A Good American Family

by David Maraniss

  By the time the 109th Regiment left the field at the end of December, it was down to 111 officers from the 145 it had started with, and 1,976 men, out of the original 2,817. But for the operations officer of the 1st Battalion, the worst was ahead.

  What came to be known as the Colmar Pocket was a compressed half-circle of territory held stubbornly by German forces in the central Alsace region of France. The topography was flat and unprotected, the winter weather frostbite Siberian, with deep snow on the ground, when the 28th Division arrived there to bolster an offensive led by the French First Army and two other American divisions at the start of 1945. Potter was wounded almost immediately upon entering the battle when shrapnel sliced into his left shoulder. His army records indicated there was “no nerve or artery involvement,” and he was patched up and sent back into action.

  Three days later, on the outskirts of the city of Colmar, Potter walked at the front of two advancing companies from the 1st Battalion, trying to find a machine gun that was slowing the battalion’s advance. After spotting the gun hidden behind a five-foot-high dike along the Rhine, he organized a patrol of six men under the cover of early-morning darkness. It was about three on the morning of January 31 when he fell on a land mine while moving toward the machine-gun placement. The blast blew Potter high into the air; when he landed, still conscious, he could see that his left leg had been blown off and his right leg was a mangled mess. His men managed to drag him back to their perimeter, and from there he was taken by ambulance to an army hospital at Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, where doctors operated on him for sixteen hours, amputating his right leg above the ankle and his left leg at the hip.

  For Chuck Potter, the war was over. Two months later, in a Texas hospital, he was awarded a Silver Star for his “gallant and courageous action.” A long, difficult recovery had begun. He came out honored, alive, and legless.

  15

  * * *

  Know Your Men

  FIRST LT. ELLIOTT Maraniss was working late in his office at Camp Lee, Virginia, on the night of February 1, 1945, the day after Charles Potter had suffered his debilitating injury. Elliott was commander of his own company, the 4482nd, a salvage and repair unit in the Quartermaster Corps. His men were being trained for battle, learning to march and shoot, but their primary mission involved work in trailers behind the lines. They were cobblers, tailors, sewing machine operators, electricians, textile workers, metalworkers, repairmen. From boots to canteens, whatever soldiers broke, the salvagers would repair. Aside from Elliott and two other officers, the men of the company had one characteristic in common: they were black. They had joined the great fight for liberty and democracy in a military—and for a nation—that segregated them and treated them as second-class citizens.

  This discrimination had been reaffirmed as government policy on the eve of the war, after civil rights leaders failed to persuade President Roosevelt that it was time to integrate the military. A few concessions were won regarding racial equity in the defense industry, but in the military itself the separation of the races remained: “The policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has been proven satisfactory over a long period of years and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparations of our national defense.” In keeping with that same racist logic, most black units were to be commanded by white officers, who were believed to be superior leaders.

  At Camp Lee it had been clear from the start that many white Virginians did not want to host black soldiers. Before the post opened in 1940, a local congressman had pleaded with the War Department that “no Negro troops be stationed at Camp Lee.” That request was rejected, and by early 1945 more than 3,500 black soldiers were in Unit Training Groups there, constituting about one-fifth of the camp’s population. But reminders of the slaveholding Confederacy were everywhere, along with daily impositions of racial discrimination. The base was named in honor of Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate army, and the camp newspaper was the Traveller, named for Lee’s horse. The barracks for black troops were isolated at the far end of the camp; the troops essentially marched and trained out of sight. Athletic teams were segregated; many of the best athletes were black, but the official Camp Lee basketball and baseball teams were all white. When soldiers went on leave to nearby Petersburg or Richmond, they were funneled into separate movie houses and USO clubs.

  Camp Lee was “the most segregated, the most prejudiced camp in the United States,” in the opinion of Jesse Johnson, who trained there as a private and went on to a successful army career as a lieutenant colonel. Johnson had spent his childhood in Mississippi and early adult years in Detroit and had endured both Jim Crow and de facto segregation, but the racism at Camp Lee struck him as among the worst he had seen. “In general, it was southerners, and most of the officers were southerners. They hand-picked them, especially with black troops. They were supposed to ‘understand blacks better.’ But they were going to segregate them more and mistreat them more and keep them discouraged.”

  Whether Camp Lee was worse than other southern military camps and forts could be argued. There were problems and periodic black rebellions against racism at many of the bases, but purposely selecting southern white officers for black units was in fact policy. In his seminal work, The Employment of Negro Troops, military historian Ulysses Lee said the War Department believed that white officers chosen to lead black troops “should have some acquaintance with Negroes.” With that in mind, Lee wrote, “it was assumed that, since few individuals from other parts of the country had come into frequent contact with Negroes, they should be Southerners.” There was one significant exception: officers who were political radicals or liberals. Many white officers considered an assignment to lead a black unit a dead end, but leftist officers who had been scrapping to get into the action since the war started saw it as an opportunity to serve two noble ideas at once: fighting against fascism and against racism. That group included my father.

  On that winter night one month into 1945, Elliott was preparing to lead his men on their first company maneuver outside the boundaries of the camp. They were about to caravan seventy-two miles up the road to “the Hill,” as it was known, the vast grounds of the A. P. Hill Military Reservation near Fredericksburg, for two weeks of extended field operations under bivouac conditions. This was to be an important test of the unit’s readiness to join the fight overseas, and Elliott believed he and his men were making great progress. Racial justice was one of the ideas that shaped his politics, and he was eager to help this group of black soldiers demonstrate their merit in a system rigged against them from the day they were born. He was also focused on building the confidence and competence of a cadre of black noncommissioned officers, most of whom came out of the Jim Crow South and had been held back by economic inequity and educational neglect.

  “They are learning things fast,” Elliott wrote in a letter home that night to Mary, who was in the final trimester of a pregnancy and had moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor to stay with her parents at their house on Henry Street. “You have no idea what a great source of pride it is to me to see a man like Joe Brooks, for example, who eight months ago was an unschooled farm laborer in South Carolina, teaching a group of men a class on the use of the lensatic compass, and doing a right smart job, too, following all the rules of ‘methods of instruction’ that we discuss in our cadre classes. Naturally, I work very closely with a man like that. I spent from 7 o’clock to 11 last night helping him prepare for his 45-minute class. It was well worth every minute of it. I have a man now who knows how to go about educating himself, using his small, elementary education to full advantage; he knows how to use training aids, how to organize his material, how to get and hold the attention of the men. He has a great desire to learn and to live up to the three stripes he has earned. He started with native intelligence and a natural ability to lead men. Now that he’s started t
here is no telling how far he will go, or along what lines his interests will develop. There are many others of whom I want to write you some time: Branch, who was a tailor in Harlem; Joyner, a farmer from Alabama and now a shoe-repair foreman; Clyburn and Dale Hall, who were former pro fighters, and many others.”

  * * *

  THE 4482ND HAD been activated at Camp Lee six weeks earlier, on December 16, a day that happened to be the fifth anniversary of Elliott and Mary’s wedding in Ann Arbor. From that first day Elliott seemed to push himself relentlessly, planning, organizing, and strategizing to create a successful company. “The days are full of work, worry, interest,” he told Mary in one of his first letters. “Never have I been so grudging and demanding of every single minute of the day, and a good part of the night.” He had devised a system that he hoped would make the best use of his time, setting a series of what he called “daily concentration points.” One day he would meet with his supply sergeant to work out problems in that area, then choose another specific area to deal with each of the following days: the mess hall, administrative records, the training schedule, training aids, and inspections, all meant to help the company function better as a whole. At the same time he had to deal with the nonstop problems of personnel and supervision of the military and mechanical training.

  At night he spent several hours in the orderly room doing company business, listening to CBS reporter Bob Trout’s summary of war news on the radio, and consulting with a steady flow of soldiers who “want to see the company commander personally.” They came between 1800 and 2000 hours, from six to eight. “One man wants me to help him fill out his income tax return. Another wants to know where he can get some legal advice. He is legally married to two women at the same time. It seems his first wife refuses to give him a divorce—and thus continues to get his allotment. I’m going to send him to the Legal Assistance Officer on Monday. Another man wants me to write a letter for him—three of those already tonight as a matter of fact. One man who was a shoe repairman for seven years in civilian life—and was sent to us as a truck driver—wants to be transferred to the shoe repair section. That didn’t take much time! And so it goes. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’m glad of the opportunity to help the men and speak to them personally about their problems, because that is the best way for me to get to know them as individuals.”

  Tuesday nights were reserved for cadre school, where noncommissioned officers were tutored in methods of instruction, the best ways to teach the men under them. This is the school where Elliott had helped Joe Brooks, the South Carolina farmhand, learn how to teach a class on the use of the lensatic compass. For each class, two noncoms were assigned to teach two subjects of their own choosing for twenty minutes as if they were teaching their men. That was followed by a twenty-minute critique of each man’s presentation, stressing the use of training aids, clear and forceful expression, logical arrangement of materials, and how to eliminate or minimize nervous mannerisms that detract from the class. From Elliott’s perspective, these cadre schools served dual purposes, helping both the soldiers and the officers. One unintended benefit, he thought, had to do with race.

  He wrote in a letter home, “Somewhere in some lecture I heard or manual I read, I remember the advice that was given to officers: Know your men, and you will not only solve a lot of problems, but you’ll eliminate them. How true! I still don’t know all of them as well as I’d like. But I know a great many, and all of my non-coms. It is surprising how true that maxim is, and how profound its ramifications. I’ve met some officers here who were appalled when they first were assigned to Negro troops. But they were serious men who were intent on doing a good job. So they went about their business and in the process of getting to know and work with the men, they gradually began to lose self-consciousness and some prejudices, and gradually came to look upon their men as soldiers, and not as Negro soldiers. Many of these officers, even a great many from the South, have turned out to be good officers, proud of their units and proud of their men. It only stands to reason, I think, that if a man makes a sincere effort to know and understand his men, his attitude is bound to change.”

  On the surface, Elliott’s assessment here seems to contrast sharply with the disparaging impressions that Jesse Johnson, his fellow Detroiter, held about Camp Lee and its officer corps. One is the perspective of a white officer, the other of a black enlisted man. But there is more to it than that. The camp’s handling of racial matters had improved by the time Elliott arrived in late 1944, more than a year after Johnson had left. And Elliott was positive by nature. His natural tendency was to try to see the best in others and to search for ways to improve human understanding. He believed that, given the right conditions, men and women could overcome the obstacles of race and class, education and geography and bias. At Camp Lee, as he had been before and would be for the rest of his life, he was driven by a sense of American optimism.

  One southern officer who responded positively to working in proximity to black soldiers was Brig. Gen. George A. Horkan, the camp’s commander, a West Point graduate and veteran of World War I who was born in Georgia and shaped by the racial mores of his native South. By the time Horkan took command at Camp Lee in 1944, he was white-haired and nearly fifty, a stickler for army discipline who coined the phrase “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn’t move, pick it up. If you can’t pick it up, paint it green and white.” Beyond that, he gained notice for improving the treatment of black soldiers at the camp and was praised for resolving a festering problem involving segregation and transportation.

  At the time Horkan assumed command, black enlisted men were required by Jim Crow laws to sit in the back of buses carrying off-duty soldiers to and from nearby Petersburg. If there was no room in the back but empty seats in front, the black soldiers still had to stand, stay behind for the next bus, or walk several miles to Petersburg. Jesse Johnson recalled a day when he and other black soldiers on the bus to Petersburg were forced to stand even though there were empty seats in the white section. When one exasperated black soldier decided to take an empty seat, a white captain snapped, “Soldier! You’re not supposed to sit there.” The black soldier got up, but “made a violent remark” to the officer, and a brawl was barely averted. The bus, Johnson said, was a place where “white soldiers were the aggressors towards us, racially.”

  It would be another dozen years before Rosa Parks changed America by refusing to leave her seat near the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, but travel discrimination of the sort Johnson recounted was a frequent source of friction at Camp Lee, and General Horkan realized that it was wrong and weakening morale. Soon after he took over, he worked out a plan to get around the Jim Crow laws by reaching an agreement with the Petersburg–Camp Lee bus company to operate a certain number of buses exclusively for soldiers, with no separation of the races, where soldiers were seated on a first-come, first-serve basis, and with a military-only depot in downtown Petersburg where black and white soldiers would sit together in the waiting room. Orrin C. Evans, a black journalist at the Philadelphia Record who was investigating racial inequities in the military, praised Horkan for his innovations at Camp Lee, which eventually forced other southern camps to follow his lead. “Any Negro soldier who is in town can always get a bus back with no Jim Crowism and no more than ordinary delay, such as happens on buses elsewhere,” Evans reported. This change, he wrote, was a major reason black soldiers at Camp Lee now appeared to be “high in morale, proud, and snappy.”

  The men in Elliott’s company provided more than their share of talent for the entire camp. In one week in January alone, the soldiers enjoyed a boxing match at the Unit Training Group gym, where the 4482nd’s Dale Hall, the Service Command heavyweight champ, defeated a Golden Gloves star from California, and then, a few nights later, Willie Reeves, another of the men in Elliott’s unit, led a quintet of singers who “brought the house down” at a musical revue. The group’s impresario was 1st Sgt. Walton Plinton, a noncom in the salvage compan
y who had discovered their harmonic talents while training them.

  One of the repeated themes in Elliott’s letters home to Mary was belief in his company. “I wish you were here to share in some of our ceremonies,” he wrote on the night of January 20, recounting that afternoon’s events. “We were presented with our unit colors and standards and flags by the CO of the Unit Training Group. I accepted them for Col. Hunter in the name of the company, then turned them over to the First Sergeant, who in turn handed them to the color guard. All very military, with salutes, snappy facings and bugles and three-shot volleys from the ceremonial guard. Then, in front of the whole company, I made the presentation of the warrants of the first group of non-commissioned officers to be promoted since we activated. Then, to the music of the First Training Group band, we marched in our first dress parade before the inspecting party headed by Colonel Hunter. It was really very colorful, and smart, and I believe, unifying. I must say we really looked good. I was very proud. Then we dismissed them at 4 p.m., one hour earlier than usual. And if you think one hour doesn’t mean anything to them when it comes to taking off for the weekend, then you don’t know the American soldier.”