Richard Combs, Private, Company A
Richard Combs, Private, Company A
Richard Combs had one of the most remarkable military careers of any man who served in Maryland's 19th Regiment, United States Colored Troops. He entered the Army during the Civil War, was wounded in the assault at Petersburg that became known as the Battle of the Crater, remained with the 19th USCT during its postwar service in Texas, and then disappeared into civilian life for nearly sixteen years. In 1883 he put on a United States uniform again. This time he joined the 10th U.S. Cavalry, one of the Black Regular Army regiments later celebrated as the Buffalo Soldiers. He stayed for more than twenty years, serving in the West and eventually fighting in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
Combs left no known diary, memoir, or collection of letters. His story has to be reconstructed from military service records, pension papers, Army reports, directories, local records, and the histories of the units in which he served. Those records are unusually rich in some places and frustratingly silent in others. They document what happened to him, where he served, and several extraordinary moments in his military life, but they rarely tell us what he thought about them.
The Army recorded Richard Combs as a Black farmer born in Fauquier County, Virginia. At his Civil War enlistment he gave his age as twenty, although later records disagree enough about his age that an exact birth year cannot be established with confidence. He was probably born sometime in the 1840s. No record found in this research securely identifies his parents, and no evidence establishes whether he had been born enslaved or free.
On November 28, 1863, Combs enlisted in Worcester County, Maryland. On Christmas Day he mustered into Company A of the 19th United States Colored Infantry. His surviving enlistment description recorded black hair and black eyes and a height of roughly five feet four inches. During the winter of 1864 he was detached from his company for provost marshal duty at Benedict, Maryland. Later that year the 19th USCT went to Virginia.
On July 30, 1864, the 19th USCT took part in the disastrous Union assault at Petersburg known as the Battle of the Crater. The regiment was among the Black troops sent forward after the attack had already fallen into confusion. Combs's records do not tell us exactly where he stood or whether he entered the crater itself. They do establish that he was wounded in the right arm by a shell during the fighting.
The wound removed him from duty for months. His records trace him through the Army hospital system, including treatment at the U.S. Army Hospital for Colored Troops at City Point, Virginia. Years later, when Combs applied for a Civil War disability pension, he again described the injury as a shell wound received during the charge in front of Petersburg on July 30. The Pension Bureau ultimately rejected his disability claim, but the wound remained a documented part of his history for the rest of his life.
Combs recovered sufficiently to return to his regiment. After the Civil War ended, the 19th USCT was sent to Texas as part of the large Federal military presence on the Mexican border. Combs remained with the regiment until January 15, 1867, when he was mustered out at Brownsville, Texas. His first period of Army service had lasted a little more than three years.
After leaving the 19th USCT, Combs settled in Georgetown in the District of Columbia and worked as a laborer. A probable 1874 Georgetown directory entry lists a 'Richard Coombs,' laborer, at 200 Madison Street. The spelling is slightly different, so the identification cannot be considered absolute, but the name, occupation, and location closely match what Combs later told the Pension Bureau.
On June 10, 1880, he applied for a pension based on the old wound to his right arm. Less than three years later, on April 5, 1883, Combs did something striking: the Civil War veteran returned to active military service. He enlisted in Troop C of the 10th U.S. Cavalry. The reasons for his decision are unknown. Whatever they were, this was not a brief return. Combs was beginning a second military career that would last more than twenty years.
Combs's presence at Fort Davis, Texas, is documented by name in the National Park Service roster of soldiers who served there. In 1885 the 10th Cavalry moved into Arizona Territory, where Troop C was stationed at Fort Thomas during the period of the Army's campaign against Geronimo and other Chiricahua Apaches. Regimental records place Combs's troop within that larger campaign, but the evidence does not justify assigning him personally to particular patrols, expeditions, or engagements for which individual participants are not named.
Combs completed his enlistment in Troop C on April 4, 1888. Only twelve days later he reenlisted, this time in Troop B of the 10th Cavalry. He would remain associated with Troop B through the most dramatic years of his Regular Army service. The regiment later moved north to Montana, where Troop B served at Fort Custer and, by early 1898, Fort Keogh. Combs reenlisted again in 1893 and again on April 16, 1898. Nine days after that last reenlistment, the United States formally went to war with Spain.
The 10th Cavalry was sent south and then overseas as part of the American expedition against Santiago, Cuba. An official troop-distribution statement preserved in Combs's pension records places Troop B in Cuba beginning June 14, 1898. Ten days later, on June 24, the regiment fought at Las Guasimas alongside the 1st U.S. Cavalry and Theodore Roosevelt's 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the Rough Riders.
Here the surviving record gives us an unusually vivid glimpse of Combs as an individual soldier. Second Lieutenant Harry O. Williard, then acting commander of Troop B, described advancing through dense brush under Spanish fire. He moved forward with about five men; three became separated. Two privates remained immediately with him: 'Combs and Jackson.' Williard and the two soldiers continued forward and climbed toward the Spanish position until they reached the advanced line of the 1st Cavalry.
Williard did not give Combs's first name. Richard Combs's service records, however, establish that he was serving in Troop B in Cuba at the time, and no competing Troop B soldier named Combs has been identified in the evidence examined. The identification of Williard's Private Combs as Richard Combs is therefore exceptionally strong. Thirty-four years after a shell wounded him in the Petersburg fighting, Combs was again advancing under fire.
A week later, on July 1, the 10th Cavalry took part in the attack on the San Juan Heights. Troop B's commander, Captain J. W. Watson, reported that his men advanced as skirmishers, pushing forward in rushes and then at double time through terrain that repeatedly broke up the formation. Richard Combs belonged to that troop, although the surviving report does not identify his individual position during the charge. Troop B held its advanced ground through July 2 and 3, and the 10th Cavalry remained before Santiago until the Spanish surrender. Combs was not listed among the troop's casualties.
After the Santiago campaign, Troop B returned to the United States, passing through Camp Wikoff at Montauk Point and later serving at Huntsville, Alabama, and Fort Ringgold, Texas. On May 17, 1899, the troop began a second tour in Cuba, this time as part of the American occupation. Combs reenlisted yet again in April 1901 while stationed there. Troop B remained in Cuba until May 12, 1902.
The 10th Cavalry then returned to the United States and was stationed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Combs had now spent nearly two decades continuously in the Regular Army. Federal pension-related records give his retirement date as May 23, 1904. Later government documentation describes him as 'Cook, Retired U.S.A.' Taken together with his Civil War service, Combs had spent roughly a quarter-century in the United States Army.
After retirement Combs settled in Omaha, Nebraska. On March 24, 1909, he was recorded as receiving Indian Campaign Badge No. 1155, official recognition that the Army considered him to have qualifying service in the Indian campaigns. The surviving sources examined for this account do not establish which particular campaign qualified him for the badge.
On April 20, 1910, Combs married Pearl Buford across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He was then in his sixties; Pearl was in her mid-twenties. The surviving records do not explain how they met. A later Bureau of Pensions investigation found no evidence that Richard had previously married. No children were born to Richard and Pearl.
Their marriage lasted less than eleven months. Richard Combs died in Omaha on March 3, 1911. His mortuary record gives 3222 Emmett Street as his residence and place of death and records the cause as fatty degeneration of the heart. Pearl later gave their address as 3223 Emmett Street, a one-digit discrepancy that remains unresolved. Combs was buried at Fort Crook Cemetery, south of Omaha, on the military post that later became part of Offutt Air Force Base.
The outline of Richard Combs's life connects several major chapters of nineteenth-century American history. He was a Black Civil War soldier in a Maryland USCT regiment, a wounded veteran of the Battle of the Crater, a postwar soldier on the Rio Grande, a Georgetown laborer, a Buffalo Soldier in the West, and a Regular Army veteran of the war with Spain. At Las Guasimas, a contemporary officer's report briefly pulls him out of the anonymous ranks and shows him advancing under fire.
Much about Combs remains unknown. We cannot securely identify his parents, say whether he was born enslaved or free, explain why he returned to the Army in 1883, or know what he thought about the extraordinary events through which he lived. A nonfiction account should not fill those silences with invention. The documented life is compelling enough: a man who first entered the Army during the Civil War, survived a serious battle wound, returned to military service after sixteen civilian years, repeatedly reenlisted, fought in Cuba, and finally retired after a military career spanning more than four decades of American history.
This profile is based on Richard Combs's Civil War and pension-related records, Regular Army service information, contemporary Army reports from the Santiago campaign, unit histories, directories, and Omaha-area records examined during the larger Richard Combs research project. It deliberately distinguishes between events documented for Combs individually and events documented only for his regiment or troop.