by James R Benn
“They took our TDs away,” Angry Smith said, his voice a low growl. “They make us drive them up those flatbeds and they’re going to take them away.”
“What? Are you getting tanks? Where are you going?”
“We’re not getting tanks, Billy!” Tree shouted, exploding in a fury I hadn’t seen since we parted in Boston. “They’re giving our TDs to a new battalion, a white battalion! All the officers are going, all of them except the one Negro officer we have.”
“But what’s happening to you?” It didn’t make any sense.
“Plymouth,” Tree said, spitting out the word as if it were foul and rotten. “We’ve been designated a quartermaster battalion. Lots of ships to unload in Plymouth. Supplies for the invasion. So they take a well-trained unit like ours and turn us into stevedores, then give our TDs to white boys who don’t know them. It ain’t right, Billy.” He was up against me, his anguish paralyzing, his agony awful to see.
“Don’t bother, Tree,” Angry said, taking him by the arm. “Don’t give them an excuse.” A squad of white MPs stood at the ready near the knot of white officers. Just in case.
Tree took a breath and calmed himself, turning back into a US Army sergeant. “Okay men, grab your duffles and board the truck. Let’s go!”
“I’m sorry, Tree,” was all I could get out. It was pathetic. He brushed by me, unable to look at me. His hand squeezed my arm, briefly, a sign from the depths of a childhood friendship, and then he was gone, swallowed up by the shaded darkness of the truck.
Angry was the last to board. He leaned over the tailgate, and beckoned me closer.
“What I said last night? It don’t hold no more. I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
The truck lurched forward, dust rising from the road as it followed the rest of the battalion, six hundred strong. They passed by their Tank Destroyers, loaded on the flatbeds. Most looked away. One man saluted.
I stood to attention and returned the salute, keeping my hand to the brim of my cap until the last of the trucks passed.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE SEGREGATION OF American armed forces during the Second World War was not only morally wrong, it was an inexcusable misuse of manpower and scarce resources. The government and military could have chosen this national emergency to signal a change in race relations on the basis of wartime necessity. Instead, segregation resulted in wasteful duplication by creating separate and unequal facilities so the races would be kept apart. Shipping, transportation, post exchanges, and every aspect of military life had to be provided independently for white and black usage. Perhaps racist attitudes were too ingrained to change when America entered the war in 1941, but in doing research for this book I was struck by the extent to which the separation of the races hampered the war effort and gave the enemy a gift of propaganda, pointing out the dichotomy between the American war aims and the treatment of minorities.
Each incident of racial conflict and violence described in this work actually occurred; from the smashing of glassware in pubs frequented by black soldiers to the dragging to death of a black GI in the Deep South. These encounters are true, if fictionalized for the purpose of this narrative. The sign on the Three Crowns Pub in Hungerford stating “This place is for the exclusive use of Englishmen and American Negro soldiers” was observed by George Orwell and reported in the London Tribune in 1943.
Black soldiers training in camps in the southern US were subject to harsh treatment by civilian authorities when they ventured off base. In 1941, a black soldier named Felix Hall was found lynched in the woods outside Fort Benning, Georgia. Even though his hands were tied behind his back, the army listed the official cause of death as suicide, eliminating the necessity of an investigation that would have involved local white authorities.
Similar bias existed within American bases in England as well. At the US Army prison in Shepton Mallet, eighteen military executions were carried out. Of those, ten were black soldiers, even though blacks accounted for only eight percent of Army personnel. One black GI did escape the death penalty thanks to the outrage expressed by the British public. Leroy Henry was sentenced to death for raping a white woman in the village of Combe Down. Local residents were aware that Leroy Henry had been engaged in an ongoing relationship with the woman and tended to believe his story that she accused him of rape after an argument over the price of her services. The British public were also appalled at how he had been beaten by the military police during questioning. As the result of newspaper publicity, over 33,000 people signed a petition calling for Leroy Henry to be reprieved. It was sent to General Eisenhower, who agreed to grant the soldier his freedom.
The deactivation of black combat units and reassignment of personnel into service units, as experienced by Tree and the fictional 617th Tank Destroyer Battalion, was routine. The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments (known historically as Buffalo Soldiers) along with the entire 2nd Cavalry Division were all disbanded and their combat-trained men assigned to non-combat units.
Independent Tank Destroyer and Tank battalions were one of the routes for blacks to serve in combat. The 761st Tank Battalion was the first black armored unit committed to combat, assigned to the Third Army under General George Patton, who famously welcomed them with this speech: “I don’t care what color you are, so long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sonsabitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all, your race is looking to you. Don’t let them down, don’t let me down.” They didn’t, serving 183 days in combat and receiving commendations from every unit they were assigned to.
THE BRITISH COUNTERINTELLIGENCE service MI5 was charged with apprehending German agents in England. Operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee, chaired by John Cecil Masterman. The name of the committee came from the number twenty in Roman numerals: XX, or double cross.
MI5 was quite successful in catching Nazi agents who reached British shores. Many turned themselves in to the authorities as soon as they landed. Others were captured soon after coming ashore. As the war progressed, German spies were instructed to contact agents already established in Great Britain. But by then, those spies were controlled by the British. As explained by Masterman in this book, the greatest fear the Twenty Committee had was one German agent slipping through their hands, thus revealing to the Nazis that none of the information coming from their agents was be trusted. With D-Day approaching, this could make the difference between a successful landing and a disaster. After the war it was determined that every agent sent by Germany to Great Britain had given themselves up or had been captured, with the possible exception of one who committed suicide. The work of the Twenty Committee is one of the great success stories in the history of counterintelligence and deception campaigns.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM SUPERBLY supported and assisted by the diligence and keen eye of my wife Deborah Mandel, my first reader and editor. As in all things, her work improves mine. Michael Gordon continues to provide a close read; his comments and edits are valued, even though we don’t always agree on comma usage. Juliet Grames, Senior Editor at Soho Press, provides a clear guiding hand as the manuscript undergoes her expert scrutiny. Her dedication is extraordinary.
