The 10th Cavalry had one of the Army’s lowest desertion rates and an unusually high reenlistment culture.
1. AZ: The History of Arizona podcast Episode 226 is about Camp Naco and the Buffalo Soldiers on Arizona’s border during the Mexican Revolution.
2. Host David Rickhausen frames the episode around the 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, and his conversation with Jeremy Frick of the NACO Heritage Alliance.
3. The episode asks what Camp Naco reveals about Black military service, border duty, and historic preservation.
4. Rickhausen says the Mexican Revolution had been sending bullets across the border for three years by 1913.
5. He explains that the U.S. Army entered the conflict in 1911 to keep fighting from spilling into the United States and to stop gun smuggling.
6. He notes that by this point one-fourth of the Army’s fighting men were stationed along the international border from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico.
7. The host spends time on the 10th Cavalry’s history, including its service in the Indian Wars, the Apache Wars, Cuba, and the Philippines.
8. He says the unit became known as the “Fighting 10th Cavalry” after San Juan Hill and had one of the Army’s lowest desertion rates between 1910 and 1917.
9. William Vrooman is used as an example of long-term enlisted service, with enlistment at age 16, a Distinguished Marksman Award in 1894, and later service in the Philippines and at Fort Huachuca.
10. Henry O. Flipper’s story covers slavery in 1856, West Point graduation in 1877, service with the 10th Cavalry, and later work in Nogales as an engineer, surveyor, translator, and writer.
11. Rickhausen also covers Flipper’s 1882 court-martial, his 1976 record correction, and President Bill Clinton’s 1999 posthumous pardon.
12. Charles Young appears as the third Black West Point graduate, an officer who served in the Philippines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, and with the 10th Cavalry in 1916.
13. The episode says Young’s rank made Army leaders nervous, leading to a 1917 medical retirement that he protested with a nearly 500-mile horseback ride to Washington, D.C.
14. Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is presented as Young’s mentee, beginning as a private in the 9th Cavalry and becoming a second lieutenant in the 10th Cavalry after passing the officer test with a 91%.
15. Rickhausen says Davis later led the 99th Fighter Squadron in World War II and served on the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Problems in the Army Inspector General’s office.
16. The episode’s central historical insight is that the Buffalo Soldiers were highly trained, educated professionals who still faced hostile treatment across many states, including Arizona.
17. Rickhausen shifts into a more conversational tone when he describes arriving troops from Vermont trekking seven miles to Fort Huachuca in a December 1913 blizzard.
18. He and Frick also describe Camp Naco as a rare surviving adobe camp with a square layout, a segregated west and east side, a hospital, a mess hall, stables, and an automobile shop.
19. People interested in Arizona border history, Black military history, and preservation projects will get the most from this episode.
20. People looking for a fast-moving battlefield story with no preservation detail will probably skip it.
