The Roughest Riders (35 page)

In early July 1950, several black combat units that had not yet been integrated were shipped to Korea with two companies of white soldiers. They were among the first to be sent abroad for what was expected to be a short “police action” before returning to their base in Japan a few weeks later. They brought with them their dress uniforms for the planned victory parade through the streets of Seoul. Instead, they would find themselves bogged down in a grinding war in extreme weather conditions that would last for two years, until Dwight D. Eisenhower brokered an uneasy peace soon after his election as president in 1952. The still-segregated troops of the Twenty-Fourth, which was soon to be dissolved, won the first ground victory on the peninsula and earned the first Medal of Honor bestowed in the conflict. A white officer with the group, Lieutenant Colonel John T. Corley, sang the praises of the black soldiers' performance in action, which was well received by the men he led on the battlefield.

“The 24th Infantry Regiment performed extremely well for Colonel Corley,” wrote black combat pilot Charles Bussey. “Leadership seemed more important to him than skin color in determining success in battle.” Later, however, Bussey altered his opinion of Corley when he learned that the colonel would have recommended Bussey and his men for even more medals had they been white. “I cannot
allow you to become a hero, no matter how worthy,” Corley admitted to Bussey. “I reduced the size of the battalion that you saved to a group, and I reduced the number of men you killed” out of fear, he said, that Bussey and other black warriors would “flaunt it.” Blood brothers and drinking buddies they may have been in uniform, but the old racial bigotry resurfaced when they returned to peacetime life at home.

The Korean War gave birth to the nation's first black four-star general, Roscoe Robinson Jr., who graduated from West Point in 1951 and saw combat in Korea and Vietnam. He earned his fourth star in 1982 as the representative to NATO's Military Committee. The complete integration of the armed forces picked up steam during the Korean War as black volunteers poured heavily into recruiting offices. The post commander of the army training center in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, found it impossible to sort out the recruits along racial lines. He cast aside whatever personal reservations he may have had and simply assigned the incoming troops wherever they were needed most. The base quickly became a model for the only viable means of completing the process of integration—just bite the bullet and do it! The era of military segregation sputtered to a close. And as the full integration of the armed forces became a fait accompli, the curtain fell on the almost century-long drama of the Buffalo Soldiers and the role they played in the long, hard sweep of American history.

Colin Powell joined the army in 1959 after graduating from CCNY in New York City. As a cadet in the ROTC, Powell became a member of the crack Pershing Rifles drill team—named after General Black Jack Pershing—where Powell earned his bar as a second lieutenant when he graduated. It was a time between wars, with Korea
now in the past and Vietnam still off in the future. Born in Harlem to Jamaican parents, Powell was sent to Germany where he quickly rose up the ranks. By the end of 1960, he became the first lieutenant in his battalion to command a company, a job ordinarily reserved for captains. He considered himself lucky that he was not personally subjected to racial discrimination, even from his white NCO from Alabama. “My color made no difference,” Powell wrote. “I could have been black, white, or candy-striped for all he cared. I was his lieutenant, and his job was to break in new lieutenants and take care of them.”

In 1981, Brigadier General Colin Powell jogged around a field at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the base where the first Buffalo Soldiers unit, the Tenth Cavalry Regiment, was established in 1867, 114 years earlier. Since that historic birthdate, some troops of the Tenth had been stationed there continuously through the end of World War II, but Powell noticed that there was little at the site to celebrate their presence; two alleys and two lonely graves bore the names of the Ninth and Tenth, and that was it. Powell vowed on the spot that, if he were ever in a position to rectify the situation, he would make sure the Buffalo Soldiers received the honor they deserved.

Powell fulfilled his promise ten years later. On July 25, 1992, more than ten thousand people arrived at Fort Leavenworth to witness the dedication of the Buffalo Soldiers Monument on the site. Senator Bob Dole addressed five hundred surviving veterans of the Ninth and Tenth, and General Powell stepped up to the microphone to deliver the keynote speech. He said the Buffalo Soldiers had made it possible for people like him to achieve their current positions. Without them, Powell would not be standing before them on that memorable July day. Powell pointed proudly at the towering statue of a Buffalo Soldier on horseback, created by sculptor Eddie Dixon, rifle in hand as he scouts the territory ahead in advance of his unit. The oldest Buffalo Soldiers in attendance were
110-year-old Jones Morgan of Richmond, Virginia, and 98-year-old William Harrington of Salina, Kansas. Another veteran, Elmer Robinson of Leavenworth, had summed up their emotions three years earlier when he heard that the statue was being built at Powell's urging: “After all these years, I didn't think anyone cared. Now I feel like a hero.”

General Powell stated his own feelings poetically on the day of the dedication: “They are the wind beneath my wings.” Indeed, they will be the wind beneath the wings of many generations to come.

T
he battlefields are in different places now, and many of the old ones have changed over the decades. The Civil War killing fields where the Buffalo Soldiers spilled their blood a century and a half ago are mostly national parks where Americans and foreign tourists can visit and get a rough idea of what special kind of hell the country lived through back then. The plains where the Buffalo Soldiers first got their name from the Comanche and Cheyenne warriors they battled in the late 1800s have been parceled into vast corporate ranches, upscale leisure communities, public parks, and reservations for the folks who first roamed the land. And the hills in Cuba, where the Buffalo Soldiers rescued Teddy Roosevelt and his colorful band of Rough Riders from almost certain annihilation, have changed most of all.

Today, the former Spanish stronghold at Santiago de Cuba is an industrial city on the harbor, replete with warehouses, factories, wharves, and other maritime facilities strewn along the water's edge. The historic center of town has been preserved much the way it looked in 1898 and has become a draw for tourists from around the globe. The San Juan Heights north of the city are dotted with
residential developments that undulate across the rolling terrain to the top of San Juan and Kettle Hills and other peaks in the area. The original blockhouse at the crest of San Juan Hill where so many lives were lost no longer exists; the Cuban government ripped it down and built a replica that sits at the center of a park and museum, which were established twenty-five years after the war ended. The park contains well-preserved Spanish and US artillery pieces and other weapons used during the war, plus a plethora of statues and plaques commemorating the Cuban and American troops who together defeated the Spanish. Visitors can look out from the edges of the park and see the village of El Caney to the northeast and the peak of El Pozo to the east.

Perhaps the biggest eyesore in the area is the former Hotel Leningrad, more recently the Hotel San Juan, which was constructed by Soviet-era architects for Russian tourists in a clumsy attempt to capture the tropical splendor of the region. Fortunately, the grounds are covered with palm trees and other flora, which hide some of the monotonous outlines of the structure. Equally troubling are the size and location of the hotel, which cuts off views of the siege lines during the war. A zoo and amusement park also rest incongruously on the slopes. More appropriately, a hospital adorns the side of the hill, a vivid reminder of the carnage that took place there. The steepness of the slope leading to the crest of San Juan remains much in evidence, although some commercial and residential structures obscure the contours of near-lying Kettle Hill.

El Caney is much less recognizable as the quaint, historic battlefield village it once was, except for the church in the center of town, the main plaza, and the ruins of El Viso, which have been left standing. More modern and less imaginative developments engulf the winding, twisting streets and narrow passageways where much of the fighting occurred. Las Guasimas has been left largely intact,
and both Siboney and Daiquiri are unaltered by the passage of time, except for a hotel compound that sits on the hill above the latter.

The memory of the Buffalo Soldiers lingers on in the hills of southeastern Cuba, as it does in other battle sites in the United States and abroad where they fought bravely for their country. The terrain and killing fields may look different these many years later, but the memory cannot be erased. What the Buffalo Soldiers accomplished during their long, remarkable history—which until now has remained a mere footnote in the pages of time—remains the wind beneath the wings of the black warriors who followed them into combat in later wars.

T
his book would not have seen the light of day were it not for my agent, Linda D. Konner, who encouraged me to move forward with it from the time I first mentioned it to her. No writer has ever had better representation. Many thanks go to my editor Jerry Pohlen. Ernest Hemingway once said that no good writers would need an editor if they had the leisure to wait five years from the time they finished until they published a book. But deadlines are rarely stretched out quite that far. Jerry served me well from the time I submitted the book until it was ready for publication, and I am indebted to him for that. Thanks also to Michelle Williams, Lisa Marietta, and the rest of the dedicated staff at Chicago Review Press, who ushered my manuscript from the typed page through the final stages of production and promotion.

I would like to thank General Colin L. Powell, who brought the Buffalo Soldiers to the forefront of the nation's consciousness by establishing the monument in their honor at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, more than two decades ago. His stirring words on that occasion appear in the forefront and penultimate chapter of this book. His astonishing career is an inspiration to everyone who values military service as the ultimate guardian of liberty in a free society.

I also appreciate the help I received from the administrators, directors, and other personnel at the Library of Congress, the
National Archives and Records Administration, the National Park Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Presidio Trust, the Spanish-American War Centennial Society, the US Army Garrison at Fort Leavenworth, the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, and other organizations that provided me with pertinent information for this book. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the help and cooperation I received from National Park Service rangers Frederik Penn, Anthony Powell, and Shelton Johnson.

Many thanks go to my daughter Christine Tuccille Merry, proprietor of Merryhaus Design, who has been an emissary and surrogate for this project every step along the way. Her efforts in researching photographs and securing the rights for their inclusion in the book, promoting the project on social media and other venues, establishing a title-specific webpage, and helping in other ways have been invaluable to me.

Special thanks go to Don Holman who supplied me with an original research paper on the sinking of the
Maine
written by his father, Donald A. Holman. The information in it proved to be a valuable source of information unavailable anywhere else. I would like to thank Allen K. Boetig, whose knowledge of military operations was extremely helpful to me. Thanks go to Don Wimmer, who pointed me in the direction of his son Eric Wimmer, who went out of his way to do some legwork for me at the Presidio in San Francisco, the final resting place of 450 Buffalo Soldiers.