Author: Ivan J. Houston
Publisher: iUniverse Star
ISBN: 9781936236404
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
"Ours was the only Negro division to fight as a unit in Europe during World War II"--Author's note (p. xi)
Author: Hondon B. Hargrove
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476621519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
The 92nd Infantry ("Buffalo") Division was the last segregated (all-black) U.S. Army division and the only black division to fight in World War II in Europe. The few media references to the division have reflected generally unfavorable contemporary evaluations by white commanders. The present work reflects an analysis of numerous records and interviews that refute the negative impressions and demonstrate that these 13,500 soldiers gained their share of victories under hardships no others were expected to meet.
Author: Gordon Cohn
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1936236419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Numbering 4,000 select officers and men, Combat Team 370 was part of n Europe during World War II the 92nd Infantry Division, the only all-Negro division to fight in Europe during World War II. In Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II, author Ivan J. Houston recounts his experiences, when, as a nineteen-year-old California college student, he entered the US Army and served with the 3rd Battalion, 370th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Division of the US Fifth Army from 1943 to 1945. Drawn from minute-by-minute records of the units activities compiled by Houston during his deployment in Italy, this account describes both the historic encounters and the achievements of his fellow black soldiers during this breakthrough period in American military history. It tells of how the Buffalo Soldiers fought alongside other American troops, including Japanese Americans and soldiers from Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, and India. With photos and maps included, Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II provides a compelling, firsthand account of the segregated Buffalo Soldiers experiences while they fought not only the power of the Nazi war machine but also racism and the widely held belief they were not up to the task. Their achievements prove otherwise.
Author: Ivan J. Houston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781663251305
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Italians in the towns and villages liberated by the buffalo soldiers during World War II called them Giganti Buoni, the Good Giants. They did not know that these giants would return to a country where they were still second-class citizens. In 2012, Ivan J. Houston, one of those remaining buffalo soldiers, was invited to return to Italy by the owner of a villa his battalion captured. He and his family would be guests at the fifteenth-century Villa Orsini, now a bed and breakfast renamed the Villa La Dogana. His return to Tuscany almost seventy years after the war had ended was filled with emotion. In this book, he describes how he went back to a place where African American buffalo soldiers are considered heroes and liberators. He visits battlefields where more than three thousand African American buffalo soldiers were killed or wounded as they battled Nazi and Fascist soldiers. The author and his family returned to Italy for five consecutive years, visiting the battle sites and celebrating ancient victories that will never be forgotten.
Author: William H. Leckie
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806183896
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Originally published in 1967, William H. Leckie’s The Buffalo Soldiers was the first book of its kind to recognize the importance of African American units in the conquest of the West. Decades later, with sales of more than 75,000 copies, The Buffalo Soldiers has become a classic. Now, in a newly revised edition, the authors have expanded the original research to explore more deeply the lives of buffalo soldiers in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments. Written in accessible prose that includes a synthesis of recent scholarship, this edition delves further into the life of an African American soldier in the nineteenth century. It also explores the experiences of soldiers’ families at frontier posts. In a new epilogue, the authors summarize developments in the lives of buffalo soldiers after the Indian Wars and discuss contemporary efforts to memorialize them in film, art, and architecture.
Author: Charles W. Sasser
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439103909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543
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Book Description
On the battlefields of World War II, the men of the African American 761st Tank Battalion under General Patton broke through enemy lines with the same courage with which they broke down the racist limitations set upon them by others—proving themselves as tough, reliable, and determined to fight as any tank unit in combat. Beginning in November 1944, the 761st Tank Battalion engaged the enemy for 183 straight days, spearheading many of General Patton's offensives at the Battle of the Bulge and in six European countries. No other unit fought for so long and so hard without respite. The 761st defeated more than 6,000 enemy soldiers, captured thirty towns, liberated Jews from concentration camps—and made history as the first African American armored unit to enter the war. This is the true story of the Black Panthers, who proudly lived up to their motto (Come Out Fighting) and paved the way for African Americans in the U.S. military—while battling against the skepticism and racism of the very people they fought for.
Author: Denise George
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 1101987413
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Nearly forgotten by history, this is the story of the Wereth Eleven, African-American soldiers who fought courageously for freedom in WWII—only to be ruthlessly executed by Nazi troops during the Battle of the Bulge. Their story was almost forgotten by history. Now known as the Wereth Eleven, these brave African-American soldiers left their homes to join the Allied effort on the front lines of WWII. As members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, they provided crucial fire support at the Siege of Bastogne. Among the few who managed to escape the Nazi’s devastating Ardennes Offensive, they found refuge in the small village of Wereth, Belgium. A farmer and supporter of the Allies took the exhausted and half-starved men into his home. When Nazi authorities learned of their whereabouts, they did not take the soldiers prisoner, but subjected them to torture and execution in a nearby field. Despite their bravery and sacrifice, these eleven soldiers were omitted from the final Congressional War Crimes report of 1949. For seventy years, their files—marked secret—gathered dust in the National Archive. But in 1994, at the site of their execution, a memorial was dedicated to the Wereth Eleven and all African-American soldiers who fought in Europe. Drawing on firsthand interviews with family members and fellow soldiers, The Lost Eleven tells the complete story of these nearly forgotten soldiers, their valor in battle and their tragic end. INCLUDES PHOTOS
Author: Robert Child
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472852842
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
The remarkable story of seven African-American soldiers denied the Medal of Honor for more than 50 years due to their race, and their extraordinary acts of bravery. In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades. But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machine guns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearheaded his tank unit's advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself. Ultimately, in 1993 a US Army commission determined that seven men, including Baker, Rivers and Thomas, had been denied the Army's highest award simply due to racial discrimination. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war, President Clinton finally awarded the Medal of Honor to these seven heroes, sadly all but one of them posthumously. These are their stories.
Author: Kent Haruf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400043018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel that unveils the immemorial truths about human beings: their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another. • "Storytelling at its best.” —Entertainment Weekly The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their a violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide reveals Kent Haruf as a novelist of masterful authority. “Stunning.... The dry, cold air of Colorado's high plains seems to intensify the light Kent Haruf shines on every character in his masterful novel.... A book of hope, hope as plain and hard-won as Haruf's keenly styled prose.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
Author: SOLACE WALES
Publisher: Knox Press
ISBN: 9781948496032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
BRAIDED IN FIRE is the stirring author’s search to understand the drama that unfolded between the Italian peasants and African-American infantrymen of the 366th Infantry Regiment whose lives were lost, or changed irrevocably by a village battle in Tuscany during the Battle of Garfagnana. Cultures and relationships are intertwined to become BRAIDED IN FIRE in Sommocolonia, a medieval Tuscan village in the Apennines directly on the highly fortified Third Reich’s ‘Gothic Line’ stretching across northern Italy. Only at Sommocolonia did attacking German troops break through that formidable line, with dire consequences to the inhabitants and their defenders, a handful of black GIs, who were outnumbered three to one by the Axis troops. In the desperate fight, Lt. John Fox sacrificed himself with supreme heroism. (He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor 52 years later.) Although the military action, (and tragic inaction of certain senior white officers), is described in detail, BRAIDED IN FIRE is not just military history, but tells of the human toll of war: the drama, the folly, the heartache – all present in grand measure for two peoples marginalized over the years for reasons of race and economic circumstances. BRAIDED IN FIRE is a celebration of human dignity in desperate circumstances. This book is painted in a narrative befitting the beauty and rich hues of the Tuscan hills and its people, juxtaposed by the toils of a segregated America in black versus white, even while in Army green. Together these two worlds are BRAIDED IN FIRE with all of the passion, heartbreak, and violence of war, ultimately providing the reader with a redemptive peace, and cultural harmony. Praise for BRAIDED IN FIRE Braided in Fire tells the story of Lieutenant John Fox, a forward artillery observer and posthumous Medal of Honor recipient, who directed friendly artillery fire on his own position as German troops overran Sommocolonia, Italy, on December 26, 1944. Fox’s selfless sacrifice went unrecognized by the U.S. government for half a century simply because he was black. Solace Wales has invested decades in researching this instance of forgotten valor, producing a rich tapestry that interweaves the experiences of the black GIs and Italian villagers caught in the hellish maelstrom that engulfed Sommocolonia the day John Fox died. The result is a moving meditation on the cost of war and a tribute to the African Americans who fought for a country that treated them like second-class citizens. ~ Gregory J.W. Urwin, Professor of History, Temple University, author of Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island Braided with Fire vividly recounts the intertwined histories of the small Italian town of Sommocolonia and the black 366th Infantry Regiment, which intersected during the German Winter Storm Offensive in December 1944. At the center of Solace Wales’ story are the brave Biondi family and forward artillery observer Lieutenant John Fox, who won the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Sommocolonia. Thoroughly researched and dramatically retold, Braided with Fire adds a valuable new page to our understanding of the Second World War. ~ Ian Ona Johnson, P.J. Moran Assistant Professor of Military History, the University of Notre Dame Solace Wales contributes a remarkable, unique account which is not available anywhere else. . . Because of her gracious literary style, she vividly captures the ways in which the African American soldiers and the Italians of Sommocolonia’s lives became intertwined. The book breaks new ground. ~ Carolyn Ross Johnston, author of My Father's War: Fighting with the Buffalo Soldiers in World War II
