Black military heritage in Canada is still generally unknown and unwritten. Most Canadians have no idea that Blacks served, fought, and died on European battlefields, all in the name of freedom. The story of the overt racist treatment of Black volunteers is a shameful chapter in Canadian history. It does, however, represent an important part of the Black legacy and the Black experience. It is a story worth reporting and worth sharing.
Their motto was "Come Out Fighting," and that they did without fail. The 761st Tank Battalion - the famed "Black Panthers" - was the first African American armored unit to enter combat, and in World War II they fought in four major Allied campaigns and inflicted 130,000 casualties on the German army. And the fighting was intense - only one out of every two Black Panthers made it home alive. This is the complete history of the 761st, told in large part through the words of the surviving members of the unit. Richly illustrated, this work recounts how the unit was given long overdue recognition - the Presidential Unit Citation and the Medal of Honor - in recent years.
“Riveting. . . a testament to a misconceived war, and to the ease with which ordinary men, under certain conditions, can transform into monsters.”—New York Times Book Review This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives. Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.
In 1998, the author learned about a new monument in Washington, D.C., created to honor the black soldiers and sailors who had served in the Civil War. What she was about to learn; however, was that her great grandfather's name would not be among those remembered there. Why not? Because he had not served in one of the segregated units whose members' names are engraved on the memorial wall. Instead, Crowder Pacien/Patience had served in a white regiment. An identifiably "Col'd" man, he had been a private in the 103rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. After having been told that there had been no black soldiers serving in white regiments, the author made a hypothesis that if there had been one such black soldier in a white regiment, as she knew, then there might have been others. This series traces the author's journey to such proof. The hundreds of names listed here should be proof enough for the "nay-sayers" to conclude that black men indeed did serve in white regiments. Chapters in Volume II include: Difficulties with Finding Facts, C-Span Book TV Presentation, Mixed Race Regiments, Honoring Civil War Ancestors, Recruitment of Black Soldiers, General Orders No. 323 and the Undercooks, Three Undercooks Garrisoned at Plymouth, N.C., A Trip to the Carlisle Barracks, Finding the Gravesites of Black Soldiers, A Gravesite Lost in North Carolina, One Descendant's Determination, and Conclusion. Chapters are followed by lists: Additional Black Soldiers Alphabetized, Additional Black Soldiers by States, and Final Resting Places. Numerous photographs and illustrations, End Notes, Sources, and an index to full-names, subjects and places add to the value of this work. Historians and Civil War "buffs" alike will find new information revealed in this series, even though so many years have passed since the last shot of the war was fired.
The inspiring story of the first African American soldiers to serve during the postslavery eraMany have heard how Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. But often forgotten in the great swamp of history is that Roosevelt's success was ensured by a dedicated corps of black soldiers—the so-called Buffalo Soldiers—who fought by Roosevelt's side during his legendary campaign. This book tells their story. They fought heroically and courageously, making Roosevelt's campaign a great success that added to the future president's legend as a great man of words and action. But most of all, they demonstrated their own military prowess, often in the face of incredible discrimination from their fellow soldiers and commanders, to secure their own place in American history.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, thousands of African-American men volunteered to fight for a country that granted them only limited civil rights. Many from New York City joined the 15th N.Y. Infantry, a National Guard regiment later designated the 369th U.S. Infantry. Led by mostly inexperienced white and black officers, these men not only received little instruction at their training camp in South Carolina but were frequent victims of racial harassment from both civilians and their white comrades. Once in France, they initially served as laborers, all while chafing to prove their worth as American soldiers. Then they got their chance. The 369th became one of the few U.S. units that American commanding general John J. Pershing agreed to let serve under French command. Donning French uniforms and taking up French rifles, the men of the 369th fought valiantly alongside French Moroccans and held one of the widest sectors on the Western Front. The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French government s highest military honor. Stephen L. Harris s accounts of the valor of a number of individual soldiers make for exciting reading, especially that of Henry Johnson, who defended himself against an entire German squad with a large knife. After reading this book, you will know why the Germans feared the black men of the 369th and why the French called them hell fighters. "
