Black US Servicemen.761st Tank Battalion.

[Owen]

Feel like starting a thread on the injustices many suffered in the US Forces due to the colour of their skin.
WW2 was a war to free oppressed peoples around the world.
Why did it take the USA to give those freedoms to their own people.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f...08-1594951.php


Black soldier recalls fighting racial war, WWII

By Brian Livingston
Laurel Leader-Call / Associated Press


LAUREL, Miss. — As a black teenager in Laurel, James B. Jones said he really didn’t notice the level of racism. He was fortunate to work for a “fine” white family in Laurel who treated him with respect and dignity.
Seeing that side of the race issue in the years leading up to the most turbulent time in America’s cultural history helped Jones as he joined the U.S. Army and became a part of one of the few black combat units fighting the Nazis shortly after the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings at Normandy.
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Jones and the men who both fought through the battles against a nation bent on ethnic cleansing and who stood fast at home wanting the acceptance by a nation they bled for are a part of black history as well as American history.
“I guess I was lucky in some ways,” said Jones, 83. “I didn’t have any hate or animosity and I don’t think many blacks in Laurel did through all those years. You know, things happen in their own good time. Our democracy is still growing and maturing. It isn’t over yet.”
For what Jones didn’t have to endure while growing up in Laurel, he was to find later as a black soldier in the Army.
There were strict rules for the blacks to follow. Many of those rules didn’t apply to white soldiers. In fact, Jones said the German POWs brought over from the battlefields of Europe were treated much better than African-American soldiers who were training to fight the very race supremacy Hitler and his Nazi followers abdicated.
“They could ride on buses and were accepted much more quickly than we were,” Jones said. “But I still didn’t hold a grudge. I was too busy training anyway to worry about that.”
Jones was fortunate to have white commanding officers who treated the men as soldiers without noticing the color of their skin. In October 1944, Jones found himself in France joining the 761st Tank Battalion attached to Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army Group. It was the first all-black tank battalion ever formed and traced its roots back to training camps in Louisiana and Texas.
Jones remembers the stories told by the other black soldiers about what they had to go through, and the story was very similar to the hardships overcome by the Tuskegee Airmen of the same period who flew P-51 Mustangs against German fighter planes over Italy.
“Those guys in the original battalion went through a great deal of racism,” said Jones. “The battalion was just a publicity stunt anyway. It was started just to appease the black people in America. There were so many of the black community who wanted to see their men fight.”
It was Patton, who had lost so many tanks trying to break out of Normandy during the weeks following the invasion, who ended up calling up the 761st. This was despite the very outspoken general’s assertion months earlier that black soldiers couldn’t fight. Even Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had said as much earlier in the war. The black soldier was just deemed inferior in terms of combat spirit.
The Tuskegee Airmen, the 761st Black Panthers and other all-Black units would prove them all wrong.
While the Tuskegee Airmen were sweeping the skies clean of enemy fighters, not losing one escorted bomber to enemy fighters during the war, the 761st tankers were spearheading Patton’s army in breaking out through the French countryside.
Over the course of 183 days on the front, the Black Panthers helped liberate more than 30 towns under Nazi control. They inflicted thousands of enemy casualties while suffering more than 50 percent casualties themselves. Seventy-one tanks of the 761st were lost in combat with many of the crews.
Jones was one of a four-man crew in an M-3 Stuart tank. It was a light tank with thin skin but plenty of speed. It was used for reconnaissance missions and for infantry support against enemy light units. It packed a 37mm cannon and two 30-caliber machine guns in many of the versions that saw action. The way to fight the enemy from a Stuart was to shoot and scoot, fast.
“We had numbers and maneuverability,” said Jones. “The German tanks were bigger, better armored and had better guns. But we could run circles around them in the M-4 Sherman tanks. Eventually, the numbers overtook the German armored divisions.”
As they did during the Battle of the Bulge during the winter of 1944 near Bastogne, Belgium. Combat companies of the 761st engaged the 15th Panzer Division near Tillet, Belgium. At stake was a vital road needed by the Germans and an even more valuable fuel depot held by the Americans.
During a five-day period, Jones and his comrades repelled enemy-armored thrusts by a far more superior foe in men and equipment. Tenacity and courage were the rule of the day. When the weather broke, Allied air power finished off whatever the Black Panthers hadn’t.
On March 20, 1945, the 761st was the spearhead that broke through the Nazi Siegfried Line that led into the German Rhineland. In a 72-hour period, the 761st assaulted the line, creating a breach the U.S. Army’s 4th Armored Division could pour through. The 761st captured seven towns in those critical 72 hours. The door was opened to the Rhine River and in May, the Black Panthers met the First Ukrainian Army (Russian) at the Enn River in Austria.
Throughout those days of fighting, Jones was immune from any sort of racism. Everyone then, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, was fighting for the same cause — to end the war and go home. But the majority of soldiers in the European Theater of Operations weren’t going home to the same thing as the black soldier. There were still battles there to be fought.
“I didn’t go home right away,” said Jones. “I got out of the Army in 1945 and immediately went to work for the U.S. government in Europe as they rebuilt the towns and cities. I didn’t come back to the states until 1965.”
While working in Paris in 1956, Jones came across a remarkable man. It is a meeting he’ll never forget.
“I went down to the American Express office for something and ran into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Jones. “I was so thrilled to meet him and his wife. They were on their way to India to meet the Dalai Lama.”
But for one day, a few hours, Jones was the tour guide for the man who would ignite the conscience of a nation into recognizing the equality of every individual regardless of color.
“He wanted to see Napoleon’s tomb in Paris so I took him. He was so fascinated by it all. At one point he just bowed his head and remained very still for almost 15 minutes. You could see he was deep in thought,” Jones said.
Jones said upon returning to the states in 1965 and Laurel in 1985, never did he get depressed at the way blacks were being treated. He’d seen much through war, and patience had taught him the time would come when America would embrace his color.
“All the things I’ve seen and experienced have been worth it,” said Jones. “In many ways I probably appreciate what I have more than young blacks today. What they have to understand is that everything has to have time to grow. Racism isn’t a state of mind but rather it is a matter of the heart.”
It is that change of heart, according to Jones, that allowed Melvin Mack to be elected mayor. It was the same when Jones was elected to the Laurel City Council in 1989.
“Give it time,” he said. “And it will happen.”

[Owen]

Link here to site about the above mentioned 761st Tank Battalion.
http://www.8thwood.com/761st_tank_battalion.htm

As they were the "Black Panthers" was this the inspiration for the Black Power organisation of the same name?

[von Poop]

That's odd. Was thinking about this and the red ball express yesterday.
Gives me a chance to offer one of the very few 'facts' I remember from Uni. Despite many Black guys fighting for the US (sure I've got a pic somewhere of a black pilot with loads of kill flags alongside his canopy. Pacific? someone's bound to know the one..)the troops were only de-segregated by Truman in 1948.
(brace yourself for the music on that 761st site......blimey.)

[Kyt]

Men that served with distinction "the 761st Tank Battalion"

Combined Arms Research Library

[Andy in West Oz]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

Gives me a chance to offer one of the very few 'facts' I remember from Uni. Despite many Black guys fighting for the US (sure I've got a pic somewhere of a black pilot with loads of kill flags alongside his canopy. Pacific? someone's bound to know the one..)the troops were only de-segregated by Truman in 1948.
(brace yourself for the music on that 761st site......blimey.)

Might have been 332nd FG, VP. They flew in the MTO. Might have been a pic of Ben Davis.

Tuskegee Airmen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And a quote from the Wiki site (so reliability suspect!):
In 2006, it was reported that George Lucas was planning a film about the Tuskegee Airmen called Red Tails

Red Tails (2008)