NINETY-SECOND
INFANTRY DIVISION
....World
War II Buffalo Soldiers
SOURCE:
Ninety-Second
Infantry Division World War II Association and the Appendix to the
Congressional Record, Volume 92 - Part 9, January 14, 1946 to March 8,
1946. Submitted by Spencer Moore, Magnolia, New Jersey. Mr. Moore, a
former Captain with the 92nd Infantry Division, is currently Director of
Public Relations of the 92nd Infantry Division Association The 92nd Infantry Division was
reactivated for duty in World War II on October 15, 1942, less than a
year after Pearl Harbor. Immediately after activation its units were
distributed among four military encampments: Fort McClellan, Alabama; Camp
Atterbury, Indiana; Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky; and Camp
Robinson, Arkansas. Seven months later, all components of the Division
arrived at Fort Huachuca, Arizona to continue training before deployment
overseas. The division was composed of Black enlisted personnel and a
mix of black and white officer personnel. All senior commanders were
white. During April, 1944, at the completion
of Corps Maneuvers in the vicinity of Merryville and De Rider,
Louisiana, the division commander, Major General Edward M. Almond,
announced that the 92nd Division would join the Fifth U.S. Army in the
Mediterranean Theater of Operations. The first unit to sail overseas was
the 370th Combat Team (CT 370) which departed the United States on July
15, 1944. The regimental combat team went into
the line on the Fifth Army front in Italy in August, 1944. Ten minutes
later they went into action against some of the best trained and
seasoned troops Hitler had in his army. From then on, until the Italian
campaign finally ended with the surrender of a million crack German
troops in April 1945, the 92nd Division fought in General Mark Clark’s
Fifth Army. Some of them were in the line as long as 68 days at a
stretch, more that 2 months. It is one of the marvels of the war
that the 92nd Division with an enlisted personnel made up almost
entirely of Black soldiers from the South, who had been sent out to work
in the fields before they were even adolescents, and who in many cases
never had a chance to learn to read or write. They had grown up in an
area where they and their people were always treated as inferiors and
sometime less than humans. Despite this stayed in there week in and week
out, through some of the harshest fighting in the whole war, against
Hitler’s best, a superb army of self-assured German veterans fighting
with all they had to protect their homeland from the attack rolling up
from the South. The 92nd Division consisted of
approximately 12,000 officers and men, including some 200 white officers
and 600 black officers. Its enlisted personnel was all black - a
majority of them rated as IV and V, the lowest grades in the Army
classifications. This was largely due to the fact that three-fourths of
them came from Southern States, where educational opportunities for
blacks were practically non-existent. And the 92nd Division was
activated before the Army educational program - designed to carry a man
only through the fourth grade in school - got under way. But these men -
ill equipped as they were - did their job. They stayed in there, giving
their best, day in and day out, seesawing back and forth through the
rain and cold and mud, locked in a titanic death struggle with an
experienced, magnificently trained enemy who knew all the tricks and who
had never known defeat. Through the whole bitter experience,
the men of the 92nd Division were dogged by the racial prejudice and
segregation that had followed them from the Southern camps where they
trained at home. Other troops might yield temporarily, but there was no
comment. But if the 92nd Division lost a yard one day - even though they
might gain it back the next day - the reports went back across the
Atlantic and soon theirs from home would tell them of loud-mouths
screaming, even on the floor of Congress, that the Negro soldiers were
cracking, that the Negro soldiers were no good. The Fifth Army in which the 92nd
fought was made up of British, American, Brazilian, French, Italian,
Greek, Polish, Palestinian, New Zealand, and East Indian troops. It was
in this Fifth Army that the Japanese Americans so greatly distinguished
themselves - the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion, one of the
first outfits to receive a Presidential Unit Citation for fighting in
Italy. On April 30, 1945, General Clark
announced that the long, weary, bitter campaign, begun on the beaches of
Salerno in September 1943, had ended. His polyglot troops had so smashed
the German armies in Italy that they had been virtually eliminated as a
military force. Nearly 1,000,000 Germans in Northern Italy and Western
Austria laid down their arms in unconditional surrender on May 2, 1945,
at 2 p.m. The surrender had been signed in the royal palace of Caserta
on April 29, by representatives of the German commander, Col. Gen.
Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel, and of the Allied Mediterranean
commander, Field Marshall Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander. On the day the campaign in Italy
ended, the 92nd Division had lost almost one-fourth of its men through
casualties. Three hundred and thirty had been killed in action, 2,215
wounded, and 616 were missing in action. A soldier of the 92nd Division,
Private Woodall I. Marsh, of Pittsburgh, Pa., was the first Black to win
the Silver Star in Italy. He got it for taking 12 wounded paratroopers
from the front lines to safety in his truck, after officers said it
could not be done. When he was told that he could not
make it because the water of a raging torrent he had to ford to get to
the wounded paratroopers was too deep, Private Marsh replied:
"Well, there’s dirt underneath ain’t there?" and he
proceeded to ford it. Under terrific enemy fire, he drove
his truck through water up to the hubs of the wheels to get to the
wounded men. On return trip, he tried another route, but it turned out
to be just as bad. He had to dig his truck out of the muck and mire
again and again. For 30 minutes during the trip, the Germans were trying
to get him and his truck with heavy mortar and artillery fire. Another hero of the 92nd Division was
Second Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a rifle platoon
leader. He won the Distinguished Service Cross for the bravery he
exhibited in action on 2 days, April 5 and 6, 1945, near Viareggio,
Italy. The citation reads: "Second Lieutenant Baker, demonstrated
outstanding courage and leadership in destroying enemy installations,
personnel, and equipment during his company’s attack against a
strongly entrenched enemy in mountainous terrain." (Note: The DSC citation was not revised when they changed his decoration to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Courtesy Steve Gossett, Jr. ) "When his company was stopped by
the concentrated fire from several machine-gun emplacements, he crawled
to one position and destroyed it, killing three Germans. Continuing
forward, he attacked an enemy observation post and killed its two
occupants." "With the aid of one of his men,
2nd Lieutenant Baker attacked two more machine-gun nests, killing or
wounding the four enemy soldiers occupying these positions. He then
covered the evacuation of the wounded personnel of his company by
occupying an exposed position and drawing the enemy’s fire." "On the following night 2nd
Lieutenant Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine
fields and heavy fire toward the division objective. Second Lieutenant
Baker’s fighting spirit and daring leadership were an inspiration to
his men and exemplify the highest traditions of the armed forces." One of the officers of the 92nd
Division awarded posthumously the Silver Star for gallantry in action
was Captain Charles F. Gaudy, Jr., of Washington, D.C. On October 12,
1944, Captain Gandy was ordered to deploy his company in position on
difficult mountainous terrain. His citation states: "He personally
led his company out in broad daylight and, through further
reconnaissance and by personal example and leadership, succeeded in
getting his entire company across a canal, with an abrupt 12-foot wall.
This was accomplished in rain and under extremely heavy enemy
fire." "Halting the company at its
intermediate objective, Captain Gandy went forward alone to reconnoiter
the route of the next movement. While engaged in this activity, he was
mortally wounded by enemy machine-gun fire. His outstanding gallantry
and leadership in combat exemplifies the heroic traditions of the United
States Army." Lieutenant Theodore O. Smith, aged 24
years, was killed in action in Italy on February 11, 1945, 1 month after
he had been awarded the Silver Star for his bravery in leading a small
patrol on a mission that netted the Americans two Nazi prisoners and
four enemy dead. According to the citation, Lieutenant Smith led his
14-man patrol 2 miles across a mined area through enemy lines to climb
up a mountain where the enemy was holding out. Risking his life to lead the mission,
his action made in possible for the Americans to accomplish their
objective and capture a strategically important point on the Fifth Army
front. Lieutenant Smith was a native of the District of Columbia. He was
a graduate of the Dunbar High School and received the degree of bachelor
of arts from Howard University, where he was a captain in the Reserve
Officers’ Training Corps. First Lieutenant John M. Madison was
posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action with the
92nd Division in Italy on February 8 and 10, 1945. The first action for
which he was cited occurred after his company had taken its objective
against light enemy resistance. Immediately afterwards the enemy
subjected the position to terrific artillery and mortar fire which
killed or wounded all officers except Lieutenant Madison. "Extremely heavy casualties and
the loss of leadership disorganized the company, and it sought to
withdraw," the citation said. "First Lieutenant Madison
quickly gathered the remaining 15 men, and regardless of continuing
enemy fire put them into positions to hold the hill. By sheer personal
courage and disregard for his own life, First Lieutenant Madison
inspired his men to repel three separate enemy counterattacks aimed
exclusively at their position.. He withdrew only upon orders. Two days
later he captured seven enemy soldiers while leading his company in an
attack routed through an extensive unmarked mine field." Lieutenant
Madison was killed in subsequent action with the 92nd Division on April
5, 1945. First Lieutenant William E. Porter, of
Indianapolis, Indiana, who was also awarded the Silver Star for
gallantry in action, exposed himself to enemy arms while his company
advanced on its objective under a hail of machine-gun fire. With his
unit pinned to the ground, Lieutenant Porter succeeded in eliminating
the machine-gun nest, killing the German officer in command and forcing
the gun crew to surrender. During a patrol action Staff Sergeant
Mansfields Mason, of Baltimore, Maryland, distinguished himself by
heroic conduct. Acting on information that some Germans had been seen to
enter a house near a village, his patrol surrounded the building and
effectively covered all of its approaches. Sergeant Mason then crawled
to within 30 feet of the house in the face of withering machine-gun
fire. He hurled three hand grenades into the building and shifted his
position slightly. Out walked five Germans, including an officer, to
surrender. While overseas the 92nd received
12,096 decorations - including 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, 1
Distinguished Service Medal, 16 Legion of Merit awards, 7 Oak-Leaf
Clusters to Silver Stars, 95 Silver Stars, 6 Soldier’s Medals, 723
Bronze Stars, 1,891 Purple Hearts, and 7,996 combat infantry badges. It
also received 205 commendations. The 92nd came home during the latter part of 1945, landing in Boston, New York, and Norfolk. Only 4,000 were left of the once 12,000-strong 92nd Division whose ranks, like those of other Divisions that fought overseas, had been thinned by transfers, discharges, and deaths. The 365th Regimental Combat Team and the 597th Field Artillery Bn of the 92nd Infantry Division was activated there on 10 Sep 1942. Because of racial segregation at the time the unit was kept in the southern portion of the camp. It departed on 26 April 1943.
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