Local veteran wants comrades to get deserved recognition

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Roger Holloway was 17 years old when he joined the U.S. Army. It was May 17, 1950, and little did he know, he would become one of the last living Buffalo Soldiers, now on a new mission to keep the stories of these black vanguards alive.

“Most of the people have forgotten,” said Holloway from his home on Belmont hill in Hopkinsville. “... But people like me will tell the story. People like me know the truth because I witnessed it.”

The Buffalo Soldiers were all-black troops created in 1866 after Congress passed the Army Organization Act. They mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War but also went on to fight in the Spanish-American War and the Korean War.

This segregated section of the Army was comprised of six all-black cavalry and infantry regiments — 9th and 10th Cavalry, and the 24th and 25th Infantry, which were consolidated from four regiments.

The 9th Cavalry Regiment was mustered in Louisiana in August and September 1866. The men were tasked with helping control the Native Americans of the Plains, capturing cattle rustlers and thieves and protecting settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and railroad crews along the Western front, History.com states.

“The black soldiers, facing their own forms of discrimination from the U.S. government, were tasked with removing another minority group in that government’s name, “the website states.

According to the Congressional Record, Buffalo Soldiers secured the first U.S. victory in Korea on July 20, 1950, “when the Army’s oldest Negro Infantry regiment, spear-headed by the Twenty-fifth Division, which had just come into the line, counter-attacked and drove the Reds out of Yechon.”

Although Holloway joined the military months before this victory,...