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Ingratitude Was All These People Got For Doing the Right Thing

Khalid Elhassan August 28, 2023 32 min

Ingratitude - Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating — Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorinated lime water before operating. NPR

D-Day’s Black Balloon Operators

Balloons of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion flying Normandy beaches on D-Day. New York Times

In the run up to WWII, many American military leaders doubted African Americans’ ability to fight. That, despite the fact that black soldiers had fought, and fought well, in just about all of America’s wars until then. In the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and even WWI, fought within the lifetime of America’s uniformed WWII higher ups, black soldiers had proven themselves in combat. However, racism is impervious to facts.

Thus, with relatively few exceptions such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761^st Tank Battalion, most African Americans were relegated to non-combat roles in WWII. The exceptions included the 320^th Barrage Balloon Battalion – a US Army segregated specialty unit created to protect GIs from low level strafing and dive bombing by enemy planes. On June 6^th, 1944, they stormed the beaches of Normandy – the only black combat unit on D-Day – carrying silvery balloons.

Ingratitude - The black barrage balloon operators' training camp near Paris, Tennessee — The black barrage balloon operators’ training camp near Paris, Tennessee. National Archives

Their story began in September, 1942, when black soldiers stepped off a train in Paris, Tennessee, en route to nearby Camp Tyson. It was the furthest south many blacks from the north had ever been, and they feared the treatment to expect in the land of Jim Crow. They discovered it was just as bad as they had imagined, and often worse.

The premonitions began when their locomotive crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, and all black soldiers were ordered to the “Negro car” – the filthiest and most decrepit one at the end of the train. Upon arrival, their orientation included tips to avoid infuriating the locals into homicidal rage: never look a white person in the eye, and step off the sidewalk if one came towards you.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.