14. Henry Johnson and the Argonne Forest
Henry Johnson was of indeterminate age (he recorded different dates of birth on several documents) working as a Red Cap in the Albany Union Station in 1917, when he joined the all-black 15th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard. The unit became the 369th Infantry Regiment when the Guard was nationalized and was sent to France in late 1917 and early 1918. Unlike most of the American regiments, which General John J. Pershing, the American commander, retained as an autonomous force, Johnson’s regiment was assigned to serve under the direct command of French forces. The 369th wasn’t strictly all-black, its officers were white. Some historians have suggested that Pershing assigned the unit to a French command due to American soldiers refusing to share encampments and later trenches with black troops, though other all-black units served alongside American units at the front.
The French assigned Johnson’s unit to a region in Champagne, near the Argonne Forest. Johnson was manning an observation post in May, 1918, when a German patrol attacked. Estimates of the number of Germans in the patrol vary according to sources, but may have been as many as two dozen. Johnson fought the German patrol using his rifle and sidearm, hand grenades, and finally in hand to hand combat using a knife, before the German attack was repulsed. During the encounter he was wounded a total of 21 times. The story of his defense of his position was reported first in French newspapers before being picked up by The Saturday Evening Post in the United States, which told the tale in August, 1918. Johnson returned to the United States in 1919, for a short time gave lecture tours, and then faded into obscurity, dying of complications from tuberculosis in 1929. In 2015 he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
