Upholding Buffalo Soldiers’ Way

It was as if those old soldiers reached through time and tapped Walter Brady on the shoulder.

Nearly 50 years old, raising his son and four grandchildren, Brady had every excuse to ignore the men -- and the impulse their dusty battle stories awakened within him.

He didn’t. He headed to the nearest Army Reserve recruiter and presented himself for service, just as he did 32 years ago when he joined the Army at 17.

This time was different. This time he was continuing a legacy, and this time he would take an odyssey that would bring him pride and heartache.

Brady is a modern Buffalo Soldier, part of a group of men who serve as honor guards at veterans’ funerals and appear in parades and at schools dressed as the famed African American soldiers of the Old West. The Buffalo Soldiers are veterans and others who pride themselves on keeping alive the memory and contributions of the all-black units.

Yet, for all their reenactments, their commitment is real, so real it pushed Brady, a middle-aged MTA bus driver from Palmdale, back into uniform, this time as a specialist with the Army Reserve.

So on Feb. 14, Brady headed for Camp Roberts, near Paso Robles, and months of training for duty in Iraq. Some of the 296 men in his company are like him: middle-aged guys who rely on the power of conviction to override paunches and creaky knees.

“They’ve got the heart,” said 1st Sgt. James Norris, of Transportation Company 1498. “I’ve got several who came back in the service after 9/11 wanting to get in the fight and do something.”

In the days following the attack, the National Guard received numerous calls from people inquiring about enlisting, including former soldiers willing to put the uniform on again.

“I got a call from one retired colonel who was 73, and who wanted to contribute,” said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe Jr., commander of the California National Guard. “There was this overwhelming sense of patriotism and everybody wanted to contribute.”

Maturity is not rare in the reserves. The average age in the California Army National Guard is 34; for the California Air National Guard the average is nearly 38.

“What the older people provide is that maturity and steadiness that just grounds whatever group they belong to,” Monroe said.

Serving the country under tough conditions is part of the history Brady upholds. The Buffalo Soldiers were founded by an act of Congress in 1866. Before then, black men had been called upon to fight for the nation, but were denied a role in the nation’s standing army, said retired U.S. Army Col. Franklin Henderson. The act changed that.

“It was a way of showing the gratitude of the country for the service of so many black men during the American Civil War,” Henderson said. “They had helped to preserve the Union.”

The Buffalo Soldiers, who earned their nickname from the Native Americans they sometimes combated, played a key role in the expansion westward, and they remained a part of the standing army until 1944.

Immortalized in Song

A 1980 Bob Marley song immortalized the troops and a Danny Glover movie told the story to a younger generation. Still, it is a history many have not heard, Brady said, “especially children.”

Among themselves, the Buffalo Soldiers tell their own stories. They are veterans in their 70s, 80s and 90s. The oldest member of the national organization is 108, Henderson said.

In some of their stories, they are young men again, fighting the Axis powers, only to return home to “No Colored” signs at lunch counters.

In 1966, 100 years after the act that gave black men a place in the U.S. military, those veterans formed a national organization known as the 9th and 10th (Horse) Cavalry Assn.

Among the members of the Los Angeles chapter, Brady is a youngster. But a childhood in Mobile, Ala., taught him that patriotism is more than the easy gesture of waving a flag. Sometimes it is a meditation on the nation’s capacity to fulfill its highest ideals, even when the nation fails to do so.

“I couldn’t drink out of the water faucet. I couldn’t use the bathroom. I’m not bitter, but I tell my children about it, and my grandchildren so they know. It was a dark part of America’s history, and we have to deal with it.”

Brady has been associated with the Buffalo Soldiers, Greater Los Angeles Area Chapter, since the 1990s. He decided to join the reserves in January 2001.

After “listening to these elderly soldiers and veterans ... I said, ‘I’m going to do my part, even if it’s driving a bus or a Humvee.... I want to do my part as an American citizen and, most of all, to represent the Buffalo Soldiers.’ ”

The last time Brady wore a uniform was nearly 25 years ago. He enlisted then, looking for training, education that would lead to a good job. Then came the Vietnam War, and he fully expected to see combat. Instead he ended up stationed in Alaska. He left the military in 1977 as a corporal.

This time around, Brady had to fight just to join the reserves. There are weight and body fat requirements, and vigorous physical fitness tests to pass.

The MTA driver had had knee trouble after an injury at work. And he was carrying about 51 pounds more on his 6-foot-4-inch frame than the Army wanted. So Brady put himself on a plan.

“At first I thought he was crazy,” recalled his wife, Juanita. “He was eating salads, fruit. He was eating beans and very little meat.... I went along with it.”

Two times he presented himself. Two times he was sent away. Then Sept. 11 happened.

“Like everyone else, he was upset and just felt devastated about it,” Juanita said. He could have given up on the reserves, realizing that war was imminent. But he didn’t.

The third time he presented himself -- six days after Sept. 11 -- he passed the weight requirement. Next he endured rigorous examinations of his knees, an MRI, X-rays, strength tests.

About two months later, he received the stamp of approval, and when tensions with Iraq escalated, he was called up to Camp Roberts.

This is not the military he remembers. These soldiers have laptops and DVDs. They eat “add water” meals, not canned C-rations. They use porta-potties, not the trenches that soldiers once dug. And, of course, they are younger.

“I’m like a dinosaur,” he said, laughing. But the men bridge the age divide; the young soldiers bring him up to the present, he takes them into the past.

At Camp Roberts, Brady’s job is shuttling soldiers, driving them around the base. It’s a good way to get to know people: “They say, ‘It’s the Buffalo Solider. How’re your knees doing?’ ”

One day in March, the soldiers practiced jumping into foxholes. Looking into the 5 1/2-foot abyss, Brady thought, you’ve got to be kidding. Then, he looked around and saw the heads of soldiers disappearing into the darkness. He jumped.

On about the third jump, he felt a pain in his knee and figured he bruised it. Later he asked the doctor for Motrin and continued training. He did not complain. He did not stop training when he developed a cough he thought was a result of bronchitis.

At his home in Palmdale, full of growing-boy energy and the adventures of a 2-year-old named Raven, something other than complaints permeates the house with the large American flag flying in front.

Juanita Brady, 51, tells herself things could be worse, and she continues the task of caring for the five kids, ages 2 to 15, and running a household, all while attending school herself. She has hired someone to help with her 15-year-old grandson, who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair.

“God will get me through,” said Juanita, who, along with her husband, is adopting her four grandchildren. “A lot of people are going through the same thing.”

She offered her husband support, not protest. For a while she thought maybe his company might not be called to the Mideast. Maybe fate would twist his path again, and keep him safe the way it had during Vietnam.

Departure Date Passes

But Brady’s company had been told they would be relieving troops who had been fighting, and Brady was to drive heavy equipment. They were given departure dates that came and went. They waited.

In May the waiting was over. The soldiers received their “DCUs,” desert combat uniforms. Brady put on the sand-colored uniform and boots, and took a photograph. He was ready to go.

He was not ready, however, for the news a squad leader delivered a few days later.

That visit to the doctor after the foxhole jumps left Brady with a “profile,” meaning he would need a preliminary medical evaluation.

A rating of 2 or lower would land him a seat on the plane. Anything higher would mean remaining behind for more tests.

The doctor gave Brady a 4.

Part of him wanted to contest it. But he didn’t. As the rest of his troop prepared to leave, Brady was told to turn in his desert gear.

“That just about wiped him out,” Juanita said.

Brady had joined to be a soldier, and an ambassador. But the men he trained with, who listened to his stories and told him theirs, had given him more reasons to board the plane.

“I wanted to go with these guys.... Most of all I wanted to watch their backs,” he said.

Instead, the soldiers said goodbye. One corporal gave Brady a parting gift, the medallion of a Buffalo Soldier. Brady gave some of the men Buffalo Soldiers T-shirts. And Transportation Company 1498 boarded planes for Iraq, without Brady, in May.

In his youth, that disappointment would have been enough to make a soldier cry. Years of living have added perspective.

“I can’t cry,” he said. “It’s just something that wasn’t meant to be.”

At Ft. Lewis in Washington, he is waiting for a medical evaluation. He also learned that since being deployed he was exposed to tuberculosis, which may account for that cough. He is receiving treatment and is not considered infectious.

He is not sitting idle. A Buffalo Soldiers chapter is nearby, and he remains active with that fraternity of men, “trying to do something good in life.” And he worked as a Red Cross volunteer at the base hospital.

By September, he had been at Ft. Lewis so long that he met returning men he had trained with. The wounded are returning to be treated and, in some cases, sent back. Others stop at Ft. Lewis before being sent home.

“A lot of them said, ‘You don’t want to go, Brady. It’s bad,’ ” he recalled.

As bad as he knows it is, as much as he sees the toll it has taken, he still wants to go, to fight side-by-side with his comrades, to watch their backs.

Given the chance, he would go. Because that’s what a Buffalo Soldier does.