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End of the War

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What did you know about the war in Japan and at what point did you and the rest of the battalion realize that you may be heading over there?

We'd lost sight of Japan, I did, when we got to Europe. The only time that Japan crept up again was after the war. They had us on hold. They sent a task force to meet the Russians somewhere around Manchuria and pick up some tanks. We were going to go to Japan from there. But we were just laying around waiting, everybody was on hold, until they dropped the bomb. That's what saved us all.

You said that after the war that you were in occupation duty in Germany. Did you enjoy that time there, and were you integrated with white soldiers?

Yes, during that time there wasn't much to it, we just had to have our presence there, and I played football and baseball during the seasons that I was there. We played for the European Championship which was the 1st Infantry Division. They were all white. But remember now, its not '48 yet. Things were not integrated. We had a white major on our team, and I was a running back. We had a lot of fun. We won the ETO Championship. But then after that, after football season, I played baseball. And I was just doing my occupation duty half a day.

Did you ever consider staying there?

No. But a lot of people did. I had to come back and go to school, and see Mama.

Can you expand on your transition on coming home and being with your family and friends here?

Coming home was—we didn't come home as a unit. We came home—we gave up our tanks. When I stayed there one of my jobs was to get rid of all the tanks in A Company and send them to the Ordinance Company—we put them on these railroad cars, and saw that they got to the Ordinance Depot. And after we did that, I went out and did what we had to do after that pertaining to the army. Then I had to came home, but it was on a furlough—I only had thirty days. I came back on a U.S. battle ship Missouri. It took us five days. Going over, it took us fourteen days on an old English freighter that they had converted into a troop ship. They had all of us blacks on there. We were just sleeping in hammocks. They put them at the top of the ceiling, and they swing down, and they had cots on the bottom. So that's when we came home.

Do you feel like the 761st battalion has been given recognition for the fighting that you did?

No. They are just now getting it, being recognized. Our President Carter—they didn't want to give us a unit citation of what we did. Some outfits got four and five unit citations and they didn't do near the stuff that we did. We should have had five or six. President Carter finally gave us one, but it was watered down. We had a lieutenant, Captain Harrison, right after the war he was in charge of the 761st, and he had all the records, all the battles that we had participated in. He wrote up our unit citation. They wouldn't accept it. Then he sent it back again, it wasn't approved. And then he sent it back again. He was getting out of the Army—I mean, leaving the 761st—so he didn't send it in again. But I have a copy of it, and he had every movement—all the places that we went, how many enemies that we killed, and how much we destroyed—and we destroyed enough German troops and equipment for two divisions, two German divisions. That was saying a lot. They watered it down quite a bit. Did I give you guys a copy of it, before?

Yes, we have a picture of it on the web.

What is your favorite part of your story, and also which is the hardest part of your story to tell, and why?

It's all the same. There's one part that I get teary-eyed about. The wife and I went back to Europe in '95, and I took this picture of me and the Stars and Stripes where it said, "Negro tankers Cut Past the 3rd Army." I took it with us. Then we got to this little place called Goblin. That's were Rivers got killed. The 4th Armored Division got ran out of the little town, and we lost about ten tanks, and two lieutenants. And the 4th Armored had big losses too.

In France, lunch at twelve, that's when they closed down the cafes. I said, "Ah, heck, we got there too late." And there were three men sitting on a bench, eating a sausage sandwich, you know, those long German sandwiches. And I asked him—I was trying to speak French—and he said, "Ah man, I'm an American." He said, "You want this sandwich? Over here in the parking lot." I said, "That's good." And I said, "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm going to a place called Goblin back there." He says, "That's where—there were two tanks there by the door." He said, "I came by there every morning. I speak to those guys and go on to take the messages into the office." I looked at him, I said, "That was me." He said, "What?" He didn't believe it. So he went and got his copy and I went and got mine. He said, "I kept this copy fifty years. I wanted to show it to my sons," those were his two sons with him, "where I fought in World War II." I said, "Well I'll be damned!" We embraced each other. He's still writes, we still stay in touch with each other. We didn't talk about that. He was a good man.

Then they had the Yankee Division, a newsletter, a big paper, the one that I sent the pictures in. I got a letter. It said, "Hey Floyd, you sent one more picture than I had." You know to put in. So Edris had all that stuff. We sent it. And on the back of the tank, we see a little head looking over the side of the tank. I thought that might have been him when this guy was taking a picture. But he was on the run. He was snapping, and running.

The 761st was a very successful unit because you guys fought so hard, right? How do you explain that? Can you explain your motivations to fight so hard and the motivations of the people around you to fight so hard, especially given the fact that you were an all black fighting force? Why is it that you were so successful, and why did you work so hard?

Well, if all the odds were against us, as it was said that we wasn't coordinated enough to drive those tanks—to operate them rather—and why we are watched so and have so much on the archive, they were expecting us to flee, you know, as soon as the battles got hard. And this little town I was telling you about, they had a captain from a TD—tank destroyer company—to watch our flank—I mean our rear so the Germans wouldn't go around and come in the back. Now they had 90mm guns, cannons, and we had 76's. See when we were fighting these tanks, that was there job. After the battle, he came up, he told our captain, he said, "I've been up here ever since D-Day, never seen anyone fight that hard, fighting as hard and hanging in the way you guys did." They knocked hard on us, but we stayed in there and did what we had to do. So, there was no special reason, just we had a job to do and these fellows depended on us. Like Patton said, "I'm depending on you." So we got to do what we had to do. We never got decorated. We only got one unit citation and one medal of honor. Now, what I don't understand, is the 349th, the Japanese outfit, they got about ten or eleven unit citations. And that was at one battle to get those from when they went up on the hill, a mountain, and saved 500 American troops. That was one or two days of battle. Now we were up there 183 days, nothing. And we had to fight to get that one.

Are you still fighting for it?

No. Captain William—all the officers are dead, except Latamar. He's one white officer. We had seven white officers, and he's still with us.