Jack & Jill Politics

Hat tip: Booker Rising

Soldiers of the all-black 320th Battalion landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, shortly after dawn on June 6, 1944.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills

From the NYDailyNews:

All-black battalion that landed in Normandy, France on D-Day to be honored on anniversary of siege
By Linda Hervieux
Special to The News
Friday, June 5th 2009, 10:40 AM

CAEN, France – William Garfield Dabney, a 20-year-old enlistee, landed on the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago Saturday. Tethered to his waist was a bomb-armed helium balloon, meant to bring down a German dive bomber.

George Davidson, then 22, ferried messages between American commanders under the cover of night, dodging enemy fire with nothing but his wits to guide him.

Both men, members of the same all-black unit, survived the bloody D-Day landings that launched the Allied liberation of France. But because they were black, they disappeared into oblivion – a historic wrong that at last is being rectified.

Dabney on Friday will be among 50 U.S. veterans awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration, in Paris. The vets will return to Normandy tomorrow for the official D-Day ceremony with President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“The whole group should have been decorated,” Bill Davidson, of Waynesburg, Pa., said of his father, who died in 2002. “The contribution of blacks has never been acknowledged.”

Few of the 900,000 African-American vets who fought in World War II received medals. Photos of black soldiers were long conspicuously missing from exhibits commemorating major World War II battlefields.

Rest of article at link above.

African-American troops arriving in Cherbourg, France, in 1944. There were nearly 30,000African-American troops in the strategic port city.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills

A driver in Cherbourg, France, in 1944. There were nearly 30,000African-American troops in the strategic port city.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills

A French boy, around 10, poses in a Jeep with US soldiers. “For me this is a memory full of tenderness,” said the boy’s sister, who provided the photo to researcher Alice Mills.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills [Eds. No ID available on boy or sister]

The all-black 320th Battalion prepares to launch balloons armed with bombs to deter German planes above the beaches of Normandy, France, in June 1944.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower speaks with a black corporel in Cherbourg, France, on Feb. 21, 1945.
Photo courtesy of Alice Mills