AZ: The History of Arizona podcast · David Rookhuyzen

Episode 227: The Tenth Is In Mexico

·32 min·2 clips

At Carrizal, Mexican federal troops outnumbered, outgunned, and outpositioned the 10th Cavalry.

The episode opens with a 1917 letter from Captain Albert Dockery asking for a transfer and complaining about the officer he had to report to. That officer was Charles Young, a colonel whose recent performance in the punitive expedition to Mexico had already earned recognition. Dockery was not alone, and four other officers joined the request. The complaints eventually reached President Woodrow Wilson, which is about as high as a military grievance can climb before it starts becoming everybody’s problem. The Secretary of War thought Young should either do his duty or resign, which is a neat little way of pretending the institution was above the issue. Young was transferred to Ohio and then dropped from the army. The reason, of course, was not incompetence or misconduct, but race. From there the episode backs into the military context that made Young such a prominent figure in the first place. It describes the 10th Cavalry operating in Mexico and the way Young led a successful flank charge after a frontal assault was not possible. The men under his command advanced with guns and pistols raised, which was apparently enough to scare off the Villistas without a single shot being fired. There is also the rescue of a detachment from the 13th Cavalry at Parral, including a badly wounded major. Those actions helped advance Young’s career and eventually made him temporary commander of both the 10th Cavalry and Fort Huachuca. The episode also notes that Buffalo Soldiers and some Mexican troops could develop a grudging respect for each other, even while fighting on opposite sides of the border. One sergeant’s line, that neither side wanted to fight but would answer fire because it was orders, captures the whole thing rather neatly. The narrative then turns to the Battle of Carrizal, where the 10th was humiliated. That episode sits inside the broader border crisis and Pershing’s search for the forces responsible for earlier attacks. The story keeps circling back to the uneasy reality of Black soldiers serving under a segregated and prejudiced army while being asked to do difficult and dangerous work for a country that still treated them as a problem. It also keeps the geography grounded, moving through southern Arizona and the border regions without losing sight of how strategically important the area was. The final stretch hints at the 10th’s later duties, which shift away from major fighting and toward patrols, drills, and life in Arizona. Even there, the racial pressure does not disappear. The episode closes by setting up the next chapter: daily prejudice, off-duty life, and the 1929 aerial bombing that will bring the regiment back into action.

As heard by us

A border-war history that keeps the cavalry, the politics, and the racism in frame.

This episode tracks the 10th Cavalry through the fighting in Mexico and the fallout that made Charles Young a liability to officers who could not accept a Black superior.

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Want border fighting, Buffalo Soldiers, and a commander the army could not keep in place?

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