Colonel Earl D. Thomas Fort Des Moines 1906

Colonel Earl D. Thomas, commander of the Eleventh Cavalry at Fort Des Moines, took command several cavalry units in Cuba in 1906.

Thomas began his military service as a private in the Eighth Illinois, rising to sergeant-major during the Civil War. He graduated from West Point in 1869 and was assigned to the Fifth Cavalry where he took part in many of the Indian Wars. He fought in the Indian campaigns in the Republican River Country, the Apache Campaign of 1872-1874, at Four Peaks, Salt River Canyon, Music Mountain, and many more campaigns in the West.

Thomas was on frontier duty in Kansas and Nebraska from 1878 to 1885, led a surveying expedition in 1879, and fought in the Western Indian Wars from 1885 to 1898. 

When the Spanish American War broke out, he helped outfit Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, then served as an inspector general of volunteers. In 1899, he became an associate judge in a provincial court in Cuba. He returned to the United States in 1900 and served on the frontier for several more years.

Thomas was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1904 and took command of the Eleventh Cavalry at Fort Des Moines in April of that year. When he headed to Cuba in 1906, two-thirds of the 851 men at Fort Des Moines went with him.