CHAPTER 6
Thousands of Negro boys would have done the same thing as Connie did if they had been put in the same spot as he was. My son did not give his life in vain. His bravery has been recognized by the President of the United States and the whole country. And even those persons in America who have felt that the Negroes are second-class citizens must in their hearts now know that this isn’t so. My son has proved that the Negro is worthy of the country’s highest honor.
—Van Charlton, 1952
On a warm, sunny day in July 1952, a Gold Star mother shed tears of pride during a ceremony honoring her recently fallen son. In the midst of whistle blasts and geysers of water emanating from fireboats in New York harbor, Clara and her husband Van were on hand to witness the launching of the Merchant Marine’s latest sea vessel, a handsome ferryboat called the Sergeant Cornelius H. Charlton. The army vessel had previously plied the waters of New York Harbor between 1st Army Headquarters on Governors Island and the Battery under a different nameplate, but it was now being rechristened after the Bronx, New York, infantryman who had recently been posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his outstanding act of valor near Chipo-ri during the Korean War. Charlton joined fellow New York State native William Henry Thompson as one of only two African-American soldiers to be so honored.
The whole Charlton family was there, along with members of the Bronx American Legion and the Unknown Soldiers Post, and a whole host of Defense Department officials. Perhaps Lt. Gen. Willis D. Crittenberger, 1st Army commander, provided the ideal eulogy for the occasion when he said, “In giving Sergeant Charlton’s name to this craft, we of the Army are dedicating a memorial to symbolize our highest respect for his deed.”1
Unfortunately, the gratitude that Crittenberger and those in attendance expressed that day did not extend to Charlton’s unit. At the time, the 24th Infantry Regiment was fighting a multiple-front war—first, as ideological shock troops in an emerging civil rights insurgency; then, as black patriots fighting against the Communist enemy, along with racism within their own ranks, during the actual shooting; and later, as pivotal figures in the nation’s historical memory of the Cold War era. As Charlton and his comrades no doubt realized, Southeast Asia served as the battleground upon which these struggles would be bitterly contested.
While the public dedication of the Sergeant Cornelius H. Charlton was a wonderful tribute to the man, recognition of his unit’s monumental role in America’s first shooting war after 1945 has been largely erased from the nation’s collective memory. Until recently, historians have tended to accept Roy Appleman’s negative depiction of black soldiers’ performance as presented in the army’s 1961 official history of the Korean War. Largely based on judgments rendered by army officers and mass media outlets, the battlefield actions of the 24th have been described as “frightened and demoralized,” exhibiting a “tendency to panic,” “and straggling in retreat.” History textbooks and social science literature have used these negative depictions to highlight Executive Order 9981, which marked the desegregation of the military and the end of Jim Crow racism in the US Army.2 In some ways, the legacy of Cornelius Charlton’s valor and the misrepresentation of the 24th Infantry have moved in tandem with each other. It would take nearly forty years and a long quest for equality, both within and without the American military, to revise that interpretation.3
Recognition of his unit’s monumental role in America’s first shooting war after 1945 has been largely erased from the nation’s collective memory.
As the presence of American troops expanded in Europe and Asia at the end of World War II, African Americans contemplated their place in the postwar military establishment.
In the months immediately following the end of World War II, African-American men and women found themselves confronting a sharp downturn of personal fortune, as military demobilization spelled massive unemployment and the reinstitution of discriminatory hiring practices in the workplace. As a result, large numbers of African Americans were barred from the nation’s auto, steel, and electronics industries, leaving them impoverished and embittered.
Black GIs who had fought Fascist and Nazi enemies abroad now faced a more-familiar adversary. Immediately upon their return home, many former servicemen were harassed, beaten, and murdered by white civilians and law enforcement, with vicious impunity. Episodes of racial violence erupted up and down the Eastern Seaboard: Isaac Woodard was blinded in South Carolina; a police officer killed two former black servicemen in Nassau County, New York; and James Stephenson was violently beaten upon his arrest in Columbia, Tennessee.
The plight of African Americans worsened as relations chilled between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mounting anti-Communist hysteria at the end of 1946 resulted in months of government harassment for many black progressive organizations and leaders. As the country began to pivot from wartime to peacetime status, the tentacles of segregation and discrimination reasserted themselves, reaching nearly every facet of American society, and leading black men to openly debate their status in postwar America.4 World War II and its bitter aftermath influenced many young black veterans to remain in the military. They had come to believe it offered greater economic and social opportunity than what they could find in civilian life. In many ways, the army still offered what it had provided black men since the Civil War: steady employment and a viable pathway toward achieving respectable black manhood.
At the end of World War II, black reenlistment in the army had outpaced the wartime percentage projected by War Department planners, rising from 9.7 percent of its enlisted strength to well over 14 percent in 1946. As the military strength declined sharply from 1,891,000 men in 1946 to 550,000 in 1948, black enlistment climbed steadily during the same period. The Secretary of War and army staff officials began to contemplate the issue of black employment in the peacetime army. Launched by the adjutant general in late 1945, army ground and service forces, along with the air force, began to evaluate the performance of black troops in the previous war. The War Department issued questionnaires to senior commanders to gauge the performance of black troops and to solicit recommendations for their use in the postwar period.
Unsurprisingly, their responses were negative. While acknowledging the valorous acts performed by the small black outfits that served alongside larger all-white units during the latter stages of the war, most officers ignored the heroism of soldiers like Vernon Baker, John Fox, and countless others. They largely derided the performance of black officers and enlisted men and questioned their conduct under fire, couching their arguments in claims of military cohesion and efficiency.
Noel Parrish, senior officer of the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama, stated that by developing racial guidelines that focused entirely on black GIs, the army may have erred.
Not all commanders subscribed to these views, however. Some, like Noel Parrish, senior officer of the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama, stated that by developing racial guidelines that focused entirely on black GIs, the army may have erred. Policies that called for the end of segregation but acknowledged the individual capabilities of black soldiers might be more feasible, Parrish noted.5
In October of 1945, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson asked Chief of Staff George Marshall to appoint a group of senior officers to develop a policy for the future employment of black manpower in the postwar period. Headed by Lt. Gen. Alvan Gillem Jr., the board, mostly composed of Southern-born officers, convened for nearly six weeks before rendering its report to the chief of staff. After interviewing more than sixty witnesses and collecting a wealth of evidence, the board concluded that black soldiers had a constitutional right to fight, and that the US Army must live up to its obligation to develop more-effective employment policies for African-American service personnel. But while they advised the War Department to abandon its practice of developing division-size all-black units, they emphasized the continued employment of smaller black outfits to serve alongside white combat elements.6
When released in the spring of 1946, the Gillem Board’s findings drew scorn from nearly every quarter of the black community. NAACP officials and other civil rights organizations excoriated the report, correctly claiming that it merely continued the military’s practice of segregation. Roy Wilkins, the NAACP’s assistant executive secretary, called the board’s recommendations an absolute “failure” in The Crisis. Under the headline “Still a Jim Crow Army,” Wilkins concluded, “The basic policy is still Jim Crow. Instead of having big Jim Crow units like the 92nd and the 93rd Infantry Divisions (15,000 to 18,000 men), we are to have nothing larger than Jim Crow regiments (3,000 men).”
By the end of 1948, international events would combine with presidential politics to galvanize public debate over military service. A Communist coup in Czechoslovakia had increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, raising the possibility of a shooting war between the two adversaries. American military officials became even more concerned about US troop strength when the Soviet Union imposed a full-scale blockade on West Berlin. Military leaders and the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings about instituting universal military training, and worried about how African Americans would react to serving yet again in a segregated army.
On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman, facing the prospect of massive black resistance to a segregated draft and military while anticipating the ominous threat of renewed war, signed Executive Order 9981, calling for “the equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the Armed Services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” When asked whether his order spelled the eventual demise of segregation in the armed forces, Truman emphatically responded “Yes.”7 When the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services suggested that the army break up its all-black units in late 1948, the service branch demurred. As a result, large segregated units were deactivated and black infantry and artillery battalions were simply merged into white regiments and divisions. Staffed by white senior commanders, racial prejudice manifested within these units.
By the time the Korean War erupted in 1950, black men who had enlisted in the army stood in the ranks of segregated platoons, companies, and battalions. As one veteran soldier noticed when he was reassigned to active duty to American occupational forces in Japan during the period, “It was still a Jim Crow Army. Segregation was practiced routinely and administered religiously. Training was slipshod and routine—not a serious or focused professional activity. The senior officers were there essentially to get their tickets punched for promotion to higher rank or pass the time until retirement.”8
The subterfuge inherent in the US military’s delayed response to Truman’s executive order was soon unveiled for all to see in the post–World War II experiences of the 24th Infantry Regiment. At the end of the war, the regiment moved across the Pacific Ocean to Okinawa, joining American occupational forces there. They had just completed a series of mopping-up operations on Saipan and on the Kerama Islands, where they had accepted the first formal surrender of Japanese troops in the area. The regiment had remained in Okinawa until January 1947, when they were ordered to the island of Honshu, attached to the 8th Army’s 25th Infantry Division. Their stint of duty proved uneventful. As the army began its postwar conversion to peacetime status, the men engaged in seemingly end less retraining exercises, including dismounted drill, military courtesy and discipline, physical training, and interior guard duty. The constant rotation of enlisted men and officers in the unit created feelings of instability and a lack of discipline for men who had become accustomed to the stresses of war.
The constant rotation of enlisted men and officers in the unit created feelings of instability and a lack of discipline for men who had become accustomed to the stresses of war.
Jim Crow segregation also impacted the men in Okinawa and Japan, as they encountered separate post exchanges and officers’ clubs on the military posts. They were discouraged from patronizing Japanese businesses whenever they left the base, and military commanders forbade them from bringing Japanese women to their quarters. Fistfights broke out frequently between the men of the 24th Infantry and other regiments, as black GIs reacted to racial slurs like “blackbirds,” “niggers,” and “boys.”
When the 24th Infantry left the southern part of Japan for the shores of Korea, they essentially had two separate identities: While they were seen as bulwarks in the fight against international communism and symbols of equality and first-class citizenship in American life, they still faced racial segregation at the hands of skeptical white commanders and staunch segregationists.
The heroic acts performed by William Henry Thompson, Cornelius Charlton, and others during the Korean War would support blacks’ persistent claims of equality during war and directly refute long-standing white beliefs of African-American dysfunction and cowardice in the face of battle and overall unfitness for citizenship. To best understand these heroes, we must look into their past and the events that inspired them.
William Henry Thompson and the Battle of Masan, August 1950
Born in 1927, William Henry Thompson experienced hard times throughout his early years. His mother, Mary Henderson, raised him in an impoverished tenement neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Thompson dropped out of high school and worked as a menial laborer in a textile factory. The low wages he earned were not enough to sustain an adequate living, and when a minister saw him wandering aimlessly in the street, he placed him in a homeless shelter where he stayed until the age of eighteen.
In October of 1945, Thompson struck out on his own. He decided to join the army, apparently in an attempt to escape abject poverty. After undergoing basic training, he was attached to units stationed in Adak, Alaska, and Honshu, Japan, where he served for a year and a half before receiving an honorable discharge from military service in late 1947. But after discovering that civilian life afforded little comfort, Thompson reenlisted in January of 1948, reporting to South Korea where he was assigned to the US 6th Infantry Division. He remained there until he was reassigned to Company M of the 24th Infantry Regiment.
On June 25, 1950, the 24th Infantry had just completed heavy weapons exercises at Mount Fuji and were returning to their barracks at Gifu, Japan, when the guns of war erupted on the Korean peninsula. Elements of the North Korean People’s Army (NKP) had crossed the 38th parallel, initiating an all-out attack on South Korea. Approximately ninety thousand men, supported by a full complement of infantry divisions, an armored brigade, tanks, and artillery, deployed along the south side of the defensive perimeter in an overt attempt to capture South Korea’s capital city of Seoul. Encouraged by the Soviet Union, the invasion by the NKP was such that it caught the Republic of Korea Armed Forces (ROK) and the United States totally by surprise. Hasty efforts were made to rush ground and air forces and equipment from Japan to the Korean peninsula. By the end of the month, the men of the 24th Infantry had received orders to move across the Korean Strait and proceed to Pusan, on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula. Once they arrived at the port, they boarded railcars, heading 110 miles north to P’ohang-dong. From there, they received orders to move into the Kumchon area before eventually taking up a position in the vicinity of Yechon.9
At Pusan harbor, the 24th Infantry realized they had hurdles to overcome. First, there were not enough railcars to take them to the forwarding areas. Second, there were not enough trucks to transport them to the front. Third, they were underequipped; their field packs contained only a change of socks and underwear, a few personal items, and a meager supply of combat rations. Fourth, confusion and uncertainty reigned. The combat readiness of the 8th Army proved to be woefully abysmal during the opening of hostilities.
The 25th Infantry Division’s initial mission was to set up its headquarters at Yongchon, halfway between Taegu and Pohang. From there, two of the division’s infantry regiments, the 27th and the 25th, respectively, were to block enemy movement south from Taejon and Chonju sectors. But as the regiments moved into position, deteriorating circumstances at Kumchon dictated that the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 24th Infantry be moved to retake the higher ground north of Yechon. The small town was of primary importance to American and South Korean forces, for it possessed strategic roads that would allow the enemy to move east or west.10
In the summer of 1950, William Thompson experienced a baptism by fire near the Pusan Perimeter. In late July, Thompson’s unit, the 25th Infantry Division, received orders to move south to Masan, a port city located thirty miles west of Pusan, where enemy forces were massing for a possible attack. The assignment proved to be easier said than done. On August 2, the unit attempted to leave Sangju, but discovered that their southward movement was partially blocked by the continuous flow of refugees into the area. The regiment’s convoy of trucks stood in the pathway of one of the supporting cavalry divisions, and this caused episodes of confusion and delays. These setbacks failed to deter the flow of division forces to Masan, however. After arriving at the port city, battalions of the regiment took up positions west and northwest of the city and began to carry out patrols ostensibly aimed at offsetting guerrilla activities and enemy infiltration into the area.11
After nearly a month of waging countermeasures against the enemy, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions staged countless patrols in areas south of Haman. These missions came at a tremendous cost, as they encountered enemy parties and sustained numerous casualties. During a patrol, a platoon from the 3rd Battalion’s Company L engaged a group of approximately thirty North Korean soldiers, and both sides were practically annihilated. The company commander, recently arrived to assume leadership in the unit, and two enlisted men were killed while leading the mission. Eleven men with the outfit were wounded, and two others were listed as missing in action.12
These missions came at a tremendous cost, as they encountered enemy parties and sustained numerous casualties.
Pvt. 1st Class William Thompson’s valiant actions while engaging the enemy would become firmly enshrined in the collective memory of his fellow servicemen. On August 6, Thompson’s heavy-weapons platoon, along with Company M, was providing support for the 25th Infantry Division’s night advance near Haman when it was ambushed by an overwhelming number of NKP troops. Pinned down by a steady stream of automatic-weapons fire, the platoon leader ordered the men to withdraw to higher ground and regroup under the cover of darkness. Despite being severely wounded, Thompson ignored the order, setting up his machine gun in the path of the approaching enemy and laying down withering suppressive fire until his unit was able to secure a more-tenable position.
Thompson sacrificed himself while defending his comrades on the rough ground of Sobuk-San. Although gravely injured, he resisted his fellow GIs’ efforts to get him to withdraw to safety. Thompson’s war came to an abrupt end when he was struck by an enemy grenade, killing him instantly. While making his final stand, the twenty-two-year-old New York native had taken the lives of numerous North Koreans before succumbing to his own wounds.
Thompson’s role in the fighting impressed enlisted men and officers alike. His platoon leader, Lt. Herbert Wilson, later recalled: “When the order was given to withdraw, I ordered Thompson to withdraw with the rest. At the time, I saw he had been wounded in several places and was bleeding profusely. Thompson told me that he had been hit and was not going to move back, but would cover the movement of the rest of the men; then if he couldn’t get out, he would take a lot of the enemy with him.”13 Thompson’s achievement was honored by senior officers throughout the Far East Command. Recognizing the Korean War veteran posthumously, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway cited the black machine gunner as “a splendid soldier who fought with distinct gallantry and fortitude for the ideals of freedom and the protection of his fellow soldiers.”14
Thompson’s heroic actions that day were overshadowed by white officers’ reservations about the 24th Infantry Regiment’s conduct on the field of battle. Battalion commander Lt. Melvin Blair withheld his recommendation for the Medal of Honor because he and other senior commanders looked rather unfavorably upon the overall performance of the men in the 24th Infantry. Thompson’s action simply confirmed their shared belief that black junior officers took questionable risks and often disobeyed orders on the battlefield. Only after interviewing many eyewitnesses who corroborated Thompson’s act of valor did Blair relent and recommend him for the Silver Star citation and the Medal of Honor.
On June 21, 1951, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Omar Bradley, awarded the Medal of Honor to Thompson’s mother, Mary Henderson, at the Pentagon. Thompson was recognized by black scholars as the first African American to be honored with the medal for bravery in the Korean War, and the first black soldier to be accorded the nation’s highest military honor since the Spanish-American War.15 (African-American heroes who fought during World War I and World War II would not be accorded the Medal of Honor until the 1990s and 2000s.)
The 24th Infantry and Sgt. Cornelius Charlton during Operation Piledriver, June 1951
Cornelius Charlton was born in 1929 to a large family in East Gulf, West Virginia. His father Van struggled to provide for his family for nearly thirty years as a coal miner for the Gulf Smokeless Coal Company. Charlton and his family lived in West Virginia until 1940, when they moved to the Bronx, New York, after his father landed a job as an apartment building superintendent. After graduating from high school, Charlton enlisted in the army in November of 1946. He completed his basic training and was assigned to occupied Germany for a few years before reporting for stateside duty with a military engineering outfit at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. There he remained until he was deployed to Okinawa in 1950,16 eventually heading to Korea to serve in the war.
As the weeks turned into months, the men of the 24th Infantry participated in some of the most hotly contested battles in the latter stages of the Korean War. From Battle Mountain to the breakout from the Masan Perimeter to Chongchon, to the Han River Crossing, the unit fought valiantly against tremendous odds. From their arrival in Korea through the winter months of 1951, the men had withstood numerous casualties. Nearly 1,200 of the 3,200 men who composed the unit were wounded on the battlefield, reflecting a nearly 40 percent casualty rate. As a result, the unit suffered severe shortages of enlisted men and officers, as the availability of replacement soldiers was extremely limited. Manpower shortages became even more acute over time, for unlike their white counterparts, the men of the 24th did not rotate from combat to rearguard areas; rather, they stayed at the front for more than 120 days, from July until the dead of winter, without any relief.
The shortage of battle-hardened troops made it even more urgent for the army to find seasoned noncommissioned sergeants and corporals who could provide leadership at the front. By the spring of 1951, the situation was so dire that a black correspondent who covered the unit’s activities reported that the outfit “was hit hard by the staggering casualties, and this crack regiment is continually being sent into the line without the vital resources necessary for combat.”
One of these moments happened during the 8th Army’s Operation Piledriver in May of 1951. Earlier that spring, Chinese Communist troops had forced the 25th Infantry Division to withdraw from the Hant’an to Line Kansas, just north of the Yongp’yong River. Hoping to slow the enemy from launching a major attack, the 25th Infantry Division, in concert with other elements of I Corps, launched an attack north of the towns of Chorwon and Kumhwa. The purpose was to block the enemy’s main avenues of approach to the eastern front, as well as to mitigate pressure that the Chinese and the North Koreans had been applying to Allied troops in the area. Based on this reasoning, the limited action would force the enemy to the peace table.
As part of the assault, troops in the 24th Infantry were assigned to provide support to the eastern flank of the 25th Infantry Division and to move incrementally toward Kumhwa. That spring, however, the climate was a pressing concern for military commanders, with the rainy, warm days leading up to the advance punctuated by temperatures that dipped sharply at night.
By the time the regiment’s battalions had moved into position, they were encountering fierce enemy machine-gun and mortar fire and were forced to withdraw. As a company of its 3rd Battalion attempted to capture a hill north of the area, near the village of Chipo-ri, they fell headlong into a well-fortified Chinese entrenchment manned by enemy soldiers who were armed with numerous heavy automatic weapons. They took tremendous casualties, losing their platoon leader in the process.
It was under these taxing circumstances that Sgt. Cornelius Charlton stepped forward. The talented noncommissioned officer had reported to the platoon just weeks before, following an assignment with an engineering service unit in Korea. His considerable leadership skills had been recognized by his superiors, and his second lieutenant had recommended him for a battlefield commission. After learning that the platoon leader lay mortally wounded, Charlton took command of the beleaguered men and led them up the hill. Attempting to advance three times and suffering heavy casualties in the face of crushing mortar and rifle fire, the West Virginia native single-handedly destroyed two Chinese positions and killed six enemy soldiers. All the while, Charlton exposed himself to heavy fire, sustaining wounds to his chest while advancing the attack.
Charlton took command of the beleaguered men and led them up the hill.
The war hero’s actions inspired eyewitnesses who were present during the fighting that day. As one enlisted man in the company recalled, “Charlton was wounded in the chest, but he refused to be evacuated. He got the rest of the men together, and we started for the top. The enemy had good emplacements. . . . We couldn’t get to him. Grenades kept coming at us and we were chased back down again. Again we tried but no luck. Sergeant Charlton said he was going to make it this time and he yelled, ‘Let’s go.’ I saw the sergeant go over the top and charge a bunker on the other side. He got the gun but was killed by a grenade.” Charlton’s selfless act saved most of the men in his platoon.
As Charlton’s comrades recovered his remains for the final trip home, word of his brave deed reached the ears of public leaders and pundits. Each eulogized the fallen soldier’s act of valor, ascribing different meanings to its significance. To black weeklies like the Los Angeles Sentinel, Charlton’s actions demonstrated the 24th’s ability to perform admirably under fire against tremendous odds. In fact, before Charlton was killed on June 2, 1951, he and his fellow soldiers with the regiment had been largely responsible for the United States’ first important victory at Yechon. For other mainstream periodicals, like Redbook magazine, the sergeant’s daring exploits served as an enduring testament to the US military and the youth of America. Still others believed that Charlton’s intrepid action gave new meaning to black claims of equality in American society.
On March 12, 1952, Cornelius Charlton was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.17 Republican senator Irving M. Ives of New York used the medal presentation to call attention to the seventh anniversary of the New York State law against discrimination. “This simple but moving ceremony emphasized deeply the fact that when loyalty and heroism and sheer patriotism are demanded of Americans, there is no distinction among us,” Ives told his Senate colleagues.
This perspective was also expressed by Charlton’s father. After he and his family journeyed to the District of Columbia to accept the nation’s highest military honor from Secretary of the Army Frank C. Pace, on behalf of their son, Van Charlton stated, “My boy’s action in combat and his death make a liar out of Paul Robeson and others who have claimed the Negro will not fight for this country.”18
The Ordeal of Cornelius Charlton
After his heroic death, Charlton was laid to rest in an American Legion cemetery located in his boyhood town of Beckley, West Virginia. During his funeral, townspeople gathered to pay tribute to the fallen soldier, honoring him with a parade, a twenty-one-gun salute, and the playing of “Taps.” The decorated soldier was buried at the top of a hill, alongside some 250 white soldiers.
Shortly after his funeral, however, a battle over his legacy began. Charlton had only been buried for a few months when his parents demanded that he be reinterred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. The response they received from Official Washington left a lot to be desired. Army officials stated that they had not offered to rebury the fallen GI at Arlington or at another location because of an administrative oversight. His family members tell a different story. “They say it was an administrative error,” his brother Arthur Charlton recalled years later, “but I say it was discrimination.”
The fight between Charlton’s family members and the army over his burial continued for nearly forty years. In 2008, a group of white veterans from Beckley’s American Legion post petitioned members of Congress, urging them to address the apparent oversight. And in May of that year, Korean War veterans and Charlton’s surviving family members assembled for the reburial of Charlton’s remains at the national cemetery. Among those in attendance were an assistant secretary of state, a local congressman, two army generals, and a full honor guard from Fort Knox, Kentucky. While some in the audience had gathered to honor a soldier who fought and died in a war that took place more than forty years earlier, for others, Charlton’s life—and death—held more significance. Sgt. Maj. Lindsey Bowers, president of the 24th Infantry Regiment Association, commented, “This guy should have had some kind of hero’s ceremony. If it had been a white soldier who won the Medal of Honor, somebody would have come forward immediately.”19
The forty-year-old fight over the reburial of Charlton’s remains reflected the larger battle being waged over the historical legacy of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea. The regiment was disbanded on October 1, 1951, marking the end of the last segregated combat regiment in the Regular Army. But as the unit faded into history, its conduct in the shooting war remained a matter of public discussion, as military commanders and army historians debated the service record of the celebrated unit. Almost to a person, they downplayed the army’s long-standing system of racial discrimination, focusing instead on senior officers’ disparaging reports of black soldiers’ conduct and the many court-martial proceedings meted out to African-American servicemen in Korea. All the while, black press correspondents who had covered the fighting in Korea, and black Korean War veterans themselves, refused to be silent on the matter. To a person, they cast doubt on the negative assessments of the regiment’s performance. Instead, they pointed to poor decisions made by white commanders on the field of battle, inadequate equipment, insufficient rest and relaxation periods for black soldiers at the front, and biased coverage by mass media as the root of the unit’s negative image.20
Black press correspondents who had covered the fighting in Korea, and black Korean War veterans themselves, refused to be silent on the matter.
Ironically, both sides based their judgments of the 24th Infantry on the number of medals won by black GIs on the battlefield during the war, noting that their perceptions of bravery played a major role in their assessments. As the military began to slowly change the composition of their ranks, each side reassessed the meaning of valor to fit the exigencies of the post–Korean War period.
To fully understand this phenomenon, we must now explore the integration of the armed forces, and society’s efforts to understand bravery, in the context of American military involvement in Southeast Asia.