thedrifter
06-06-09, 07:13 AM
June 6, 2009
Forgotten Battalion’s Last Returns to Beachhead
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
William G. Dabney could hardly have expected to be spending that ferocious June day in 1944 hunkered on Omaha Beach, struggling to keep aloft one of the tethered silver balloons intended to confound German pilots trying to bomb or strafe exposed Allied invaders in Normandy.
As a member of the only all-black unit in the D-Day landings on Omaha and Utah, the two beachheads assigned to American forces, Corporal Dabney was a rarity in a European war that in its early days was fought almost entirely by whites.
The contributions of his unit, the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, have been largely forgotten over the years. But on Saturday, Mr. Dabney, now 84, will join President Obama near Omaha Beach to mark the 65th anniversary of the invasion. On Friday, he received the Legion of Honor from the French government. Officials of the White House Commission on Remembrance, which organizes services at American war memorials, say he is the only survivor of the 320th they have been able to track down.
At 17, Mr. Dabney, of Roanoke, Va., had chafed to join older friends already at war, and had to persuade his grandmother to let him enlist. Most black soldiers were being given support roles in the United States, but like many young men, Mr. Dabney craved action at the front. He volunteered for “special service,” which he thought would have him loading artillery weapons.
“I didn’t know that it involved flying balloons,” he said in a telephone interview from Roanoke.
He was sent to Tennessee to train with the 320th, a unit intended mainly to deploy blimplike balloons for coastal defense. But he soon found himself bound for England and a role in the invasion of France.
In retrospect, Corporal Dabney and his contemporaries can be seen as pioneers. As late as the mid-1930s, the Army had been less than 2 percent black. The Coast Guard used blacks only as stewards, the Navy mainly for kitchen help. The Marines and the Army Air Forces barred blacks outright. The discriminatory treatment was defended by an Army War College report in 1925 concluding that blacks lacked intellect and courage.
“Blacks wanted to participate” in World War II, “but the position of the military was that wartime is not a time for social experimentation,” said William A. De Shields, a retired Army colonel and founder of the Black Military History Institute of America.
Blacks who did join the services were often assigned to thankless jobs as stevedores, stewards or ammunition handlers. (A single catastrophic explosion of ammunition at Port Chicago, Calif., in July 1944 claimed the lives of 202 black sailors, among a total of 320 people killed.)
Some seeds of change had already been planted, however. In June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, wary of backlash from whites but pressured not only by groups like the predominantly black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters but also by his wife, Eleanor, ordered an end to discrimination in war industry employment.
And that March, the Army Air Forces created a unit of black fliers now well known as the Tuskegee airmen. Their achievements, along with those of other black units, helped discredit the War College report.
Still, before the invasion of France, most black soldiers, whose numbers had risen to 700,000, were stationed in the United States. By 1944, however, manpower shortages were acute, and by the end of that year more than two-thirds of black troops were overseas. Corporal Dabney was part of that wave.
So was George A. Davison, another member of the 320th, who died in 2002. In a letter home after D-Day, Sergeant Davison recalled crossing the English Channel on the morning of the invasion, in a landing craft shared with Army rangers. “It was our turn,” he wrote.
Once the landing craft approached shore, the troops had to wade through chest-high waves, then dig in on the beach under extreme fire. That done, the men of the 320th deployed their balloons by filling them with helium.
The balloons, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported, “provided a screen of rubber several miles long on the two main beachheads.” Three German planes were downed when they struck balloons, which carried explosives, or hit their cables.
The balloons came in various sizes. Corporal Dabney headed a three-man crew responsible for one balloon, of a type classified as V.L.A., for very low altitude.
Sergeant Davison also worked with V.L.A.’s. “These weren’t the big barrage balloons,” which could be 60 feet long, his son Bill said in an interview. “They were about the size of a Volkswagen.”
“They had only 2,000 feet of line, as opposed to bigger balloons with 10,000 feet,” Bill Davison said. “But 2,000 would keep enemy planes from strafing the beaches.”
Mr. Dabney recalled the intensity of the Germans’ fire. “We thought at one time me and my crew might get pushed back into the English Channel,” he said, “because they were fighting so furiously.”
Sergeant Davison saw a ranger near him blown apart. It was a day, he wrote home, “of ducking bullets and anything that would kill a man.” He was “too afraid to be afraid,” he wrote.
Four members of the 320th died. One who lived showed particular courage. Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a medic, was injured by a mine explosion but went on to work for 30 straight hours treating other wounded men. He received a Bronze Star.
The younger Mr. Davison, who has pledged to keep his father’s story alive, recently sent President Obama a letter about it.
“I hope he reads it,” Mr. Davison said, “and hope he has some sense of the African-Americans who were there.”
So does Colonel De Shields, of the Black Military History Institute. “Obama is a young man,” Colonel De Shields said. “We hope he’ll have an appreciation for the contribution that African-Americans made in World War II, when we were fighting two enemies: the enemy abroad and racism at home.”
Ellie
Forgotten Battalion’s Last Returns to Beachhead
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
William G. Dabney could hardly have expected to be spending that ferocious June day in 1944 hunkered on Omaha Beach, struggling to keep aloft one of the tethered silver balloons intended to confound German pilots trying to bomb or strafe exposed Allied invaders in Normandy.
As a member of the only all-black unit in the D-Day landings on Omaha and Utah, the two beachheads assigned to American forces, Corporal Dabney was a rarity in a European war that in its early days was fought almost entirely by whites.
The contributions of his unit, the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, have been largely forgotten over the years. But on Saturday, Mr. Dabney, now 84, will join President Obama near Omaha Beach to mark the 65th anniversary of the invasion. On Friday, he received the Legion of Honor from the French government. Officials of the White House Commission on Remembrance, which organizes services at American war memorials, say he is the only survivor of the 320th they have been able to track down.
At 17, Mr. Dabney, of Roanoke, Va., had chafed to join older friends already at war, and had to persuade his grandmother to let him enlist. Most black soldiers were being given support roles in the United States, but like many young men, Mr. Dabney craved action at the front. He volunteered for “special service,” which he thought would have him loading artillery weapons.
“I didn’t know that it involved flying balloons,” he said in a telephone interview from Roanoke.
He was sent to Tennessee to train with the 320th, a unit intended mainly to deploy blimplike balloons for coastal defense. But he soon found himself bound for England and a role in the invasion of France.
In retrospect, Corporal Dabney and his contemporaries can be seen as pioneers. As late as the mid-1930s, the Army had been less than 2 percent black. The Coast Guard used blacks only as stewards, the Navy mainly for kitchen help. The Marines and the Army Air Forces barred blacks outright. The discriminatory treatment was defended by an Army War College report in 1925 concluding that blacks lacked intellect and courage.
“Blacks wanted to participate” in World War II, “but the position of the military was that wartime is not a time for social experimentation,” said William A. De Shields, a retired Army colonel and founder of the Black Military History Institute of America.
Blacks who did join the services were often assigned to thankless jobs as stevedores, stewards or ammunition handlers. (A single catastrophic explosion of ammunition at Port Chicago, Calif., in July 1944 claimed the lives of 202 black sailors, among a total of 320 people killed.)
Some seeds of change had already been planted, however. In June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, wary of backlash from whites but pressured not only by groups like the predominantly black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters but also by his wife, Eleanor, ordered an end to discrimination in war industry employment.
And that March, the Army Air Forces created a unit of black fliers now well known as the Tuskegee airmen. Their achievements, along with those of other black units, helped discredit the War College report.
Still, before the invasion of France, most black soldiers, whose numbers had risen to 700,000, were stationed in the United States. By 1944, however, manpower shortages were acute, and by the end of that year more than two-thirds of black troops were overseas. Corporal Dabney was part of that wave.
So was George A. Davison, another member of the 320th, who died in 2002. In a letter home after D-Day, Sergeant Davison recalled crossing the English Channel on the morning of the invasion, in a landing craft shared with Army rangers. “It was our turn,” he wrote.
Once the landing craft approached shore, the troops had to wade through chest-high waves, then dig in on the beach under extreme fire. That done, the men of the 320th deployed their balloons by filling them with helium.
The balloons, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported, “provided a screen of rubber several miles long on the two main beachheads.” Three German planes were downed when they struck balloons, which carried explosives, or hit their cables.
The balloons came in various sizes. Corporal Dabney headed a three-man crew responsible for one balloon, of a type classified as V.L.A., for very low altitude.
Sergeant Davison also worked with V.L.A.’s. “These weren’t the big barrage balloons,” which could be 60 feet long, his son Bill said in an interview. “They were about the size of a Volkswagen.”
“They had only 2,000 feet of line, as opposed to bigger balloons with 10,000 feet,” Bill Davison said. “But 2,000 would keep enemy planes from strafing the beaches.”
Mr. Dabney recalled the intensity of the Germans’ fire. “We thought at one time me and my crew might get pushed back into the English Channel,” he said, “because they were fighting so furiously.”
Sergeant Davison saw a ranger near him blown apart. It was a day, he wrote home, “of ducking bullets and anything that would kill a man.” He was “too afraid to be afraid,” he wrote.
Four members of the 320th died. One who lived showed particular courage. Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a medic, was injured by a mine explosion but went on to work for 30 straight hours treating other wounded men. He received a Bronze Star.
The younger Mr. Davison, who has pledged to keep his father’s story alive, recently sent President Obama a letter about it.
“I hope he reads it,” Mr. Davison said, “and hope he has some sense of the African-Americans who were there.”
So does Colonel De Shields, of the Black Military History Institute. “Obama is a young man,” Colonel De Shields said. “We hope he’ll have an appreciation for the contribution that African-Americans made in World War II, when we were fighting two enemies: the enemy abroad and racism at home.”
Ellie