like hail out of the sky, but we kept on moving forward, advancing . . . by rushes. One of the men killed in this battle stood right by my side.” In the war in the Philippines in 1899 and 1900, Sanders exposed himself to great danger and distinguished himself by making forays behind enemy lines in jungle areas to deliver messages from General Andrew Burt. But, ironically, it was a peacetime shooting incident in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906, not war, that ended Sergeant Sanders’ military career. The victim of the shooting was a white bartender, and suspicion for the crime fell on members of the Twenty- Fifth Infantry Regiment who were stationed in Brownsville at the time. President Theodore Roosevelt, frustrated by the delay in arresting the actual culprits, ordered 167 black soldiers to be discharged without honor—a rarely used administrative device that separated men from the service without dishonorably discharg- ing them. This also meant that the soldiers had no chance to prove their innocence through a trial. Sergeant Sanders, apparently asleep at the time of the shooting, was caught up in this web of discharges.
Before the Brownsville incident, Sergeant Sanders had a long and successful army career, with six re- enlistments and ratings of “outstand- ing” or “very good.” General Burt told Mary Church Terrell, a renowned civil rights leader who worked to get Sanders an honorable discharge: “Mingo Sanders is the best noncom- missioned officer I have ever known. And I have been in the army forty
Wheels of War
Taken in the early 1990s, this photo depicts a Swiss soldier riding a bicycle capable of transporting weapons ranging from grenade launchers to machine guns.
A
LTHOUGH the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps’ late-nine- teenth-century experiment with bicycles as modes of military transportation did not immediately lead to the use of bicycle units in the US Army, other armies across the world did turn to the bicycle as a way of moving supplies and troops. In 1937, for example, the Japanese army employed fifty thousand bicycle troops in its invasion of China. Later, during the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II, British paratroopers riding on folding bicycles launched a successful raid on a German radar station in France. Perhaps most noteworthy of all military uses of the bicycle, however, is the North Vietnamese use of bicycles as cargo carriers on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where each bicycle could be loaded with as much as four hundred pounds of supplies. Until relatively recently, the Swiss and Swedish armies maintained units of bicycle-mounted light infantry, and today, more than one hundred years after the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps’ magnificent 1,900- mile ride from Montana to Missouri, the US military once again has bicycle troops in its ranks. Some US troops are said to have used bicycles for their speed and mobility when fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and bikes are also believed to have been used in Iraq for reconnaissance missions and neighborhood patrols. —PH
years.” Finally, in 1972, more than sixty years after the incident, the 167 men discharged without honor, including Sergeant Sanders, were given honorable discharges.
Wheels of History
Despite the success of the Twenty- Fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps’ experi- mental ride from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri, bicycles were never fully integrated into the US military because both horses and bicycles were soon made obsolete by the advent of tanks and
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
trucks. Nonetheless, during their brief, shining hour in the bicycle corps and in battle, the men of the Twenty- Fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps demon- strated that they were the equal of any man, and by showing, as Lieuten- ant Moss once wrote, “spirit, pluck and fine soldierly qualities” during a journey that the St. Louis Star described as “the most marvelous cycling trip in the history of the wheel. . . .” they helped pave the way for equal treatment for African-Ameri- cans in the armed forces and across the United States. ■
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PHOTO: ©PIERRE VAUTHEY/CORBIS SYGMA
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