HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS, EXCERPT

HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN 369TH INFANTRY IN WORLD WAR I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Inc., Wash. DC: 2003), p.34 “Soon after Whitman's appointments, he seemingly hedged his bets with the city's African Americans by requesting from the War Department that it reassign Maj. Charles Young to the Fifteenth. At the time, Young was in Mexico with the Second Squadron of the Tenth U. S. Cavalry, turning himself into a national hero. On 12 April, he led his squadron on a rescue mission to save the Thirteenth U.S. Cavalry from destruction at the hands of Villa's forces at Hacienda Santa Cruz de la Villegas and, in so doing, according to some historians, averted a full-scale war with Mexico. The [New York] Age's editorial writer noted: 'At last we notice that the Tenth Cavalry is appearing in news despatches. It did look like as though the censor's biggest job was keeping any mention of the colored soldiers out of the despatches, but we knew that couldn't be kept up after our boys really got down to work.' Mexican citizens, who saw those boys at work, called them 'devils.' A black trooper overheard one of them say, 'They are not Americans. They are devils.' Two years later, the French would call them fighters from hell.'”