From the Civil War to the present, Baylor University students, faculty, and staff on observation have produced a disproportionate number of generals in the United States military. But few soldiers ever achieved the national acclaim and attention of the euphoniously named Gen. Beaumont Bonaparte Buck, a national hero whose every word made headlines.
But his exploits in World War I were only one aspect of Buck’s long and often tumultuous life.
Born in Mississippi in 1860, Buck’s family moved to Dallas 10 years later. When he was old enough, Buck apprenticed as a “printer’s devil,” then as a reporter with The Denton Monitor and other newspapers, often working with legendary journalist James Clayton McNealus, who sponsored his application to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.
But while in preparatory school prior to his admission to West Point, Buck was intensely harassed and hazed by the son of the school’s commandant. Eventually, during a serious confrontation, Buck shot and killed his chief tormentor. Indicted by a grand jury, Buck was allowed to take his Academy entrance exams while awaiting trial in New York. When he was acquitted, he was admitted to West Point.
Buck graduated in 1885, finishing 30th in a class of 39, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army’s 16th Infantry Regiment. He served with distinction on the American frontier before being assigned to the Philippines.
In 1893, while stationed at Fort Douglas Utah, Buck was appointed as the first commandant of the Baylor Cadets (which had been formed in 1890), with the additional title of professor of military science and tactics.
Buck was expected to arrive on October 1. But according to a letter by Baylor President Rufus C. Burleson, published in the Waco Daily Day-Globe on November 28, 1893, on one of his final nights at Fort Douglas, Buck and two of his soldiers were involved in an incident with a drunken civilian, who had tried to force his way on to the base. Buck initially convinced the man to return home.
“But in a few hours,” Burleson writes, “[the man] returned, more boisterous than ever, yelling and swearing no one could arrest him.”
Buck instructed his men to restrain the man, who fled behind a large building. Moments later, a shot rang out — one of the soldiers had killed the man “in self-defense.” Though he was 200 yards away from the incident, Burleson writes, as commanding officer, Buck was arrested as well.
Read more: Burleson Heads Waco University — The School That Saved Baylor
Confident of Buck’s innocence and eventual arrival in Waco, Burleson’s letter of explanation to the newspaper included a humble brag on his school:
This will add new power and new attraction to Baylor University. We hope soon to inaugurate, according to our charter, our commercial and law department, and, as soon as possible, our medical department.
By January 1, 1900, we hope to see 54 professors and teachers, and 1650 students, male and female. We earnestly invite the press and people of Waco to aid in the glorious consummation, so devotedly to be wished.
Fortunately for Burleson and Baylor, Buck was again soon acquitted. Waco newspapers provided regular updates on Buck’s progress from Utah. On December 10, 1893, the Daily Day-Globe reported that Buck had arrived in town:
As soon as he can lease a suitable residence, he will move his family to Waco from Salt Lake City, his last post. Lt. Buck will not be long in bringing the Waco cadets up to the high standard of West Point. This is a very important improvement in the educational faculties of the Central City. For the present, Lt. Buck is a guest at the Hotel Royal.
The Bucks soon found a “suitable residence” in a home at Ninth Street and Speight Avenue and became instant celebrities in Waco social circles. Even the staid Morrison & Fourney General Directory of the City of Waco 1894-1895 made an enthusiastic note of his arrival:
Lt. Beaumont B. Buck, a distinguished officer of the regular army, a graduate of West Point and a soldier of great ability, has been assigned as commander of the corps, which wears the regulation uniform and is armed with the latest improved muskets.
Apparently, Burleson’s (and Morrison & Fourney’s) belief in Buck was well-founded. Within a year, the Baylor corps numbered 50 well-trained cadets and Texas Gov. Jim Hogg even invited Buck and his charges to march in the annual Confederate veterans reunion parade in downtown Austin. Buck responded that — assuming the Baylor faculty gave their blessing for the absences — his cadets would gladly accept the invitation.
By May 1894, the Waco Evening News was reporting that Buck’s cadets now numbered 150 and added that “since he has been command of the cadets, [he] has improved them a great deal.”
In another article, the Baptist Standard devoted several paragraphs to commenting on the success of the Baylor cadet program, which Buck had now organized into a battalion of three companies, with “each company fully officered and equipped” with “150 cadet rifles and accouterments and two 3-inch rifled field guns, with appurtenances complete.” The Standard also noted that there is “no charge” for this department: “Neither the state nor the general government has or claims any control over the school, or over these cadets by reasons of instructions or use of equipments.”
Alas, Buck’s success at Baylor did not go unnoticed by the U.S. Army, either. He was transferred again in May 1895 and was eventually returned to the Philippines at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Buck had a facility for languages and had already mastered Spanish and French and soon added the Philippine Tagalog dialect to his repertoire. (He also was said to be able to “carry on fairly good conversations in Japanese and Chinese.) He eventually served three tours of duty in the Philippines and, as Major Buck, served as a commanding officer of Fort McKinley, outside Manila, said to be the largest military outpost in the world at the time.
From there, Buck’s rise in the peacetime Army was little short of meteoric. In 1909, Buck graduated from the U.S. Army War College and served on the faculty, returned yet again to the Philippines as acting commander of the 13th Infantry Regiment, and by 1916, had been promoted to colonel. In June 1917, he was named the commanding officer of the 28th Infantry Regiment, part of the newly formed 1st Division — the famed “Big Red One” — and promoted yet again.
When the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies, now-Brigadier General Buck was sent to France as part of the first wave of the American Expeditionary Forces. Buck’s promotion was widely reported, including in the various Waco newspapers, which invariably noted his stint as commandant of the Baylor Cadets.
The Germans launched the Aisne Offensive in late-May 1918, the third in a series of desperate offensives designed by Gen. Erich Ludendorff to end the war’s bloody stalemate and split the Allies before American forces arrived in full strength. While German armies successfully routed the French and English lines further south, the Americans struck their first major independent blow of the war on May 28 at the Battle of Cantigny. There, ‘raw’ Americans — those who were unproven in major combat — were ordered into the fray under Buck.
One of the best accounts of these operations comes from an interview Buck and his assistant brigade adjutant, Capt. Wendell H. Woolworth, gave to New York newspapers upon returning to the U.S. in November 1918. They recounted the battles of Cantigny, Soissons, and Saint-Mihiel, the interview capturing the moment when Buck’s 2nd Infantry Brigade broke through enemy lines after four days of continuous fighting:
We had made five attacks already. Seventy-five percent of the commissioned officers of my brigade were casualties, and 50 percent of the enlisted men were killed or wounded when I received orders that Berzy le Sec must be taken at any cost.
I stayed up all night personally instructing my officers. At 2:30 a.m., we went in. There were three waves and we took and held Berzy le Sec.
Woolworth picked up the narrative, adding:
The General was in the first wave, carrying that bamboo riding crop. And they were mighty thin waves, too. There wasn’t much left of the brigade, but they waded right in.
The brigade was under fire all the time. The Germans — they were the Prussian Guards, the Kaiser’s own, the finest shock troops in the German Army, too — could see the outfit, and they were pouring in shells all the time. Two officers were killed by one shell while the General was explaining the plan of attack to them.
Buck, who was knocked down by the concussion, stood back up and resumed his command. The battle was, he said, the turning point of the war:
Had the Allies not been prepared for an offensive, the Germans would have taken Paris in four days. As it was, American troops rushed to the front by forced marches, were able to stop the Germans. There is no doubt in my mind that the Americans saved Paris. No American unit ever lost a foot of ground gained.
In the chaotic days that followed Cantigny, Buck was assigned command of the 3rd Division in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in mid-September, and during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in October. It was during the fighting of the Meuse-Argonne that Buck ran afoul of the prickly Gen. John J. Pershing — who was dissatisfied with the division’s organization — and was relieved of command, then reassigned to various lesser administrative posts in the U.S. for the remainder of the war.
At least three Baylor men were in Buck’s vicinity. In Frank Jasek’s Soldiers of the Wooden Cross: Military Memorials of Baylor University, Jasek writes that Oscar C. Key, Ben H. Rogers and James P. Walker all fought in the bloody Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
Following the final defeat of the German armies and the end of the war, Buck received the prestigious Croix de Guerre from the French for his “conspicuous gallantry in action” for his attack on the heavily fortified village of Berzy-le-Sec.
Later, on August 22, 1918, Brigadier General Buck was promoted to the rank of major general. Having clearly distinguished himself on the battlefields of France, Buck joined a select early group of recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross for this “conspicuous gallantry and heroic leadership,” the nation’s second-highest medal for valor during WWI. The Distinguished Service Cross citation reads:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Brigadier General Beaumont Bonaparte Buck, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving as Commanding General, 2d Infantry Brigade, 1st Division, A.E.F., before and during the attack of Berzy-le-Sec, France, 21 July 1918. Brigadier General Buck displayed conspicuous gallantry and heroic leadership of his command. When most of the officers of his brigade had fallen, General Buck, with contempt of personal danger, in spite of heavy artillery bombardment and machine-gun fire, traversed the front of his advancing forces, gave correct directions to his organization commanders and led the first wave of the culminating attack which stormed and captured the town.
Buck’s actions made him one of the first American heroes of World War I and he became a media sensation, with large crowds cheering his lectures and appearances, and long, glowing features in the nation’s newspapers and magazines, usually spotlighting his famous riding crop.
In January 1919, Buck made his triumphant return to Waco, assuming command of the sprawling Camp MacArthur, but stopping long enough to address Baylor students in Chapel. The Lariat called him a “hero of the great war” and provided a detailed account of Buck’s speech, which provides an in-depth look at World War I’s final days.
University President Samuel Palmer Brooks’ interrupted Buck’s narrative and asked him to recount how he became known as “The Hero of Cantigny.” According to The Lariat’s account:
To this the general modestly replied that the success of the Americans at Cantigny was due to the men under command of one of his colonels and not directly to him. But the general did win fame for himself and glory to his country in the siege of [Berzy-le-Sec].
While at Camp MacArthur, Buck also paid what The Richfield Flyer called a “neighborly visit” to the nearby Rich Field in Waco, where a special flying exhibition of the latest in warplanes was held in his honor, including new De Havilland Four airplanes.
The Round Up yearbook even devoted an entire page honoring Buck in the 1919 edition.
He soon became a much in-demand speaker on military affairs. The Waco newspapers extensively covered one of Buck’s addresses to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce in June 1922, calling him a “military strategist and prominent figure in the World War.” At one point in the speech, Buck made an ominous prediction: “Since the inception of the United States, this nation has spent one-fifth of the time at war, and it would a foolish dream for us to believe we will have no more wars.”
After several more posts, Buck retired from the U.S. Army on January 16, 1924, once he reached the mandatory retirement age of 64. He settled in San Antonio, continued to speak across the country and worked on his memoir, Memories of Peace and War, which was finally published in 1935. The slim volume, which doesn’t mention his time at Baylor, is most notable for the photographs of Buck at various stages in his long career.
Buck remained active in various San Antonio military community and civic organizations, including a stint as the head of the San Antonio Bi-Centennial Commission.
In late 1949, the now twice-widowed Buck married his nurse, Virginia Rodgers, 40 years his junior.
At a Valentine Dance in February 1950 sponsored by the State Association of Texas Pioneers, of which he was a past president, Buck went through the receiving line, turned to Virginia and said, “I am going to dance Put Your Little Foot with you.” He exchanged greetings with another couple, then crumpled to the ground.
According to an obituary in the San Antonio Light, “It was the kind of death he always wanted. He often predicted he’d die with his boots on.”
Gen. Beaumont Bonaparte Buck was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio.
Buck was survived by four daughters and two sons from his first two marriages. But even in death, he continued to make news when his last will and testament left only $1 to each child, with the rest of the estate going to Virginia, prompting a prolonged legal battle that was well-covered in the San Antonio press.
As another obituary said, “Life was kind to General Buck. It bestowed long years upon him and filled those years with things he liked. In return, he gave far beyond the average to community and country.”
