"volunteer division" for early service in France in World War I. Roosevelt appears to have planned to recruit at least one and perhaps two Black regiments for the division, something he had not told President Wilson or Secretary of War Baker. He immediately wrote to Young offering him command of one of the prospective regiments, saying "there is not another man [besides yourself] who would be better fitted to command such a regiment." Roosevelt also promised Young carte blanche in appointing staff and line officers for the unit. However, Wilson refused Roosevelt permission to organize his volunteer division. Young returned to Wilberforce University, where he was a professor of military science through most of 1918. On November 6, 1918, after he had traveled by horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty as a colonel. Baker did not rescind his order that Young be forcibly retired. In 1919, Young was reassigned as military attaché to Liberia. Death While Young was on a reconnaissance mission in Nigeria in late 1921, he suddenly became debilitatingly ill. Young died of a kidney infection at the British hospital in Lagos on January 8, 1922. Because his death took place in a British hospital, his body was required to be buried in Lagos where it remained for an entire year. During that year, Young's wife and many notable African Americans at the time demanded that Young's body be brought back from Nigeria so that he could receive “a proper military burial.” More than a year after his death, Young's body was finally exhumed and brought back to American soil. When his body finally made it to New York, he received a hero's welcome. There were large crowds of people there, all to pay honor to Young's long and accomplished military career. He was given a full military funeral and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 3 across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. He was the fourth soldier to receive a funeral in Arlington Memorial Amphitheater. He is buried with a large tombstone that states his name, military rank, and year of birth and death and other side simply says “Young.” He had become a public and respected figure because of his unique achievements in the Army, and his obituary was carried in The New York Times. Honors and legacy Honors Charles Young