"The ... 761st Tank Battalion (an all-Black unit)...fought across Europe with Patton for an unheard-of duration — six straight months without relief — capturing or liberating more than 30 major towns along the way," Ann Banks told New York Times Sunday Magazine readers in 1995. Fifty years after VE day, she hoped to set the record straight once and for all on the question of "colored guys" in combat.
Johnnie Stevens, a platoon sergeant with the 761st, told her: "I was drafted in June 1942, and they took me to Fort Benning, Georgia. At the time, they were taking I.Q.'s on black guys to see if they could qualify to do technical things that had to do with tanks.
"It didn't make any difference to me where I went, but I didn't want to drive trucks. I didn't want to load materials and stuff. I'm going to give it to you straight. I didn't want to wait on the white boys. We completed our advanced training in Texas. But there was no intention of sending this black outfit into combat. It was a big show for the public. Then General Patton came into the picture. He was on an inspection tour and watched how we handled tanks, how we fired guns. Patton said: 'I like them. I want them.' That's how we ended up in the Third Army. They called us Patton's Pets and Eleanor's Niggers.
"When we landed in France, we went directly into combat. All I remember is fighting and killing and freezing and starving and fighting and killing. We mostly spearheaded. The Maginot line, the Siegfried line, the Ardennes Forest, Battle of the Bulge.
"A lot of people asked us: 'Why did you guys earn such a record? Why did you chalk up so many kills? With all the hatred and segregation, why would you fight like you did?'
"I lost a tank on Hill 309 in France. We were in support of the 26th Infantry, a Yankee division, meaning they were white. We fought well with them guys. They liked us, we liked them, and most of them said they liked our support better than the white tankers because we took care of them.
"I led the attack that morning. My tank was hit by a round from a German 88. I used the ejection seat to dismount. When I hit the ground I had a bullet hole in the chest. I had shrapnel sticking out the left side of my head. My leg was bleeding. My right hand had shrapnel in it. There was a white infantry sergeant over by the embankment. He and I had got to know each other pretty good in a couple of days of combat, and he yells, 'Sergeant, you hear me?' I said, 'Yeah — I'm hit hard as hell, man.'
"The Germans ... were raking the field with machine gun fire. They didn't intend for us to get out because tankers kill too many people. The sergeant crawled over and gave me a hand." The short of it: Stevens lived, the white infantry sergeant got shot — and died right there — helping Stevens to safety.
Review by Boston University Professor of Humanities, Robert Wexelblatt: "One of the most extraordinary autobiographies I've ever encountered. It is unimpeachably honest, insightful, intimate, touching.... An exceptional book."