Cale E. Carter II (24:35)
But normally the legacy component, that really starts in earnest during World War I, but it really takes off during World War II. Okay. So by the time World War I comes around in the drive to get black soldiers or black people to participate in the war effort as well as enlist, you start seeing where some people start highlighting the stories of blacks that served in the military priority. And up to that point, really prior to the Spanish American War, the main conflict that people tend to know about in the American Mexican was the American Civil War. And while there was a lot of blacks that served in the American Civil War, the Spanish American War was really that first conflict since the Civil War where you can make the argument that basically America as a country, both north and south, was united and fighting against a common enemy. And so because of that, you see where some of the black leadership and some of the black advocates start kind of highlighting, like, hey, like, these are guys that like. Like, basically be like the guys who fought and fought against the. The Spanish in Cuba and stuff like that. And then from the military side, when they start having to raise these black units. Because keep in mind, even though we. It's. It's easy for us, it's kind of difficult for us to think about this now, but back in World War I, and even at the start of World War II, America didn't really have a large military. Like, it was mostly a frontier army. And so we had to rapidly expand the army, and we rapidly expanded the army that also included the rapid expansion of black units. And so to help ease that rapid expansion, to help accelerate the training, you see where a lot of veteran soldiers from the 9th Cavalry Regiment, the 10th Calvary Regiment, the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments, they're literally, in a sense, kind of taken from their home regiment or basically transferred from their home regiment to these new regiments. So, like in the case of the 92nd, some guys end up in the 367th Infantry Regiment or in Pioneer infantry regiments, labor battalion, stuff like that. And so because a lot of these guys that transfer to these regiments, some of these guys have been in the military from. Some have been in there for a few years, but you had some that was guys that were career Army. So some of these guys have served since the 1880s. And, like, if you imagine, like, you have, like, this is like a movie or something, that you have a gruff old sergeant that comes in, like, normally we see a gruff old song, they come in and yelling at the troops. With a lot of these guys that's coming in, some of them would have a certain degree of respect for them because, like, hey, this guy, like, he's traveled, he saw some things. And so what you end up seeing is that with some of these older sergeants and older NCOs, that that train, these guys, they start telling about, oh, we heard that we was called this, but it might have been like, we don't really know how the story got out or how they told them, but for some reason, the younger guys that was brought in for the military service during War one, they cleave to, like, oh, like, wow. Because it's kind of a scene as a sense of, like, hey, like, they're from our community. These guys have proven their metal. And also, if you want to tell us, it's kind of a cool nickname. So I was like, okay, well, certainly is. So it's like, oh, well, they're called Buffalo Soldiers. Well, how do we carry this on? Oh, well, we're the Buffaloes. And then, in fact, so the first regiment you see that takes on that moniker is the regiment I mentioned before, the 367th Infantry Regiment. And in fact, if people are curious about that, like, they can actually. The National Archive had their. The was a light regimental history booklet of the 367th in World War I. And they actually had their regimental crest, and it literally has a buffalo head. And I'm kind of paraphrasing what the. The information says, but it essentially says that, hey, we take this name to pay homage to the guys who came before us who were referred to by the Native Americans as Buffalo Soldiers. And so you see, it kind of take off a little bit in World War I, but by the time World War II comes around in 1941, that's when you see it takes off to a different level. Because on the one hand, with the actual Buffalo Soldier regiments, they're still around as surrogated units by this point. But the 9th and 10th Calvary, they're literally the last of the horse Calvary in the U.S. army. By the time World War II comes around, most of the cavalry guys, they traded their horses for tanks. And so with the 9th and 10th and later what became known as the 2nd Cavalry Division, they literally are the last horse soldiers in the US army, where these guys are trained how to ride horses, how to do horse drill, and basically kind of do comedy like true Calvary. And of course, the 24th and 25th, they fight in the Pacific during this time. But in addition, as In World War I, you had where a lot of these guys were kind of sent to other regiments to help train them. So you see guys who was in these original Buffalo Soldier regiments ending up in everything from tank battalions, tank destroyer battalions, field artillery units, field artillery battalions. And so what's interesting is that when you look through the regimental records of some of these units, like, a primary example would be the 846 Tank Destroyer Battalion out of Camp Livingston, Louisiana. Like, even though the regiment will ultimately get disbanded by 1943, when you look at the regimental crest and even the name, they have a buffalo on their regimental crest. And they literally say, like, the reason why we take this name, we have a buffalo owner, is the Payo Marsh to the guys who came before. So as you mentioned before, it's kind of a sense of like, hey, let's carry on this legacy of the guys who served before us and kind of carry it on as long as we can. Now, by the Time War II ends and when you get to 1948, the order to integrate the army comes through. And by that point, the only regiment of the original Buffalo Soldiers that's Left is the 24th infantry, because the 9th and 10th Calvary, they were deactivated in 1944. The 25th Infantry Regiment, by and large, was deactivated by 1946. Like, I know some of the research I was doing, some of the regiments, some of the battalions survived on as training units in various capacities until about 1950. But with the 24th being the last of the original regiment, you see where the legacy starts kind of going from, again, kind of the focus on the specific regiments to mostly black soldiers who served in the segregated army and kind of came under the tutelage of those men. And so when the 24th Infantry Regiment is deactivated in 1951 and they're saying, okay, well, like, that regiment's officially disbanded, that kind of marks the end of the original Buffalo Soldiers Kale, I've enjoyed.