By Traci Chapman
Published on June 26, 2008

When Alfonso Benson walked through his local draft board office 65 years ago, he didn’t know he would become a part of history.

Benson, then a resident of Kansas City, Kan., said it was “very important” to him to volunteer to serve during World War II. As a black recruit, Benson became part of an “elite” group — the buffalo soldiers.

“I remember it so clearly — it was June 14, 1943, when I went in to sign up,” he said. “I’d heard about buffalo soldiers, but it never occurred to me that by signing up I would become one myself.”

Benson, a Calumet resident, said although the buffalo soldier organization widened its membership to include other black veterans in the last few years, the moniker pertains to black soldiers serving up through the end of World War II. With the death of fellow buffalo soldier John Baker in January, Benson is the last original buffalo soldier living in Oklahoma.

Through all those years — from the organization of the first all-black regiment — the 10th Cavalry, formed in 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. — to the service of thousands of members of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry regiments in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II — black soldiers were segregated from their white counterparts.

After signing up, Benson left for the South Pacific, building hospitals and railroads and helping engineer roads. At that time, he said, most black soldiers did not see combat.

“The black soldiers were not issued weapons, and we didn’t do any fighting,” he said. “Only one black unit did any fighting. We accomplished a lot, but it’s not like I was a hero or anything.”

Benson said his war years were basically unremarkable,” except for the long impact serving his country has had on him, but five campaign medals — which he said he doesn’t “really think about” — indicate the story might not be so clear-cut.

“The medals weren’t what it was about. Serving — that was what was important. First, it gave me a real appreciation of my country and what it means to serve.
Anytime I was lonely or tired, I would remember my family, and I knew I could go on,” he said. “Then being part of the buffalo soldier group helped me to understand everything blacks had gone through — and all of the accomplishments they had — and that also gave me strength, long after I had come home.”

After his discharge in 1945, Benson went home to Kansas City. He said he took the determination he had gained in the service and applied it to becoming a police officer. In 1948, Benson entered the Kansas City Police Academy, and in 1950, he became the Kansas City Police Department’s first black motorcycle officer, later serving as one of the city’s first vice detectives.

After living in Compton, Calif., and working for the Compton Police Department for 28 years — 12 years as head of the department’s internal affairs department — Benson and his wife, Lillie, moved to Calumet in 1989.

“Lillie’s family lived in Geary, and she wanted to live near them, so we found the farm, packed up and ended up in Oklahoma,” he said.

Benson said once word got out he was an ex-police officer, he was tapped to serve on Calumet’s volunteer fire department. He also is former president of the Calumet Chamber of Commerce and has been involved with the American Legion and the Buffalo Soldiers 9th and 10th Cavalry Horse Association.

His days as a buffalo soldier also made him a “natural,” he said, to portray Clark Young at Fort Reno events. Young was a buffalo soldier killed at the battle of Sand Hill in 1875.

These days Benson splits his time between his farm and a nursing home in Kingfisher, where Lillie has been recuperating since a series of strokes in 2006. Every Friday, he makes the trek to Fort Reno, where he serves as a historical interpreter, passing down what he has learned about the area’s history, the buffalo soldiers and what it means to serve a “country I love more all the time.

“I don’t really think about the time I spent in the Army very much, but I know what I did then affected every day of my life since then,” he said. “It was one of the things I’m most proud of, and something that’s really made me who I am.”