CHAPTER 4
An opinion held in common by practically all officers is that the negro is a rank coward in the dark. His fear of the unknown and unseen will prevent him from ever operating as an individual scout with success. His lack of veracity causes unsatisfactory reports to be rendered, particularly on patrol duty. World War Experience implies that the negro may not stand grilling combat with heavy losses.
—Army War College Study, 1925
The World War I experiences of heroes like Freddie Stowers and other Medal of Honor aspirants were forged between the turn of the twentieth century, the 1912 election of Woodrow Wilson, and initial American responses to the exploding guns of war in Europe. During the first decade of the twentieth century, black people experienced a tectonic shift in the political landscape. Since Reconstruction, black voters had supported the Republican Party and its presidential candidates. But the epidemic of black lynchings in Atlanta, Georgia, and Springfield, Illinois, and Theodore Roosevelt’s discharge en masse of 167 black soldiers with the 25th Infantry in the wake of the Brownsville, Texas, incident in 1906, produced feelings of disbelief and dismay among many members of the black community.
As the decade progressed, the foreboding sentiments expressed by black leaders turned to disgust as President William Howard Taft tacitly acquiesced to the overt “lily-white” policies devised by Southern whites to eliminate an African-American presence at polling places in the region. By 1912, black disillusionment with the “Party of Lincoln” was rife, as black voters in both the North and the South openly contemplated voting for Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party presidential candidate. A Southern-born Democrat, Wilson’s pledge to treat blacks justly influenced many black leaders.1
Unfortunately, Wilson’s first administration did not fulfill his promise, codifying Jim Crow segregation and personally approving the overtly racist film, The Birth of a Nation (see appendix). Much to the dismay of black leaders, extralegal violence, racial tension, and conflict increased in many areas throughout the country. Expressing the view that many blacks held of Wilson and the racial climate that existed during the period, noted historian Rayford Logan observed, “I was in my last year of high school in Washington when Wilson was elected. Negroes showed grave concern, especially when some newly elected Southerners publicly declared that they had come to Washington to ‘fight niggers and likker.’”2
Blacks did not stand idly by and watch while their claims to democracy and equality were under assault. Between 1908 and 1917, a host of leaders and organizations sprang into being. Unhappy with the accommodationist approach of Booker T. Washington and galvanized by the 1908 Springfield Race Riot, W. E. B. Du Bois, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Moorfield Storey organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Over a seven-year period, its chapters led boycotts calling for a public ban of the showing of The Birth of a Nation, court challenges to the Oklahoma “grandfather clause” that violated the Fifteenth Amendment, as well as crusades against lynching and racial violence. Norfolk, Virginia, resident Addie W. Hunton and Washington, DC, natives Josephine Bruce and Mary Church Terrell worked diligently to combat racism and sexism as members of the National Association of Colored Women. Formed in the fall of 1913, the National Equal Rights League, led by William Monroe Trotter and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, formed a delegation that called on President Wilson, demanding that he abolish racial segregation in Washington, DC.
Achievement in battle served as another concrete way for African Americans to fight for equality and uplift the race. Military service not only provided an image of black men that debunked many of the racial stereotypes, but it also promoted the promise of black political participation both before and during the period. Through the promise of military service, African-American men could redefine their sense of honor and independence in relation to a racially divided American society.
James Weldon Johnson was an editorialist for the New York Age, and he and his brother wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” recognized by many as the “Negro National Anthem.” Although he often expressed his disgust for Wilson and his segregationist policies, he intuitively understood the importance of black military service in relation to social conventions of manhood and citizenship. Writing in the wake of the exploding guns of August and Wilson’s reelection, Johnson opined, “If they don’t take these colored men and give them the right to bear arms and fight as equal citizens, they have got to send to the trenches, perhaps to die, a white man for each Negro they refuse.”3
Like W. E. B. Du Bois, some believed that the Great War provided blacks the opportunity to “close ranks.” Du Bois wrote, “Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.”4
But soon black leaders like Johnson and Du Bois had to face reality. A few days after President Wilson’s war message, army planners had begun to consider expanding black troops in the armed forces by inducting large numbers of men in each of the divisional training areas. Nearly seventy-five thousand soldiers would be drawn from among the army cantonments throughout the country, most of them from the American South. Black draftees would then join other recruits to form the sixteen regiments newly created during this period. However, they realized that Southern congressmen like Mississippi’s James Vardaman and others opposed the training of armed blacks in the region.
After Southern congressional fears materialized into racial violence at Camp Logan in Houston, Texas (see appendix), Secretary of War Newton Baker signaled his approval of the War Department’s plan to pare down the number of regiments in order to form a combat division. The remaining portion of black draftees and enlistees would be assigned to auxiliary units, such as service battalions, or placed in services of supply organizations.5 “The colored race, knowing that a combatant division is being formed, will realize that in the non-combatant service, they are doing no more than their share along with similar white troops, and there can be no reasonable cause for ill feeling,” army staff members contended.
General staff officers within the War Department quickly discovered that the creation of a black division gave rise to another staffing problem—namely, the employment of officers to lead its regiments. The War Department announced plans to open an officer training camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in late May of 1917. After it opened on June 18, more than 1,200 men passed through its gates. From June to October, college-educated men from universities like Howard, Cornell, Tuskegee, Cornell, and Wilberforce trained with business leaders, government employees, attorneys, letter carriers, and brick masons. Each was deeply determined to seize the mantle of leadership and advance the cause of the race. Recognizing the opportunity that the camp provided for a generation of young black men, one aspiring candidate from Lincoln University observed, “It is the height of my ambition to do credit to my country and my race.”6
Meanwhile, the fate of Charles Young hung in the balance. As prospective black officers rushed to the colors at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, black leaders and organizations looked to the legendary Regular Army officer to lead troops into battle, as well as to serve as the exemplar for its expanding junior officer corps. Just two years earlier, Young had received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, an honor accorded to the nation’s Talented Tenth for distinguished achievement. The seasoned officer had become a rising star, receiving a promotion to lieutenant-colonel for his invaluable service in Mexico in 1916. As the highest-ranking senior black officer in the Regular Army, Young had received high praise from General Pershing and others, and was slated to be promoted to full colonel, making him eligible for advancement to brigadier general in the near future.
“It is the height of my ambition to do credit to my country and my race.”
However, the forty-nine-year-old career soldier soon found himself engulfed in military racism. Albert A. Dockery, a white first lieutenant with the 10th Cavalry, had complained to the War Department that he “found it not only distasteful but practically impossible to serve under a colored commander.” Secretary of War Newton Baker initially suggested that the junior officer either “do his duty or resign.” Baker also reassured Wilson that he would avoid what he perceived to be a potentially “embarrassing situation” for the president. Not long afterward, the situation was resolved through a medical technicality. After a physical examination revealed that Young had Bright’s disease (a historical classification of kidney disease, often accompanied by high blood pressure), he was promoted to full colonel and ordered to report to a retiring board, where he was subsequently retired from the active list and reassigned to the Ohio National Guard as a military adviser.7
W. E. B. Du Bois wrote a letter to his distraught friend, telling him that The Crisis and the NAACP would “take all possible steps to bring [Young’s] case to the attention of the authorities.” Throughout the fall of 1917, NAACP officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Secretary of War to reverse the War Department’s decision regarding Young’s retirement. Not to be outdone, Young sought to demonstrate his fitness by riding five hundred miles on horseback from his home in Ohio to Washington, DC, where he hoped to personally present his case to the Secretary of War. His pleas fell on deaf ears.8
Young’s removal shook the black public to its core. Not only did many view his forced retirement as a dastardly tactic employed by Wilson and the War Department, meant to cast aspersions on black leadership, but they also correctly perceived that the Young issue would cast a dark cloud over the actions taken by black enlisted men and officers once they reached Europe. Young’s retirement also raised questions as to what would be considered honorable conduct in battle for black GIs who saw extensive action along the Western Front. The die was thus cast for all black servicemen who entered the armed forces during the European conflict.
Training for World War I
A tumultuous story of foreign and domestic upheaval, born of war and race, structured the World War I experiences of African-American soldiers who saw action on the battlefields of Europe. In November of 1917, camps at Funston, Kansas; Grant, Illinois; Upton, New York; Dix, New Jersey; Meade, Maryland; Dodge, Iowa; and Sherman, Ohio, received thousands of black soldiers. Together, they formed the principal elements of the 92nd Infantry Division of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Most of the black recruits with the 92nd Division were assigned to the 365th, 366th, 367th, and 368th Infantry Regiments, with a smattering of the inexperienced GIs reporting to indirect and service units. A month later, black National Guardsmen from the states of New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia assembled at Camp Stuart, Virginia, to form the 93rd Infantry Division (Provisional). The division’s brigades were supplemented by conscripts from the state of South Carolina.
The assigned men were then organized into the 369th, 370th, 371st, and 372nd Infantry Regiments, along with an assortment of machine-gun, field artillery, medical, ordnance, and veterinary companies, battalions, and brigades. Altogether, each division had about 27,000 enlisted men and officers, with each regiment consisting of nearly 3,700 men, including several groups of train, engineering, sanitary, and field signal servicemen.9
Since the War Department announced that it had no desire to expand the number of black Regular Army units, most of the division’s regiments were composed of National Guard units. Among the principal state-based units that were federalized during the war was the 15th New York Infantry Regiment. Organized in 1913 by Col. William Hayward, the son of a Republican senator, the 15th New York included men who largely came from Deep South states like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. Quite a few had joined the regiment after moving from the rural South to the Empire State.10
This was the case with Henry Johnson, a poor black railroad porter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who joined the regiment in 1917 and would later distinguish himself in action during Allied fighting on the Western Front. Although little is known about Johnson’s prewar life, he had already fought a war against a formidable foe—namely, white supremacy. As a young teenager, he, along with his parents, migrated north, eventually settling in Albany, New York. In 1915, Johnson landed work at the city’s Union Station as a red cap and quickly plunged into local civic activities sponsored by his church and the Colored Benevolent Society. After marrying Edna Jackson, Johnson promptly registered for the Selective Service in 1917. He obviously found tradition and the call to duty virtually irresistible, as less than two months after congressional approval of war, he volunteered for the army. He reported to active duty with the 369th Infantry as the unit massed at Camp Whitman in New Jersey, just a few weeks before Congress federalized the unit. His wife observed at the time, “If you say anything about Henry, I want you to say Henry enlisted—he didn’t wait for no draft. That ain’t Henry’s speed, no siree, not when Uncle Sam calls.”11
Johnson’s prewar activities and his sentiments regarding duty and honor were hardly atypical. Many of the men assigned to the regiments of the 92nd and 93rd (Provisional) Divisions came from polyglot backgrounds that included Northerners, Southerners, Easterners, and Westerners. Coming from all walks of life, they emerged from the levees of Mississippi, the coal mines of West Virginia, and the workshops and factories of the Midwest and the Northeast. Still others worked in kitchens as cooks and bakers, on docks as longshoremen and stevedores, on railways as Pullman porters and red caps. They came in every type of clothing imaginable—some in rags and tatters, others in overalls, still others in suits. Loaded down with diverse expressive folkways and cultures, recruits and draftees descended on the national army camp, some carrying their guitars and banjoes, while speaking dialects derived from every part of the country. Others came from beyond the borders of the United States, with nearly a thousand hailing from the British and Dutch West Indies, Cuba, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
While most of the soldiers had a vague understanding of the European conflict or its underlying cause, quite a few shared a broad interpretation of what was at stake: They felt that the war offered them a chance to strike a blow for a new world—one they hoped to see come into being. The war, in short, opened for them the possibility of a new world where they could live and breathe as black men. Like Chester Heywood, a captain with the 371st Infantry, most framed their experiences in the army encampments in the following manner: “Everybody talked overseas, A.E.F., France, the Boche, and swanked about the camp and town as if they had already seen months of service in the trenches.” Others felt their families, relatives, and neighbors in their respective communities were depending on their honorable service during the fighting. They were staking their own abstract notions of freedom on their service in this war. W. Allison Sweeney, contributing editor to the Chicago Defender, observed that black intellectuals and the black press placed a great deal of importance on the loyalty and heroism of black troops who served during the period, writing, “How splendid was the spectacle of their response! Theirs not to ask the WHY; theirs but to do and die.”12
But training black patriots for military service proved to be a battle in and of itself. Upon entering the camps in Whitman, New Jersey, and Newport News, Virginia, recruits marched to a processing area where they received brand-new uniforms and regular infantry equipment. Afterward, the men received instruction from watchful yet demanding officers on the intricacies of military training, including close-order drill, formal guard mounting, parade reviews, signaling, and marching. Then the men were put through the paces of small-arms practice and field exercises. Most of these soldiers had never shot a firearm before entering the camps. Not only that, but most of the companies and platoons of fledgling citizen-soldiers found themselves having to contend with the lice and cooties that accompanied trench-digging, the bane of all infantrymen fighting in World War I. Nonetheless, the new recruits and enlisted men embraced their training with grim determination. Arthur Little, a white officer with the 15th New York, observed at Camp Whitman, “Our men worked as few soldiers had ever before had to work in a mere camp of instruction. Every hour of daylight was devoted to drill and to rifle practice. We drilled and shot, rain or shine.”13
Every hour of daylight was devoted to drill and to rifle practice. We drilled and shot, rain or shine.”
As their training progressed, thousands of black draftees and enlisted men with the 93rd Division (Provisional) quickly discovered that their introduction to military life included the familiar refrain of Southern racism that seemed to follow them at every turn. In October of 1917, most of the elements of the 93rd Division received orders to train at military facilities situated in the American South. The 8th Illinois reported to Camp Logan, the 15th New York was dispatched to Camp Wadsworth, and the District of Columbia’s 1st Separate Battalion was dispatched to Camp Stuart—all located below the Mason–Dixon Line.
Black soldiers assigned to Spartanburg, South Carolina; Montgomery, Alabama; and Newport News, Virginia, heard speeches given by their commanders about the August insurrection staged by the 24th Infantry in Houston. But they also witnessed the “cake” and “custom” of Jim Crow discrimination firsthand. Almost immediately upon their arrival for training at Camp Wadsworth in early October 1917, men of the 15th New York reported to an assembly area. There, Col. William Hayward read a statement the mayor of Spartanburg had recently given to the New York Times, indicating the depth of fear and resentment that townspeople felt regarding the presence of armed black men near their city. Hayward implored the black soldiers to refrain from violence and conduct themselves as gentlemen and representatives of their race, but to no avail.
For most Northern black soldiers with the unit, such events proved to be rather unsettling. Although they had read or heard about Southern racism from the black press and family members and friends, when they encountered such affronts to their dignity firsthand, they found it hard to accept. After Spartanburg racists brutally accosted two of their most esteemed officers—Capt. Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall and regimental drum major Noble Sissle—some outraged members of the 15th decided to answer the insults and provocations with deadly force by gathering in small armed groups to storm the city. The potentially riotous encounter between black soldiers and the people of Spartanburg was dispelled only because Lt. James Reese Europe and the regiment received orders from Washington to be deployed overseas. On October 24, the regiment boarded troop transport trains bound for Hoboken, New Jersey.14
But not before another potential racial explosion rocked the unit. Once they had reported to Camp Mills, the men of the 15th almost came to blows with the all-white 167th Infantry, an Alabama National Guard regiment that was assisted to the famed 42nd “Rainbow” Division. The 167th had revealed their racist proclivities when some of the men reportedly placed “Whites Only” signs in the area. They had also severely beaten and blinded a black resident who sat in their railcar alongside the Long Island Rail Road. Racial tensions boiled to the point of becoming a full-scale confrontation between the two units as the 15th arrived in the Garden City area. Only after William Hayward managed to convince a troopship captain to set sail for Europe did the threat of violence lessen for all parties involved. Shortly thereafter, the men boarded the ship and headed for France, where fate and fortune awaited them.15
The Heroism of Henry Johnson
New Year’s Day of 1918 began with great anticipation for the men of the 93rd Division’s 15th New York Infantry. As the “Fighting 15th’s” band played “Auld Lang Syne,” returning the salutes given to them by the ship’s company, the enlisted men and officers debarked from the troopship Pocahontas in Brest before marching to a nearby station to board trains that would take them to Saint-Nazaire. As they trudged aboard the crowded freight cars, they understandably had much on their minds. Of course, they missed the comforts of home and hearth and good conversation with relatives and neighbors. They had just spent nearly three weeks on the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding near misses from friendly vessels and surviving rumored attacks from German submarines and raiders. But their spirits had never flagged. They were finally in France, about to confront the German enemy in a war to end all wars. The 15th’s commander, Col. William Hayward, wrote in his diary, “December 27, landed at Brest. Right side up.” Arthur Little, an officer with the unit, claimed, “We were ready to look up to John J. Pershing—almost as a god.”16
Unbeknownst to Hayward, Little, and the rest of their comrades, the train ride into Saint-Nazaire would bring them face-to-face with disappointment and dismay. No sooner had they arrived at the depot area that they learned their unit had been assigned as Services of Supply troops with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), receiving assignments to build docks, lay railroad tracks, haul lumber, dig ditches, construct roads, and unload ships. Because virtually all of the newly arrived soldiers wished to get right into the action, those who received these noncombatant-duty orders were sorely disappointed. Emmett J. Scott, civilian aide to the Secretary of War, wrote at the time, “The fact of being in the country ‘where the war is’ helped the impatient soldiers to endure their lot for a while, but before long there was a general feeling that ‘while stevedoring may be all right, it is not war,’ and the officers were besieged with apologetic and respectful queries, ‘When do we fight?’”17 Their disillusionment was compounded when an element of the regiment was shuttled to the nearby town of Coëtquidan and given orders to guard a German prisoner-of-war camp—hardly an honorable assignment for soldiers who yearned to fight at the Front.
Although they didn’t realize it, even before they had arrived in France the commander of the AEF had made other plans for them. In the days leading up to the 15th New York’s arrival on European soil, Pershing and General Staff members had planned to disband the 93rd Division and reorganize its troops as pioneer infantry regiments. In his mind, they would work on lines of logistics and communication, as well as build roads, salvage battlefields, remove ammunition, rebury the dead, dig trenches, construct ammunition depots and bomb shelters, and perform other service and supply duties for frontline units. Pershing’s motivations for disbanding the unit and dispatching its components in such a manner remain unclear. While his prewar impressions of the conduct of black soldiers, stemming from his service with the celebrated 10th Cavalry, were highly complimentary, other forces may have contributed to his decisions as AEF supreme commander. While some scholars have pointed to the racial sensitivities of his senior commanders, others have indicated that diplomatic entreaties between Official Washington and European powers over manpower policies may have played a role.
“We were ready to look up to John J. Pershing—almost as a god.”
Whatever lay behind Pershing’s decision, it had a dampening effect on black troops stationed at port cities in France, including Brest, Saint-Nazaire, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Le Havre. As 8th Illinois chaplain William Braddan recalled, “The most dejected-looking men I ever saw in uniform, and the most unsoldierly, are the stevedores. Truly, I would rather be a dog than such a soldier.”18
Fate, and the dire military situation in Europe, soon forced a significant change in War Department policy. By early 1918, the French military had suffered a string of humiliating setbacks. During the previous spring, widespread mutinies had taken place within the French Army in the wake of its disastrous Nivelle Offensive. More than twenty thousand troops from over fifty divisions had deserted from the ranks. What’s worse, German commanders had planned a major offensive along the Western Front that spring. Aimed at dividing the British and French forces, the Germans hoped to end the war in its favor before American troops could be assembled and used to reverse the Allied losses. Pressed to find fresh troops, Marshal Foch, recently named Allied commander in chief, pleaded with the War Department, met with Pershing, and requested that American soldiers be used as replacements. The French cared very little about race, having enlisted African troops from Morocco, Algeria, and West Africa from the beginning of the war.
Little did the French commander realize that machinations within AEF headquarters were at work in his favor. Around the same time, Pershing received a letter from Col. William Hayward from Saint-Nazaire, describing the demoralizing effect that labor duties were having on the 15th New York’s morale and demanding a frontline assignment for the regiment. Although Pershing initially resisted the idea of integrating American troops into French formations, he reassigned the regiments of the 93rd (Provisional) Division to the French Army.
Describing the placement of the division’s four regiments with the French at the time, Pershing later recalled, “I consented to send temporarily to the French four colored Infantry regiments of the 93rd Division. Some of the units had arrived, and others were expected soon to be en route, but they did not have in France even the beginning of a brigade or divisional organization. One regiment was to go to each of four divisions, with the provision that they were to be returned for the formation of the 93rd Division when called for.”
The regiments of the 93rd would serve with French forces for the remainder of the war.
While Pershing may have thought that the regiments would later be returned to the AEF and reconstituted as an American division, the French thought otherwise. The regiments of the 93rd would serve with French forces for the remainder of the war.19
On March 12, 1918, the first elements of the 15th New York moved from Connantre to Givry-en-Argonne, where they were assigned to the French 4th Army’s 16th Division for field training. The men were upbeat. Upon their arrival at the sleepy town in central France, they received word that their unit had been renamed the 369th Infantry. For most of the soldiers, the reassignment to the French Army offered a real opportunity to fire guns, and, most importantly, to gain the notoriety of being the first American unit to strike a blow against the Germans as members of the French Army. But for many, the French Army experience soon proved to be as disconcerting as their arrival on the European continent. First, they lacked adequate interpreters in the ranks and had to adjust to the unfamiliar language spoken by their new French comrades. Then they were ordered to replace their American equipment with French uniforms, helmets, weaponry and ammunition, knapsacks, and gas masks. What’s more, their units were reorganized in order to meet the requirements of the French Tables of Organization.
As if that wasn’t enough, the feelings of bewilderment GIs experienced while receiving their new gear were no doubt accompanied by a profound sense of dislocation as French drill sergeants and corporals instructed them on the tactics inherent in the monotonous grind of trench warfare along the Western Front. For nearly a month, the men learned how to distinguish between different kinds of poison gas by smell, and the ways to approach the heavily armed enemy trenches that dotted the European battlefields. This instruction would prove to be essential, even as it conveyed the sobering possibility of death, since the training exercises often took place in close proximity to the sounds of enemy guns along the Front.
As the 369th Infantry received their introduction to trench warfare, disparate elements of the 93rd Division began to show up in France. During the month of April, Brest served as the landing point for the 370th and the 372nd Infantry Regiments. Upon their arrival, each regiment reported to different units within the French Army. While the 370th moved on to Grandvillars, where it was attached to the French 73rd Division, the 372nd debarked from the USS Susquehanna at Saint-Nazaire and headed for Condé-en-Barrois, where it trained with the French XIII Corps until late May.
Around the same time, Freddie Stowers and the 371st debarked and marched to the Pontanezen Barracks, an outpost that rested on the heights just beyond the port city. By the end of June, all of the units with the division were in central France and would report to active sectors in or around the Argonne Forest, where German shelling occurred on a daily basis. For the newly arrived soldiers, the Front marked a clear departure from anything they had ever experienced. Endless stories about impending German raids and artillery concentration filled the air as the soldiers moved into regimental sectors along the Front. Most of the division members were very inexperienced; as one newspaper correspondent who covered the unit’s activities put it, “They did not know the use of rockets, and thought a gas alarm and the tooting of sirens meant that the Germans were coming in automobiles.”
The men and junior officers in the 371st Infantry saw things differently. Trenton, New Jersey, native Needham Roberts, a soldier with the 369th, stated, “Green troops, though we were, who had never heard a shell burst, had never smelled gas, everyone was eager to write the first letter home and say, ‘I am in the frontline trenches.’” Chester Heywood, a captain with the 371st, recalled, “Orders were received to prepare to march, surplus equipment was to be evacuated, and we were one step nearer an active participation in the war.”20
To a man, soldiers in the newly designated 369th Infantry translated Heywood’s sentiment into action. As the unit concluded a three-week stint of training along the Front, the regiment was dispatched to Mains de Massages, an area west of the Aisne River and northwest of the Champagne region. There, they participated in the occupation of the Afrique Sector, a zone that lay just west of the Argonne Forest. Under the command of Colonel Hayward, they remained in the active sector until they received orders to take part in the Champagne-Marne Defensive in July. The purpose of the Allied action was to stave off the massive German offensive that was aimed at destroying the French 16th Division. The 369th’s mission was to operate in tandem with the French unit to probe and recapture the weakest German trenches west of the Argonne Forest.
Upon entering the zone, black soldiers in the unit quickly discovered the enemy was just as intractable as the barbed-wired entrenchments they faced along the Front. The commander of the 369th assigned individual GIs to be relay runners who risked life and limb to cover an area of approximately three kilometers along the well-fortified front line. They did this to maintain a close liaison with their French comrades. The horrors of war were heightened considerably with both sides carrying out daily and nightly raids against each other, as well as patrols into the wide swath of land between the Allied trenches and the German defensive redoubts, often resulting in numerous casualties.
Finally, the soldiers battled the treacherous weather and the climate just as much as the German enemy. Horace Pippen, a twenty-nine-year-old corporal with the unit, remembered, “The ‘Oregon Forest’ [sic] was dark and rainy almost all the time. We took to them lonely, cooty, muddy trenches, water seeping everywhere; you went to bed wet and woke up the same. At night you could not see your hands before you . . . In the Day time it were Dark, even, we could not see anyone coming, but you could hear them.”21
On a dark and gloomy night in May, a German raid near the western edge of the Argonne Forest prompted the courageous actions taken by Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, two privates with the 369th Infantry. The two soldiers were standing guard at a small outpost near the German lines when Johnson heard what he thought was the shearing of barbed wire in the vicinity. When asked about the source of the noise, Johnson calmly responded, “They are Germans getting ready—they are going to take this hill,” before shouting to his fellow sentry, “Turn out the guard!”
Almost instantly, a raiding party of almost twenty Germans appeared in the area, firing on and wounding both soldiers. Undaunted, Johnson—known as “Black Death” by his fellow servicemen for his intense fighting in France—returned immediate fire. For his part, Roberts tossed hand grenades at the enemy while lying prone on the ground, but to no avail. The German party continued to push the surprise attack and captured the beleaguered soldier. The events that followed have become a matter of conjecture, but have also entered black collective memory. Seeing his comrade in danger, the five-foot-four Johnson emptied the magazine of his rifle before grabbing his bolo knife, “a short, heavy weapon with a razor-sharp edge, the weight of a cleaver, and the point of a butcher knife.” Armed with just the bolo, Johnson fiercely engaged the Germans in deadly hand-to-hand combat. With that, the “Battle of Henry Johnson” ensued.
After splitting the head of one of the enemy combatants, Johnson disemboweled the German leader of the raid who was dragging Roberts away, thus freeing the severely wounded soldier in his grasp. The heroic actions taken by the former railway porter so stunned the German party that they promptly gathered up their dead and wounded and hastily fled the outpost altogether. Johnson pressed the attack a bit further, using his emptied rifle as a club and throwing hand grenades at the fleeing enemy before being forced to succumb to the severity of his own wounds.
Shortly afterward, the two soldiers were transferred to a French hospital where they convalesced. Word of their acts of bravery began to attract the attention of French and American commanders throughout Europe. On May 20, Johnson and Roberts received the highest French military medal—the Croix de Guerre with Palm and Star from Gen. Henri Gouraud, the French Army commander—thus earning the distinction of being the first Americans to receive such an honor in the war. At the same time, they received special commendation from AEF headquarters. In an account that publicized their act of valor and devotion to duty, Gen. John J. Pershing openly voiced his admiration for the two men, stating, “The two colored sentries should be given credit for preventing by their bravery the taking prisoner of any of our men.” Little did the two men realize at the time, but their valor and sacrifice would become the stuff of legend among various sectors of the black community once they returned home.
But as we shall see, American recognition of Johnson’s heroic deed would take place much later.
The Indomitable Courage of Freddie Stowers
On April 7, 1918, a regiment of all-black troops stood on a pier in Newport News, Virginia. H hour quietly approached as the harmonic melody of “Over There” filled the air. Darkness descended on the sleepy Southern town while companies with the 371st Infantry Regiment trudged up the gangplanks toward the President Grant, bound for France. For the men who marched in the ranks that evening, the moment was filled with great excitement intermingled with feelings of relief. For most of the conscripts, just getting to the Hampton Roads port of embarkation had tested the patience of even the most seasoned soldier.
Organized as an element of the First Provisional Colored Regiment in August 1917, the men in the unit had been forced to wait for nearly seven months before receiving orders from the War Department to report to Camp Upton, New York, for training in the combat arms. Official Washington had delayed their initial orders due to a severe labor shortage in the American South, harvesting the year’s cotton crop. Since most of the men hailed from South Carolina, such noncombatant duties smacked of considerable irony, and must have produced profound feelings of disillusionment, not to mention anger and frustration. “ ‘This man’s army certainly doesn’t want us,’ was heard on all sides,” a chaplain assigned to one of the 93rd Division’s all-black regiments recalled.22
Twenty-two-year-old Freddie Stowers from Sandy Springs, South Carolina, may have shared those sentiments. Stowers had witnessed firsthand the harsh realities of race and class in the Deep South. Born in January 1896 to Wiley and Annie Stowers, both ex-slaves, he was raised in Anderson County, where nearly two centuries of cotton picking and share-cropping had shaped the lives of most members of the black community. As the twentieth century moved toward the end of its second decade, Stowers married and took on various forms of backbreaking, unskilled farm labor to support his expanding family.
In October of 1917, however, Stowers decided to quit the farming life altogether and join the army. His reasons for enlisting are unclear; he had no prior knowledge of army discipline and culture, nor did anyone in his family or neighborhood have any military experience. It’s quite possible that he was interested in the brewing worldwide conflict that became known as the Great War, and was sufficiently impressed by the “close ranks” rhetoric of racial leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois that he decided to enlist. If that was the case, receiving labor assignments outside of the infantry, such as picking cotton, must have left Stowers and other soldiers feeling understandably underwhelmed.23 As Stowers and the men gathered along the decks of the troop transport steamer, expressions of exasperation and cynicism surely wafted through their conversations.
Around the time that Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were about to enter the pantheon of immortality, the men of the 371st Infantry boarded railcars that summer, bound for Vaubecourt, just west of the Saint-Mihiel salient. Shortly after their arrival, they, like their sister regiments formerly with the 93rd (Provisional) Division, were attached to the French 154th Infantry Division of the French XIII Corps. They, too, exchanged their US government–issued rifles, packs, helmets, and uniforms for French equipment. French advisers put the infantrymen through the same intricacies of training, including hours of instruction in the trenches. More often than not, their training took place in areas where they could hear artillery fire at close range. Shortly afterward, the outfit marched northwest through Sivry-la-Perche, Bois Borrus, and Vigneville, to the Bois de Bethlainville, before being assigned to the newly created French 157th “Red Hand” Division under the command of Gen. Mariano Goybet.24
As they approached the Front, the newly arrived soldiers of the 371st Infantry could not help but notice the multinational composition of the French Army. As soon as they reached Bois de Bethlainville, they met soldiers from all over the world, including Italians, French, Chinese, and Arabs. The Argonne Forest involved troops not only from France and Britain, but also Dominion forces from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, they were deeply impressed by the pan-African sensibilities expressed by groups of Africans who hailed from French colonies like Senegal and Morocco, attached to the French divisions. The strange mélange of languages, customs, practices, and traditions assaulted their senses like no other, and encouraged them to think about the world anew. A black officer writing home to his family during the period described the transnational character of their experiences in the following manner: “The Italians all speak French pretty well, and a few words of English. We all jabbered in French, Italian, and English, and as one of the Italian officers said, ‘It is a regular Tower of Babel, isn’t it?’”25
‘It is a regular Tower of Babel, isn’t it?’
From the moment the soldiers of the 371st regiment moved to the area north of Somme-Bionne with the French 4th Army to the days leading up to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that fall, the consciousness-raising moments the soldiers experienced while interacting with their international counterparts were put to the test during the month of September of 1918. Upon their arrival, the infantrymen were ordered to take part in one of the most critical stages of the final and greatest Allied offensive along the entire Western Front, from the Swiss border to the Belgian coastline. The mission was to lay siege to the vaunted Hindenburg Line and seize the Carignan-Sedan-Mézières Railroad—a critical point in the German line of supply—thereby forcing the surrender of the German Army. The Argonne Forest was pivotal in the initiative, as its dense woods, barbed wire, and damp and narrow dugouts precluded passage by vehicle.
On September 25, the men of the 371st received orders to move forward to the Front, where they had been assigned as reserve forces for the French 157th Red Hand Division as it advanced south of Ripont. As the men approached the area, they discovered that the horrors of war awaited them. Enemy artillery fire erupted as a previously dormant Argonne Forest was transformed into an active theater of operation. During a nine-day period, elements of the 371st Infantry, along with the 372nd, fought German forces, advancing nearly five miles against well-organized enemy defenses. They captured over six hundred prisoners of war, along with fifteen heavy guns, twenty Minenwerfers, and scores of machine guns, engineering supplies, and artillery ammunition. But they paid a dear price for their gallantry, with more than five hundred of their men wounded, gassed, or killed in the process.26
One of the most costly battles fought during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive took place on September 28 at Cote 188, a key strategic point in the Hindenburg Line that lay near Beausejour (Bussy) Farm, and involved C Company squad leader Freddie Stowers. After receiving orders to launch an all-out assault on the hill, Stowers and the men of his company managed to move through the area virtually unscathed before encountering the most unlikely sight. Upon their arrival, the South Carolina native and his comrades discovered that the enemy had ceased firing upon them. They had actually begun climbing out of their dugouts, proclaiming their surrender.
But to their consternation, Stowers and his men found that all was not what it seemed. As they moved to reciprocate the gesture, the enemy jumped back into their positions and proceeded to lay down indiscriminate fire on the unsuspecting company, practically annihilating most of the unit’s officers. The dire situation also gave rise to a critical moment of heroism for one soldier. Undaunted, Stowers stepped forward and provided inspired leadership for fellow members of his company, spurring them forward in a desperate battle against enemy trenches and the elements of the hill. With total disregard for any danger to himself, the intrepid squad leader moved his fellow soldiers toward the enemy position, until the Germans dropped their weapons and staged a hasty retreat to the Sechault-Ardeuil Line.
Stowers and his men seized Hill 188, captured many German prisoners, and secured precious machine guns, railroad cars, and enormous quantities of lumber and supplies. In addition, they shot down three German airplanes during their attack. Stowers would not live long enough to see the fruits of his courageous act. When the assault ended, he, along with more than 40 percent of his two-hundred-man company, had been brought down during the battle, gravely wounded by machine-gun fire.
The Plight of Black World War I Ex-Servicemen
The legacy of Stowers’s courage that day would long outlive his physical presence. His actions earned him many French honors from the Red Hand Division commander, Gen. Mariano Goybet. For his distinguished service, Stowers received the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military decoration for fortitude on the field of battle. Stowers, the grandson of slaves, was laid to rest in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France. The French memorialized the heroic deeds performed by Stowers and his 371st comrades who fell at Bussy Farm, Ardeuil, Montauxelle, and Triers Ferme by erecting an obelisk statue in their memory. His regimental commander also recommended the young patriot, along with six members of the all-black regiment, for the Distinguished Service Cross, and pushed for Stowers to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest citation for valor.
In most instances, Stowers’s courageous exploits would have generated the same outpouring of praise from observers in the United States, but this was not the case. As Stowers’s family members and the survivors of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive would soon discover, their acts of bravery produced only a sort of Pyrrhic victory. The legacy of his valiant actions, along with the heroism displayed by other black soldiers in World War I, would be virtually erased from our nation’s memory until the waning years of the twentieth century.
But like Henry Johnson and other black heroes of the World War I era, Stowers’s path to glory would take many twists and turns before attracting the attention of congressional members and prompting the actions of a sitting president.27
Unlike Freddie Stowers, Henry Johnson managed to make it back home in one piece. In February of 1919, the former railroad hand returned to the United States and received a hero’s welcome. During a parade along New York’s Fifth Avenue, throngs of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of their Albany hero. One can only wonder what Johnson was thinking as he rode along in an open-top automobile to shouts of “Oh, you, Henry Johnson! Oh, you, “Black Death.” He had come a long way from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, through the streets of New York, to battles in France, only to wind up back in New York, greeted with adoring applause and lasting fame.
He was the first US soldier to be accorded a major decoration for bravery in the war when he received the Croix de Guerre. Former president Theodore Roosevelt heaped praise on him, describing the World War I veteran as “one of the five bravest” lads to serve in the war. On March 26, Johnson spoke at the State Armory on Washington Avenue about his wartime experience. He sat for seemingly endless rounds of interviews with members of both the black and the white national press corps, all of whom were anxious to hear about the exploits of the 369th and their authentic hero. By the end of that month, Johnson’s celebrity had reached even greater heights when he appeared before the Albany State Legislature to speak in support of a bill to provide veterans’ preference for ex-GIs who sought civil service employment.28
Shortly afterward, Johnson was discharged from the army. He soon discovered that new challenges awaited him. His war wounds had left him permanently crippled, preventing him from being able to secure employment in his old position as a baggage handler. Penniless, and denied a veteran’s pension, Johnson died a destitute alcoholic in July of 1929 at the age of thirty-two. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Although he received a posthumous Purple Heart, the Medal of Honor still eluded him. As his wartime deeds entered the realms of local mythology, the Albany Chapter of the 369th Regiment Veterans traveled to the state capitol, urging lawmakers to push for legislation to honor the New York native. Assemblyman Michael McNulty and Senator Alfonse D’Amato also introduced bills in their respective chambers of the house, calling for the Medal of Honor for Johnson, to no avail.
But in June of 2015, at the behest of New York senator Charles Schumer and a host of prominent scholars, President Barack Obama finally bestowed the nation’s highest honor for valor on Henry Johnson. Staff members and honored guests attended the ceremony, pregnant with meaning, in the East Room of the White House.29 Command Sgt. Maj. Louis Wilson of the New York National Guard accepted the medal on behalf of the long-since-fallen soldier. President Obama stated that the country needed to express its gratitude, even ninety-seven years after the soldier’s act of courage. “It takes our nation too long sometimes to say so,” he added. “We have work to do as a nation to make sure that all of our heroes’ stories are told.”30
“We have work to do as a nation to make sure that all of our heroes’ stories are told.”
Obama’s words signify how the quality of valor requires a revaluation of American democratic principles, and how its meaning has been transformed over time to meet the challenges of each war. How the nation arrived at such a re-estimation of courage and what circumstances forced such reinterpretation is the subject for a later chapter.