Brothers In Arms

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Floyd Dade, in charge of battalion equipment in Europe after the war ended, supervised as the battle-scarred M-4 General Sherman tanks were driven up on flatcars and taken to the equipment depot to be cut up for scrap: The battalion, filling up with replacements, trained now on the better-armed and better-armored M-26 Pershing tanks. Upon his return to the States and honorable discharge from the military in 1947, Dade completed his education at City College of San Francisco and Elkhart University, working for ten years as a dental technician and then becoming supervisor of school custodians in the San Francisco Unified School District until his retirement in 1986. Twice married—to his second wife for more than thirty-five years—Dade raised three daughters and three sons, and he has been an extremely active presence in community, church, and veterans' affairs.

  Christopher Navarre, the Army ambulance worker who gave up his rank to join the 761st, was branded as a troublemaker by whites in his Louisiana hometown when he attempted to register to vote and encouraged others to do the same; the decorated veteran subsequently decided to return to the military, serving with distinction in Korea, rising to the rank of sergeant major, and later serving as a warrant officer.

  Able Company's S. Sgt. Johnnie Stevens left the military to return to his native Georgia, working as a cook at the only job he could find there before deciding to migrate north to New Jersey. He began working for the New Jersey Transit Authority as a long-distance bus driver in 1947, one of the first African Americans to hold such a position, and became actively involved in mentoring local youth.

  Capt. David J. Williams returned to the States to complete the education he had deferred in order to enter the military, earning his degree from Yale in 1947. He married and raised three sons, working as a stockbroker with E. F. Hutton & Co. His true work and passion, however, was writing about his experiences with the 761st so that the sacrifices of the men would not be forgotten. His tireless campaigning to this end would be instrumental in the battalion's fight for recognition.

  Lt. Col. Paul L. Bates remained in the military after the war, working among other assignments at the Pentagon and at an officers' college at Fort Leavenworth. Bates was helped in his readjustment to life back in the States following World War II by his longtime girlfriend, the “Taffy” after whom his storied tank had been named. He married Taffy and raised two sons. He remained beloved by and in constant touch with the veterans of the 761st until his death in 1995 at the age of eighty-six. Bates and his family established a scholarship at Bates's alma mater, Western Maryland College, for descendants of members of the 761st.

  WARREN CRECY, UNIVERSALLY REVERED by the battalion as the most courageous of its soldiers, their “Iron Man,” received a battlefield commission from sergeant to the rank of 2nd lieutenant in May 1945. Crecy volunteered to remain in Europe and did so for five years, serving at one point as a prison officer during the Nuremberg trials. In 1950, he returned to the States to serve in the slowly desegregating army as the commander of an all-white unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. When the Korean War began, he received orders to once again serve in combat duty.

  In October 1952, Crecy was injured by a mortar blast as he was dismounting his tank under fire to aid a disabled tank in his unit. The mortar shattered his eardrums and severed his lower jaw. His internal injuries were so extensive that he was not expected to live. On regaining consciousness, however, Crecy's first concern was the status of his men: He had to be physically restrained from crawling through hostile fire to find them.

  Crecy was transferred to a military hospital in San Francisco. He had a permanent tracheotomy, and a plastic block was surgically inserted to replace his jaw. In his long, difficult recovery, Crecy exhibited a valor beside which even his battlefield actions paled, visiting other patients left with permanent disabilities and disfigurement to encourage them in their struggles. He became the officer in charge of the hospital's supply store, receiving a commendation for hiring and striving to help other recovering patients. He returned briefly to limited active duty at the Presidio. His injuries caused him severe pain for the remainder of his life. He hoped more than anything to recover fully enough to be able to return to a tank battalion, and was heartbroken in 1965 when, as a major, he was ordered to retire with full disability.

  Crecy did not attend the yearly reunions of the 761st Tank Battalion because, he said, he didn't want his fellow tankers to feel pity for him. But in the years following his return from Korea, he would sit for hours reading the battalion's unofficial history, Come Out Fighting, reminiscing about his fallen comrades and the accomplishments of the unit in Europe. Crecy's son, Warren G. H. Crecy Jr., graduated from West Point in 1976, and later that year Crecy finally attended his first reunion of the 761st. On October 26, 1976, he died of the ongoing complications from his war wounds. Crecy was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

  WHEN HE RETURNED TO NEW YORK CITY in the winter of 1945, Leonard Smith was twenty-one years old. He was at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his life. He had no skills other than those he had learned in the military, and “tank gunner” was not a profession immediately translatable to the civilian world. But he had learned one invaluable skill in the service, largely through his relationship with Pop Gates—that of listening to his elders—and when an old man from his neighborhood suggested he go into the civil service, Smith took his advice, beginning by cleaning up subway cars, then working for the sanitation department, then driving a city bus. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he eventually took the exam to join the police force and was accepted by the New York City transit police, a position he would hold until his retirement.

  Preston McNeil worked for a number of years at a company in the city that made wrought-iron furniture, before trying, like his friend Smith, to join the police force. He passed his test, but the distinguished veteran was disqualified, in a quirk of history, because the labor union for the furniture company where he was employed had been designated in those Cold War years as a “communist” organization. He appealed and was eventually cleared of these charges, but still he was not put on the list for a job; the New York City police force of that time, the 1940s and 1950s, was an almost exclusively white organization and Smith's hiring by the transit police had been the exception rather than the rule. McNeil began working instead at the post office.

  William McBurney went to mechanical drafting school and was awarded his degree—but found that despite his qualifications, among them a Bronze Star for valor, no one would hire him. Like McNeil, he took the test to join the police force but was not put on the list. He had married and started a family; there was nothing to do but look for another job. He took an entry-level job at a plastics factory in the Bronx.

  AS THEY RETURNED TO BEGIN their lives as civilians, Smith, McBurney, McNeil, and most of the battalion's other members talked less and less to people outside the unit about what they had seen and done during the war. Smith found that even people he'd considered close friends often didn't believe him. The men were confronted with the commonly held notion that not one black had fought—let alone fought in the famed Sherman tanks—during World War II.

  The service roles that the majority of African American soldiers performed in the war were crucial to the Allied victory—including maintenance, engineer, and ambulance duties, as well as the construction of the Alaska Highway through Canada and the Lido Road in Burma. But tens of thousands of African Americans did, in fact, see combat. Twenty-two African American units fought in the European Theater of Operations, including nine field artillery battalions, an antiaircraft battalion, eight combat engineer battalions, and the 761st and 784th Tank Battalions (the 784th entered battle near Eshweiler, Germany, in January 1945). African American combat units in Italy included the 92nd Infantry Division and the 758th Light Tank Battalion; in the Pacific, they included elements of the 93rd Infantry Division, two coast artillery battalions, and an antiaircraft barrage balloon battalion. When the replacement situation in Europe
grew dire in 1945, thousands of African Americans—many more than the 2,500 requested—volunteered to take up rifles beside white infantrymen.

  Part of the reason the men of the 761st remained invisible to history concerned the type of unit to which they belonged: The separate tank battalions, phased out after the war in favor of the combined-arms infantry division of the present day, were officially considered a part of whatever division they were attached to at the time and were not mentioned by name in most history books. Whether black or white, none of the separate battalions has truly been given the recognition it deserves for its efforts.

  The 761st suffered additionally from being an African American unit. Capt. David Williams, Capt. Charles Gates, Capt. John Long, Capt. Ivan Harrison, and Lt. Col. Paul Bates all believed that race was at times a factor in the underreporting of the accomplishments of their battalion. The Army of that time, and particularly the officer corps, was heavily populated with white Southerners, and there is reason to believe that many lost records, valor citations, and petitions for commendations were deliberately misplaced or destroyed. Like the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge's poem, the battalion's members found themselves with an anguished tale they urgently wanted to tell but with no one to listen to or believe them.

  THE 761ST BEGAN WHAT WOULD become an arduous fight for official recognition in June 1945, when Capt. Ivan Harrison submitted a request that the unit be considered for a Presidential Unit Citation, also known as the Distinguished Unit Citation. The paperwork for this request included a four-page narration of the unit's combat actions from October 31, 1944, to May 6, 1945; a damage report listing, among other statistics, its documented 331 enemy MG nests, 58 pillboxes, and 461 wheeled vehicles destroyed or captured, 6,246 enemy killed, and 15,818 captured (with a note explaining that these totals were low, as they did not fully reflect those achieved in combined operations with infantry); the 71 battalion tanks destroyed by the enemy; the 3 officers and 31 enlisted men killed in action; and the 296 Purple Hearts awarded to its members (8 with clusters), 8 battlefield commissions, 8 Silver Stars, and 62 Bronze Stars (three with clusters). These latter totals would later be revised to 11 Silver Stars and 70 Bronze Stars.

  Also included with Harrison's submission were letters of commendation for outstanding achievement from XII Corps commander Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy; 26th Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Willard S. Paul; 103rd Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe; and 71st Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Willard G. Wyman; as well as mention of the high verbal praise received from the 17th Airborne's Maj. Gen. William Miley.

  The 761st Tank Battalion's request was denied on August 18, 1945, by Third Army Headquarters, with a statement reading, in part: “1. Not favorably considered. 2. After a careful study of the 761st Tank Battalion described in basic communication, it is considered that the action, while commendable, was not sufficiently outstanding to meet the requirements for a unit citation. . . .” General Eisenhower's office, following the Third Army's evaluation, formally denied the request on February 12, 1946.

  THE THIRD ARMY COMMANDER HIMSELF had been quoted in Stars and Stripes as saying that “the Negro tank battalion attached to my command fought bravely in the critical Battle of Bastogne” and that its soldiers were “damn good soldiers”—but there were nowhere to be found any other indications that George Patton had changed his opinions about the capabilites of African Americans in battle. Patton, who died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in Germany in December 1945, remains a complex, enigmatic figure with as many if not more tragic flaws than strengths. But though the members of the 761st scanned his biographies in the years that followed, finding only negative, if any, references to African Americans, most were aware that it was on Patton's request that they had first been given the opportunity they had hoped and trained for—the opportunity to fight: Their story remains a part of his, and his of theirs. Patton was, along with Douglas MacArthur, the only Allied general whom the Germans truly feared, and most members of the battalion remain proud to have served in his army.

  FOLLOWING THE REJECTION of their submission for a Presidential Unit Citation, veterans of the battalion submitted repeated requests over the years for this decision to be reviewed, arguing that the case had not been given just and fair consideration. All such requests were denied. Congressman Frank Annunzio from Illinois had become a champion of the battalion's cause when the matter was brought to his attention by a member of his district. In 1977, Annunzio discussed the battalion with Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, and Conyers sent a letter detailing the 761st's ongoing fight to the Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander. Alexander decided to reopen the case. Army researchers assigned to review the case noted that “there are clear indications that racial discrimination and inadvertent neglect on the part of those in authority, at the time the recommendations were originally considered, may have been a factor in the disapprovals” and “that the climate created by the Army commanders could only have made it difficult to provide proper recognition for a ‘Negro' unit during the period 1944–1947. . . .”

  The initial evidence was reexamined, along with substantial information gathered during seven months of intensive research through the National Archives, the Army Library, the Library of Congress, the Office of the Chief of Military History, and the Eisenhower Library. On January 24, 1978, thirty-three years after the conclusion of the war in Europe, President Jimmy Carter signed the orders and awarded the 761st Tank Battalion the Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism.

  THE END OF THIS STRUGGLE for recognition marked the beginning of another fight, led primarily by Able Company's Capt. David Williams. On November 23, 1944, four days after the fierce battle for Guebling and Bourgaltroff, France, Williams had handed paperwork to the battalion's acting commander, Lt. Col. Hollis Hunt, recommending S. Sgt. Ruben Rivers for a posthumous Medal of Honor. Hunt seemed indifferent, at best, to his request. Able Company's clerk later swore, in an affidavit supporting Williams's assertion, that he had indeed processed this recommendation. The paperwork, however, was either lost or destroyed at some point after this—no record of it exists in Army archives.

  In 1978, Captain Williams, who was greatly encouraged by the awarding of the Presidential Unit Citation, began in earnest another fight—tirelessly lobbying congressmen and the Army for Rivers to be considered for the Medal of Honor. Four hundred and thirty-three Medals of Honor had been awarded to soldiers in World War II, but none of the 1.2 million African Americans who served had yet received the honor.

  In 1993, the Pentagon established a committee of military historians, based at Shaw University, to comb military records and determine whether recommendations for African American soldiers in World War II to receive the Medal of Honor had been justly and properly considered. Members of the 761st submitted the names of Ruben Rivers, Samuel Turley, and Warren Crecy to this committee and testified to their heroism.

  In 1996, the Shaw University team forwarded the names of nine African American soldiers to Congress and the President to be considered for the Medal of Honor despite the Army's 1952 cutoff date for World War II honors; seven were eventually accepted. Rivers's name, owing largely to the efforts of Williams and author Joe W. Wilson Jr. to make his story known, was included in that list. Rivers's “lost” paperwork was not uncommon; of those seven, four had had paperwork, like Rivers's, submitted that also disappeared. Though no direct proof of overt racism could be discovered in any of these cases, there was, as the report indicated, a climate that encouraged such omissions.

  On January 13, 1997, at a White House ceremony, seven African American soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton. Two of these men, 1st Lt. John R. Fox and 1st Lt. Vernon J. Baker (the only soldier still alive and able to receive his medal in person), had served with the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy. The 92nd Infantry was poorly trained and poorly led by white southerners, most of whom were openly contempt
uous of their men; the black troops received a grossly unjust yet enduring reputation for cowardice under fire. Throughout its tenure in combat, beginning in the summer of 1944, the 92nd was assigned to cover areas far beyond the frontage ordinarily given an infantry division.

  On Christmas Day 1944, 1st Lt. John R. Fox, with Cannon Company of the 366th Infantry Regiment, volunteered to act as a forward artillery observer in the town of Sommocolonia, located in Italy's Serchio Valley. Fox's unit was stretched impossibly thin, with a 1,000-man battalion assigned to a thirty-mile front. The Germans and Italian partisans were easily able to infiltrate the line. At 4 A.M. on December 26, a heavy German artillery barrage announced the beginning of a German assault. The greatly outnumbered infantry were forced to withdraw from Sommocolonia, but Fox and several others volunteered to remain behind in the house where they had set up their observation post. By 8 A.M., German soldiers were visible throughout the streets. Fox called on his radio for the 598th Field Artillery Battalion to fire on the German positions. At 11 A.M., Fox placed a second call—received by a friend of his, the 598th Artillery's Lt. Otis Zachary. Fox's post was about to be overrun completely. Fox called for the artillery's 105mm howitzers to fire directly on his own coordinates. Zachary refused to give this order, turning to the battalion's commanding colonel. The colonel radioed Fox for details; Fox responded, “There are hundreds of them coming. Put everything you've got on my OP!” The shaken colonel called to division headquarters for approval and received it. Zachary had no choice but to give the order for four of the artillery battalion's heavy guns to “converge, sheath”—walking their fire steadily forward until all came together simultaneously on Fox's position. When a counterattack later reclaimed Sommocolonia, Fox's shattered body was discovered surrounded by the bodies of a hundred German soldiers. Lieutenant John R. Fox was recommended at the time for a Distinguished Service Cross, but the paperwork was lost for almost forty years.