[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 81 (Friday, June 17, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1260-E1261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      BUFFALO SOLDIER: MOUND BAYOU RESIDENT, ONE OF AMERICA'S LAST

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 16, 2005

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize 
Rev. C.L. Woodley. Rev. Woodley currently' presides in Mound Bayou, 
Mississippi and is one of the last Buffalo Soldiers in the Nation. I 
submit the following article by Robert Smith of the Cleveland News 
Leader in Cleveland, Mississippi.

       The Rev. C.L. Woodley's moral conscience is still 
     powerfully stirred by events he witnessed when he served in 
     the U.S. Army during World War II.
       ``I pray for America. We're in bad shape and don't know 
     it,'' the retired African Methodist Episcopal (AME) presiding 
     elder says, reflecting on both past and present.
       Woodley, 85, is one of the last of the Buffalo Soldiers--
     African Americans trained as horse-riding cavalrymen, who 
     served the nation in both peacetime and war from the late 
     1860s up through the mid 1940s--Native Americans of the Great 
     Plains were the source of the nickname.
       A native of Stringtown, Woodley was drafted in 1941 and 
     received his cavalry instruction at Camp Funston, Kansas. He 
     later took part in U.S. military actions in North African and 
     Italy.
       However, he recalls with a laugh that he had experience as 
     a rider before he trained with horses at Camp Funston. As a 
     youth in the Stringtown area, in southwest Bolivar County, he 
     was a jockey in mule races. Today, he still rides a bicycle 
     in the mornings, he explained.
       Turning the pages of his photo album, Woodley commented 
     during an interview at his home about how he and other 
     soldiers had to cross the burning, but not sunken, remains of 
     a bombed ship to get from their vessel to shore when 
     they arrived at Casablanca, Morocco. He became motor-pool 
     sergeant for a contingent of replacement troops, who 
     supported men on the fighting line, and the sound of 
     shells and bombs exploding became a regular feature of 
     their environment. ``We got it so bad until you could tell 
     the sound of a German plane from an American plane,'' he 
     said.
       In addition to the dangers of combat, Woodley had 
     disturbing experiences with which he still grapples. Among 
     those experiences was the sight of hungry civilians begging 
     for food--mothers asking U.S. soldiers for bits of their 
     rations to feed to keep the civilians back.
       ``Our orders were to take that club and beat them back, but 
     I told the commanding

[[Page E1261]]

     officer I didn't have the heart to do it,'' he said, adding 
     that he is concerned about how the U.S. treats civilians in 
     present-day conflicts, such as the fighting in Iraq and 
     Afghanistan.
       ``I don't know whether we'll ever get out of this war. 
     There are way too many people getting killed,'' he said, 
     voicing anxiety that America may be losing men and women it 
     will need in the future. He sees a national indifference to 
     the value of life expressed both in our foreign policy and in 
     social practices such as legalized abortion.
       ``God is not dead,'' Woodley warns. ``I might lie to you 
     but that Bible's going to come true.''
       When he returned to Mississippi after his Army days, 
     Woodley studied at Campbell College in the Jackson area and 
     became an AME clergyman. He served for more than 40 years as 
     a presiding elder in the church, which means he was 
     responsible for helping the bishop to supervise preachers. He 
     became senior presiding elder of the Eight AME District, 
     comprised of Mississippi and Louisiana.
       Woodley settled in Mount Bayou with his wife, Willie Thelma 
     Woodley, who was a native of the historic settlement founded 
     by former slaves of Joe Davis.
       Shelton Woodley of Mound Bayou, one of the minister's sons, 
     says his own service in the Vietnam War helped him to 
     appreciate and better understand his father's experiences.
       The elder Mr. Woodley, who stays busy keeping up the 
     shrubbery at his home and at the Mound Bayou branch of the 
     Bank of Bolivar County, says he hates to be idle. He recalls 
     how hard work shaped him as a child.
       ``I picked 200 pounds of cotton in Stringtown, Mississippi, 
     when I was nine years old,'' he says with a smile.

  Most of us are aware of the contributions that men like Rev. C.L. 
Woodley and the Buffalo Soldiers have made to the preservation of our 
Nation and our democracy.
  In the history of the Buffalo Soldiers there were not only men that 
served, but women as well. Cathy Williams, the only woman who served in 
1866 as a Buffalo Soldier, also deserves recognition by the House; 
therefore, these are men and women of courage, bravery, and honor.
  The remarkable irony of the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and many 
other African American soldiers like Rev. Woodley is that they fought 
to preserve the high ideals of liberty, freedom, and democracy; 
however, they were fighting for principles and privileges that they 
themselves were being denied on their own soil.
  Mr. Speaker and to the Members of Congress, too many times do we 
celebrate the men and women of our armed services and veterans after 
they are no longer with us. I ask you to join in saluting Mr. Woodley 
and the men and women of the Buffalo Soldiers, to ensure him while he 
is living and well that we are grateful and indebted to him and others 
like him for his service in the United States Army.

                          ____________________