Battling While Black

by Major General Peter J. Gravett, USA (Ret)

Imagine you are an 18-year-old black man growing up in the “Jim Crow” South of the 1940s with maybe a seventh-grade education, and you enlist in the Army and become trained to operate and fight from a new Sherman battle tank. But many in the Army at that time did not want Black soldiers to fight in World War II. Reluctantly, the Army sent its African American tank battalion and other segregated Black battalions to serve in WWII under General George Patton. Battling While Black (the WWII version of “driving while black”) will enlighten the discrimination Black soldiers experienced during the war and expose another view of General Patton’s personality not widely known. Battling While Black chronicles four diverse Army segregated African American units in General Patton’s Third Army from D-Day to the end of WWII. These include a barrage balloon battalion which landed in Normandy on D-Day, an armor battalion (where Sergeant Ruben Rivers received the Medal of Honor over 50 years later), a field artillery battalion, and central postal directory battalion.

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