With his weapons skills, discipline, and can-do attitude, Eddie quickly gained the respect of the white officers. However, because of the Army’s policy of racial segregation, Eddie and the other black soldiers were to be assigned to a service unit—as cooks, truck drivers, stevedores, engineers—rather than to combat duty.
After completing basic training Eddie was shipped out to Fort Benning, Georgia, and assigned to 3535th Quartermaster Truck Company. In less than a year he would be promoted to staff sergeant. But if Eddie was shocked by the racism he found in Texas, he was appalled by what he found in Georgia. Both the civilian white population and the Army were bastions of racism. “They don’t treat you at all like soldiers,” he complained. “It’s more like slaves. When this war is over, you’ll see plenty of tough and bitter boys coming home,” he prophesied, with more truth than he could have known.
Two days later he voiced his anger, bitterness, and despair at the mistreatment of black people, especially black soldiers, by whites. In a letter to Mildred dated January 25, 1942, he wrote:
“After I get out of the Army and should [the United States] have another war, I’ll not join the Army. I’ll go to jail before I go. The treatment that they give the Negro in the South is plenty of reason. If that is what we have to fight for, why fight? Fight to save the white man’s money? The Negro is nothing but the cat’s paw. I have every bit of love and respect I ever had for the United States. I know I shouldn’t be telling you these things. But why should the Negro fight for something he will not get? Should we fight for mops, buckets, and brooms, and then be treated as they are treating us? Hell no! We fight, then we should be able to break bread and eat it together with the rest of our white brothers. ‘All men are created equal.’ If so, why can’t we share the spoils?
“The officers down here tell us that they don’t need niggers in the Army. Then why in the hell don’t they let us go. After all, a mop, bucket, and broom are not worth giving one’s life for. The white man is the lowest animal there is. Nothing is too low or dirty for him to do.” Sensing that his anger might worry Mildred, Eddie added, “I am letting my hate get the best of me. So please overlook my top blowing.”
Eddie seemed to take a deep breath and then he continued his letter: “The main thing is that I still love you, Mil. Nothing will ever stop me from coming home…. I dreamed of you last night, sweets. I dreamed that we were out boat riding on a beautiful lake. The water was clear as glass. Everything looked beautiful. Even as you do. Nothing will stop my being true.”
In the steady flow of what he called his “epistles” to Mildred he insisted that he wanted her to come to him and get married. But there was some hesitation—on both sides. Eddie loved Mildred but he was afraid of getting too close to someone for fear of losing her, as he had lost his mother. Mildred stirred tender feelings in him and this had a strong impact on him, but he still had doubts that she would truly want him as her husband. She wasn’t a needy person. She had a secure and full life. As for Mildred, she was captivated by Eddie, but having come through a difficult relationship with her former husband, she was worried about stability and commitment. She also sensed Eddie’s hesitation, but she didn’t know its source. With Eddie now a soldier and far away, she probably worried that they might drift apart, that he might not remain faithful to her.
Each of them struggled with doubts, but eventually they agreed that Mildred should come to Georgia and they would get married. Mildred joined him in May 1942, and they were married on June 10. Mildred left Iris and Charles with her parents in Los Angeles. Iris suffered with asthma, and Mildred was fearful that the humid Southern climate would affect her adversely. Eddie was worried that, given the hostile racial climate in the South, a rambunctious young black boy might fall in harm’s way. The family settled in a small, cramped house in the nearby town of Columbus. Although their life was circumscribed, Eddie was happy to have Mildred and Buddha with him.
Despite his anger over Southern racism voiced in his letters to Mildred, Eddie was doing well in the Army and gaining some notoriety. In October 1942, he was featured in an article in The Pine-Bur, the post newspaper. The article noted that his “career as a soldier of fortune has taken him around the world.” It recounted his growing up in India and China, and his combat experience in China and Spain. “He is now married and the proud father of a large son,” the article ended.
A year after marrying Eddie, Mildred gave birth to a second son, William. They named William for Eddie’s brother, who was in the service at a different military base. With Mildred, Eddie felt a wholeness he had never known before.
Meanwhile, his relationship with his own family had reached a nadir. Eddie and his brother William had always been close. William had been married for a short time, but his wife walked out on him, leaving him heartbroken. Eddie’s relationship with Miriam, whom he regarded as out of control, was often strained. And since returning to the United States, Eddie had kept his distance from his father and stepmother. He wrote to them occasionally but complained that they didn’t respond. “They don’t answer my letters,” Eddie told Mildred, “so I’ll discontinue my letters.” The old wound between father and son never healed, and now it had become an ugly scar.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOVE AND WAR: A HERO’S STORY
Eddie loved married life and he greatly enjoyed his young family. Despite the evident segregation and discrimination, he also relished his life in the Army. His officers were impressed by his knowledge, capability, and enthusiasm, and as a result he was promoted to staff sergeant. But Eddie was a combat soldier, a warrior against tyranny, and he was itching to get into the fight against fascism.
In the fall of 1944 his hopes were raised when his unit was notified that they would be shipped overseas. He packed up his family and sent them back to Mildred’s parents in Los Angeles. His truck company was shipped first to England and then on November 13, 1944, they arrived in southern France expecting to be sent to the front lines. Instead they were assigned to transporting supplies to the fighting forces and cleaning out snipers in the rear areas.
Despite his disappointment, Eddie kept an upbeat tone in his letters home. On November 22 he wrote to Mildred to wish her a happy birthday. “Dear Pet: You see, I haven’t forgotten the date. Dec. 1st is your birthday, is it not? If I wasn’t several thousand miles away I would give you one thousand burning kisses for your very own. This is another one of my letters you may keep as a promissory note to be made good at the first opportunity. In the meanwhile, I’ll be thinking only of you. If you should care to make me happy, write soon and mail me a few crumbs of that birthday cake, which I’m sure your mother baked for the sweetest of girls.”
In a letter written on December 17, Eddie admitted the deep impact Mildred’s love had made in his life: “Your claim is that you do not understand me—yet you are the only one who has ever understood me. You made me love you when once upon a time I was sure that it was impossible for me to love anyone but my mother. You did what others could not do. You are my emancipator. Life would be unbearable without having someone to fight for and to come home to after the war.” For most of his life Eddie had steeled himself against feelings of tenderness for anyone other than his mother. Mildred taught him to love again.
Eddie was a soldier and he was anxious to get into the infantry. From the moment he landed in Europe he volunteered daily for combat duty. He wanted to get to the front lines, but he was never accepted. Finally he got his chance. The German counteroffensive at Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, took a disastrous toll. Reinforcements were desperately needed, but few GIs—that is, few white GIs—were available. Thousands of black troops stood at the ready, and many of them were eager to join combat units. Having no alternative, the Army finally opened its ranks to black volunteers. An initial circular soliciting volunteers stated that black soldiers would be assigned to units without regard to race or color and implied that they would be fighting side by side with white troops. This was hastily ret
racted and replaced by a new circular stating that volunteers would be accepted with-out regard to race or color, with no suggestion of inter-racial fighting units. In fact, the black volunteers would be assigned to all-black infantry units under the com-mand of white officers, in accordance with the policy adopted by General Eisenhower and the Army. The all-black units would operate within the structure of larger white units.
Some 4,500 black soldiers volunteered; 2,800 were accepted for training, and 2,221 made it into combat duty. Sergeant Carter was among the first to be accepted, but like other black sergeants, he was required to relinquish his stripes and accept a reduction in rank to private. The Army didn’t want any black sergeants supervising white enlisted men. Eddie had worked hard to earn the rank of sergeant, but he gladly gave it up to serve his country on the front lines.
Eddie continued to write frequently to Mildred. The Army prohibited soldiers from disclosing details of their whereabouts or combat operations, but Eddie kept her apprised of his well-being. In addition to inquiring about her and the children, he could turn on the charm when he wanted to and his letters often waxed romantic. Eddie professed his everlasting love for Mildred, although at the same time he admitted harboring some misgivings about emotional expressiveness.
Jan. 3rd 1945
France
Dear Lover,
I have always found…that the time I spend writing to you to be my holy and sacred hour of the day. The time that I spend in writing to you, my sweets, is the only time that I ever make a confession. And it seems to me that I’ll always be guilty of the same sin. Or is it a sin? Well, it seems that I’m guilty of Loving You. Please do not condemn me, because I shall only continue to confess my Love and devotion to you alone…. Married life I have found to be one of the sweetest of all experiences. Life was tragic until my lucky star, You, came into this life of mine. For Love’s sake alone, I promise you there will never be, let’s see, I guess you might call it the state of stagnation for us. Again I promise, as I have in my other letters, to reimburse you for every lonely second, hour, day, week, month, and year that I have been forced to spend away from your charms and that radiant, tender, consuming Love that you alone possess and have given to me so freely. Is my confession complete, sweetheart? I am trying to confess that which is in this heart of mine. My way of expression I admit is crude, but please try and comprehend. What I have written comes from the heart and not from reasoning. If I were to follow the code that I have always tried to live by, I would never admit my Love and feelings for any woman, not even to myself. Because I have always felt, that is until meeting you, that to express one’s Love and devotion could only mean that the person or persons were weak. And I the one who has lived by these same codes have broken them. “I was blind and now I see!” Now I am quoting the Bible and that’s not at all like myself. If there is anything that I have failed to admit or own up to, please let me know. (Amen)
Kiss the children by proxy for me. Give my Love and good wishes to the family….
As for myself, I am still in the very best of health and will continue to make the best of a bad situation. The harder I work and fight to draw this war to a speedy close, the sooner my return…. Sweets, I must sound retreat until another day of light. Loads of Love, all of my Love. Thumbs up. Write whenever your time permits.
For Ever and Ever,
Eddie (Amen)
P. S. I still Love You only.
In January 1945, as a bitterly cold winter gripped Europe, Eddie was assigned to the Ground Force Reinforcement Command in France to be trained with other black volunteers as combat soldiers. At the completion of the training period Eddie was assigned to the Twelfth Armored Division, Fifty-sixth Armored Infantry Battalion, Provisional Company 1 (also known as D Company, or Dog Company). The commanding officer of D Company was First Lieutenant Floyd Vanderhoef; Lieutenant Russell Blair was the executive officer. At the time of his new assignment on March 12, 1945, Eddie had no idea that he was about to take part in one of the largest assaults in the history of the war, the Rhineland assault, under the leadership of General George Patton. The Twelfth Armored Division had been temporarily assigned from the Seventh Army to Patton’s Third Army, where it would become known as Patton’s famous “Mystery Division.” The orders for the change came down on March 17. The Twelfth Armored was ordered to move from Saint Avold to an area near Siereck Les Baines, where it was attached to the Third Army’s XX Corps. The Mystery Division came into being as shoulder patches and unit vehicle markings were removed. The Hellcats, as Twelfth Armored members proudly called their unit, were now part of Patton’s “Blood and Guts” Third Army.
The Third Army had been given the task of crossing the Rhine River. Patton was anxious to beat the British, who were under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. He was determined that his troops would be the first to make a successful assault across the river. Under tight security the Twelfth Armored moved into a position near Trier, Germany, from which it could spearhead the drive to the Rhine. The plan was to pass through the Ninety-fourth Infantry Division, race to the river, and secure a crossing. Mopping up enemy strongholds would be the job of the infantry unit that followed in the wake of the assault.
“As we advanced toward Trier,” Dog Company’s Russell Blair remembered, “we were pretty exposed, riding on top of tanks and in wide-open six-by-six trucks in an armored column. Whenever we encountered any action, the troops would deploy in front of and to the side of the tanks, with the tanks firing over their heads. Carter was doing a good job with his squad, and the men respected him.”
Company commander Vanderhoef was also impressed by Eddie. “Blair and I were trying to develop leaders for the squads. We promoted several of the black soldiers. Carter was the first one. He was the ideal soldier. He wanted to do the right thing. He had absolutely no qualms about being there, and he insisted that his men do what they were supposed to do. He was one of the best leaders we had in that company.”
The Twelfth Armored Division was organized into three combat commands, each consisting of tanks, armored infantry, and artillery. Eddie’s unit, the Fifty-sixth Infantry, was made part of Combat Command B (CCB). The units advanced into Germany and across the Saar Palatinate, making steady headway and taking hundreds of Germans prisoner. Smashed German equipment littered the route. The orders were to keep going and search for an intact bridge at the town of Ludwigshafen. The units met strong resistance at Freimheim, but this did not stop the advance. CCB pushed on and cut the autobahn, a segment of German’s vaunted superhighway system. In the advance from Birkenfeld to Ramsen on March 20, some 2,200 German soldiers were taken prisoner and another 1,000 enemy troops killed. Late that night elements of the Fifty-sixth infantry reached the Rhine River.
The Germans had blown up the bridge at Ludwigshafen so the Americans bivouacked at a little town nearby. The next day, March 22, CCB was sent along the Rhine to attack Speyer and capture the bridge across the Rhine there. “We knew from reconnaissance,” Blair said, “that there were some thick woods between Ludwigshafen and Speyer, with a heavy German force. Late in the afternoon they moved Dog Company into position to clean out the woods the next day so that we wouldn’t have a problem when we attacked Speyer.” Blair was assigned to take the command vehicles and bivouac in what had formerly been an SS barracks. “The next morning, March 23, the weather was beautiful. At daylight D Company jumped off to clean the woods out, but the Germans had withdrawn during the night. They pulled D Company back to join the attack on Speyer.”
As Eddie and his rifle squad were riding on a tank advancing toward the town, the column came under bazooka and small-arms fire from a large warehouse. Everyone scattered and took cover. Quickly surveying the situation, Eddie volunteered to lead three men to reconnoiter the warehouse. Two of his men were killed and the third wounded within minutes. Eddie advanced alone, despite being wounded himself multiple times, managing to silence two machine-gun nests and a mortar crew. Within thirty yards of the w
arehouse he took cover behind an earthen bank.
His own officers thought he was probably dead and commenced shooting at the warehouse with a rocket launcher. Eddie waited there for two hours when a squad of German soldiers, checking to see if he was dead, approached his position. Waiting until the right moment, he leapt up and opened fire with his Thompson submachine gun. He cut down six of the Germans, and the other two quickly surrendered. Using the two prisoners as a shield, one in front of him and the other behind, Eddie made his way back across the field to his unit.
Vanderhoef and Blair were amazed to see Eddie return with the two prisoners. Even though he was wounded, he refused to be evacuated to a hospital until be had climbed to an observation post established by the officers and pointed out German machine-gun positions. With this help and the information obtained from the prisoners Eddie captured, the American forces cleared the road and continued their advance into Speyer. Eddie, though wounded and alone, had defeated a last-ditch German effort to stop the American advance.
The bridge at Speyer was blown up by the retreating Germans, but American tanks were ferried across the Rhine and soon engineers built a treadway bridge across the river at Nierstein. The Rhineland drive by Patton’s Mystery Division was unstoppable.
While recovering from his wounds in an Army hospital, Eddie wrote to Mildred to tell her of his condition: “Dear Lover: Just a line or two letting you know that I am still able to kick. Sweets, please overlook my not writing sooner. We have been fighting pretty steady. I have killed and killed Jerries until I couldn’t see straight. I guess the War Dept. has written you concerning my getting shot up a little. A Jerry machine gun hit me in my left hand—three holes in my left arm, one hole in my left leg, two holes in my right leg and one hole in the right foot. And also in the head. I have nine bullet holes in all. Not so bad at that, is it? I hope that I’ll get well in time so that I can get back to my outfit. I would sure like to get to Berlin. My outfit has the fightingest bunch of doughboys there is in it.” In the hospital Eddie was presented with a Purple Heart, which he promptly sent to Mildred for safekeeping. By then he had also earned two Battle Stars.
Honoring Sergeant Carter Page 7
