whatever the greater cause was supposed to be.