Forgotten

Linda Hervieux

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062313812
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Seconde Guerre mondiale

"An utterly compelling account of the African Americans who played a crucial and dangerous role in the invasion of Europe. The story of their heroic duty is long overdue." —Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation

The injustices of 1940s Jim Crow America are brought to life in this extraordinary blend of military and social history—a story that pays tribute to the valor of an all-Black battalion whose crucial contributions at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France. Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. One member of the 320th would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, an award he would never receive. The nation's highest decoration was not given to Black soldiers in World War II.

Drawing on newly uncovered military records and dozens of original interviews with surviving members of the 320th and their families, Linda Hervieux tells the story of these heroic men charged with an extraordinary mission, whose contributions to one of the most celebrated events in modern history have been overlooked. Members of the 320th—Wilson Monk, a jack-of-all-trades from Atlantic City; Henry Parham, the son of sharecroppers from rural Virginia; William Dabney, an eager 17-year-old from Roanoke, Virginia; Samuel Mattison, a charming romantic from Columbus, Ohio—and thousands of other African Americans were sent abroad to fight for liberties denied them at home. In England and Europe, these soldiers discovered freedom they had not known in a homeland that treated them as second-class citizens—experiences they carried back to America, fueling the budding civil rights movement.

In telling the story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Hervieux offers a vivid account of the tension between racial politics and national service in wartime America, and a moving narrative of human bravery and perseverance in the face of injustice.

Notes

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ABBREVIATIONS

Archives

AFHRA—Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base

EL—Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS

MHI—U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA

NARACP—U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

NARANY—U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, New York, NY

NAUK—National Archives, United Kingdom, Kew, London

NPRC—National Personnel Records Center, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, MO

TL—Harry S Truman Library, Independence, MO

Record Groups

AG—Records of the Adjutant General’s Office (US)

CO—Records of the Colonial Office (UK)

ETO—European Theater of Operations (US)

FO—Records of the Foreign Office (UK)

RG—Record Group

SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

WD—War Department, Washington, DC

CHAPTER 1: WAR BREWING

All the personal recollections in this chapter were gleaned from author interviews in person and by telephone between 2010 and 2014 with Wilson and Mertina Monk and their friends and family.

3 Every night was: Nelson Johnson, The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City (Medford, NJ: Plexus Publishing, 2010), 158.

5 Even the carousel: Johnson, The Northside, 43.

5 Two years later: Ibid.

5 The name Jim Crow came from: Graham Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull: Black American Soldiers in World War II Britain (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 6. The minstrel performer, Thomas D. Rice, took his show on the road and brought it to London in 1936.

6 Although New Jersey had repealed: Slavery would not be permanently repealed in New Jersey until 1846.

6 It is likely, then, that: Johnson, The Northside, 6–7. Using 1860 census figures, historian Richlyn Goodard has concluded that slaves were likely used to build early Atlantic City.

6 Each multistory hotel: Turiya S. A. Raheem, Growing Up in the Other Atlantic City: Wash’s and the Northside (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2009), 14–15.

6 By 1900: Johnson, The Northside, 34.

6 About 95 percent: Ibid., xx.

7 They could pay the: Ibid., 10.

7 “Considering the event”: Ibid., 11.

7 “the first big step”: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 11.

8 By four hundred years: The first black slaves arrived along the Carolina coast in 1525, according to Horsby, Alton Jr., Chronology of African American History from 1492 to the Present (Detroit: Gale Group, 2000), xli.

8 There is no simple answer: Johnson, The Northside, 40. Johnson writes that racism alone is too simplistic, and attributes the rising animosity to an “emotional brew” of “folk history, religion, sexual taboos, and myths of the old South concocted in the slavery era, together with the fallacious dogma of white supremacy.”

8 What had been: Ibid., 40. In 1880, 70 percent of blacks had a white neighbor. By 1915, that figure had fallen to less than 20 percent.

9 To the little girl’s: Author interviews with Vernon Hollingsworth Blackwell.

9 A few blocks away: Author interviews with Mertina Madison Monk.

10 The Paradise Club: This is the opinion of musician Chris Columbo in Johnson, The Northside, 172.

11 Every night was: Johnson, The Northside, 158.

11 “There were so many whites”: Ibid., 172.

11 “Why do you” and “So that your wife”: Ibid., 162.

11 “World’s Playground”: Ibid., 19. Although vice reigned in Atlantic City, censors patrolled to ensure modesty on the beach, even measuring the length of a woman’s bathing suit. Up until the 1940s, the law required men to wear tops.

12 Nobody seemed to mind: At least Darrow gave the Northside hot spot Kentucky Avenue its due. Its eighteen-dollar “rent” was almost as much as that for the “white” properties. To see what the Monopoly properties look like today, go to http://www.scoutingny.com/what-the-monopoly-properties-look-like-in-real-life/.

12 “Atlantic City was”: Raheem, Growing Up, 21.

13 Fathers, mothers, kids: Author interviews with multiple Atlantic City natives.

14 The family moved: Author interviews with Wilson Monk. Despite the hardships, Monk recalled his childhood as an “absolutely” happy time filled with love.

14 At Apex: Apex Board of Trade booklet, 1936, Atlantic City Free Public Library.

15 She was right: Press of Atlantic City, March 23, 2012. For more on Sarah Spencer Washington, see www.atlanticcityexperience.org.

15 Madame Washington, as she was known: Advertisement in an Atlantic City Board of Trade booklet, 1936, Atlantic City Free Public Library.

15 hid her identity: Johnson, The Northside,122.

16 Mertina Madison’s mother: Raheem, Growing Up, 27.

16 One day, the order came: Author interviews with Wilson Monk.

18 “He’s a done deal”: Author interview with Mertina Madison Monk.

19 The vast majority: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt—The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 236.

19 It meant that: Author interviews with Wilson Monk. Prewar base pay for privates was thirty dollars a month, which rose to fifty dollars after June 1942, according to Jonathan Gawne, Finding Your Father’s War: A Practical Guide to Researching and Understanding Service in the World War II US Army (Philadelphia, PA: Casemate, 2006), 48.

20 Wilson Monk reported: Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops: United States Army in World War II (reprint; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 1994), 137.

20 Southern officers were: Nat Brandt, Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 102.

21 “I never knew what”: Yank, February 23, 1945.

21 “We wanted to know”: Author interviews with Wilson Monk.

21 One day in: Author interviews with Wilson Monk. Other examples of discrimination are from multiple sources, including author interviews with dozens of black veterans.

CHAPTER 2: TOO DUMB TO FIGHT

23 The negro . . . is by nature subservient: Memorandum for the chief of staff, Subject: “Employment of Negro Man Power in War,” November 10, 1925, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/pdfs/tusk_doc_a.pdf.

24 As Hitler reveled: Multiple sources, including Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004), 1. At the time, only 504,000 Americans were on active duty or in the reserves as compared to 6.8 million Germans. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 23.

24 War games Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 51.

24 Among them were: Ibid., 47.

24 One high-ranking: Dwight D. Eisenho...