a living legend. the drill inmucte or dl - marines.mil in the marine corps... · a living legend....

A Living legend. The drill inmucte or DL hasbeen callS ¶3 Marine's Marine." He leads &ataniple nezwr asking a tvcult to do anj*hlng hehas not done bimselfi The Dl instruct. guides,and molds his men into bask Mat*ses. He knowsthat discipline is the djfference between successand faikwc whether on the baulqfleld or in gar.ttsion. (Qfficlal USMC Photo)

PCN 190 003062 00

FOREWORD

When this monograph was published almost 30 years ago, then History and Museums DirectorBrigadier General Edwin H. Simmons wrote: "Today's generation of Marines serve in a fully integratedCorps where blacks constitute almost one-fifth of our strength. Black officers, noncommissioned offi-cers, and privates are omnipresent, their service so normal a part of Marine life that it escapes specialnotice. The fact that this was not always so and that as little as 34 years ago [in 1941] there were noblack Marines deserves explanation." This statement holds true for this edition of Blacks in the MarineCorps, which has already gone through several previous reprintings.

What has occurred since the first edition of Blacks in the Marine Corps has been considerablescholarship and additional writing on the subject that deserve mention to a new generation of readers,both in and outside the Corps. First and foremost is Morris J. MacGregor, Jr.'s Integration of the ArmedForces 1940-1965 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1981) that documents theArmed Forces efforts as part of the Defense Studies Series. The volume is an excellent history of a socialtopic often difficult for Service historical offices to deal with.

Two other more recent Marine Corps studies include Bernard C. Nalty's The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, 1995) and ColonelAlphonse G. Davis' Pride, Progress, and Propects: The Marine Corp's Efforts to Increase the Presence ofAfrican-American Officers, 19 70-1995 (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, 2000). One acommemorative publication, the other an occasional paper, they both add new insights and research tothe subject building upon Henry I. Shaw, Jr. and Ralph W. Donnelly's initial effort.

The continued interest and success of Donnelly and Shaw's narrative is one reason to continue tomake it available. Equally important is the story of the Marine Corps' evolution as an institution thatdraws strength from the diversity of American society. The complete integration of the Corps was not asingle event in the past, but a series of individual and group contributions towards a not always com-mon goal. The success of this effort is measured in today's opportunity for an equal right to serve regard-less of race, color, or creed. This is a story that parallels the nation's history.

John W. RipleyColonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

Director of Marine Corps History and Museums Division

111

PREFACE

This has been a difficult history to research. The records of black Marine units are sparse; theadministrative correspondence concerning blacks in the Marine Corps is equally scanty. One luckyfind was a file of correspondence relating to the efforts to find a place for black Marine barracksdetachments in the late 1940s. It came to light as the result of the research efforts of Mr. Morris J.MacGregor of the Army's Center of Military History, who is writing a history of blacks in the ArmedForces for the Department of Defense. A similar unexpected find was several folders of statisticaldata on black Marines in the 40s and 50s which had been relegated to the back of someone's filedrawer in the Manpower Department and happily rediscovered by a person who recognized itshistorical worth.

The basic information compiled on World War II Marines was gained by a painstaking extrac-tion of data from the monthly muster rolls of black Marine units. The Reference Section of theHistory and Museums Division has maintained subject files over the years consisting of pertinentnewspaper clippings, extracts from official documents, copies of answers of public and officialc1ueries, and other valuable miscellaneous pieces of information. Those files pertaining to blackMarines were used extensively but with care as to the authenticity of the sources. An assemblage ofofficial documents relating to blacks in the Marine Corps, maintained by the then PersonnelDepartment, and later by the Commandant's Special Assistant on Minority Affairs, was turned overto the Reference Section at the start of the writing of the history.

All apparently pertinent published sources were consulted, but it was soon discovered that verylittle has been written about black Marines and much of that which has been available is inaccurate.The Camp Lejeune newspaper was read, page by page, from 1942 until 1950 to uncover news of themen of Montford Point. Surprisingly little was published in the way of news stories specificallyconcerned with black Marines, but the columnists and photographers unwittingly provided a mine ofinformation. A summary history of black Marines which had been prepared in the Historical Branchin 1946, as later enlarged upon by Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth H. Berthoud, Jr., who also added ahistory of black officers, proved very useful. Colonel Berthoud himself was even more useful as asource of information in his conversations with both authors.

When most of the documentary research had been completed, Mr. Donnelly wrote a first draftof this history. It provided the backbone for much of what is now printed, but it was obvious thatmore information than could be culled from official sources was needed. To fill the gaps, Mr. Shawconducted a number of interviews in the summer of 1972 with serving black officers and enlistedmen and with black veterans. Key interviews in this series were those with Assistant Secretary of theNavy James E. Johnson, then-Lieutenant Colonel Frank E. Petersen, jr., Sergeant Major Edgar R.Huff, and retired Sergeant Major Gilbert H. "Hashmark" Johnson. Through the good offices of theMontford Point Marine Association (MMPA), Mr. Shaw was able to hold extensive discussions, bothinformally and on tape, with members attending the association's 1972 annual meeting. There hebenefitteci greatly from an extended talk with retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Brooks E. Gray, Jr.,first President of the MMPA. Taped interviews were conducted with Marine veterans HermanDarden, Jr., Obie Hall, Alex Johnson, Robert D. Little, and Norman Sneed.

Once the rewrite of the narrative had started, a chance visit from an old friend, Master GunnerySergeant Frederick H. Clayton, who had been a classification specialist at Montford Point and withboth the 51st and 52d Defense Battalions, provided the answers to several baffling questions.Throughout the writing of the final version of the history, Majors Edward L. Green and Solomon P.Hill were ever ready to provide advice, information, and constructive criticism. Three civilianemployees of Headquarters Marine Corps, Joseph H. Carpenter, Charles H. Doom, and David C.Hendricks, all World War II veterans of Montford Point, were particularly helpful in providingbackground information on personalities and events and in clearing up disputed points about theservice of black Marines.

V

A number of knowledgeable individuals were asked to review the final draft manuscript. Themajority of their valuable comments have been incorporated in the text. Active duty reviewersincluded Colonels Berthoud and Petersen, Majors Green and Hill, and Gunnery Sergeant Roy G.Johnson. Retired and former Marines who read the manuscript included Secretary Johnson,Sergeant Major Huff, Master Gunnery Sergeant Clayton, Mr. Carpenter, and Mr. Hendricks. Dr.Robert Humphrey of the USMC Human Relations Institute at San Diego had the text reviewed by"my best two black advisors in the Corps" and provided their comments. Dr. Charles W. Simmons,Head of the History and Geography Department at Norfolk State College and former sergeantmajor of the 51st Defense Battalion, was particularly helpful in his review. Mr. MacGregor, drawingon his considerable background in recent black military history, furnished many useful and construc-tive comments. All members of the 1973—74 Commandant's Advisory Committee on Marine CorpsHistory read and critiqued the manuscript including Major General Donald M. Weller, USMC(Retired), Chairman, Major General Norman J. Anderson, USMC (Retired), Colonel Frederick S.Aidridge, USMC (Retired), Dr. Gordon A. Craig, Dr. Philip K. Lundeberg, and Mr. Robert L.Sher.rOd.

The editorial review of the manuscript was made by Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons,Director of Marine Corps History and Museums, and Colonel Herbert M. Hart, Deputy Director forMarine Corps History. The typing of the manuscript through its various drafts was the responsibilityin succession of Miss Cynthia L. Brown, Lance Corporal Carl W. Rice, and Miss Catherine A. Stoll.Miss Stoll and PFC Denise L. Alexander prepared the index for the printer. The maps, charts, andcover copy for the history were prepared by Staff Sergeant Paul A. Lloyd. Unless otherwise noted,official Department of Defense photographs were used throughout the text.

\,

HENRY I. SHAW, JR.

vi

RALPH W. DONNELLY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PageFOREWORD .PREFACE v

TABLE OF CONTENTS viiINTRODUCTION ix

CHAPTER 1. A CHOSEN FEW 1

The Beginnings 2

The Camp Opens 3

The First Graduates 8

Expansion Looms 8

CHAPTER 2. THE 51st DEFENSE BATTALION 15The First Combat Unit 16

Overseas Duty 19

On to the Marshalls 21

Home Again 21

CHAPTER 3. THE 52d DEFENSE BATTALION 23First to the Marshalls 24Forward to Guam 25Postwar Activities 27

CHAPTER 4. DEPOT AND AMMUNITION COMPANIES29Into Service Overseas32

Combat in the Marianas 33Combat on Peleliu 37Combat on Iwo Jima 37Combat on Okinawa 39Occupation Duty 42Windup in the Pacific 44

CHAPTER 5. BETWEEN THE WARS 47Finding a Place 50Truman and Integration 53The End in Sight 55

CHAPTER 6. A DECADE OF INTEGRATION 59Combat in Korea 61Black Leaders 62Changing Times 64

CHAPTER 7. THE VIETNAM ERA 69Action Against Discrimination 70Racial Turmoil 71

vii

Page

Black Officer Procurement and Human Relations 74Vietnam 78Conclusion 81

APPENDIX A. NOTES 85

APPENDIX B. BLACK MARINE UNITS OF THE FLEET MARINE FORCE,WORLD WAR II 95

APPENDIX C. BLACK MARINE MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS 97

INDEX 103

Vill

INTRODUCTION

Prior to President Harry Truman's 1948 declaration of intent to end segregation in the U.S.Armed Forces, blacks who served most often did so in segregated units or under a quota systemdesigned to limit their number. In time of war, the need for men usually required the recruitment ordrafting of blacks; in peacetime the number of black servicemen dwindled. In large part, thesituation of blacks in uniform was a reflection of their status in society, particularly that part ofAmerican society which practiced racial segregation and discrimination.

During the American Revolution blacks served in small numbers in both the Continental andstate navies and armies. According to surviving muster and pay rolls, there were at least three blacksin the ranks of the Continental Marines and ten others who served as Marines on ships of theConnecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania navies.' It is probable that more blacks served asMarines in the Revolution who were not identified as such in the rolls. The first recorded blackMarine in the Continental service was John Martin or "Keto," a slave of William Marshall ofWilmington, Delaware, who was recruited without Marshall's knowledge or permission by MarineCaptain Miles Pennington in April 1776. Martin served on board the Continental brig Reprisal untilOctober 1777 when the ship foundered off the Newfoundland Banks. All of her crew except thecook were lost.2

On 27 August 1776, Isaac Walker, identified on the rolls as a Negro, was enlisted in CaptainRobert Mullan's company of Continental Marines in Philadelphia, and on 1 October, a recruit listedsiinply as "Orange... Negro" was enrolled. Both of these men were still on the company payroll asof 1 April 1777. It is quite possible that they served with Mullan's unit in the Second Battle ofTrenton (Assunpink Creek) on 2 January 1777 and in the Battle of Princeton the following day.

Those few black men who have been identified as Marines from surviving Revolutionary Warrosters were pioneers who were not followed by others of their race until 1 June 1942. TheContinental Marines went out of existence within a year after the Treaty of Paris was signed on 11April 1783. When Congress conditionally authorized the construction of six frigates for a new Navyin 1794, Marine guards were part of the planned ships' complements. In 1797, after the completionof three of the frigates, Constitution, Constellation, and United States, was authorized, Marines wereactually enlisted. The Secretary of War, who also supervised the Navy, on 16 March 1798 prescribeda set of rules governing the enrollment of Marines for the Constellation which provided that "NoNegro, Mulatto or Indian to be enlisted

These regulations prohibiting the enlistment of Negroes were continued when Congress, on 11July 1798, reestablished a separate Marine Corps with a major in command. The new Commandant,Major William Ward Burrows, was explicit on the subject in his instructions to his recruiting officers.To Lieutenant John Hall at Charleston, South Carolina, he wrote:

You may enlist. . as many Drummers and Fifers as possible, I do not care what Country the D & Fifers are of butyou must be careful not to enlist more Foreigners than as one to three natives. You can make use of Blacks and Mulattoeswhile you recruit, but you cannot enlist them.5

The regulations for recruiting Marines were much more selective than those for seamen becauseof the reliance on the small guards on board ship to maintain discipline, prevent mutinies, and give amilitary tone to men-of-war. This situation was, in part, a carry over from the experience of BritishMarines, about whom the observation had been made a hundred years earlier:

It may be added to what has been said of the usefulness of the said [Marine] Regimt that the whole body of seamen onboard the Fleet, being a loose collection of undisciplined people, and (as experience shows) sufficiently inclined to mutiny,the Marine Regimts will be a powerful check to their disorders, and will be able to prevent the disasterous coffsequencesthat may thence result to their Mats [Majesties] service.6

ix

Certainly those instrumental in recreating the American Navy had before them the spectacleand lesson of the British Navy's Spithead and Nore mutinies of April and May 1797 and the partplayed by Marines in their suppression.

There is no known record of black Marines serving in the various wars of the 19th Century. TheNavy did frequently enlist blacks as seamen, so much so that at one time in 1839 the Secretary of theNavy issued a directive that no more than five percent of enlistees could be blacks.7 Thousands ofblacks served in the Federal Army and Navy during the Civil War and some continued to servethereafter—in the Army's case in two black infantry and two black cavalry regiments which foughtthe Indians on the western frontier.

Mixed crews with blacks in all ratings remained a feature of the Navy up until World War I,when the majority of black volunteers were assigned to the Messman Branch. Following the war,black recruitment in the Navy ceased for more than a decade and when it resumed in 1932, blackswere again only enlisted in the Messman Branch.8 The Army used blacks in segregated units inWorld War I and continued the practice following the war. At the onset of American involvement inWorld War II, the segregation of blacks in the Armed Forces continued. Black Army volunteers anddraftees were assigned to all-black units. The Navy restricted its black volunteers to steward duty andthe Marine Corps accepted no blacks at all.

x

CHAPTER 1

A CHOSEN FEW

The door was opened for blacks to serve inall branches of the Armed Forces on 25 June1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt is-sued Executive Order No. 8802 establishingthe Fair Employment Practices Commissionwith this statement:

In affirming the policy of full participation in thedefense program by all persons regardless of color,race, creed, or national origin, and directing certainaction in furtherance of said policy . . . all depart-ments of the government, including the ArmedForces, shall lead the way in erasing discriminationover color or race.'

Major General Commandant Thomas Hol-comb appointed Brigadier General Thomas E.Watson to represent the Marine Corps on thenewly established commission, and the Corpstook preliminary steps to comply with the Pres-ident's Executive Order. There is no questionbut that the order was unpopular at Headquar-ters Marine Corps. Faced with the necessity ofexpanding the Corps to meet the threateningwar situation, few, if any, of the Marine leaderswere interested in injecting a new element intothe training picture. There was serious doubtthat blacks would meet the high standards ofthe Marine Corps. Once war had broken out,this opposition stiffened. The Commandant, intestimony before the General Board of theNavy on 23 January 1942, indicated that it hadlong been his considered opinion that "therewould be a definite loss of efficiency in theMarine Corps if we have to take Negroes

" 2

General Holcomb also indicated that theMarine Corps did not have the facilities ortrained personnel to handle all the whites whowanted to join after Pearl Harbor. If therewere to be black Marine units, he noted that hecould use only "the best type of officer on thisproject, because it will take a great deal ofcharacter and technique to make the thing asuccess, and if it is forced upon us we mustmake it a success." The need for experienced

noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in trainingblacks was equally acute and the Commandantfelt that "they simply can not be spared if weare going to be ready for immediate servicewith the fleet." ' Concluding his remarks, hesaid, "the Negro race has every opportunitynow to satisfy its aspirations for combat, in theArmy—a very much larger organization thanthe Navy or Marine Corps—and their desire toenter the naval service is largely, I think, tobreak into a club that doesn't want them."

Regardless of the Commandant's privateprotests, the pressure was on from the WhiteHouse and from other public sources to get onwith the enlistment of blacks for general dutyin the Navy and Marine Corps. Wendell L.Wilkie, the titular head of the RepublicanParty, in a speech delivered at the FreedomHouse inaugural dinner on 19 March 1942,described the Navy's "racial bias" in excludingblacks from enlisting except as mess attendantsas a "mockery." He challenged, "Are we alwaysas alert to practice [democracy] here at home aswe are to proclaim it abroad?" 6

The Administration's answer, delivered bySecretary of the Navy Frank Knox on 7 April,was that the Navy, Coast Guard, and MarineCorps would soon accept blacks for enlistmentfor general service in active duty reserve com-ponents. Actual recruitment would begin whensuitable training sites were established.7 Secre-tary Knox's statement was followed on 20 Mayby an announcement from the Navy Depart-ment that on 1 June the Navy would beginrecruiting 1,000 blacks a month for shore andhigh seas service and that during June and Julya complete battalion of 900 blacks would beformed by the Marine Corps.8

This was to be a new experience for theMarine Corps. One officer recalled:

• • . when the colored came in, we had the appropria-tions and the authority, and we could have gotten40,000 white people. It just scared us to death whenthe colored were put on it. I went over to SelectiveService and saw General Hershey, and he turned me

1

2 BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS

over to a lieutenant colonel [Campbell C. Johnson?]—that was in April—and he was one grand person. Itold him, "Eleanor [Mrs. Roosevelt] says we gotta takein Negroes, and we are just scared to death; we'venever had any in; we don't know how to handle them;we are afraid of them." He said, "I'll do my best tohelp you get good ones. I'll get the word around that ifyou want to die young, join the Marines. So anybodythat joins [has] got to be pretty good!" And it was thetruth. We got some awfully good Negroes.9

The Beginnings

In the course of a study prepared on thepossible uses of blacks in the Marine Corps byBrigadier General Keller E. Rockey, Directorof the Division of Plans and Policies, the possi-bility that they might be employed in amessmen's branch, similar to the Navy's, wasconsidered, but the Corps at that time did nothave such a branch. Strong doubts were ex-pressed that blacks could serve successfully incombat units, citing the Army's experience thatthe General Classification Test scores of themajority of black recruits showed low levels oflearning aptitude.1° The Marine Corps actuallyhad little choice in the matter. The die hadbeen cast. There would be blacks in the MarineCorps and some at least would serve in combatunits. The initial vehicle for that service wouldbe a composite defense battalion, a unit con-taining seacoast artillery, antiaircraft artillery,infantry, and tanks, whose task was overseasbase defense.

Units of this type, their organization alwaystailored to their mission, were already de-ployed overseas and had seen combat. Out-numbered elements of the 1st Defense Battal-ion had gallantly defended Wake Island frominvading Japanese. Other units of the 1st onJohnson and Palmyra and of the 3d and 6thBattalions on Midway had engaged enemyships and planes with seacoast defense and an-tiaircraft guns.11

As General Holcomb had pointed out to theGeneral Board, the selection of an officer tohead the black unit, in fact to oversee all blackMarine training, was crucial. The choice was awise and fortunate one. Colonel Samuel A.Woods, Jr., a native of South Carolina and agraduate of The Citadel, had some 25 yearsexperience as an officer, including service inFrance in World War I, duty in Cuba, China,the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines,and service with the fleet.'2 In addition to avaried and well rounded career, he had per-sonal qualities that made him a memorable

Colonel Samuel A. Woods,Jr.,first Commanding Officer, 51stComposite Defense Battalion and Mon/ford Point Camp. (USMCPhoto 9511).

man to the first black Marines. Almost univer-sally they speak of him with respect and affec-tion. In the words of one black NCO whoserved closely with him, his most outstandingquality was "his absolute fairness. He wouldthrow the book at you if' you had it coming, buthe would certainly give you an opportunity toprove yourself." 13

Colonel Woods, basing his findings upon aGeneral Board report to Secretary Knox of 20March, presented his plans for the program tobe established for black Marines to GeneralRockey on 21 April. He based his concept on aminimum of 1,000 black reserve recruits to beequipped as a defense battalion after sixmonths. Training was to be conducted atMumford Point (later renamed MontfordPoint) at the Marine Barracks, New River,North Carolina. The barracks, soon to benamed Camp Lejeune, was already the majoreast coast combat training site for Fleet MarineForce (FMF) units and it would soon be theonly training site for black Marines. The sumof $750,000 was alloted to construct and en-large temporary barracks and supportingfacilities for the new camp at Montford Point.

Some of the colonel's plan came to fruition,

A CHOSEN FEW 3

other parts were changed to meet the cir-cumstances at Montford Point. Basically, how-ever, a headquarters and service battery andone or more recruit training batteries would beformed as the initial camp complement. Thefirst recruits to report would have cooking ex-perience. It was expected that boot camp andbasic training would take 180 days. At the endof this time, the black Marines would receivecombat equipment and organize for training asa composite defense battalion. The first ap-pointments of black NCOs would be made atabout the same time.

Colonel Woods recognized the battalion'stable of organization contained "some rankswhich normally require considerable experi-ence and more than 12 years' service to at-tain." 14 Since the unit was eventually to becomposed entirely of black enlisted men andwhite officers, blacks would have to learn onthe job to fill all NCO billets. Promotion was tobe governed by length of service, experience,and demonstrated ability, and controlled bychanges in the training allowance for the bat-talion 15

Recruiting was to begin on 1 June 1942. Al-though the public announcement was notmade until 20 May, the basic instructions forMarine Corps Recruiting Divisions were sentOut ifl a letter from the Commandant on 15May. This letter set a quota of 200 recruits eachfrom the Eastern and Central Divisions whilethe Southern was to furnish 500 of the initial900 recruits. These men were to be citizensbetween 17 and 29 years of age, and they wereto meet the existing standards for enlistment inthe Corps. They were to be enlisted in Class III(c), Marine Corps Reserve, and assigned to in-active duty in a General Service Unit of theirReserve District. Both the service record bookand the enlistment contract were to be stamped"Colored." 16

When recruiting opened on 1 June, the firstmen to enlist were Alfred Masters and George0. Thompson (1 June), George W. James andJohn E. L. Tiliman (2 June), Leonard L. Burns(3 June), and Edward A. Cuip (5 June), all inthe 8th Reserve District, headquartered at Pen-sacola, Florida. On 8 June, James W. Brown inthe 3d District (New York) and George L.Glover and David W. Sheppard in the 6th and7th Districts (Charleston) enlisted. From thenon the number on the rolls gradually rose, withthe instructions to recruiters that the first mento be sent to Montford Point would be those

who had skills that would help ready the campfor those to follow.

The majority of the recruits were well moti-vated to join the Marine Corps. One recruit,Edgar R. Huff, from Gadsden, Alabama, wholater became the senior sergeant major in theMarine Corps, expressed the feelings of a lot ofthose first men when he said: "I wanted to be aMarine because I had always heard that theMarine Corps was the toughest outfit goingand I felt that I was the toughest going, and soI wanted to be a member of the best organiza-tion." 17

Other recruits, faced with a long delay inreporting to boot camp unless they had qualifi-cations that were needed in the initial campsetup, stretched the truth a little. In Boston, ayoung black, Obie Hall, who eventually becamethe first man in the first squad in the firstregular recruit platoon organized at MontfordPoint, told the recruiting sergeant that hecould drive a truck. He recalled later, "I couldno more drive a truck than a man in the moon,[but] I said, 'I'm a truck driver.' "18 And as aresult he arrived at Montford Point on 2 Sep-tember 1942.

The original schedule called for about 25cooks, bakers, and barbers to report to campon 26 August. The next 100 men were to re-port on 2—3 September and another 125 or sowith miscellaneous qualifications were to arriveon 16—17 September. The middle of eachmonth thereafter was to bring about 200 re-cruits until the target total of 1,200 men wasreached.19

The Camp Opens

On 18 August 1942, Headquarters and Ser-vice Battery of the 51st Composite DefenseBattalion was activated at Montford Point withColonel Woods as battalion commander. Hisexecutive officer and officer in charge of re-cruit training was Lieutenant Colonel Theo-dore A. Holdahi, a World War I enlisted mancommissioned as a regular officer in 1924, whohad served in the Philippines, China,Nicaragua, and British Guiana.2° Batterystrength, all white Marines, was 23 officers and90 enlisted men, these last soon to be known toblack recruits as SES men (Special EnlistedStaff). While there was a sprinkling of experi-enced officers and warrant officers, the major-ity of the commissioned strength was secondlieutenants not long out of officers' training at

z H z C C,)

A CHOSEN FEW 5

the Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia.The staff NCOs, sergeants, and some of thecorporals were men with years of experience inthe Marine Corps. The few privates first class(PFCs) and privates filled clerical, motor trans-port, and other camp support billets.

The men chosen to be drill instructors (DIs)were "old line" Marines, men who were to im-press the black recruits with their bearing andfirmness of manner. In the memory of one ofthe few recruits who had had prior experiencein the Armed Forces, Gilbert H. Johnson, theseDIs "set about from the very beginning to getus thoroughly indoctrinated into the habitsand the thinking and the actions of the MarineCorps. Discipline seemed to be their lone stockin trade, and they applied it with a vengeance,very much to our later benefit." 21

On schedule, 13 of the 24 black recruits ex-pected in August arrived at Montford Point onthe 26th. The first black private to set foot inthe camp was Howard P. Perry of Charlotte,North Carolina. He was joined on that eventfulfirst day by Jerome D. Alcorn, Willie B. Came-ron, Otto Cherry, Lawrence S. Cooper, Harold0. Ector, Eddie Lee, UlyssesJ. Lucas, Robert S.Parks, Jr., Edward Polin, Jr., Emerson E.Roberts, Gilbert C. Rousan, and James 0.Stallworth. The rest of the 23 men who even-tually arrived in August came in over the nextfive days. Battery A of the 51st Composite De-fense Battalion was organized on 26 August "asan administrative and tactical unit for the train-ing of recruit platoons," with Second Lieuten-ant Anthony Caputo as commanding officer.22

In September recruit training began in ear-nest. What Montford Point Marines later calledthe "Mighty" 1st, 2d, and 3d Recruit PlatOonswere organized with 40 men in each platoon.Several SES NCOs were assigned to each pla-toon to give the men experience in handlingblack recruits; as more men came in in mid-September many of the original DIs weretransferred to help form new platoons. Thiswas to be the experience of the first fewmonths, in fact it was not long, before excep-tional recruits were being singled out andmade "Acting Jacks," assistant DIs in their ownplatoons. This came about partially because ofthe shortage of white NCOs and equally as wellbecause one purpose of all training at MontfordPoint was to discover and develop potentialblack NCOs.

The number of voluntary enlistments ofblack Marines was not up to the anticipated

rate. The requirement for these first recruits tohave ability in needed skills was undoubtedly afactor in the slow intake. It became necessaryon 9 October to modify the plans for assem-bling the black personnel of the 51st, and theassignment of experienced SES personnel hadto be curtailed in the face of pressure for menfor FMF units already deployed in the Pacific.Although it had been anticipated that 1,200black recruits would be enlisted by the end ofOctober less than 600 were in camp.23 TheCommandant was writing as late as 19 De-cember that "colored personnel will continueto be procured and ordered to the 51st Com-posite Defense Battalion at the rate of 200 re-cruits per month until 1,200 is reached." 24

The camp at this time made an indelibleimpression on the incoming recruits. Comingoff Highway 24 near the small and sleepy townof Jacksonville, a narrow road about a milelong led through a corridor of tall pine treesinto a large clearing where there was:

a headquarters building (#100), a chapel, twowarehouses, a theatre building with two wings, whichlater housed a library, barber shop, [and] classificationroom on one side and a recreation slop chute [beerhail] on the other, a dispensary building, a mess hail,designated by the recruits as "The Greasy Spoon,"quarters and facilities for the SES personnel, a smallsteam generating plant, a small motor transport com-pound, a small officers' club, and 120 green prefabri-cated huts, each designed for billeting 16 men.25

Surrounding the open spaces of the maincamp area were thick pine forests. Beyond thenorth forest area was Highway 24, to the souththe point of land that gave the area its namethrust into the New River, to the west was theriver, Wilson Bay, and the town of Jacksonville,and to the east was Scales Creek, which hadnotorious areas of quicksand. Across the creekwas an old Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)camp area now partially occupied by a war dogtraining center. In all there was about 5½square miles of rugged ground in the originalcamp site. Mosquitoes abounded, the woodswere full of snakes, and bears padded aboutthrough the camp, much to the consternationof recruits who saw their tracks when they fellout for morning roll call. There was a lot ofbush in the camp area to start off with, but theboots soon cleared it away or wore it away withtheir incessant drilling.

Part and parcel of this somewhat drab anduninviting encampment was the traditional DIreception the incoming recruits received. Theidea at all boot camps, whether white at Parns

Island and San Diego or black at MontfordPoint, was to knock the new recruit off balance,keep him on the run, hammer at him physi-cally and psychologically day and night, andeventually meld him as an individual into amember of a team, his platoon. There wasample room for the men to believe one Dl'sstatement, "I'm going to make you wish younever had joined this damn Marine Corps." °

In point of fact, however, Gilbert Johnson,who had served six years in the Army's black25th Infantry on the Mexican Border in the1920s and most of the 1930s as a Navy messattendant and officers' steward, sagely ob-served in regard to the white DIs that "thepolicy was to select the type of individuals whowere not against the Negro being a Marine,and had it been otherwise, why I'm afraid thatwe would have all left the first week. Some ofus, probably, the first night." 27

Johnson, who had been an Officers' Steward2d Class, had asked to be discharged from theNavy in order to enlist in the Marine Corps as aprivate. The Commandant and the Secretary

of the Navy concurred in his request; he re-ceived his discharge, enlisted in the Marines,and soon became known, once out of bootcamp, as "Hashmark" Johnson, because of theprior service stripes that he wore on his sleeves.Due in part to his age, 37, when he reachedMontford Point, his considerable service ex-perience, and a serious dedication to making asuccess of being a Marine, he was destined tobecome a legend in his own lifetime to the firstblack Marines, an elder statesman and histo-rian of the Montford Point experience.

But "Hashmark" Johnson was far from theonly memorable man who joined in those firstfew months when volunteers filled the ranks atMontford Point. The recruiters had been selec-tive; there were other men with Army service,John T. Pridgen, who had been a member ofthe black 10th Cavalry in the late 1930s, andGeorge A. Jackson, who had been an Armylieutenant. Both eventually became drill in-structors. There was a host of collegegraduates and men who had had college train-ing including Charles F. Anderson, a graduate


Montford Point Camp a.s it appeared in 1943. In the left center is the mess hail; in right center are the "little green huts" of boot camp.

(photo from Montford Point Pictorial).

pP-w

I',

A CHOSEN FEW 7

of Morehouse College, who arrived in Sep-tember and eventually became the first blacksergeant major of Montford Point Camp andCharles W. Simmons, a graduate of Alcorn Aand M with a masters degree from the Univer-sity of Illinois, who wound up as sergeantmajor of the 51st Defense Battalion28 The manwho was to become the senior bayonet andunarmed combat instructor of black recruits,Arvin L. "Tony" Ghazlo, a former bodyguardand jujitsu instructor from Philadelphia,29 ar-rived in October, and the next month saw theman who was to be his principal assistant, Er-nest "Judo" Jones, reach Montford Point. Be-sides teaching the recruits, these two and their

assistants were responsible for many memora-ble exhibitions of unarmed combat techniques.

There were many of those early recruits whobecame men of note amongst black Marinesand, in fact, men of substance in their com-munities in later life. They were, in general, aselect body of young men; the recruiters hadtried hard to find and send to Montford Pointmen with technical, educational, and workbackgrounds who had the potential to fill outthe various billets of a defense battalion. Thecall for such specialists could not be completelymet, however, and the Commandant was in-formed in late October that it was "doubtful ifeven white recruits could be procured with the

Corporal Alvin "Tony" Ghazlo, senior bayonet and unarmed combat instructor at t%4ontford Point, disarms his assistant, Private Ernest"Judo" Jones. (USMG Photo 5334).

I 4

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qualifications listed This racial com-parison of relative skills was not as odious as itmight seem today, but rather a statement ofthe prevailing situation in most of the country,where the general education level of blacks waslower than that of whites and the chances forskilled job experience were severely limited forblacks.

The First Graduates

By the end of November 1942, the initialrecruit platoons were near the finish of theireight weeks of boot camp. Two weeks prelimi-nary marksmanship training was conducted atMontford Point, culminated by a week of livefiring at the Camp Lejeune rifle range nearStone Bay. Since there were as yet no livingfacilities for blacks at the range, the recruitsfound themselves trucked to the range beforedawn and returned to camp after nightfall.Still, they did well, and the majority of the first198 men to graduate from boot camp qualifiedas rifle marksmen or sharpshooters, enablingthem to wear their qualification badgesproudly on their uniforms. Even more im-portant to the men, the first blacks were qual-ified to sew rank stripes on their uniforms inNovember. On the 1st, 16 privates were prom-oted to private first class and on the 19th, fourprivates were promoted to assistant cook.Many of the new PFCs had been acting as assis-tant DIs to the SES NCOs, some had evenfinished up the training of their platoons as thewhite DIs were spread thin among newlyformed units. Others of the new "one stripers"were slated to take over office duties in existingor planned headquarters, while the newly de-signated cooks would man the kitchens of the5lst's messhall.

In early December, the new graduates hadtheir first opportunity to go on liberty andpoured out the front gate walking down thelong road to Jacksonville. Their reception wasa rude awakening to the men. The sight of acouple of hundred blacks in Marine greencoming into the little town was unnerving tothe merchants, and they closed down theirstores. Far more disturbing, the bus station andthe ticket office were also closed, and theyoung blacks had seemingly lost their oppor-tunity to leave "J-ville." They had no intentionof staying in town, they wanted to get out, totake a bus to Wilmington, Kinston, or NewBern, larger towns with substantial black popu-

lations. In this instance, as in many, ColonelWoods was the champion of the black Marines.He ordered out the 5lst's trucks, which tookthe men to their chosen liberty towns, stayedwith them, and brought them back toMontford Point. And he took steps to ensurethat the buses were available thereafter to theblack Marines. Yet, the actualities of segrega-tion in the South made the use of these buses asore point with the men at Montford Point.Not only did they have to ride in the back ofthe bus, they were often arbitrarily denied en-trance by the white bus drivers while the buseswere filled with white Marines returning fromliberty. On a few occasions during the courseof the war years, white bus drivers who attemp-ted such arbitrary action found themselvesabandoned beside the road while a delightedcrew of black Marines returned themselves toMontford Point in the commandeered buses.

With the advent of promotions and libertycame new assignments for the first recruitgraduates. The 51st Composite Defense Battal-ion began to take shape. On 1 December, RifleCompany (Reinforced) of the 51st was or-ganized. But its immediate function belied itsname, for it was primarily a schools and train-ing organization for the many specialistsneeded. Student bandsmen, cooks, clerks,communicators, and truck drivers were amongthe men who filled its ranks. Some of theseindividuals were already experienced in theirspecialties, others had been selected to learn byformal schooling or on-the-job training. Alsoformed on the 1st was a 155mm gun batteryand a 90mm antiaircraft group. On 21 De-cember, a 75mm pack howitzer battery wasorganized. Remaining behind in Battery Awere nine privates and 12 PFCs, six of thelatter to serve as Dis and six as battery clerks.

December offered many of the newly mintedMarines a chance for a week's furlough; manywere home for Christmas or New Year's Day.Their misadventures were many, for theirnumber was still small, and the existence ofblack Marines was apparently not widelyknown. In several instances, men were ques-tioned or arrested for impersonating a Marine,but the misunderstandings were usuallycleared up in short order.

Expansion Looms

While the 51st Composite Defense Battalion,still the vehicle for handling all black Marines,

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was in the process of reorganization, there wasthe prospect of a whole new ball game insofaras blacks in the Marine Corps was concerned.Instead of 1,200 men, one defense battalionand its training base, there were going to bethousands more men arriving at MontfordPoint.

On 5 December 1942, voluntary enlistmentsin the Armed Forces were discontinued for allmen 18 to 37 years of age, although 17 yearolds and, in some instances, those 38 or oldercould still volunteer for the Navy and MarineCorps. Beginning in January 1943, all men inthe 18—37 age group would be inducted intothe services through the Selective Service Sys-tem. To make the call-up equitable, at least 10percent of those selected would be blacks, aproportion approximating the number ofblacks in the U.S. population as a whole.

The Army, which was the principal ben-eficiary of the stopping of the flow of thevolunteers into the other services, was in-terested in having the Marine Corps concen-trate, on taking black draftees until it hadreached the same percentage of blacks in itsranks that the Army already had. This conceptwas unacceptable to the Corps, since it wouldhave severely disrupted existing training plansfor replacements and new combat units, butthere was no arguing with the imposition of aninduction quota. Its advent was recognizedearly in the year's planning and was confirmedin a memorandum of 8 March 1943 fromHeadquarters Marine Corps to the Chief ofNaval Personnel. Since the approved increasebetween 1 February and 31 December 1943was 99,000 men, this placed a requirement onthe Corps for the acquisition and accommoda-tion of 9,900 blacks. In order to meet this goal,calls were placed with Selective Service for 400men in February and March, 800 in April,1,300 in May, and 1,000 men per month there-after. Any increase in the authorized strengthof the Marine Corps would lead to a corres-ponding increase in the monthly draft calls forblack Marines.31

Obviously, Montford Point was due for dras-tic expansion, and the 51st Composite DefenseBattalion could not be the vehicle to absorbsuch numbers. Some of the new men wouldhave the opportunity of becoming officers'stewards, cooks, and messmen, for the Secre-tary of the Navy on 1 January had authorizedthe formation of a Messman Branch (eventu-ally Stewards' Branch) in the Marine Corps,

composed entirely of black Marines. Stillothers of the incoming thousands would servein a second defense battalion that was con-templated as a follow on to the 5 1st. But mostof the new recruits, in fact the majority ofWorld War II black Marines, would end upserving in pioneer or labor units, for the needfor logistic support troops in the Pacific fight-ing was acute.

Colonel Woods visted Headquarters MarineCorps in January and presented a plan for thefuture development of Montford Point. He in-dicated the 51st could carry on the handling ofall black Marines through February and intoMarch when a new 1,000-man camp areawould be ready. Simultaneously, organizationwork would be underway on the Mess Atten-dants School (an 8-week course) and an Offic-ers' Cooks and Stewards School (a 16-weekcourse). The contemplated increase in blackMarines would dictate the organization of aseparate Montford Point Camp headquartersby late spring.32

In January, the first 42 selective service menarrived at Montford Point to he treated nodifferently as boots than the men who hadgone before them. Many of the draftees, boththen and later, were selective service volun-teers. Marine liaison officers with the SelectiveService System and Marine recruiters workedmightily to ensure that most of the drafteeswere men who wanted to serve in the Corps.The experiences of a number of men whoentered during this period bear out the con-tinued effort at enlisting the best men availa-ble.33 In May, Colonel Woods wrote the Com-mandant that "the standard of inductees con-tinues to be about the same as in the case ofvolunteers. This indicates excellent work bythe recruiting service."

Change continued at Montford Point duringthe first half of 1943. In January, the first blackNCOs were appointed as three assistant cooks,Jerome D. Alcorn, Otto Cherry, and Robert T.Davis, were named field cooks (corporals) onthe 18th. Men who had been assigned to tacti-cal units of the 51st, but who had dem-onstrated that they were of DI caliber while inboot camp, rejoined Battery A in February.Ten of them made corporal on the 19th, thenucleus for a vastly increased recruit trainingeffort. Nineteen other new corporals weremade in other units of the 51st in February andthereafter new NCOs were appointed everymonth.

A CHOSEN FEW 11

On 11 March, Headquarters and ServiceCompany, Headquarters Battalion, MontfordPoint Camp was activated, as was Headquar-ters Company, Recruit Depot Battalion. Bat-tery A of the 51st became Company A of theRecruit Depot Battalion. Colonel Woods, ascamp commander, relinquished his commandof the 51st to Lieutenant Colonel W. BayardOnley, a Naval Academy graduate (1919) whohad recently served as Execuitve Officer, 23dMarines,35 and Lieutenant Colonel Holdahitook over the new recruit battalion. On 1 April1943, Headquarters Company, MessmanBranch Battalion was organized with the newbattalion commander Captain Albert 0. Mad-den, a World War I veteran who had beenrecommissioned as a food service officer afterextensive restaurant experience in the Albany,New York, area.36 The new unit with its at-tendant schools was redesignated Stewards'Branch Battalion on 13 April. The new camparea which would house the stewards was dub-bed "Slotnick's Grove" by the black Marinesafter a young lieutenant who had been in-volved in its construction.37

Reorganization and augmentation con-tinued at a frantic pace as hundreds of recruitspoured into Montford Point. New recruitcompanies were organized, a Schools Com-pany and a Motor Transport Company wereadded to the camp headquarters battalion, the5lst's Rifle Company became the vehicle fororganizing and dispatching depot companies(labor troops) to the field, and an AssistantStewards' School (Company A) and a Stewards'Cook School (Company B) were added to Cap-tain Madden's battalion.

The change on the recruit drill field was themost drastic. Almost all of the SES DIs had leftby the end of April; black sergeants and cor-porals took over as the senior DIs of the eightplatoons then in training: the 16th Platoon(Edgar R. Huff); 17th (Thomas Brokaw); 18th(Charles E. Allen); 19th (Gilbert H. Johnson);20th (Arnold R. Bostic); 21st (Mortimer A.Cox); 22d (Edgar R. Davis, Jr.); and 23d(George A. Jackson).38 In late May, the lastwhite drill instructor, First Sergent Robert W.Coiwell, was transferred, and Sergeant"Hashmark" Johnson took his place as the re-

Corporal Edgar R. Huff, one of the first black drill instructors, confronts a recruit platoon at Montford Point. (USMC Photo 5337).

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cruit battalion's field sergeant major, in chargeof all drill instructors; Sergeant ThomasPridgen was his assistant. From then on, allrecruit training at Montford Point was con-ducted by black NCOs—a milestone had beenpassed.

Boot camp did not get any easier, in fact, inthe testimony of those who served there in thetransition period it became rougher and stayedrougher.39 The boots started on the run andstayed on the run. As one black DI com-mented: "Glenn Cunningham [a famous miler]had nothing on the recruits at MontfordPoint." 40 "Hashmark" Johnson, first as fieldsergeant major and later as sergeant major ofthe Recruit Depot Battalion, was determinedthat the black boots would measure up in everyway to Marine Corps standards. Hisphilosophy prevaded boot training. In lateryears, addressing a group of veterans of thatera, he reminded them of their ordeal and thereason for it, remarking:

I was an ogre to some of you that met me on thedrill field and in the huts of Montford more than aquarter century ago. I was a stern instructor, but I wasfair. I was an exacting instructor, but with some un-derstanding of the many problems involved. I keptbefore me, always, that nearly impossible goal to qual-ify in a few weeks, and at the most a few months, atype of Marine fully qualified in every respect to wearthat much cherished Globe and Anchor. You wereuntried. The objectives were to qualify you with loy-alty, with a devotion to duty, and with a determinationequal to all, transcended by none . . . As I look intoyour faces tonight, I remember the youthful, andsometimes pained expressions at something I mayhave said . . But I remember something you did.You measured up, by a slim margin perhaps, butmeasure up you did. You achieved your goal. Thatrealization creates within me a warm appreciation ofyou and a deep sense of personal gratitude.4'

With Johnson's type of drive permeating theboot camp at the man-to-man level of DI andrecruit, life proved to be very trying for thenew Marines. But it was not all drill and train-ing. There were USO shows and movies at thecamp theatre and a full schedule of intra-mural sports between various units at thecamp. And there was always music, for manytalented singers and musicians had enlisted.Men from the bands of Count Basie, Cab Cal-loway, Duke Ellington, and Erskine Hawkinswere in the ranks of the 5lst's band, whichlater became the camp band. The band wascapable of producing jazz combos, dance or-chestras, and concert groups of professionalcaliber.

Fortunately, one of the young officers whoarrived early at Montford Point was LieutenantRobert W. Troup, Jr., an accomplished com-poser and musician from New York, who es-tablished immediate rapport with the blackmusicians which carried over to the rest of themen. He eventually became camp recreationofficer, and many of his activities were directlyconnected with the improvement of moralethrough the arrangement of talent shows,sporting events, and concerts using the mul-titude of entertainment and athletic talent inthe ranks at Montford Point. He elicited almostuniversal praise for understanding, rangingfrom "Hashmark" Johnson's typically re-strained, "a top-notch musician, a very decentsort of officer," to Obie Hall's, "he was thesharpest cat I ever seen in my life." 42 But mostof the men of Montford Point rememberBobby Troup's song "Jacksonville," whichhardly rivaled his World War II hit "Route66" in nationwide popular music charts, butcertainly was a hit at Camp Lejeune where itechoed the sentiments of black and whiteMarines alike with words like:

Take me away from Jacksonville, 'cause I've had myfill and that's no lie,

Take me away from Jacksonville, keep me away fromJacksonville until I die,

Jacksonville stood still while the rest of the world pas-sed by.43

Black Marines practise descending cargo nets in MontfordPoint's training pool under the watchful eye of Sergeant Paul E.Meeres (on board). (USMC Photo 8275).

:fl

A CHOSEN FEW 13

Near mid-summer, one of the frequent en-tertainments that featured Mon tford Pointtalent, a series of boxing matches plus un-armed combat exhibitions by Tony Ghazlo andhis instructors, produced an incident that hasnever left the memory of any man who witnes-sed it. Major General Henry L. Larsen, whohad just returned from the South Pacific totake command of Camp Lejeune, was invitedto attend this "boxing smoker" and took theoccasion to make a short speech to the assem-bled black Marines. There are as many ver-sions of his exact words as there are witnesses,but the gist of his remarks, as remembered,was that when he had come back from overseashe had not realized how serious the war situa-tion was until he had seen "you people wearingour uniform." ' The unfriendly responsefrom the predominently black audience wasimmediate and tumultuous. His unfortunatechoice of words emphasized to the men thatthey were still on trial in the eyes of many whiteMarines.

By early fall, when Bobby Troup's popularfarewell to Jacksonville was being sung, whis-tled, and played throughout Monford Point,many men had already left the North Carolinacamp. When the anniversary date of the open-ing of Montford Point was reached, four depotcompanies had already deployed overseas, anda Marine barracks detachment had been sentto the Naval Ammunition Depot, McAlester,Oklahoma. The 51st had locked on to a train-

Marines from VlontJord Point climb down a cargo net into awaiting LC VP for a practice landing at Onslow Beach. (USMCPhoto 9007).

ing schedule for overseas deployment, otherdepot companies were forming for duty in thePacific, and stewards were leaving for assign-ment to officers' messes in the states and over-seas. The pace of the camp quickened as moreand more men left for duty beyond the reachesof Montford Point. The test of combat was yetto come for black Marine units, but it was in-evitable.

$rn-u

CHAPTER 2

THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION

Throughout the first six months that blacksserved in the Marine Corps, the focus of atten-tion was the 51st Composite Defense Battalion.It was to be the first (and for a time, the only)black combat unit. Its initial stages of trainingwere hampered by equipment shortages, buteven more by the complete unfamiliarity of themen with the weapons and supporting equip-ment they encountered. There were a numberof qualified white instructors for the variousspecialties, and many of the junior officers hadattended short technical courses of varioustypes, but the biggest drawback to the battal-ion's progress in training was the fact that ithad no cadre of experienced men on which tobuild.

The initial selection of men the battalion re-ceived in its new tactical units was a good one,but many of these served only briefly in itsranks before they moved on to the drill field, toschools, and to camp offices to help cope withthe swelling tide of draftees, or to the depotcompanies that began forming in March andApril. As a consequence, there were only about500 men on the rolls of the 51st on 21 April1943 when a new commanding officer freshfrom overseas, Lieutenant Colonel Floyd A.Stephenson, arrived at Montford Point to takeover. His predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel On-ley, moved on to take command of the campHeadquarters Battalion and to serve as ColonelWood's executive officer.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson was an ex-perienced artillery officer who had been atPearl Harbor with the 4th Defense Battalionwhen the Japanese attacked. Later, he servedas the battalion's executive officer and com-mander of its 5-inch artillery group at Efate inthe New Hebrides.' He approached his newtask with enthusiasm and considerable drive.Within two weeks, he was recommending thatthe 51st become a regular, heavy defense bat-talion and stating "that there is nothing thatsuitable colored personnel can not betaught." 2 Colonel Woods in his favorable en-

dorsement to Stephenson's recommendationindicated that he was "now fully convinced thatthis unit can be forged into a first class fightingoutfit in a reasonably short time after its com-plement is filled." He also noted that a compo-site defense battalion was designed "to meetthe requirements of a situation that no longerexists."

The units that would be detached from the51st, if the change took place, would be theRifle Company (Reinforced) and the 75mmPack Howitzer Battery. A Machine Gun Grouphad been organized on 1 March 1943 to givethe battalion a light antiaircraft capability andit would remain together with the 155mm and90mm guns.

The recommendation was approved atHeadquarters Marine Corps on 28 May 1943

90mm antiaircraft gun crew oJ the 51st Defense Battalionpractices loading shells at Montford Point. (USMC Photo 9507).

15


with the stipulation that men under trainingfor infantry and field artillery would continueto train with the 51st pending organization of aseparate infantry battalion.4 The news of thechange caused some bewilderment and con-sternation among the black Marines atMontford Point. The inclusion of infantry andfield artillery in the 51st had meant to mostmen that the battalion would see some closecombat. The purpose of separating and re-designating these units was widely misun-derstood. Reinforcing this misunderstandingwas the loss, earlier in the year, of the lighttank platoon which had been part of the riflecompany. Although some defense battalionsalready overseas had such platoons, they wereno longer to be an integral part of the defensebattalion organization. Rumor had it that theblack Marines would serve only as labor troopsor officers' stewards.

The First Combat Unit

Fortunately, the rumor was soon dispelledinsofar as the 51st was concerned. On 7 June1943, "Composite" was dropped from the titleof the 51st Defense Battalion. The 155mmGun Battery expanded to become the 155mmArtillery Group and the Machine Gun Groupbecame the Special Weapons Group, its princi-pal armament now being 20mm and 40mmcannon as well as .50 caliber machine guns.Rifle Company (Reinforced) was redesignatedCompany A, 7th Separate Infantry Battalionand the 75s became the 7th Separate PackHowitzer Battery. Both units were attached tothe camp's Fleadquarters Battalion but werestationed in the 5 lst's area to continue trainingwith the defense battalion.

The redesignations continued in July whenthe 155s became the Seacoast Artillery Groupand the 90s the Antiaircraft Artillery Group, inkeeping with the titles of such units in a newtable of organization for defense battalions.5The summer was fully occupied with intensivetraining on weapons, fire control equipment,searchlights, and all the myriad of equipmentthat a defense battalion possessed. A few menwere sent away to specialist schools at variousArmy bases and some received schooling atCamp Lejeune, but the vast majority learnedon the job. The battalion doubled in size in July,and the growth continued in succeedingmonths, with over 1,700 officers and men on

the rolls in October. Not all these Marines weredestined to serve in the 5 1st, however.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson had beengiven the task of assimilating and training thecadre of another defense battalion, approxi-mately 400 men, at the same time he readiedhis own troops for combat. The new unit, the52d Defense Battalion, was to be organized atthe start of 1944.6

The increased pace of training was marredby the death on 20 August of the first black todie in Marine Corps uniform, Corporal GilbertFraser, Jr. of the Slst's Seacoast ArtilleryGroup. Fraser, a New Yorker who had at-tended Virginia Union College, was killedwhen he fell 30 feet from a landing net into alanding boat while his unit was practicing de-barkation. A road leading from the main campat Montford Point to the base artillery area wasnamed after the popular 30-year-old Marine.Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson noted FraserRoad would be "a constant reminder to thosewho come after him of the fine type of youngmanhood" represented by Gilbert Fraser.7

In early September, the battalion moved outof Montford Point proper across Scales Creekto the old CCC-Camp Knox area where it tookover three of four barracks blocks; the otherwas occupied by the War Dog Training Center.The accomodations in the new campsite werenot luxurious; the barracks, mess halls, andoffices were old wooden buildings, drafty andbadly in need of repair.8 The living quarterswere characterized by one of the 51st as "moreopen than closed" and dominated by big pot-bellied stoves. He recalled that if you stoodwithin 10 feet of them "you roasted in frontand froze behind." But the move was popularwith the battalion. It was off by itself, runningits own show, and the transfer across ScalesCreek intensified the feeling of the men of the51st that they were a bit different, superioreven, to the rest of the blacks at MontfordPoint. In the battalion's news column in theCamp Lejeune paper, the writer, SergeantJimmie Stewart, observed: "We just can't getover the thrill of being here at Camp Knox.Boy, its really swell. Makes us feel like we're inthe groove again and that life is not so badafter all." 10

Most of the reason the men of the 51st"thought they were the cat's meow," as onemember put it, was that they were in the onlyblack Marine unit engaged in extensive combattraining.'1 They considered themselves to be

THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION 17

members of a fighting outfit and were not at allhesitant about reminding the other blackMarines of the fact. On liberty they stuck to-gether, a not unusual trait of men from unitswith high morale. They were convinced, andnot without some reason, that most of the menat Montford Point wanted to serve in the 5 1st.

The battalion's lot throughout the fall of1943 was hard, exhausting training. First theSeacoast Group moved out to Onslow Beach tofire its 155s; the Antiaircraft and SpecialWeapons Groups soon followed to test theirgunnery. The whole battalion spent two

months in the field, a period that saw hardusage for all its equipment in frequently miser-able weather. In order to fill the ranks of theaugmented 5 1st, many men with no recruittraining and others with only a few days ofboot camp were added to the firing batteries sothat they could get target practice experience,and the battalion would be ready to mount outat full strength on schedule.12 It made the taskof the officers and white instructor NCOs dou-bly difficult to have to supervise these raw re-cruits and train the "veterans," who were notlong out of boot camp themselves. Still, the job

O(F(NL 8AT1A1N5 1942-1945


was done, although a number of the officersnoted in their December training reports andin later comments that they thought the 51stneeded more training before going overseas,that the newly promoted black NCOs neededmore seasoning, and that in general the men,most of whom had had no experience withsophisticated equipment, "showed a lack ofappreciation of the value or importance ofmaterial and equipment." 13

These judgments did not obviate the factthat men had often done quite well at targetpractice at Onslow Beach. When an inspectingparty including Secretary Knox and GeneralHolcomb watched the 90mm guns being firedin November, the gun crews shot down thetowed target within 60 seconds after theystarted firing. Lieutenant Colonel Stephensonreported General Holcomb as remarking, "Ithink they're ready now." 14 And "What a yelpwent up" amongst the black Marines when theyhit that target; to them it proved too that theywere ready.15

Not long after the battalion returned toCamp Knox in early December, LieutenantColonel Stephenson went to HeadquartersMarine Corps to get further orders on the fu-ture of the 51st. Much to his dismay he foundthat the battalion's sailing orders had beenmoved up five weeks from original plans andthat the 52d Defense Battalion was also to beorganized two weeks ahead of the original pro-jection. Plans for sending the men who hadjoined as recruits to the rifle range to completethat essential part of their training had to bescrapped and holiday leaves cancelled. The400-odd men destined for the 52d were trans-ferred out of the 51st and the new battalionwas formed on 15 December. Plans for specialtraining of the seacoast artillery in field artil-lery firing techniques were put aside and allofficers and men away at school were recalled.All hands turned to at a furious pace to crateand pack the battalion's equipment for thepending move.'6

Another sure sight that the battalion was onits way was the transfer of the white seniorNCOs and instructors to other units at CampLejeune. The blacks who had been their assis-tants now took over. Gunnery SergeantCharles W. Simmons became the battalionsergeant major. He later recalled: "I will neverforget the consternation of the white sergeantwho trained me for the job of Sergeant Majorof the 5 1st, when we learned that he would not

go overseas with the battalion. I was surprisedtoo—but I understand the situation. I hadgraduated!" 17

In early January, 175 freight cars wereloaded at the rate of 25 a day, mostly in rottenweather with heavy doses of rain, snow, andsleet.'8 The men turned to with a will, how-ever, since they were sure they were headedfor combat. The battalion moved out in incre-ments with the seacoast artillery leading offand the rest of the units followed in their owntroop trains. By 19 January, only a relativelysmall rear echelon was left at Camp Knox, andit too was slated to leave the next day.

The departure of the 51st was not withoutincident that became a matter of controversyand investigation. What started out to be somefarewell rounds of beer by rear echelon mem-bers at the Montford Point snack bar deterio-rated into a conflict with the military police.When the confrontation reached the bottle-throwing stage, the MP sergeant on the sceneclosed the snack bar. As some of the Slst's menstarted to throw rocks at him, he fired his car-bine in the air three times in warning, and thecrowd dispersed.

Later that evening, about 15 or 20 shots werefired from the Camp Knox area towardsMontford Point. Unfortunately, one of theserandom shots, which were judged to be firingswith no intent to hit anyone, did find a target.Corporal Rolland J. Curtiss, a drill instructorwho had his platoon in the woods back of thecamp theatre, was wounded, though not seri-ously.

Authorities soon made checks of all the riflesin the Camp Knox area but could not deter-mine conclusively if any had been fired. Therewas evidence, however, of some laxity in theaccountability of rifles in the battalion. Thisbecame a feature of a critical report that Colo-nel Woods submitted to the Commandant afterthe departure of the last elements of the 51stfor the west coast. He commented unfavorablyon the police of certain parts of the camp, thatnumerous items of personal equipment hadbeen left behind, and that the care of govern-ment property had been neglected.'9

So it happened that the 51st Defense Battal-ion arrived at San Diego under somewhat of acloud. Most of the men in the battalion wereunaware of the events that had transpired.They were proudly wearing their new battalionshoulder patch, issued just before they left


Religzous services are held at Onslow Beach for men of the 5lst's Seacoast Artillery Group. In the background is one of the group's155mm guns. (Photo from (Ytontford Point Pictorial,).

Camp Lejeune.'° It was a red oval with a largewhite "51" in the center with the white letters"USMC" below and a blue 90mm antiaircraftgun superimposed on the numerals. As theymoved into tents at Camp Elliott, some of themen went to the base's open air movie anddisrupted the show when they were told blackshad to sit in the back of the amphitheatre.They were not having any part of segregationthat night; they were too full of themselves ascombat-bound Marines. Despite the fracas,Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson authorized theissuance of liberty passes.2'

On 27 January 1944, much to the disap-pointment of the men, who liked and re-spected Stephenson, the battalion was assigneda new commanding officer, and Stephensonwas transferred. Colonel Curtis W. LeGette,the new commander, was a veteran artilleryofficer who had originally entered the MarineCorps as an enlisted man in 1910. He had justreturned to the states from a tour of duty ascommanding officer Of the 7th Defense Battal-ion in the Ellice Islands.22 Soon after he tookover, he fell the battalion in and gave the men adressing down on the subject of their disciplineand general behavior. Naturally enough, heused the term "you people," a common expres-sion in the Marine Corps by a superior whenaddressing a group of men, but to the men of

the 51st it meant "you blacks" and the lecturefell on deaf ears.23

Overseas Duty

Much to the young blacks surprise, all of theweapons and equipment that they had packedso laboriously on the east coast were nowturned in to the quartermasters at Camp Elliottand San Diego. The men retained only theirpersonal gear and the battalion only a modestamount of its property. On 11 February, the51st boarded a merchant transport, SS Meteor,at San Diego and sailed. The ship's destinationwas the Ellice Islands, where the 51st wasdestined to relieve the 7th Defense Battalion.En route to the islands, on 23 February, De-tachment A, 51st Defense Battalion was or-ganized with approximately half the men inthe battalion on its rolls and Lieutenant Col-onel Gould P. Groves, the battalion executiveofficer, as its commander. The mission of thenew detachment was to provide a garrison forNanomea Island. The rest of the battalionunder Colonel LeGette was headed forFunafuti and would outpost Nukufetau.

Moving by landing ship and submarinechaser, Detachment A reached Nanomea on 25February 1944; the rest of the battalion disem-barked at Funafuti on the 27th.24 In both

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places the men of the 51st found the Marinesof the 7th Defense Battalion eager to leave."They were never so glad to see black people intheir lives," one of the new arrivals at Nanomeadecided.25 The 51st took over the equipmentand weapons of the 7th Defense, much ofwhich had seen hard usage since the battalionhad first reached the South Pacific ninemonths before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

The task assigned the detachment onNanomea and the outpost on Nukefetau was tomaintain and defend the airfields on those is-lands for emergency use. On Funafuti, ColonelLeGette was charged with maintaining existingstaging and limited repair facilities for aircraft,an anchorage and a motor torpedo boat base,and with defending the atoll. The airfields inthe Ellice Islands were on standby to supportcombat operations then going on in the Mar-shall Islands to the northward.

Not much exciting happened to the 51st inits first overseas assignment, although the155mm gun crews on Nanomea did let loose 11rounds at a suspected enemy submarine on 28March. Most of the time was spent on gun drilland firing practice, and the battalion began toshake down into a settled outfit, though it stilldid not entirely please its more senior officers,many of whom were veterans of oversea serv-ice with other defense battalions in the earlypart of the war.

In June, when a letter from the Comman-dant arrived at Funafuti indicating that the5lst's ordnance and motor transport equip-ment left behind in California showed signs oflack of proper preventive maintenance, Col-

40mm gun crew of the 51st Defense Battalion ready to firetarget practzce at Montford Point. (Photo from Montford PointPictorial).

onel LeGette ordered a board of investigationand appointed himself the examining officer.26The lengthy study, which included testimonyfrom battery and group commanders, arrivedat a conclusion that the former commandingofficer of the battalion was primarily at fault.27When Colonel LeGette followed up this inves-tigation report with an unfavorable report thenext month on the state of the Slst's combatefficiency, Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson wasembarked on a long siege of letter writing toWashington to tell his side of the story. Muchof the correspondence forms the basis for whatis known about the state of the Slst's trainingand capabilities, at least from the standpoint ofthe battalion's officers. Throughout his embat-tled responses, Stephenson, who was overseaswith the 6th Marine Division at the time, main-tained a strong defense of his actions and ofthe unit he had trained, calling it "the finestorganization in the whole Negro program inthe Marine Corps 28 It should be notedthat much of this exchange went on withoutthe knowledge of the men in the ranks of the51st Defense Battalion. In their own eyes, theyhad done well and were steadly improvingtheir capabilities.

Another of the frequent changes in the bat-talion's organization occurred in July. As a re-sult of a Marine Corps-wide reshuffling of ta-bles of organization for defense battalions,most units were redesignated as antiaircraftartillery battalions. Their seacoast artillerygroups were disbanded or reorganized intofield artillery battalions of the corps artillery ofthe two Marine amphibious corps in thePacific. The 51st Defense Battalion, the 52d,and the 6th on Midway were the only units toretain their original titles, although the pri-mary function of all three battalions was nowantiaircraft defense.29 On 15 July 1944, theSeacoast Artillery Group of the 51st was dis-banded and its men transferred to other unitsof the battalion. The 90s became a Heavy An-tiaircraft Group, Special Weapons became aLight Antiaircraft Group, and a separateSearchlight Battery was organized.

At about the same time these changes wereoccurring, the Slst's detachments on Nanomeaand Nukufetau began moving to Funafuti. De-tachment A was disbanded on 15 July, and thebattalion began preparations to move to amore forward area. While these activities weregoing on, the Commandant, Samoan DefenseGroup, Captain Allen Hobbs, USN, who was

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LeGette's senior, wrote the colonel to express"his appreciation for the excellent spirit andefficient manner in which the officers and menof this battalion have carried out their dutiesunder trying and difficult conditions." Hefurther wished the 51st "luck and profitablehunting in your new assignment." 30

On to the Marshalls

Once again the weapons and equipment ofthe 51st had been using were packed andturned in. In the opinion of one member of themotor transport section, which had had to re-build many of vehicles it had inherited fromthe 7th Defense Battalion, "everything wasstanding tall when we left." 31 The unit went onboard ship, the Dutch-manned U.S. Armytransport Kola Agoeng,32 early in September,sailing on the 8th. The new destination wasEniwetok Atoll, a bustling support area for theoperations just concluded in the Mariana Is-lands.

On 14 September, the battalion arrived atEniwetok and in the next three days replacedelements of the 10th Antiaircraft Battalion,taking over its weapons and equipment onEniwetok, Engebi, Parry, and Porky Islands.The 10th was formally relieved on 17 Sep-tember and left for Pearl Harbor on the KotaAgoeng.33 The 5 1st, almost as soon as it wassettled in position, embarked on an intensiveschedule of training and towed-sleeve firing.The radar and searchlight units were con-stantly busy as aircraft based on the atoll wereused to try to penetrate the battalion's defen-sive screen. There were Japanese on bypassedislands in the Marshalls, and the men werereadily aware that they were a lot closer to theshooting war. The enormous lagoon atEniwetok was a constantly shifting scene asships passed through going and coming fromthe forward areas. Here, at least, there was thepossibility of action and spirits perked up.

The men of the 51st really sharpened theirtalents as gunners at Eniwetok. The battalionbecame a veteran unit; towed-sleeve targetswere shot down with regularity, searchlightspinpointed their targets as soon as they "struckarc," and the radar operators prided them-selves in detecting any and all snoopers.34 Butthe fact of the matter remained that the firstblack Marine combat unit was not in combat.

On 13 December 1944, Colonel LeGette re-linquished command of the 51st to return to

the States. When he left he expressed regretthat he could not stay with the battalionthroughout its overseas tour.35 The new andlast commander of the 51st was its formerexecutive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Groves,who had joined it at Montford Point in 1943.

There was action for the battalion atEniwetok, but nothing of substance. In earlyFebruary there was a week-long submarinealert with many contacts but no sightings. Laterin the spring, Condition Red was sounded, andthe men raced gleefully and hopefully to theirpositions, but no enemy planes appeared.Their disappointment was bitter. No matterhow well trained the battalion became, therewas bound to be a letdown in morale. Oneformer sergeant recalled, "the routine got soboresome, but we got a few plane crashes, acouple once in a while; a ship would go down atsea trying to land, but other than that theywere disappointed they didn't actually get intocombat. That was what they really wanted." 36

On 12 June 1945, a detachment of one90mm gun battery, one 40mm platoon, andfour searchlight sections was formed atEniwetok for duty at Kwajalein Atoll. Christ-ened Composite Group, 51st Defense Battalionunder Major William M. Tracy, the 251-manunit left Eniwetok by LST on the 14th anddisembarked at Kwajalein on 17 June; the rearechelon arrived on the 22d. There the group'sduties were the same of those of the remainderof the battalion, antiaircraft defense of an atoll.And like the rest of the 51st, the CompositeGroup saw no combat action in the war.

Home Again

Once the fighting was over, the Marines inthe 51st Defense Battalion were itching to gethome. Since the unit had been overseas for 19months when the war ended and had receivedno replacements, many of the men were closeto the point discharge total projected for theend of the year. The 51st was ripe for return tothe States as a unit. The men had started outtogether, gone through the war together, andnow they would go home together.

On 20 November at Kwajalein and 21November at Eniwetok, detachments of the52d Defense Battalion arrived from Guam toreplace the 5 1st. The reunion of the two blackunits was fleeting for the men returning homeimmediately boarded the ships that hadbrought the 52d. On 21 November, the Com-


A veteran 90mm crew of the 51st Defense Battalion poses with its gun, "Lena Home," at Eniwetok in 1945. (USMC Photo /21743).

posite Group sailed on the attack cargo shipUSS Wyandot (AKA—92) for Pearl Harbor,where the ship stayed a few days before itsteamed on for the Panama Canal and the eastcoast. On Thanksgiving Day, 22 November,the main body of the 51st left Eniwetok with-out regret and headed for San Diego onanother cargo ship, the USS Sibik (AK—121).Save for the rough thumping that catching thetail end of a severe storm in an empty ship cangive you, the trip back was uneventful.

On 10 December, the Sibik docked at SanDiego, and the battalion moved to Camp Pend-leton, where those men who lived west of theMississippi and had enough points were dis-charged. The majority entrained on the 19thand reached Camp Lejeune on Christmas Day1945, where the men from the CompositeGroup rejoined. They had returned toMontford Point by way of Norfolk on 21 De-cember.

The processing of the high point men fordischarge began almost immediately. The of-

ficers who had long served with the battalionbegan leaving. After Lieutenant ColonelGroves departed on 7 January, the actingcommanding officer for the rest of the monthwas a second lieutenant, But there was notmuch of an outfit left for him to command asthe discharges continued. On 31 January 1946,the 51st Defense Battalion was formally dis-banded and the remaining low point men weretransferred to other units at Montford Point.

As the men went their separate ways, theytook with them the knowledge that they hadserved in a unique, a pioneering unit, and hadshared its ups and downs. Possessed of an al-most cocky belief in themselves as Marines anda special pride in their battalion besides, theyhad not needed combat to develop self respect.As a black correspondent who visited the 51stat Eniwetok in October 1945 noted about itsmen: "They are a grand bunch! And becauseof their ability to come through the kind ofexperience they have had, with its attendantracial irritants, they undoubtedly will be bettermen and better citizens."

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a living legend. the drill inmucte or dl - marines.mil in the marine corps... · a living legend....

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