Page 21 of For This We Are Soldiers
I don’t remember what my father looked like in those early years. I do remember that he wasn’t too tall (few of the horse soldiers were), and that the other officers called him Handsome Johnny. Mother generally called him “the Captain” when we were around. “The Captain says you should do this, Janey,” or “Take the Captain’s paper to him, Gerald.” When he was promoted, she called him “the Major,” and the last name before he died was “the Colonel.” Fifteen years later, just before she died, Mother had started over and was calling him “the Lieutenant” again.
I was born about a year after they were married. Pete came along two years later at Fort Sill, and Gerald was born at Fort Robinson near the Black Hills.
When I was ten, we were assigned to Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory. That was in the fall of 1881, more than sixty years ago. Father commanded D Company of the Tenth Cavalry (the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry were composed entirely of Negro enlisted men, serving under white officers). The Indians called them Buffalo Soldiers, I suppose because their kinky black hair reminded them of the hair of a buffalo. Father always swore they were the best troops in the whole US Army and said he was proud to serve with them, even though some of his brother officers considered such duty a penance.
My favorite memory of D Company was listening to them ride into Fort Bowie after duty in the field. They always came in singing. The only man who couldn’t carry a tune was my father. I remember one time right before Christmas when they rode out of Apache Pass singing “Star of the East,” Mother came out on the porch to listen, her hand on my shoulder.
D Company had two Negro sergeants. Sergeant Albert Washington was a former slave from Valdosta, Georgia. He was a short, skinny little man who never said very much, maybe because he was married to Clara Washington, who did our washing and sewing and who had the loudest, strongest voice between the Mississippi and the Pacific.
The other sergeant was Ezra Freeman. Ezra wasn’t much taller than my father, and he had the biggest hands I ever saw. They fascinated me because he was so black and the palms of his hands were so white.
Ezra had a lovely deep voice that reminded me of chocolate pudding. I loved to hear him call the commands to the troops during Guard Mount, and I loved to watch him sit in his saddle. My father was a good horseman, but he never sat as tall as Ezra Freeman, and Father’s shoulders got more and more stooped as the years passed. Not Ezra’s. Last time I saw him sitting in his wheelchair, his posture was as good as ever; I think he would have died before he would have leaned forward.
Once I asked Ezra about his childhood. He said that he had been raised on a plantation in South Carolina. At the age of twelve, he and two sisters and his mother and father had been sold at the Savannah auction to help pay off his master’s gambling debts. He never saw any of his family again. A planter from Louisiana bought him, and he stayed a field hand until Admiral Farragut steamed up the Mississippi and ended slavery on the lower river. He sometimes spoke a funny kind of pidgin French that made my mother laugh and shake her head.
But she never got too close to Ezra or to any of Father’s other troopers. None of the white women of the regiment did, either. Mother never would actually pull her skirts aside when the colored troopers passed, as some of the ladies did, but she had a formality about her in the presence of the Buffalo Soldiers that we weren’t accustomed to. At least, she did until the summer of 1882, when we came to owe Ezra Freeman everything.
That was the summer Ignacio and his Apaches left the San Carlos Agency and raided, looted, burned, and captured women and children to sell in Mexico. The troops garrisoned at Bowie knew that Ignacio’s activities would touch them soon, and the early part of the summer was spent in refitting and requisitioning supplies and ordnance in preparation for the orders they knew would come.
Mother wasn’t receiving any callers that summer. That was how we put it then. Or we might have said that she was “in delicate health.” Now, in 1942, we say, “she is expecting,” or, “she is in the family way.” Back then, that would have been altogether too vulgar and decidedly low class.
Neither of them told us. I just happened to notice Mother one morning when I burst into her room and caught her in her shift. She bulged a little in the front, and I figured we were going to have another baby brother sometime. They seemed to lose interest in having girls after me. She didn’t say anything then, and I didn’t, either. Later on in the week, when we were polishing silver, she paused, put her hand on her middle, and stared off in space for a few minutes, a slight smile on her face.
At breakfast a few mornings later, Father came right out and asked Mother if she wanted to go home for the summer to have the baby. The railroad had been completed between Bowie and Tucson, and it would be a much less difficult trip.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, John,” she replied.
“Why not? I’ll probably be gone all summer anyway, and you know the surgeon travels with us.” Father wiped the egg juice off his plate with one swipe of his toast and grinned when Mother frowned at him.
“Oh, I just couldn’t, John,” she repeated, and that was the end of that.
Two weeks later, three of the cavalry companies and two of the infantry were detached from Bowie to look for Ignacio. Mother said her goodbyes to Father in their bedroom. As I think of it, few of the wives ever saw their husbands off from the porch, except for Lieutenant Grizzard’s wife, and everyone said she was a brassy piece anyway.
We kids followed Father out onto the porch. My little brother Pete wore the battered black felt hat Father always took on campaign, and Gerald lugged out the saber, only to be sent back into the house with the useless thing. Father let me carry out his big Colt revolver, and I remember that it took both hands to carry it.
He took the gun from me and pushed it into his holster. He put his hand on my head and shook it back and forth. Then he knelt down and kissed me on both cheeks.
“Keep an eye on Mother for me, Janey,” he said.
I nodded, and he stood up and shook my head again. He plucked the black hat off Pete’s head and swatted him lightly with it. He knelt down again, and both Pete and Gerald clung to him.
“Now, you two mind Janey. She’s sergeant major.”
D Company rode out at the head of the column after Guard Mount, and the corporal who taught school for the garrison’s children was kind enough to dismiss us for the day.
Summers are always endless to children, but that summer of 1882 seemed to stretch out like cooling taffy. One month dragged by, and then two, and still the men didn’t return. In fact, another company was sent out, and Bowie had only the protection of one understrength company of infantry and the invalids in the infirmary.
The trains stopped running between Bowie and Tucson because of Ignacio and his warriors, and I recall how irritated Mother was when the last installment of a serial inFrank Leslie’s Illustrated Weeklynever showed up. The only mail that got through was official business that the couriers brought in.
But Mother was irritated with many things that summer. She usually didn’t show much until the eighth month, but this time she had Clara Washington sew her some new Mother Hubbards before her sixth month. Her ankles were swollen too. I rarely saw Mother’s legs, but once I caught her on the back porch one evening with her dress up around her knees.
“Oh, Mama!” was all I said.
It startled her, and she dropped her skirts and tucked her feet under the chair. “Jane, you shouldn’t spy on people!” she scolded, and then she smiled when she saw my face. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jane. And don’t look so worried. They’ll be all right again soon.”
Toward the middle of August, we began to hear rumors in the garrison. Ordinarily we just shrugged off rumors, but the men were now quite overdue, and Ignacio hadn’t been subdued or chased back across the border. One rumor had the troops halfway across Mexico pursuing Apaches, and another rumor had them in San Diego waiting for a troop train back.
On the eighteenth of August (I remember the date because it was Gerald’s fifth birthday), the rumor changed. A couple of reservation Apaches slouched in on their hard-ridden ponies to report a skirmish to the south of us, hard by the Mexican border. Captain Donnelly, B Company, Fourth Infantry, was senior officer of the fort then, and he ignored the whole thing. The Indians weren’t students of the truth, and they often confused Mexican and US soldiers.
