World War II Day by Day

Fort McClellan, Alabama • October 15, 1942

On this date in 1942 the 92nd Infantry Division was re­acti­vated at Fort Mc­Clellan, Ala­bama. The famed Afri­can Amer­i­can infan­try divi­sion, nick­named “Buf­falo Sol­diers Divi­sion,” had served in World War I in France from July 1918 until it returned to the United States to be deactivated in February 1919.

The 92nd Infantry Division was one of three “colored” divi­sions acti­vated in 1941–1942. The con­stant need for man­power and the spirited lobbying by First Lady Elea­nor Roose­velt and mem­bers of the black com­mu­nity, par­ticu­larly civil rights leaders and the press, wore down the War Depart­ment’s resis­tance to placing African Amer­i­can draftees and enlisted men in com­bat roles. The rank and file of the three “colored” divi­sions were trained and led by white staff offi­cers and com­pany com­manders, who were mostly south­erners. The first of the three divisions, a cavalry divi­sion, was acti­vated in April 1941, but it was de­acti­vated 2 months after arriving in Algeria, North Africa, in March 1944. Com­bat ele­ments of the second divi­sion, the 93rd Infan­try Divi­sion, nick­named “Blue Hel­mets,” saw fighting in the Pacific Thea­ter on Bougain­ville Island in March 1944 when they were attached to the Ameri­cal Divi­sion; how­ever, most “Blue Hel­mets” were assigned to labor and secu­rity detach­ments and mopping up oper­a­tions as the war against Japan wound down. Only the 92nd Infan­try (Buffalo) Divi­sion under 51‑year-old Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond saw serious com­bat in the final phases of the Ital­ian Cam­paign of 1944–1945 as part of the U.S. Fifth Army under Generals Mark Clark and later Lucian Truscott. The first engage­ment with the enemy occurred on August 23, 1944, 3 weeks after the division’s 370th Infan­try Regi­ment disem­barked in Naples. Other ele­ments of the 92nd arrived over the next 2 months, struggling against sea­soned German troops in their laborious ascent up the Italian boot.

Relations between the 92nd’s white offi­cers and the black rank and file exploded in hate-filled recrim­i­na­tions during the harsh 1944–1945 Italian winter. Maj. Gen. Almond and his white com­manders blamed the divi­sion’s set­backs, low morale, unau­tho­rized with­drawals upon engaging the enemy, and high casual­ty counts on black cow­ard­ice, while black GIs com­plained Almond and his “south­ern crackers” were using them as “cannon fodder.” U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall had per­son­ally hand-picked the Virginia rising-star to com­mand the almost exclu­sively black infan­try divi­sion because he believed Almond would excel in a diffi­cult assign­ment. But that was not to be. Almond began parroting the wide­spread preju­dice in the segre­gated Army that blacks by nature made for poor front-line sol­diers and thus were fit only for gene­ral ser­vice roles. He whined to con­fi­dants that the 92nd’s com­bat record had cheated him out of a higher command.

The Buffalo Soldiers emerged from the war with a mixed record of suc­cesses and failures, but also of honor­able ser­vice to their coun­try (see photo essay below). Many of its offi­cers and men wore their Distin­guished Ser­vice Crosses, Silver Stars, Purple Hearts, Com­bat Infan­try­man Badges, and Bronze Stars with pride. Their fighting was over, yet vet­er­ans of the Buffalo Division con­tinued to come under fire from com­mitted racists like Gen. Almond and his ilk. Their views were rejected by three deco­rated 92nd Divi­sion vet­er­ans: future U.S. sena­tors Robert Dole of Kansas, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts.

The U.S. armed forces were still segre­gated when World War II ended, but things started to change in 1948 when Presi­dent Harry S. Truman’s Exec­u­tive Order 9981 man­dated equal treat­ment and oppor­tu­nity regard­less of a service­member’s race, color, reli­gion, or national origin. Last to deseg­re­gate was the U.S. Army. Not until the end of 1954 was the last all-black unit dis­banded. Offi­cially racial segre­ga­tion had been erad­i­cated in the U.S. mili­tary, yet there was still room for improvement. There still is.

U.S. Army’s 92nd Infantry Division During World War II

Left: Fighting men of the 92nd Infantry Divi­sion, the famed Buffalo Soldiers, march past the wreck­age of a knocked-out PzKpfw VI Tiger tank in the vicinity of Pon­sacco, Italy. Pon­sacco is a muni­ci­pality in the Pro­vince of Pisa in the Ital­ian region of Tus­cany and is located about 30 miles/­48 km southwest of Florence.

Right: Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division engage the German enemy on Sep­tem­ber 7, 1944, 3 miles/­4.8 km north of the town of Lucca, Italy. Famous for its fan­tas­tic medi­e­val city walls that pedes­trians and bicyc­lists can navi­gate, Lucca is 23 miles/­37 km north of Pon­sacco. A soldier rises up to fire a bazooka at a German machine-gun nest just 30 yards/­21 m from the Amer­i­can posi­tion, while at left an Ital­ian parti­san, one foot on the dirt path, the other on grass, covers his ears.

Left: Members of a field artillery battalion of the 92nd Infan­try Divi­sion pass the ammu­ni­tion and heave it over at the Germans in an almost end­less stream near Massa, Tus­cany, some 200 miles/­322 km north of Rome, the former capi­tal of the Ital­ian dicta­tor Benito Musso­lini, Novem­ber 1944. The bat­talion was cre­dited with liqui­dating several enemy machine-gun nests.

Right: Virginia-born Maj. Gen. Edward Almond took com­mand of the 92nd Infan­try Divi­sion the month it was acti­vated. He had previously served as assis­tant divi­sion com­mander of the newly raised 93rd Infan­try Division. In this photo Almond is seen inspecting his troops, which at the moment included the highly decorated Japa­nese Amer­i­can (Nisei) 442nd Infan­try Regi­ment, during a deco­ra­tion cere­mony in Italy, March 1945. Almond grew up in the “Jim Crow” South and claimed he “under­stood the char­ac­ter of the Negro and his habits and incli­na­tions . . . and Negro cap­abil­i­ties.” Totally lacking class and tact but with friends in high places (he mar­ried the sister of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall), he once told one of his black regi­ments, “I did not send for you. Your Negro news­papers, Negro poli­ti­cians, and white friends have insisted on your seeing com­bat, and I shall see that you get combat and your share of casualties.”

Tribute to Buffalo Soldiers in Italy, 1944–1945