What Did Our WW II Service Men Think?-- Part 3

**  "I'll fight of necessary to prevent racial equality.  I'll never salute a negro officer and I'll not take orders from from a negroe.  I'm sick of the army's method of treating these inferior swine as if they were human."

**  "Why do you induct us in the first place.  Even as a leopard cannot change its spots, neither can we curtail our homosexual inclinations....  I'll just try not to get caught."

**  "I have been in the jungles  26 months.  I was just wondering of they will take us back in the States before thus war is over.  This jungle life will wreck your nerves....  Of the people back home don't think the jungle is hell just let them come over and stay for a few years."

**  "Better food should be considered for men in combat.  Constant diets of Vienna sausage & spam tends to decrease morale, as well as ruin a man's stomach."

--GreGen

Five Black WW II Veterans-- Part 3: Medgar Evers (1926-1963)

Evers was just 19 when he joined up with the Red Ball Express, a group of blacktruck drivers who transported supplies all across Europe after D-Day.  They were really essential to the war effort.

Evers World War II military service helped spark a political awakening.

When he returned to the U.S.,  he led black veterans to register to vote in  Decatur, Mississippi,  on 1946.  White townspeople with guns turned them away.  

His experience  really dramatically highlights that double victory campaign, according to Delmont.  This was the way that black Americans  are both fighting to win the war militarily, fighting agaisnt fascism, but alsotrying to fight against racism at home."

He was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963.

--GreGen

Pioneering Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee Dies at 102

From the January 16, 2022, Reuters by Kanishka  Singh.

Retired Brigadier General Charles McGee, part of the pioneering  all-black Tuskegee Airmen during World War II died on Sunday, January 16 at age 102.

McGee, who flew 409 combat missions spanning World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam died in his sleep.

He was born  December 7, 1919, in Cleveland, Ohio.  His plane was hit twice in combat, once in Korea and once years later in Laos, both tomes in his right wing.

McGee battled racism and segregation during his military career.  He was called to service in 1942 at age 23 and became one of the first black military aviators with the Tuskegee Airmen.  "We were just as interested in supporting that (war) effort as anybody else at the time and so we turned out back in the fact that there was segregation, if you will, and took advantage of the opportunity to prove that we can fly airplanes,: he said.

The Tuskegee Airmen's success helped lay the groundwork for the civil tights movement and influenced President Truman's decision to desegregate the military in 1948.

Like I Say, One of the Greatest Generation With the Added Obstacle of Segregation and Racism.  --GreGen