An author and Polytech High School educator presents a talk Saturday at the Milford Library on a unit of mostly-African American soldiers who played a crucial role in World War II.
In addition to his daily work as a social studies teacher, Dante Brizill is also the author of the “Greatness Under Fire” series of books, exploring the contributions of African Americans to victory in the Second World War. His latest book explores the Red Ball Express, a unit that put thousands of men behind the wheel to deliver crucial supplies as Allied armies pushed across Europe after D-Day. The majority of those men were Black, Brizill says.
“Seventy-five percent of the men who drove the trucks on the Red Ball Express were African American men,” he says.
Their contributions were especially important because in the lead-up to the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, Allied aircraft destroyed much of the rail infrastructure to prevent German reinforcements from arriving. Moving supplies through other European ports closer to the action as it moved into Europe was not an option.
“The German army had control over the ports, and they were ordered to hold those ports to the last man,” Brizill says. “And so the Allies did not have access to unload supplies at the large port facilities.”
That meant the Allied armies had to supply themselves from the Normandy beaches, even as the offensive pushed deeper and deeper into Europe.
The supplies they moved to armies on the march were crucial, Brizill adds.
“These were critical supplies that the soldiers at the front needed in order to continue their advances,” he says. “Gasoline, food, ammunition, weapons, all of those things.”
Along the way, the men of the Red Ball Express faced arduous and sometimes lethal conditions.
“They had to deal with fatigue because their job was labor intensive,” Brizill says. “They had to deal with poor road conditions. They had to deal with attacks and sabotage along the way from enemy soldiers.”
And, once the fighting in Europe had come to an end, the Black soldiers of the Red Ball Express came home to a new battle - the struggle for civil rights. Brizill says their contributions were central to that fight as well.
“After you just fought against Nazism and Hitler, and then you're coming back home to sit at a segregated lunch counter or being denied the right to vote, that just was not going to stand,” he says. “So we don't have a civil rights movement in the 1950s or 60s without the service of African-Americans in World War II.”
