The Harlem Hellfighters

by Walter Dean Myers

  The United States, on the far side of the Atlantic, was not considered a major power at the outset of the war. It had only a small army and no apparent interests to be considered in Europe. Woodrow Wilson, the president, had publicly opposed any American participation in the war.

  3

  TRENCH WARFARE

  The war in Europe began with an aggressive attack by Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Central Powers. German troops moved quickly through Belgium, violating that country’s neutrality and bringing Great Britain into the war. The advance was so rapid that it became somewhat disorganized, elements of the German army lost contact with their supply lines, and the plans for a massive push became bogged down. Still, the Germans hoped to end the war quickly. But once the initial thrust into Belgium and northern France had slowed and soldiers were in stationary positions waiting for their supply lines to catch up with them, advancement became extremely difficult. The major reason was the very technology of modern warfare that had made Germany superior.

  In previous wars the major weapon had been the rifle. With most rifles a good soldier could fire between five and ten aimed shots per minute. But with a machine gun, the new technology, he could fire well over two hundred shots per minute. This made the conventional attack, with men charging over a battlefield, an impossibility. Any attacking force could be stopped with well-placed machine-gun fire. An attack by the British on a German position along the Somme River in northern France produced sixty thousand British casualties—men either killed or wounded—in a single day.

  The Great War soon became the bloodiest conflict known to human experience. No amount of bravery could overcome the technology of the machine gun or the newly developed artillery that sent shells traveling from miles behind the front line into the enemy ranks. The use of modern technology was not consistent at the beginning of the war. While it’s hard to imagine in this modern age, the onset of the war actually saw soldiers on horseback, their sabers drawn, charging into ranks of armored vehicles and rapid-firing light weapons.

  Tank warfare, although deadly against ground soldiers, was too primitive to overcome the most dominant feature of the war, the defensive trench. Both the German army and the Allies built trenches, six to fourteen feet deep, to protect their soldiers. A typical trench complex—and some were very complex indeed—consisted of several rows of dugout earthworks. They would zigzag for miles across the terrain that was being defended. The most forward dugout would be the firing trench, from which men would fire on the enemy. There would be passages from the firing trench to a more securely built covered trench. Behind this trench there would be another trench, where supplies were kept and where the wounded would be taken. Then there might be yet another trench in which men not engaged in the fighting would be on reserve. In between the trenches there would be barbed wire, mines, and sandbags.

  Trench interior

  Aerial view of French trenches

  While the Germans built such a series of trenches to protect a territory they had already taken, the Allies built their own trenches to prevent the Germans from advancing farther. A line of trenches was dug all across France, where most of the Great War took place. The trenches were often close enough for the men on both sides to see and hear one another, for shaking a fist, or for a sharpshooter to take aim at a careless soldier. The space between opposing trenches was called no-man’s-land.

  Trench and barbed wire

  A typical trench defense would have machine guns covering all the land approaching the defended trench, as well as some sort of barbed-wire system to slow the oncoming soldiers. A reasonably well defended trench could withstand an attack by a force many times its size. Attacks on a line of trenches would start with a horrible artillery bombardment, sometimes using poison gas such as mustard gas. The artillery attack would drive the defenders out of the exposed forward trenches and into the second line of trenches, which were deeper and more fortified. There would be deliberate lulls in the shelling, during which each force hoped to draw the other out into the open.

  Over the top!

  As the planned bombardment neared its end, the attacking troops would gather at their own front line and then, when the signal was given, come out of their trench, going over the top of the sandbags to make a dash for the enemy’s trenches.

  The result of these charges into the face of death was devastating. Both sides had a very high rate of men killed. The area between the trenches would be filled with human and animal bodies as well as the wounded. Men often lost their hearing as shell after shell burst around them. The ground shook from the impact. Perhaps there would be a dreaded gas attack, which would burn the skin and lungs. The Germans started using gas first, but other nations soon followed suit.

  The standard defense against a gas attack was for each man to yell “Gas!” as loudly as he could. This would expel the air from his lungs and with it, hopefully, the first of the gas as he struggled to put on his gas mask before taking another breath of carbon-filtered air.

  The war dragged on for months, and then years, becoming known as a war of attrition. Germany had the superior army but could not defeat the French and British on land. The German high command decided to try to use another high-tech weapon, the U-boat—submarine—to isolate Great Britain. Britain is an island nation, and the Germans planned to sink any ships bringing in vital supplies. The U-boats were spectacularly successful at first, but less so when the British used convoys, cargo ships accompanied by war vessels to protect them.

  German submarine

  By 1916 both Great Britain and France were suffering from the financial drain of the war, the human costs, and the loss of imports. It seemed to be a matter of who could last another year or so, or perhaps just a few more months. There was rationing of food and materials in England and France, and there were severe food shortages in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

  The United States began to ship more and more food and supplies to Great Britain. President Wilson had promised that the United States would not enter the war, but America had become the major supporter of the Allied Powers. The Central Powers, led by Germany, needed to do something to offset the American aid. German submarines had already attacked some American cargo ships. Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, sent a telegram to Mexican officials that was discovered by the British Navy and decoded. The communiqué is commonly referred to as the Zimmermann Telegram.

  * * *

  We intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1. We shall nevertheless endeavor to keep America neutral. In the event that this does not succeed, we propose to Mexico an alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together. Generous financial support, and approval on our part that Mexico recapture previously lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement details are left to Your Excellency.

  Your Excellency will inform the President [of Mexico] of the above in utmost secrecy as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain, and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to join in immediately and at the same time mediate between ourselves and Japan. Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace within a few months.

  * * *

  The message had been sent on January 19, 1917. It reflected a sense of German desperation. Mexico could do very little in an attack against the United States, but Germany didn’t have many options. American sentiment had already begun to turn in favor of the English. Americans still remembered the Lusitania, a British ship that had been sunk by the Germans in May of 1915, with the loss of 128 American lives.

  President Wilson knew that the Zimmerman Telegram signaled even more attacks and more American losses.

  On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson gave a speech outlining the necessity of war with Germany. In it he stated that the world must be made safe for democracy. It was a moment
ous occasion for all Americans, many of whom felt that the war currently raging in Europe was too distant to be the business of the United States. Four days later, on April 6, Congress formally declared war on Germany.

  President Woodrow Wilson

  4

  THE PROBLEM OF RACE

  Although free since 1865, most African Americans lived under very poor conditions at the start of the war in Europe. Most lived in the South and worked on farms in rural areas. Southern agriculture—the cotton industry, tobacco, rice, and other crops—was dependent on inexpensive black labor. A number of factors severely limited the opportunities for the African American worker. The major limitation was segregation.

  There were two kinds of segregation. One was segregation by law. In 1896 a Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, declared that companies, cities, towns, or states could separate people by race as long as the facilities for each race were “equal.” Throughout the South and in many Northern areas as well, African Americans were forced to drink from “colored” fountains; go to “colored” schools, parks, and playgrounds; and even use special entrances to public places. The separate facilities were almost never “equal.” Some Southern communities had no schools for black students and would hire teachers for only a few months per year to teach African Americans.

  Besides the legal segregation there was an entrenched social segregation as well. Blacks were not hired for certain jobs, or given the same wages as whites. Blacks were not allowed to try on clothing in department stores and were often refused admittance to hotels and restaurants that elected to be “whites only.”

  The poll tax, a tax of one dollar or more for the privilege of voting, was established in some communities; this prevented blacks from voting and trying to change the laws. The social attitude in the Southern states was based on establishing the superiority of whites over blacks. Southerners did not want to treat blacks as equals and were not forced to by either laws or traditions.

  There was racial prejudice in the North, too. Blacks were not allowed to buy houses or rent apartments in certain neighborhoods, and did not get certain jobs despite their qualifications. But the growing Northern industries, with their hunger for workers to manufacture the products they would sell around the world, offered far more than the Southern fields. Also, almost all Northern cities had either integrated schools or adequate schools in black neighborhoods. Northern children could learn to read and write. Black men in the North could vote. The Northern cities looked better and better to black families.

  Black tenant farmers

  The years from 1913 to 1915 were particularly difficult for Southern farmers. Boll weevils, a very hardy and destructive beetle, had infested Southern cotton fields to such an extent that many farmers, white and black, lost their entire crops. Floods in parts of Mississippi and Arkansas had also been disastrous. At the same time, Northern factories were turning out more and more products for the war in Europe and looking for workers. Large factories would send recruiters to the South to try to lure black men northward. Southern legislators, seeing the increased flow of black families from the South to the North, wondered what effect this migration would have on Southern agriculture and the South itself.

  When the United States entered the war, there was another factor to consider. What would be the effect of African Americans’ participation in the war? What would happen if black men left the farms in large numbers? How would their experiences in the military affect their acceptance of second-class citizenship in the South after the war? Would they come back to the segregated South and continue working in the fields, or would they look for other places to settle?

  Some African Americans thought that the black man should not try to make the world “safe for democracy” until he had a fair share of that democracy in his own country. Others wanted a commitment from the United States that there would be an end to lynching, the terror tactic by which so many black men and women lost their lives through mob violence.

  Black tenant farmers were indispensable to the white South

  The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent letters to President Wilson asking him to speak up in favor of equal rights for all Americans. Southern legislators also approached the president with their concerns.

  W.E.B. DuBois, editor of the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis and an outspoken critic of domestic racial policies, was urging African Americans to participate in the war: “Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.”

  Although the nation was officially at war, Southern politicians looked beyond the war and wondered how the military experience would affect race relations in the South. Southern Negroes had grown accustomed to the traditions of the region. Blacks knew that they had to be polite and respectful to whites while not expecting the same treatment for themselves. Black men were rarely called “mister” or “sir,” no matter their position. Blacks who had lived in the North and were more likely to ask for equal treatment were considered troublemakers by Southerners.

  Poll tax receipt

  “Economic Slavery”: Political cartoon from Crisis magazine

  President Wilson listened to the concerns of Southern legislators. They felt that if the racial balance was to be maintained in the South, special consideration would have to be given to the status of the black male as soldier. People who believed in racial superiority of whites did not want black men commanding whites, or even expecting equal treatment.

  The nation was at war, but the racial conflict between blacks and whites was more important to some people than victory or defeat on the battlefield. President Wilson consulted his generals and both Northern and Southern politicians. Emmett J. Scott, an African American, was appointed as a special assistant to the secretary of war. Scott had been the assistant to Booker T. Washington, who endorsed the idea of segregation. Scott agreed in principle with Washington’s feelings that blacks should accept the conditions given them by whites.

  As the American military began to draw up its plans for war, the African American community knew that it would be facing many problems.

  5

  THE NATIONAL GUARD

  Today, the United States is defended militarily by its armed forces. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard are currently part of the United States’ federal system. The training and deployment of these forces are determined by the president, who is the commander in chief; the president’s staff; and the military commanders under the president. The National Guard is controlled jointly by the federal government and the state governments. In times of national emergencies the various National Guard units can be called into federal service. At these times they function no differently from regular army units.

  When the United States was first formed, the state militias, as the units that would develop into the National Guard were called, differed from state to state. In most states all able-bodied men were considered part of the militia and received some training. There was both pride and security in the creation of these militias. The citizen-soldiers felt that they were protecting their own homes and land. They did so willingly and, for the most part, without pay. It was clear that in the slave states there would be no black people armed and trained to fight. But in the free states there was also a problem. Military personnel have ranks that are independent of social issues. There are two categories of rank: noncommissioned personnel and commissioned officers. The noncommissioned personnel ranks range from private to sergeant major. Each individual of a particular rank is the equal to others of that rank and above those in a lower rank.

  Commissioned officers have a special status and are accorded special respect in the services. Enlisted men (noncommissioned) are obliged to salute all officers encountered in public and to come to attention when an officer enters a room unless given other instructions.

  In the case of bot
h noncommissioned personnel and commissioned officers, the rank of the soldier is the primary factor determining authority. Commissioned officers were to be saluted and addressed as “sir.” This meant that black officers would have to be treated with a courtesy that was routinely denied them in civilian life. Many white resented this forced recognition. The way to avoid conflicts was to simply not include blacks in the state militias.

  New York state had one of the nation’s largest militias, consisting of a number of regiments. In 1824 New York’s 7th Regiment began calling itself the “National Guard” after the Garde National of France, which was headed by the Marquis de Lafayette, who had aided America so much during the Revolutionary War. Soon other state militias began calling themselves the National Guard.

  At the outbreak of the Civil War many National Guard units were called into federal service. When more men were needed, both sides—the Union army and the Confederate army—accepted enlistees and also had forced service—the draft.

  The war began with only white soldiers in actual combat roles, and with blacks performing as laborers in both armies. But eventually blacks were allowed to fight in the Union army, and more than 180,000 men served in it.

  By the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898, there were several black National Guard units, the best established being the 8th Illinois Infantry. The war lasted scarcely four months, from April to August 1898. Many black units, including the 8th Illinois and the 24th Infantry, participated in this war, which greatly reduced Spanish influence in the Americas.