The Harlem Hellfighters Read online

  The Harlem Hellfighters

  When Pride Met Courage

  Walter Dean Myers

  and Bill Miles

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Defending America

  2. War in Europe

  3. Trench Warfare

  4. The Problem of Race

  5. The National Guard

  6. The Fighting 15th

  7. Who Would Lead Colored Men into Battle?

  8. Training the Black Soldier

  9. Spartanburg, South Carolina

  10. Carrying the Flag to France

  11. On the Line

  12. The German Offensive

  13. In Enemy Hands

  14. The Battle of Meuse-Argonne

  15. The Parade

  16. Red Summer

  17. Heroes and Men

  Selected Bibliography

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PREFACE

  As a child growing up in Harlem, I enjoyed life to the fullest. During the summers I played ball in the streets and dove off the old piers into the East River. On the way to the piers I noticed the large, formidable building that was the armory. I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do as an adult. But one warm day a bit of a miracle occurred. That miracle was the marching band of the 369th Infantry Regiment.

  I heard the steady beat of the drums and the call of the brass echoing against the redbrick tenements and rushed with a group of friends to see what was going on. What I saw were black soldiers in company formation. The men stood tall in perfect lines across the wide avenue. Their uniforms were neatly pressed, and the sun glistened off the rifles they carried slung over their shoulders.

  An officer gave an order and the soldiers stepped out, all on the left foot, all in perfect rhythm. There was an obvious pride in the marching, in the crisp responses to commands. I wasn’t sure what I felt, but I knew I wanted to march with them, to be a part of this magnificent array. On June 26, 1948, I joined the 369th, known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.”

  As I learned more about the regiment, I realized that the pride I had felt when I first saw it was becoming an important part of who I was. The 369th was not only an outstanding military unit; it also represented a part of the history of my Harlem community and, as such, part of my history as well. As I learned the story of the regiment—how it was first formed, its glorious record in World War I—I knew I was discovering a hidden history of African American accomplishments.

  In the 369th I found a brotherhood of soldiers whose bravery and dedication brought them respect and admiration that were often denied outside the military experience. Judging by what I felt when I put on the uniform and marched or trained with the 369th, I could easily understand how the men who had first joined the old 15th New York National Guard back in 1916 felt.

  The 15th, which became the 369th, faced prejudice and segregation but endured to perform valiantly. When, in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared that America was entering the war to make the world “safe for democracy,” many questioned why African Americans, routinely segregated and often abused, would voluntarily enter the armed forces, risking their lives for a country that had not yet afforded them equal rights. The answer to that question lies in the story of the 369th. Men such as James Reese Europe, Horace Pippin, Henry Johnson, and Robert Needham defined the identity of African Americans by their bravery and their dedication. Hundreds of black men laid down their lives in France because they refused to believe that they were anything but men, worthy of being Americans and representing their country.

  As unit historian I recognize that the documentation of the 369th is as vital to understanding the African American experience as any story about slavery or the civil rights movement. For in the story of the 369th—in the trenches of France, in the battles of Meuse-Argonne, and at the bloody siege of Sechault—we have African Americans defining their own characters with courage and determination, writing their own history in sweat and blood.

  We cannot let this history die, nor can we let it fade away. As it has filled me with pride and given me understanding of one group of outstanding soldiers, so it should be passed on to all Americans to appreciate and honor.

  Bill Miles, unit historian

  This book is dedicated to all the men and women who served in the 369th Harlem Hellfighters.

  —WDM and BM

  A Harlem Hellfighter

  1

  DEFENDING AMERICA

  Blacks have participated in all of America’s battles. When the first Africans arrived in North America in 1619 as captive labor, they found a conflict between the white British and the Native Americans, who were here first. The colonists were hesitant to arm the very people they had enslaved, but blacks soon found themselves not only working the land but defending it as well. Later, during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), blacks were again called upon to help defend the British.

  When the American colonies declared their independence on July 4, 1776, thousands of blacks lived in the thirteen colonies. Most of them were slaves. Some were promised their freedom if they fought against the British; others were simply sent into the war as laborers, personal aides, or soldiers. The small American navy consisted largely of privately owned vessels called privateers, and many of these had black sailors among them. James Forten, a free black youth of fourteen living in Philadelphia, sailed with Captain Stephen Decatur Sr. aboard the Royal Louis in the summer of 1781. The first voyage of the Royal Louis resulted in a stunning victory against a British ship and the taking of the ship as a prize of war. Forten’s luck did not last very long, and the Royal Louis was captured by a British warship. Forten, who had befriended the son of the captain who held him, refused the chance to go over to the British side and escape imprisonment. He saw himself, even during this period in which slavery was legal, as an American and remained loyal to the American cause.

  Pay voucher for Nero Free, a dead black Revolutionary soldier—the money going to his master

  Eventually, more than five thousand black men would fight for the independence of the colonies. A Hessian soldier commented in his diary that there were blacks in every American regiment that he had seen.

  During the course of the war the British offered freedom to any slave who would fight with the British against the colonists. Many blacks did escape to the British lines and either worked as laborers for the British or participated in battles against the rebellious Americans.

  During the Revolutionary War the colonists were divided in the treatment of black men. On one hand they were being asked to fight for the liberation of the colonies, but on the other hand they were not being guaranteed their own freedom. Lord Dunmore, the governor of the Virginia Colony and a British loyalist, had worried about the presence of blacks in Virginia. He felt that the blacks would side with whoever offered them freedom. When the war began, he offered blacks their freedom in return for fighting with the British. Hundreds of black men joined the British army and fought against America, sometimes having to fight against the many thousands of blacks who fought for the colonists.

  The war ended successfully for the colonists, and many slaves who had taken up arms or labored for the Americans were recognized and given their freedom in thanks for their participation in the war. Blacks who fought for the British were, by agreement between the American and British governments, given their freedom and taken to the West Indies or to Canada after the war.

  Most of the battles in the War of 1812 against Great Britain took place at sea with mixed crews of blacks and whites. General Andrew Jackson, fighting off the British at the end of the war, put out a call to black citizens
to fight in the American army: “Through a mistaken policy you have heretofore been deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for national rights in which our country is engaged. This no longer shall exist.”

  Black soldiers served in this brief war both as soldiers and as laborers, building fortifications, carrying supplies, and even acting as spies.

  The United States of America is a constitutional democracy guaranteeing its citizens certain rights. During the period of American slavery these rights were not being given to black people. Throughout early American history there have been incidents in which black people revolted against those who would keep them in slavery.

  In 1822 a free black, Denmark Vesey, planned a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1831 Nat Turner led an armed rebellion that ended with the deaths of more than fifty whites. In 1839 Africans aboard the ship Amistad killed the Spanish crew and captured the vessel. These revolts demonstrated that black people wanted freedom as much as anyone and were willing to fight for it. Recognizing that black people wanted to be free and would do what was necessary to achieve that freedom, slaveholders made it illegal for any black person to be in possession of a firearm, or for blacks to gather in large groups away from the plantations on which they worked. Free blacks were not allowed to travel in Southern states, where most of the slavery existed.

  Civil War newspaper ad for white and colored sailors

  By 1859 the Northern states had developed quite differently than those in the South. The Southern states were primarily agricultural and largely dependent on slave labor for economic success. The Northern states had a mixed economy, with a growing reliance on industry. Niles’ Register, a nineteenth-century publication that often reflected Southern views, complained that if a Southerner died, he would be buried in a grave dug by a shovel manufactured in the North, buried in a casket made in the North, and preached over by a minister holding a Bible printed in the North.

  For young Southerners who did not want to be planters, the military became the pathway to becoming “an officer and a gentleman.” A large number of the officers in the American army were from the slave states of the South. On October 16, 1859, they would be tested both as soldiers and as Southerners.

  Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, was a small, somewhat sleepy town with little to distinguish it from the neighboring areas except for its military arsenal. It was this arsenal that was the target of John Brown and the black and white raiders with him. Brown’s object was to break into the arsenal, take as many guns as possible, and hide them in the surrounding mountains. He then planned to put out a call for the slaves in the area to begin a rebellion. Robert E. Lee led a group of Marines to Harper’s Ferry to put down the disturbance. Brown was captured, and he and the survivors of the raid were tried and executed.

  But the differences between North and South, free states and slave states, grew to be too difficult to overcome, and within eighteen months of Brown’s raid the country was embroiled in the Civil War.

  Frederick Douglass, a free black man and an outspoken abolitionist, pleaded with President Abraham Lincoln to allow blacks to fight against the Confederacy: “A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.”

  Both Douglass and Lincoln sensed that the war would bring an end to American slavery. Douglass knew that if blacks had no part in a Northern victory, they would have little claim to the moral high ground in the postwar period.

  E Company, 9th Cavalry, known as Buffalo Soldiers

  Lincoln was hesitant. He knew that Southerners would be particularly bitter if he armed black soldiers. But eventually, black soldiers were needed and a Union general assembled the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers. Other “colored troops,” including the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers of African Descent, were also created. In all, 180,000 black men fought in the war and helped to defeat the Confederacy.

  Training at Camp Upton, New York

  After the Civil War the United States government authorized the creation of a limited number of black military units. From this handful of black units emerged the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments and the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments. These units were primarily assigned to duties in the rugged western states. They were most often in areas in which Native Americans were being forced onto reservations. Because of their woolly hair they were called Buffalo Soldiers by the Native Americans.

  During the Spanish-American War (1898) black soldiers were sent to Cuba to fight with the Cubans against the Spanish. Then, in 1899, black soldiers were sent to the Philippines to help put down an insurrection there. In both Cuba and the Philippines the black American troops made significant contributions to American victories.

  America had fought for and won its independence with the help of black men. The Union army had defeated the Confederacy using black men in its ranks. The United States has also fought minor wars on the sea and in foreign lands using black soldiers. But in each of its conflicts the shadow of race loomed large. It would do so again in what was to become known as the Great War.

  2

  WAR IN EUROPE

  There are many reasons for wars, most of them reflections of human failures. Countries are invaded, cities and buildings destroyed, and people killed because of political ambitions, greed, or a lust for power. Often wars are caused by too great a willingness to believe that a military plan, no matter how carefully drawn, cannot fail.

  Borders within Europe had changed many times in the two hundred years prior to 1914. Great Britain, with its vastly superior navy, expanded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to establish colonies in North America and Australia. It lost an important part of its North American colonies during the Revolutionary War, but during the War of 1812 it successfully defended its Canadian colony. By the 1820s Great Britain had begun establishing colonies in southern Africa and Asia. By 1858 the British controlled what are now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, many European nations believed they had the right to control the less technically advanced areas of the world. A mad scramble for colonies began as countries vied to increase their worldwide influence. They also wanted to control as many of the natural resources and wealth as possible.

  In 1884 the strongest nations of Europe, most notably England, Germany, Belgium, and France, gathered in Berlin to solidify their territorial claims in Africa.

  The growing wealth of the European powers was accompanied by great advancements in technology. By the end of the nineteenth century, the automobile had been invented, and in 1903 the Wright brothers had made their famous flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Marine technology—the building of powerful, well-armed ships—was also advancing, as was the development of the arms industry. Perhaps the most significant technical advances were in railroad technology. Vast numbers of people and quantities of material could be transported long distances in a relatively short period of time.

  Between 1904 and 1914 Germany became very aggressive in its territorial challenges on the European continent. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) France had lost a great deal of territory to the emerging nation-state of Germany. Now Germany, along with its ally Austria-Hungary, was threatening to advance even more into neighboring countries.

  Britain, France, and Russia made hasty treaties trying to counter the German threat. It was clear that not only was Germany determined to become the most powerful European nation, but it also wanted a world role and would use its military strength to achieve it. German ships were large, and their big guns were superior to anything the French and British had. Germany had a well-trained army, while the British were still depending on volunteers.

  Alliances were formed and treaties were signed all over the world. Nations thousands of miles apart, many without armies, agreed to side either with the Germans and Austro-Hungarians or with the British, French, and Russian alliance.


  After years of provocative diplomacy, politely exchanged insults, and thinly veiled threats, all that was needed for a war was an excuse. The excuse came on June 28, 1914.

  Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were in Sarajevo, Bosnia, which was then under the uneasy control of Austria-Hungary. The local people, the Serbs, resented the control by Austria-Hungary as well as the military exercise that the archduke was about to direct. A young Serbian man, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed the archduke and his wife to protest the Austrian presence in his country. First Austria-Hungary made demands that it knew Serbia would reject; then it declared war on the small country.

  Serbia had made a pact of mutual defense with France, so the possibility of the war spreading became immediate. Great Britain tried to negotiate a settlement, but there was no real interest on the part of Austria-Hungary. Germany, in support of Austria-Hungary but really advancing its own aims, declared war on France and demanded passage through Belgium to stage the attack. Belgium refused, so Germany and Austria-Hungary declared war on Belgium. Soon nations that were colonies of other nations, or allies, or even trading partners, were declaring war. The “war to end all wars” had begun.

  German ship Scharnhorst

  German military commanders had planned for just such a war and thought it would be over within months. They had the best technology and the best soldiers, and they thought they had a plan that would defeat France within weeks and establish the German state as the dominant one in western Europe. Then they would turn eastward to Russia.