Don't you ever get tired of being wrong Lisa? This is why you're viewed as evil.
‘Are We Not American Soldiers?’ When the U.S. Military Treated German POWs Better Than Black Troops
BY
MATTHEW TAUB
JULY 28, 2020 9:30 AM EDT
For Corporal Rupert Trimmingham, it came as no surprise that he’d have to eat inside the lunchroom’s kitchen, invisible to the diners enjoying table service. This was 1944, and the Deep South. Trimmingham and eight other Black soldiers were en route from Louisiana’s Camp Claiborne to Arizona’s Fort Huachuca and, as he later wrote, he knew the only boss was “Old Man Jim Crow…”
But what Trimmingham and his companions saw as they looked out at the lunchroom from inside that kitchen defied even their weary expectations. About two dozen German prisoners of war who entered with their American guards “sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time.” In an April 1944 letter to
Yank, a weekly Army magazine, Trimmingham asked the obvious: “Are these men”— Nazi troops who’d been captured while fighting on Hitler’s behalf—“sworn enemies of this country? Are we not American soldiers, sworn to fight for and die if need be for this our country? Then why are they treated better than we are?”
Though this is perhaps the best-known incident of its kind—it inspired a fictionalized
short story in the June 17, 1944
New Yorker—it was common during World War II for the U.S. Army to treat German Prisoners of War better than Black American soldiers. Segregation was official military policy until 1948, when President Truman signed an Executive Order banning the practice in the Armed Forces. Black American soldiers, including the 1 million who served during World War II, were often relegated to
less desirable roles and excluded from promises of patriotic camaraderie. This particular brand of discrimination, however—the preferential treatment of imprisoned Nazi combatants—was especially offensive to many Black troops. It told them, loud and clear, that they were fighting for a country even as that country fought against them. For many white military personnel, there was no point in even pretending otherwise.
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‘Are We Not American Soldiers?’ When the U.S. Military Treated German POWs Better Than Black Troops