Mark Matthews, 111; Among the Last of Nation’s Buffalo Soldiers

Retired 1st Sgt. Mark Matthews, one of the last of the nation’s Buffalo Soldiers and said to be the oldest, died of pneumonia Sept. 6 at Fox Chase Nursing Home in Washington, D.C. He was reported to be 111.

Matthews was heir to a proud military heritage that originated with the black soldiers who fought in the Indian wars on the Western frontier. Historians say that the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Apache tribes bestowed the appellation because the soldiers’ hair reminded them of a buffalo’s mane.

Given Native American reverence for the Plains animal, the soldiers wore the nickname proudly -- and with good reason. The Buffalo Soldiers won 20 Medals of Honor, more than any other regiment. They helped lay roads and telegraph lines, protected stagecoaches, battled the Apache chief Geronimo and fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War.

Matthews joined up at the end of the Buffalo Soldiers’ colorful Western exploits. The regiments that made up the Buffalo Soldiers -- the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry regiments -- stayed together for years afterward, fighting in World Wars I and II and Korea. The all-black regiments were disbanded in 1952 as the Army desegregated.

Matthews was born Aug. 7, 1894, in Greenville, Ala., and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. He rode horses starting when he was a child and delivered newspapers on his pony.

According to stories Matthews told friends, family members and at least one military historian, he was 15 when he met members of the Buffalo Soldiers’ 10th Cavalry; they were visiting a Lexington, Ky., racetrack where he worked exercising the horses. When the soldiers told him that they rode horseback wherever they went, he decided to join. Although young men had to be 17 to enlist, his boss concocted documents that persuaded a Columbus, Ohio, recruiter that he was of age.

“I was 16 when I joined the Army to be a soldier,” he told Parade magazine in 2003. “I had to wait awhile before I could get on duty. But then they shipped me to the West.”

Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., where he was first stationed, was still using Indians as guides.

“I learned all the different rules, how to ride the different horses, how to jump and how to shoot,” he recalled in 2003.

He served along the U.S.-Mexican border as part of Gen. John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing’s 1916 expedition into Mexico, on the trail of Mexican bandit and revolutionary Pancho Villa.

In 1931, he was assigned to Ft. Myer, Va., where he trained recruits in horsemanship, helped tend the presidential stable for Franklin D. Roosevelt and played on the polo team. Ten years later, although in his late 40s when the United States entered World War II, he saw action on Saipan.

He retired from the Army in 1949 and became a security guard at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. He retired a second time, as chief of guards, in 1970.

He met with President Clinton at the White House, and in 2002 marked his 108th birthday by meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who for many years campaigned for a monument to honor the Buffalo Soldiers. In 1992, Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dedicated the monument at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.

Matthews’ wife of 57 years, Genevieve Hill Matthews, died in 1986. Survivors include three daughters, a son, nine grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.