More than 5,000 African Americans served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and about half of the Rhode Island Regiment consisted of free blacks and escaped slaves. In February 1783, Colonel Marinus Willet led 750 men of the Rhode Island Regiment and New York Levies through snow and freezing temperatures against British-held Fort Ontario, but he reached Oswego too late to make the planned surprise night attack and returned to the Mohawk Valley with men suffering from frostbite and exposure. Fort Ontario later became the station of African American soldiers in several eras: the 24th Infantry garrisoned the fort from 1908 to 1911; Sergeant Duffy Nunn, who had served with the 24th U.S. Infantry in Cuba during the Spanish American War and later with the Hospital Corps at Fort Ontario, retired in Oswego and was buried in the Post Cemetery; from 1917 to 1921 the fort served as U.S. Army Post Hospital #5, where Private William Zuill, connected to the 15th New York Infantry that became the 369th Infantry Regiment, and Private Strodder Taylor of the 505th Engineers were among those buried in the Post Cemetery; and in 1940 the 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment trained there as Benjamin O. Davis, the first African American brigadier general, pressed for broader roles for black soldiers. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Army Reserve has maintained a training facility on the old Fort Ontario Military Reservation, and the 444th Engineer Company currently garrisons the post in a military presence that dates back to 1755.