Brothers In Arms

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Entering into this tightly bonded group, fresh recruits could feel like the awkward new kid on the first day of school. The battalion received a number of recruits just out of the Armored Force Replacement Training Center in January 1944, bringing the unit's total number up to 713 enlisted men. Floyd Dade, an eighteen-year-old from Texarkana, Arkansas, who'd been drafted out of high school, was assigned to act as loader in an Able Company tank. Dade listened to the company's longtime members tell jokes and stories about their previous training in Louisiana and at Camp Hood, shyly asking them to explain references and terms he didn't understand. Dade worked extraordinarily hard to catch up; he was diligent to a fault, always seeking out extra tasks to perform in training, but he escaped the resentment of his peers for this dutiful trait because he had an excellent sense of humor.

  Close friendships continued to develop throughout the battalion. Warren Crecy's wife, Margaret, lived not far from the base, and on weekend passes Crecy would invite his best friend, the quiet, reflective Horatio Scott, to spend time with them in Temple. Leonard Smith's buddy, charismatic Willie Devore, received letters from various girlfriends almost every day and read choice excerpts aloud to Smith. Smith continued his correspondence with the young woman Devore had hooked him up with from Greenwood—though he started to think she was eccentric if not downright crazy, as she never wrote to him on regular paper but rather on assorted scraps and pieces of tissue paper, which spilled out of the envelopes when Smith tore them open.

  Despite Pop Gates's continued efforts to shape him into a soldier, Smith was constantly skirting the rules. The others in his tight group of friends—including McNeil, McBurney, and Devore—made the rank of technician or sergeant while at Camp Hood; Smith was promoted and then demoted. Gates thought that he might teach Smith responsibility by recommending him to act as Captain Harrison's jeep driver. It was a very short stint. One day, driving fast, Captain Harrison suddenly said, “Turn here.” Smith turned—and the captain went flying out of the jeep. Smith backed up, and Harrison said, “What is wrong with you?” Smith replied, “You gave me an order. I obeyed it.” Harrison said, “You're trying to get out of this Army, aren't you?” Smith protested, telling the captain honestly that he loved the Army. Harrison asked, “You do?” Smith nodded vigorously. And Harrison said, “You're not crazy, Smith, you're just plain simple!”

  OFFICERS CONTINUED TO ROTATE through the battalion. Many of the original white officers who weren't pleased to have been attached to an African American unit were awarded transfers out—though Charles Wingo, who viewed the men with contempt, had remained and been promoted to the rank of executive officer. David Williams, the young lieutenant from Yale who had longed to leave the unit because he wanted the chance to fight, was granted his request for a transfer out to train with a paratrooper outfit—but several months later was disappointed to receive orders to transfer back in, and found himself put in charge of Able Company.

  Another white officer, Russell C. Geist, from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had first been transferred to the unit at Camp Claiborne. Geist had immediately requested a transfer out. When group photographs were taken, Geist opted not to participate because he did not want to be pictured with the men. He gradually came to know the men, however—largely through his love of radios and the inner workings of military equipment. The Army had a new device known as a gyrostabilizer, designed to keep the 75mm cannon locked on target even when the Sherman was crossing rough terrain. Only a small number of soldiers with top-secret clearances were supposed to have the level of technical expertise to repair it. But one of the men in Headquarters Company, Thomas Ashly, would break the seal on the equipment whenever something went wrong and fix it. Geist was amazed that a black man could do that; it contradicted everything he'd been taught to believe growing up. Over time he fell in love with his men and did a complete about-face.

  The unit was joined by several black officers while at Camp Hood, officers switched over to the unit from the newly formed 784th Tank Battalion. As per the Army's original plan, the battalion now contained more black officers than white, with three of its five companies—Charlie, Dog, and Headquarters—headed by African Americans. Among the new black officers was Capt. Garland “Doc” Adamson, who was put in charge of the medical detachment. Doc Adamson, by far the unit's oldest member at the age of fifty, had been an instructor in obstetrics and gynecology at Meharry Medical School in Tennessee before joining the Army.

  Leonard Smith's first meeting with Adamson could have been disastrous. Hood, like all other Army bases at the time, was segregated even in its entertainment facilities. African American soldiers were strictly forbidden from entering the white movie theater on base. But members of the 761st would sometimes sneak undetected into the balcony to see the movies not shown in their theater. One evening, William McBurney, Preston McNeil, Leonard Smith, and others were in the balcony when Smith slipped and fell. He was lucky: He might have been killed, but instead he escaped without serious injury. He was lucky, too, in that whereas he could have been court-martialed for breaking the rules, when he went to see Doc Adamson to treat his rather extensive bruises, the kindly doctor turned a blind eye and did not file a report.

  IN APRIL 1944, THE 761ST was joined by several more black officers, among them 2nd Lt. John Roosevelt Robinson, better known in the pantheon of American history as “Jackie.” Robinson, who was born in 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, had been a standout football player and track star at Pasadena and UCLA before being forced to leave school to help support his family during the Depression. On April 3, 1942, he answered his induction notice and was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for basic training. Robinson was an intense, sober, and quiet young man who had been known since his youth as an intelligent loner who was deeply loyal to his loved ones and the causes he believed in. He was ready to join the fight for the service of his country, but he was leery of the poor treatment blacks received in the American military.

  On joining the 761st, Lieutenant Robinson was immediately assigned to lead a tank platoon, although he had received no instruction in armored warfare at Fort Riley. As the unit was on near-constant maneuvers, there was little room for error. Robinson decided the only way to avoid disaster was simply to tell the men the truth, that he had never been inside a tank before and knew absolutely nothing about how a tank battalion operated. He knew enough from his training at Riley to attach himself to an experienced sergeant and to follow his lead. During maneuvers, Robinson spoke constantly with the sergeant via the two-way radio in his tank. The sergeant did a tremendous job of explaining things to him, and Robinson learned as he went along. The men had been impressed from the outset by Robinson's willingness to be honest with them, to admit what he didn't know and learn from them. They threw themselves into their work. After training with his platoon for several weeks, Robinson received an order to visit Lieutenant Colonel Bates at Headquarters. He still felt he knew nothing about armored warfare, and he was expecting to receive a reprimand. “Robinson,” Bates told him, “I want to commend you and your outfit on your work down here. You have the best record of all the outfits at the camp, and I am singling you out for special mention.”

  Robinson was too stunned to answer right away. He decided, though, to tell Bates the truth—that the platoon's success had nothing to do with him but was instead due entirely to the efforts of the men. Bates considered his confession for a moment before saying, “Robinson, I don't care how you accomplished what you did, but the fact of the matter is that you still have the best outfit of all down here. That's all that counts.”

  Impressed with the rapport that Lt. Jackie Robinson had established with the men, Bates appointed him the unit's morale officer. Robinson organized pickup softball games with both the officers and the enlisted men on the base. When Robinson himself was at bat, the entire infield moved back about fifty feet.

  BUS TRAVEL CONTINUED TO BE a problem for members of the 761st. At Camp Hood and throughout the South, clashes occurred repeatedly betw
een black soldiers and white civilian bus drivers. Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War Truman K. Gibson called the bus situation in 1943 “one of the most serious problems facing the Army,” reporting that for black soldiers “[i]ntercity travel is a source of constant peril or uncertainty.”

  William McBurney responded, as at Claiborne, by choosing to remain on the base in his free time. There was enough injustice on the post itself to make him angry. Camp Hood served at the time as a detainment center for German prisoners of war (holding as many as 4,000 by 1945), many of them part of Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps. The German POWs had light work detail, and most were allowed to roam through the camp unguarded. They were permitted to walk in and out of the PX and special services clubs from which McBurney himself was barred. German prisoners were given more freedom than were the black American soldiers.

  THE HIGH MARKS THE 761ST earned in training and on maneuvers at Camp Hood did not escape the notice of the Army's higher echelons. Brig. Gen. Ernest A. Dawley, the commanding general of the Tank Destroyer Center, had reported to Washington on the unit's training and had addressed the men on several occasions. Lt. Gen. Benjamin Lear had also observed the battalion repeatedly. During a mass post formation—in which all units present at Camp Hood were lined up in strict formation for inspection—Lear paid the battalion a signal honor. He called the officers and first sergeants of the 761st to step forward, saying, “All the reports coming up to Washington about you have been of a superior nature, and we are expecting great things of your battalion in combat.”

  It is unlikely that even at this late stage of the war the 761st was actually intended to see combat. The Allies were slowly gaining ground on the Italian peninsula, having staged a series of landings behind the impenetrable “Winter Line” defenses south of Rome; on May 18, 1944, Cassino fell, to be followed by Anzio on May 23. The Russians were defeating the Germans in battle after battle on the eastern front, reclaiming Kiev, Leningrad, and the Crimea, and by the summer of 1944 were poised to force the Germans back across Poland into Germany. In the Pacific in the winter and spring of 1944, the Allies fought island by island closer to Japan itself, facing ever-more-resolute, then desperate, Japanese soldiers, determined to defend the home islands to the death. In the Marshall Islands, Saipan, and Guam, the Japanese lost tens of thousands of men. The Japanese fared no better at naval warfare, suffering heavy losses of men, aircraft carriers, and battleships in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

  On June 4, the Americans captured Rome, though the fighting in Italy was far from over. Then, on June 6, the Allies implemented Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Europe. After the largely horrific landings at Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha Beaches, the Allies commenced what they believed would be a tough but inexorable march to Berlin. Coming across Normandy, however, American forces experienced unexpected difficulties and devastating casualties—particularly among the M-4 Sherman tanks and their crews, which were being lost by the hundreds. The 761st was the best-trained and most able-bodied armored unit remaining in the United States.

  On June 9, 1944—three days after the Allied landings in Normandy—the 761st Tank Battalion was put on full alert for movement overseas. All communications from the men were now strictly monitored and censored; the activities of the unit from this point forward were considered top secret.

  AMONG THE OFFICERS AND enlisted men in combat in World War II, a wound that was serious enough to warrant evacuation back to the States, but not serious enough to cause permanent harm, was termed a “million-dollar wound.” Second Lt. Jackie Robinson had suffered his million-dollar wound before he entered the Army: His right ankle had been wrenched during a football scrimmage at Pasadena Junior College in 1937, leading to a condition diagnosed as “arthritis, chronic, nonsuppurative, moderately severe.” In January 1944, the Disposition Board of Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, stipulated that Robinson be “physically disqualified for general military service, but qualified for limited service.”

  This meant Robinson did not have to fight if he did not so choose. When the battalion was put on alert, Lieutenant Colonel Bates, who had been so impressed with Robinson's rapport with the men, asked that he consider going overseas as a morale officer. Robinson agreed. He took the first steps toward obtaining the Army's consent, signing waivers relieving the Army of any responsibility in the event of further injury. On June 21, as part of this process, Robinson reported for examination at McCloskey General Hospital in Temple. X rays showed that his condition had not changed. Nonetheless, on June 26 the hospital's board cleared Robinson to travel overseas. He was required to remain at McCloskey General Hospital for further treatment. Several days later, on July 6, he was granted a night's leave. That evening he left the hospital for Camp Hood. What happened next would alter the course of Jackie Robinson's life and, as it turned out, the course of sports and American history.

  Robinson boarded the bus back to the post, eventually heading to the Negro Officers' Club. The battalion had been sent out on maneuvers, and he found the club almost empty. A later blood test would show that he consumed no alcohol. At 11 P.M., he boarded a bus from outside the club to make the trip back to the hospital. He joined the wife of a fellow lieutenant with the 761st, Virginia Jones, who was heading back to her home in Belton, halfway between the base and the hospital. Jones had made what was to prove a fateful decision on where to sit. She got on and sat down in the fourth row from the rear. Lieutenant Robinson got on next and sat beside her.

  The bus traveled two more stops on the base before filling with civilian workers leaving Camp Hood. Someone pointed out to the driver that a black officer was not sitting at the back of the bus; he was sitting in the middle of the bus, apparently beside a white woman (Jones was extremely light-skinned). The bus driver looked back at them and asked Lieutenant Robinson to move. Robinson told the bus driver, according to Mrs. Jones's testimony, to “go on and drive the bus.” The driver demanded that Robinson move, and Robinson refused. The driver stopped the bus, walked down the aisle with his fist balled, and said, “Will you move to the back?”

  In the weeks prior to this, the War Department had been forced to acknowledge the potential explosiveness of the bus situation for black soldiers stationed in the South. Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, both soldiers assigned to Camp Siebert in Alabama, had recently been harassed and threatened by white MPs while waiting outside a bus depot. The incident was widely publicized. In June, in Durham, North Carolina, a black soldier had been shot and killed by a white bus driver when he refused to move to the back of a bus; the driver was subsequently acquitted by an all-white civilian jury. The Army responded to public pressure by issuing an order—without fanfare, in order to avoid a firestorm in the South—barring segregation on any vehicle operating on an Army post. Aware of these regulations, Robinson would not be intimidated. But while Robinson knew of the order, the bus driver apparently did not—or chose not to honor it.

  According to Robinson, the driver told him that if he didn't go to the back of the bus there would be trouble. Robinson replied coolly that he knew his rights. At the last stop on the post—the central terminal, where Jones and Robinson were intending to transfer to the city bus that would take them on to Belton and Temple—the driver jumped off the bus and quickly returned with the dispatcher and several drivers. “There's the nigger that's been causing me trouble,” he shouted. Robinson pointed his finger at the driver and said, “Quit fucking with me.”

  The MPs were called to the bus station by the dispatcher, at the driver's request. The white MPs treated Robinson with proper courtesy: “They were enlisted men,” Robinson would later say, “and they called me ‘sir' and seemed only interested in doing their duty under the circumstances.” They asked Robinson to accompany them to the military police guard room. There, Robinson encountered a sergeant and a private, Ben Mucklerath, who asked one of the MPs if he had that “nigger lieutenant” with him. Robinson took exception to Muc
klerath's language. The MPs summoned the duty officer, Captain Wigginton, to the station; Wigginton proceeded to ignore Robinson and to question Mucklerath, who knew nothing but what he had heard secondhand about the bus incident. Both men referred to Robinson as a “nigger.” When Robinson protested, Captain Wigginton ordered him outside.

  Finally, Capt. Gerald M. Bear, the head of the base's military MPs, arrived. Robinson followed Captain Bear into the guard room to give his account of the incident, but Bear ordered him out. Robinson, who could see both Mucklerath and Wigginton inside, objected to being excluded from a process that could have serious implications for his future. Robinson would testify that Captain Bear “did not seem to recognize me as an officer at all.” According to Bear's testimony, Robinson regularly interrupted them and kept coming to the guard room door-gate; Bear cautioned and requested Robinson on several occasions to remain at ease. He claimed that “in an effort to try to be facetious, Lieutenant Robinson bowed with several sloppy salutes, repeating several times, ‘OK, sir, OK, sir,' on each occasion.” Bear felt Robinson's attitude was “disrespectful and impertinent to his superior officers, and very unbecoming to an officer in the presence of enlisted men.”

  When Bear finally summoned a stenographer to record Robinson's testimony on the bus incident, the stenographer, a white civilian woman, did not simply write down Robinson's answers to Bear's questions, but instead continually interrupted him, saying, among other things, “Don't you know you've got no right sitting up there in the white part of the bus?” Robinson questioned whether she was objective enough to record his words accurately. According to Robinson, Bear then said that he was an “uppity nigger” and had no right to speak to a white woman in that manner. Some time after this abortive interview, Captain Bear ordered military police to escort Robinson back to the hospital in Temple. When Robinson asked if this meant he was under arrest, Bear refused to answer. Robinson stated that he had a pass until 8 A.M. the next morning; unless he was under arrest, he should be allowed to go where he pleased. Bear finally told Robinson he was under “arrest in quarters,” which meant that he would not be detained at the base but was ordered not to leave the hospital. When he arrived back at McCloskey General, a colonel there told him “that he had been alerted to expect a black officer who had been drunk and disorderly and had been trying to start a riot”; he advised Robinson to take the blood test that proved there was no alcohol in his system.