The occasion was the celebrated expedition conducted by General J.J. Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of the bandit leader Villa. A picked detachment consisting of portions of Troops C and K of the colored Tenth Cavalry, was dispatched from Pershing's main force towards the town of Villa Ahumada. The force was commanded by Captain Charles T. Boyd of Troop C and Captain Lewis Morey of Troop K. Lieutenant Adair was second in command in Troop C to Captain Boyd. Including officers and civilian scouts, the force numbered about 80 men.
Early on the morning of June 21, the detachment wishing to pass through the garrisoned town of Carrizal, sought the permission of the Mexican commander. Amidst a show of force, the officers were invited into the town by the commander, ostensibly for a parley. Fearing a trap they refused the invitation and invited the Mexicans to a parley outside the town. The Mexican commander came out with his entire force and began to dispose them in positions which were very threatening to the Americans. Captain Boyd informed the Mexican that his orders were to proceed eastward to Ahumada and protested against the menacing position of the Mexican forces. The Mexican replied that his orders were to prevent the Americans from proceeding in any direction excepting northward, the direction from which they had just come.
Captain Boyd refused to retreat, but ordered his men not to fire until they were attacked. The Mexican commander retired to the flank and almost immediately opened with machine gun fire from a concealed trench. This was quickly followed by rifle fire from the remainder of the force. The Mexicans outnumbered the troopers nearly two to one and their most effective force was intrenched. The Americans were on a flat plain, unprotected by anything larger than bunches of cactus or sage brush. They dismounted, laid flat on the ground and responded to the attack as best they could. The horses were mostly stampeded by the early firing.
The spray of lead from the machine gun had become so galling that Captain Boyd decided to charge the position. Not a man wavered in the charge. They took the gun, the Captain falling dead across the barrel of it just as the last Mexican was killed or put to flight. Lieutenant Adair was also killed. The Mexicans returned in force and recaptured the position.
Captain Morey had been concerned in warding off a flank attack. His men fought no less bravely than the others. They finally were driven to seek refuge in an adobe house, that is; all who were able to reach it. Here they kept the Mexicans at bay for hours firing through windows and holes in the walls. Captain Morey seriously wounded, with a few of his survivors, finally escaped from the house and hid for nearly two days in a hole. The soldiers refused to leave their officer. When they finally were able to leave their place of concealment, the several that were left assisted their Captain on the road towards the main force. Arriving at a point where reinforcements could be summoned, the Captain wrote a report to his commander and sent his men to headquarters with it. They arrived in record time and a party was sent out, reaching the wounded officer in time to save his life.
About half of the American force was wiped out and most of the others were taken prisoners. They inflicted a much heavier loss on the Mexicans. Among the killed was the Mexican commander who had ordered the treacherous attack.
It may be that "someone had blundered." This was not the concern of the black troopers; in the face of odds they fought by the cactus and lay dead under the Mexican stars.
In closing this outline of the Negro's participation in former wars, it is highly appropriate to quote the tributes of two eminent men. One, General Benjamin F. Butler, a conspicuous military leader on the Union side in the Civil War, and Wendell Phillips, considered by many the greatest orator America ever produced, and who devoted his life to the abolition movement looking to the freedom of the slave in the United States. Said General Butler on the occasion of the debate in the National House of Representatives on the Civil Rights bill; ten years after the bloody battle of New Market Heights; speaking to the bill, and referring to the gallantry of the black soldiers on that field of strife:
"It became my painful duty to follow in the track of that charging column, and there, in a space not wider than the clerk's desk and three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of 543 of my colored comrades, fallen in defense of their country, who had offered their lives to uphold its flag and its honor, as a willing sacrifice; and as I rode along among them, guiding my horse this way and that way, lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked on their bronzed faces upturned in the shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country whose flag had only been to them a flag of stripes, on which no star of glory had ever shone for them—feeling I had wronged them in the past and believing what was the future of my country to them—among my dead comrades there I swore to myself a solemn oath, 'May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I ever fail to defend the rights of those men who have given their blood for me and my country this day, and for their race forever,' and, God helping me, I will keep that oath."
Mr. Phillips in his great oration on Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Black of St. Domingo; statesman, warrior and LIBERATOR,—delivered in New York City, March 11, 1863, said among other things, a constellation of linguistic brilliants not surpassed since the impassioned appeals of Cicero swept the Roman Senate to its feet, or Demosthenes fired his listeners with the flame of his matchless eloquence;