Lewis was sent to Kansas to train in the U.S. Army’s 9th Horse Cavalry, the all-Black unit that distinguished itself over decades of fighting. The Buffalo Soldier units formed during the Civil War and were disbanded when President Harry S Truman issued an order to integrate the armed forces in 1948.
The horse cavalry training was a rude awakening for Lewis.
“I had never been near a horse,” Lewis, 99, said in a recent interview. “They gave me a horse and I had to learn to ride a horse and I had to do everything a cavalryman did, ride the horse, feed the horse.”