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The 761st Tank Battalion: two years of training, then 183 straight days in combat
The African American 761st Tank Battalion, known as the "Black Panthers," trained for more than two years before it saw combat. Once it did, the National Park Service article says, it endured a record 183 straight days at the front and liberated 30 towns on its way into Germany. The article describes the unit as the first African American tankers in the U.S. Army to see combat.
Image from the National Park Service's page: the battalion patches of the Black Panthers.
Training
The battalion formed in early 1942 in Louisiana and then moved to Camp Hood, Texas, where it trained for over two years on M4 Sherman medium tanks and M5 Stuart light tanks. The article says the long training owed more to Army commanders' unwillingness to let African Americans prove themselves in combat than to anything else, but that it proved valuable when the battalion met German armor. Before shipping out, some of its first battles were with white comrades and civilians reluctant to accept the men as equals.
Two African American tankers in an M5 Stuart light tank during training, about 1943. National Archives.
In Europe
The battalion landed in Normandy in October 1944 and entered combat soon after, assigned to General George S. Patton's Third Army. The article says Patton was skeptical of African American tankers in combat but welcomed the 761st and gave its men a rousing speech before they set out.
A tank crew from the 761st in an M24 Chaffee tank in a snowy field near Bastogne, waiting to engage German forces during the Battle of the Bulge, about 1944. U.S. Army.
| Campaigns | Four major campaigns through six countries |
| Awards, from first combat to the end of the war in Europe | Seven Silver Stars, 246 Purple Hearts and one Medal of Honor |
| Battle of the Bulge | Countered the German offensive and helped break out and rescue the encircled American army at Bastogne |
| April 26, 1945 | Met the Red Army at Steyr, Austria, among the first U.S. battalions to do so; the link-up split the last remnants of the German army in two |
A soldier receives the Silver Star from General George S. Patton, about 1944. National Archives.
After the war
V-E Day, Tuesday, May 8, 1945, officially ended hostilities in Europe. The 761st stayed in Germany another year and was deactivated on June 1, 1946. The article says that returning African American soldiers were often greeted with skepticism, disdain and even hostility, not parades. The armed forces began to integrate three years later, when President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948.
Soldiers from Dog Company of the 761st check equipment before leaving England for combat in France in the fall of 1944. U.S. Army.
Two of its men
- Ruben Rivers, born in 1918 in Oklahoma, was drafted into the Army in January 1942 and served with the battalion. He was killed in action on November 19, 1944, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on January 13, 1997, for extraordinary heroism from November 16 to 19, 1944.
- Jackie Robinson, best known as the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, was born in 1919, the son of sharecroppers. In World War II he served with the all-Black 761st and 758th Tank Battalions and was honorably discharged in 1944. He died on October 24, 1972, at 53.
Sources
- National Park Service, "761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers" (nps.gov article for Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument); the article's claim that the Black Panther superhero debuted in 2014 is left out as wrong; rewritten in hubnx's own words.