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    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII
    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII
    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII
    Ebook127 pages2 hours

    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII

    By Matt Zeigler

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    About this ebook

    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII is a story of men who not only overcame the challenge of the Marine Corps and war, but perils of racism as well. Their saga began at Montford Point in North Carolina, where combat units were forged that served in the Marines’ gallant amphibious assault campaigns of World War II’s Pacific Theater. From bloody beaches and treacherous jungles of battlegrounds at Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa they earned the valor of United States Marines.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMatt Zeigler
    Release dateNov 10, 2015
    ISBN9781311072320
    Over The Side: Black Marines of WWII
    Author

    Matt Zeigler

    Former Marine Matt Zeigler worked eight years as a writer and photojournalist in the newspaper industry before embarking on an author's path. During the 1990s he traveled extensively throughout the Southeast covering the greatest athletes of American sports. Zeigler, a 1993 graduate of Troy University, has also published College Football Schemes and Techniques; Wild Alabama; Wild Alabama: Winter Haven; Wild Alabama: The American Robin; Sports Shooter: A Photographer's Story; and 1990s NFL Flashback.

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      Book preview

      Over The Side - Matt Zeigler

      Chapter 1 Volunteers

      Edgar R. Huff put on his zoot suit with peg pants, ‘Big Apple’ hat and size 3E shoes before he headed for a Gadsden, Alabama railroad station in September of 1942. Despite the fact that his shoes were lined with pasteboard to cover holes and his only pair of ‘drawers’ had to be secured with a knot, the 6-foot-6 200-pounder was ready for the challenges that lay ahead. His life to that point had been a series of obstacles to overcome.

      He was the only child of a loving, hard-working mama and a ‘soldier boy’ daddy. When he was six his father died after being stricken from the effects of a German gas attack from his World War I service in Europe. To make ends meet his mother made $3 per week as a domestic worker and Huff raked coke from discarded ashes to heat their home during wintertime.

      When his mother was sick and in need of an operation he had dropped out of middle school in the eighth grade and began working for a steel plant, walking four miles to work. It was hard labor in a dirty, extremely hot work environment, but by 1942 Huff had become a crane operator and was making $1.40 per day, good money in the post-depression era. Dropping out of school and doing a man’s work was quite a challenge for Huff, but his biggest, life-long challenge was bestowed the moment he was born. He was a ‘Negro,’ and being black in America, circa 1942, particularly in the South, was more than a challenge, it was a battle against racism, violence and pure evil.

      Edgar Huff was an honest, hard-working young man that was loyal to his mother, and destined to be a great American citizen. But to most white Americans he was just another nigger. When he was around nine years old a neighbor, Sam Brewster, who lived just four doors away from the Huffs, was dragged away from his home and beaten by a mob of Klu Klux Klansmen. Why? He had earlier defended his wife’s honor against a white man.

      Huff’s father had wanted him to be a soldier like himself, so when an opportunity arose in June 1942 to join America’s most elite military force, the U.S. Marine Corps, he seized it. His primary reason for joining was similar to that of his white counterparts. Simply put, he felt the Marines were the best and he wanted to be a part of the toughest military outfit in the world.

      But unlike their white counterparts black men volunteered to go into the military for reasons beyond manly bravado. Dating back to America’s colonial period free blacks joined militias in wartime to improve their social status. They fought on the side of those that oppressed them to prove that they were willing to pay the cost of freedom. From 1641 onward black men have fought in every American conflict, large and small. But the price they paid for freedom was not accounted for once hostilities ended. Despite their sacrifices in combat, blacks remained second-class citizens throughout the 17th, 18th, 19th and most of the 20th centuries.

      Edgar Huff’s trek to the Marine Corps’ boot camp in 1942 was a path very-rarely taken by a black man. Blacks were serving in the Army and Navy at the time, but the Marines, unwittingly, didn’t start accepting black recruits until June 1st, 1942. A few blacks had served in the Continental Marines during the American Revolution. Some also served aboard ships in the Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania Navies.

      Pvt. John Keto Martin is the first black Marine in recorded history. He joined the Marines in April 1776 and served on the USS Reprisal, a Continental brig ship that sank off Newfoundland Banks in October 1777, taking Martin and all of the crew, except for a cook, with her after encountering a storm.

      Privates Isaac Walker (August 27th, 1776) and a black man known to history only as Orange (October 1st, 1776) enlisted at Philadelphia’s Tunn Tavern, the birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps on November 10, 1775. Both Walker and Orange were part of a battalion that crossed the Delaware River on December 24th, 1776 with Gen. George Washington. Gen. Washington’s force clashed with the British later on at Trenton, New Jersey (second battle) and also at Princeton.

      The Continental Marines were disbanded in 1794, a year after the American Revolution had ended. Marines were recruited to serve aboard ships in 1797, before a reestablished Marine Corps was authorized in 1798. A few more blacks served in the Marines during the War of 1812 and Civil War, although they had been officially barred from enlistment, which continued throughout World War I.

      The Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7th, 1941 brought America into World War II. While the Army and Navy, by presidential order, prepared to bring more blacks into their rapidly-expanding ranks, the Marine Corps officially refused to enlist them. Marine Corps Commandant Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb stated in April 1941 that if it were a question of having a Marine Corps of five-thousand whites or two-hundred fifty thousand Negroes, I would rather have the whites.

      About a year later on February 23rd, 1942, Holcomb theorized that there would be a definite loss of efficiency in the Marine Corps if we have to take Negroes. But pressure from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, and his wife Eleanor, forced the Corps to accept qualified black men like Edgar Huff, who was among the first fifty recruits to enlist. Alfred Masters and George O. Thompson were the first to volunteer when the Marine Corps officially reopened its ranks to black men.

      The trip to Marine Barracks New River (later renamed Camp Lejeune in December of ‘42) in eastern North Carolina for boot camp was in itself an oddity. During WWII white Marines went to recruit training at the infamous Parris Island in South Carolina, or at San Diego, California. Black recruits from the Old South, like Huff, were familiar with the torment of Jim Crow, which were laws on record that legalized racism.

      But black men from northern cities were greeted with astonishment when, after crossing over into Southern states, they were subjected to ‘back of the bus’ or ‘whites only’ treatment, if not worse. From seating on Pullman cars aboard trains, to service at restaurants and theaters, everything was segregated: the ‘whites only’ environment prevailed.

      The Marines initially planned to recruit about a thousand blacks to form a composite defense battalion. To fill the technical billets that were organic to a defense battalion, blacks with formal education were needed. There were several college graduates inducted for service at the time; including Charles F. Anderson (Morehouse) and Charles W. Simmons, who held a bachelor’s degree from Alcorn, as well as a master’s degree from the University of Illinois.

      Two New Orleans’ natives, Sydney DesVigne and Raymond Floyd, were educators who also held master’s degrees. Some enlistees had prior military service as well, such as George A. Jackson, who’d been an officer in the Army Reserve, and John T. Pridgen, a former member of the Army’s 10th Cavalry Regiment. Other recruits had been lawyers, teachers, and college students. And there were many earnest working men like Huff from various employment fields.

      Montford Point Camp, where blacks were assigned for recruit training, was located on

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