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 The 761st was activated April 1, 1942.
The first year, no one expected the battalion ever to see combat,
but in May of 1943 Major Paul Bates became commander. He told
the black tankers that they would see combat and he started to train
them for war. Every man had to learn to operate every gun and
every vehicle. The 761st moved to Camp Hood and
there the German P.O.W.s had Post Exchange rights and were treated
better than the black soldiers. Racism was all around, on and off
the Post.
The Black Panthers,
as they called themselves, were used to act as the enemy to train white tank and
tank destroyer units. The 761st regularly defeated
them.
After over two years of training the 761st was ordered to
overseas deployment on 9 June 1944, and arrived in England
September 8th for more training in new tanks.
On 8 November 1944 the 761st
entered combat in France for the first of 183 days of continuous combat.
The first combat was
in support of the 26th
Infantry (The Yankee Division). Colonel Bates was wounded on
the first day of combat and was replaced by Col. Hollis E. Hunt.
In the first 11 days of combat, Sergeant Rubin Rivers was wounded
twice, but refused to be evacuated. He was killed in action on
November 19th while saving his unit. He was awarded the Silver
Star, which was upgraded, to the Medal of Honor, in 1997. In
the first month of combat, 25 men were killed in action and many more
were wounded. Only nine more men were killed in action for the
eight months of the rest of the war. Total wounded were 22
officers and 180 enlisted men, with eight men wounded more than
once.
Then came the Battle of the Bulge
starting on 16 December. The 761st was always
attacking, and General Patton said, "The Negro tank battalion
attached to my command fought bravely in the critical battle of
Bastogne." General William Miley, commander of the 17th
Armored Division said, "During the Ardennes operation, we had very
little armored unit support, but of that we had, the 761st
was by far the most effective and helpful."
Col. Bates returned to command
February 17, 1945. For the rest of the war the Black Panthers
were always on the attack. The bravery of these men was
amazing, as was their dedication to duty. Willie J. Devore
believed he would be killed even before he got on the boat to
Europe, but he did his duty. He was one of the last of the
Black Panthers to die in action.
The Germans called them schwarze
soldaten (black soldiers). "Do not take any black tankers
prisoners: kill them." The 761st met the Russians
May 5, 1945 in Steyr, Austria, at the war's end.
The actions of the 761st
tank battalion were one of the reasons why President Truman
desegregated the military in 1948. |