Honoring Sergeant Carter Read online

  HONORING SERGEANT CARTER

  Redeeming a Black

  World War II Hero’s Legacy

  ALLENE G. CARTER AND ROBERT L. ALLEN

  In memory of my father, Jesse Vaughn (1908–1994), the soul force in my life even when I didn’t know it.

  A.G.C.

  For my grandson, Xye Allen Arellano, and his generation. R.L.A.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: A Black Warrior in Nazi Germany

  ONE: Rediscovering a Hero

  TWO: Honoring Heroes

  THREE: Life in India and China

  FOUR: A Warrior Comes of Age

  FIVE: Love and War: A Hero’s Story

  SIX: Under Surveillance

  SEVEN: Stonewalled

  EIGHT: A Hero Vindicated

  EPILOGUE: Other Sergeant Carters?

  by Robert L. Allen

  Archives

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  A BLACK WARRIOR IN NAZI GERMANY

  In the harsh winter of 1944–1945, the long and bitter struggle against Nazi Germany reached a decisive stage. Following early successes in the wake of D day landings in France, in mid-December the Allies were slammed with a massive counteroffensive by German forces. The German assault in the Ardennes—which would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge—pitted a total of 600,000 Germans against 500,000 American troops. The Americans were stunned and momentarily pushed back, but heavy American bombing weakened the German forces and disrupted their supply lines, enabling the Allies to repulse the Germans and regain the initiative. The battle took a huge toll in U.S. casualties—80,000 killed, wounded, or captured—before the Allies could turn the tide. As American bombers continued to hammer German military and industrial targets, Allied forces launched a massive drive on the Rhineland. By early March, they were preparing to push into the heart of the Third Reich. To accomplish this they had to cross the Rhine River, the major natural barrier protecting Hitler and his weakened but still dangerous armies. It was a time of fierce battles at Forbach, Freimheim, and other German towns as Allied armies raced to the Rhine. For the first time black soldiers were playing a major combat role in the Allied campaign. Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr., my father-in-law, was one of the soldiers in the forefront of this fateful assault.

  Black American soldiers had not been welcomed into combat. For most of the war they were restricted to racially segregated units, working in service and support roles, such as truck drivers, stevedores, and engineers. But as a result of heavy casualties inflicted in the Battle of the Bulge, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower was compelled to find replacements wherever he could, and that included allowing black soldiers to volunteer for combat duty. This was the opportunity many black soldiers had hoped for. Thousands volunteered, and, after hasty combat training, more than 2,000 black soldiers were organized into black combat companies under white officers and attached to larger white units as part of the Rhineland campaign. These fresh reinforcements were critical to the campaign’s ultimate success. But to ensure that no black soldier might command whites, black sergeants were required to relinquish their stripes.

  Sergeant Carter had enlisted in the Army from his home in Los Angeles in September 1941 and had risen to the rank of staff sergeant in an all-black truck company. Eager to get into the fight, he volunteered daily for combat duty, finally being accepted after the Battle of the Bulge, but at the cost of his sergeant’s stripes. On the bright morning of March 23, 1945, Sergeant Carter and his black rifle squad were riding on a tank as members of the Fifty-sixth Armored Infantry Battalion with the Twelfth Armored Division in General George S. Patton’s Third Army. They were advancing on Speyer, a town of 50,000 inhabitants on the Rhine. The night before, Patton’s Fifth Infantry had ferried themselves in small boats across the Rhine near Oppenheim, allowing Patton to boast that he had beat British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in the race to be the first to cross the Rhine. Now the objective was to capture the bridge over the river at Speyer.

  Speyer was the site of an eleventh-century cathedral where German emperors had been buried for three hundred years. It was also the champagne capital of the Rhine Valley. A row of warehouses and breweries lined the right side of the road as the armored column advanced toward the town. Suddenly, the column was hit by 88mm artillery fire coming from one of the warehouses. Jumping down from the tanks the riflemen quickly deployed to the sides while the tanks dispersed. The officers quickly discussed what to do. Some 150 yards of open field lay between their position and the warehouse from which the shots were fired. Something had to be done to silence the enemy gunners. Armed with a Thompson sub machine gun and a clutch of hand grenades, twenty-eight-year-old Sergeant Carter stepped forward and offered to lead the way with his squad. Of medium height and lean, compact build, Eddie Carter was a handsome man with curly black hair, reddish-brown skin, and high cheekbones. His face was relatively thin, and its dominant feature, a square jaw, was often adorned with a thin mustache. He moved, some said, with the graceful agility of a panther. While the officers set up an observation post, Carter and his three men began to advance across the open field, not realizing that the tanks were not following.

  “Jerry opened up with everything he had,” Carter later recalled. “Our small group was cut to pieces.” One man was killed almost immediately by intense small-arms fire. Carter ordered the other two back to a protected position from which they could cover him as he advanced alone. But one of these men was killed before reaching cover, and the other was wounded. Exposed and without protective fire, Carter dashed ahead, dodging enemy bullets. Before he could hit the dirt three bullets from a German “burp” gun pierced his left arm, knocking him down. Lying on the ground looking at his bloody arm and realizing that his squad had been destroyed by the Germans, Carter became boiling mad. “The hell that was being loosed by all those Germans convinced me that I only had a few minutes to live,” he said. “I decided that if I was going to die I’d make sure some Jerries would be sent to hell.”

  Scrambling to his feet with his tommy gun and his string of grenades, Carter charged the machine gun that had wounded him. Tossing a grenade into the German position he permanently silenced the gun. Running hard, he lobbed two more grenades, wiping out a German mortar crew that had been shelling the American lines. Still on his feet, Carter was hit by two more bullets and knocked into the air. Bullets cut into the dirt around him as he hit the ground and crawled behind a low embankment. As he tried to see where the fire was coming from, another bullet tore into his shoulder.

  Seriously wounded and in pain, Carter lay still in his sheltered position. He knew he needed to take some of the pain pills he carried. As he raised his canteen to wash down the tablets with some water, another bullet tore through his hand. “This really made me mad,” he recalled, “but there wasn’t much I could do.”

  “As I lay there I saw an entire squad of Germans coming toward me in a skirmish line. I opened fire on them with the tommy gun. Got every one of ’em.”

  Exhausted by his ordeal, Carter remained still. Time passed. His company officers, watching from their observation post, couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead.

  Sergeant Carter began to think he should try to move to another position. Before he could do so he spotted another group of German soldiers advancing on him. He wasn’t sure how many there were. But his officers, who were watching from the American lines, saw eight Germans emerge from the warehouse and move toward Carter’s position. Suddenly Carter popped up and opened fire with his submachine gun. Using three clips of ammunition he brough
t down all but two of the Germans, who threw up their hands and surrendered.

  Now Sergeant Carter had a problem: What should he do with his prisoners? One was an officer, and the other an enlisted man. Carter, who could speak some German, realized that his prisoners might be able to provide useful information on German positions. In the meantime, they could help him escape. Keeping his prisoners as close to him as possible, Carter used them as shields as he struggled to make his way back to the American lines. The tactic seemed to work for a while, but then German artillery opened up on his position. Carter took cover with his prisoners behind a gutted building, but an 88mm shell exploded nearby, sending shrapnel into his legs. Fortunately, the dust thrown up by the shell-burst offered a temporary screen, obscuring his movements as he hobbled toward the American lines partly leaning on his prisoners. Three German infantrymen made a last-ditch effort to stop him, but he took them out with his trusted tommy gun.

  At last, Sergeant Carter reached the protection of the American lines and handed his prisoners over to the astonished officers. The officers were concerned about his wounds and wanted to rush him to a field hospital, but Carter insisted on first giving them information he had gathered about German gun positions. Under interrogation the prisoners also gave valuable information about German positions that greatly helped the advance into Speyer.

  The retreating Germans managed to destroy the bridge, but that did not stop the American assault. Engineers built a treadway bridge that allowed the U.S. forces to cross the Rhine. Virtually single-handedly, Sergeant Carter’s heroic actions had defeated a determined German effort to halt the Twelfth Armored’s advance in the Rhineland campaign.

  Sergeant Carter was eventually evacuated to an Army hospital to recover from his wounds. Within a month he slipped out of the hospital and made his way back to his company, where he remained as a combat soldier through the final weeks of the war, then returned home to his family in Los Angeles. Sergeant Carter was awarded the Purple Heart for his injuries, and for his heroism against the German troops he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor in war. That he deserved the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, eventually would be recognized, but not until long after his death.

  CHAPTER ONE

  REDISCOVERING A HERO

  That my husband’s father was a war hero who played a pivotal role in the Rhineland campaign during World War II was never fully known to us until we got a call on May 2, 1996, a call that would change our lives. The caller, Gloria Long, asked to speak to Mildred Carter, Sergeant Carter’s widow. For several years Mildred had lived with her son, my husband, and our family. She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. I explained to the caller that Mildred was not well, that I was her daughter-in-law, and that perhaps I could help her. Ms. Long said that she was a public relations liaison person with the Department of Veterans Affairs. She was calling to tell us that the White House was planning to award the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor in combat, to several African-American soldiers who served in World War II. One of the recipients was to be Sergeant EdwardA. Carter Jr.

  I was flabbergasted, and somewhat disbelieving. My mind was racing. I knew that my father-in-law, who died in 1963, was a soldier in the war. I had heard a little about his wartime service from my husband, Edward (whom we all knew as “Buddha,” a nickname given to him by his father because he was so chubby as a baby), and other family members, but this award was completely unexpected. Ms. Long said that plans were being made to present the awards at a ceremony at the White House, although the date hadn’t yet been set. Unfortunately, in 1973, a fire had destroyed the building in St. Louis that housed certain military records, including Sergeant Carter’s. Could the family help in reconstructing his tour of duty in the Army? The White House was going to prepare press releases, there would be articles in the press, and they needed information and pictures. I was stunned. Yes, I managed to say, we would help.

  Mildred couldn’t follow the details, but she understood enough to know that Eddie was going to be honored. “Finally. He deserves it,” she kept saying. “He deserves it. He deserves it.” William, Buddha’s brother who lived in Washington state, was also excited, but his reaction was affected by a stroke from which he was recovering. Buddha, on the other hand, had always been withdrawn with regard to his father. Initially, I didn’t get a big response from him.

  I later learned through Gloria Long that, in 1992, the Army had decided to commission a study to determine why no black soldiers were given the Medal of Honor during World War II. Black soldiers had won the medal in every other major American conflict, including the Civil War. Some 1.2 million black Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, more than in any other war. A number of soldiers, including my father-in-law, won the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award, but of the 294 Medals of Honor awarded, not one went to a black soldier. Some black veterans speculated that this was no accident. Pressured by the black press, civil rights groups, and veterans and their families, and facing the possibility of congressional action, the Army decided to look into the matter.

  The study was undertaken by a team of scholars, including Daniel K. Gibran, then a professor at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. After fifteen months of investigation the team produced a 272-page report concluding that the racial climate and practice within the Army during World War II accounted for the lack of black Medal of Honor recipients. Specifically, the Army’s policies of segregation and exclusion of blacks from combat limited the opportunities for black soldiers to earn the Medal of Honor. In addition, the report said, racism in the Army undermined the effectiveness of black units in combat and may have prevented black soldiers from being nominated for the highest award. The report recommended that ten black soldiers, nine of whom had received the Distinguished Service Cross, be considered for the Medal of Honor. After reading the report, Secretary of the Army Togo West and the Army’s senior uniformed leadership agreed with its recommendation and initiated corrective action. It was decided that six of the Distinguished Service Cross recipients and a winner of a Silver Star, the third-highest award for valor, would be awarded the Medal of Honor. There was only one snag: Congress would need to waive the 1952 statutory time limit on granting the award to World War II veterans. Congress was expected to vote on the issue in September and the ceremony would be held sometime after that.

  The spring of 1996 had been a deeply somber time for us. In March, Buddha’s brother William suffered a stroke and was hospitalized, unable to speak. In the same week, Iris, Mildred’s daughter by her first marriage, also had a stroke. It was a terrible double blow. Iris was on life support for a period of time, but her condition didn’t improve, so we finally had to make the decision to discontinue life support. Understandably, Mildred was very upset by the death of her daughter and her son’s illness. We were also worried about how William might take the news, so we made the arrangements for Iris’s funeral and buried her without telling him.

  Given the sense of sadness and worry in our household, it was difficult to focus on Gloria Long’s request for information about Eddie. When I asked Buddha what he could tell me about his father, he was very vague. He didn’t seem to remember much, other than that he knew his father had won a medal during the war. Mildred was also vague about Eddie’s war experiences. Both of them seemed to feel that Eddie had been given a “bad time” by the Army, but I couldn’t get details. I couldn’t tell if they simply didn’t remember or didn’t want to say.

  Any lingering doubts we had about the Army’s intentions were soon dispelled. On May 6, U.S. News & World Report published a long article on the government’s plan to belatedly award the Medal of Honor to seven black veterans of World War II. The article was written by Joe Galloway and included brief descriptions of each of the seven candidates, only one of whom, First Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker, was still living. The others were Sergeant Edward Carter Jr.,
First Lieutenant John R. Fox, Private First Class Willy F. James Jr., Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers, First Lieutenant Charles L. Thomas, and Private George Watson. The article included accounts of what each man had done to deserve the medal. Although brief, the description of Sergeant Carter’s bravery was more than I knew before. I felt a surge of excitement as I finished the article. The reality of it all was beginning to sink in.

  Over the next month William’s condition improved and he was released from the hospital. Feeling that my efforts to get information from Buddha and Mildred were getting nowhere, I proposed that we all go to Washington state to have a family discussion. William (known as “Redd” in the family) was now able to speak and was being cared for by his wife, Karen. I thought that by assembling everybody in the same room with a tape recorder I could get the background information the Veterans Affairs office needed. We made the trip in July, but it was not much help after all. Redd and Buddha had been too young to remember anything about Eddie’s military service. Neither did an old family friend, Gloria Arno, who was then living in Washington. She used to work with Mildred in Los Angeles but she didn’t meet the family until after Eddie was out of the military. Each of them had fragments of memories, but they argued and contradicted each other and I couldn’t be sure what to believe. Mil’s memory was fading; she couldn’t give me much. I began to feel that Mildred had somehow shielded the boys from something. It was when we returned to Los Angeles from this fruitless journey that I remembered Mildred’s trunk.

  In 1992, as Mildred’s health started to deteriorate, Buddha and I decided to move her into our house. She had so much stuff—furniture, clothes, personal belongings—that we had to rent two storage spaces to contain it all. I remembered that there was one trunk in particular that she always wanted to keep track of. Although her memory was fading, she frequently asked me if I had the key to her trunk. Maybe there was something in the trunk that would help me with the information needed by the White House, I thought. Of course, Mildred no longer knew where the key was and she couldn’t or wouldn’t say what was in the trunk. This presented a dilemma. Should I force it open? Neither Buddha nor I wanted to violate Mildred’s privacy, but we were in a quandary. Everyone agreed that Eddie deserved the Medal of Honor, and we wanted to do what we could to ensure that he got full credit for his heroism.