Honoring Sergeant Carter (7 page)

 

F
rom the first day he entered boot camp Eddie baffled his instructors. They couldn't understand how a new recruit, after very little training, could achieve near perfect scores in shooting. “I don't miss a thing I shoot at,” Eddie wrote to Mildred. Moreover, he was proficient with a host of weapons, including handguns, rifles, antitank weapons, and the Thompson submachine gun, his favorite. Proud of his accomplishment, Eddie sent Mildred an article published in the post newspaper in October praising his marksmanship. The article predicted that Private Carter “will become one of the area's, if not one of the camp's, best shots.”

Training at the boot camp was intense, and shortly before it ended in early January a tragedy was narrowly averted. Eddie lost his footing on ice on a march and fell off a dam into a reservoir with an eighty-pound pack
strapped to his back. He sank like a rock into the deep water. Unable to swim under all the weight, he stayed calm and managed to release the straps and buckles and free himself from the heavy pack. He struggled to the surface, much to the surprise of the officers and the other soldiers, who thought he would surely drown. They told him he had been under water for four minutes, but to him it seemed like four days. It was so cold that his clothes froze when he climbed out of the water. But with a cockiness that was characteristic of him, Eddie told Mildred not to worry. “I am fit as a fiddle,” he boasted.

With his weapons skills, discipline, and can-do attitude, Eddie quickly gained the respect of the white officers. However, because of the Army's policy of racial segregation, Eddie and the other black soldiers were to be assigned to a service unit—as cooks, truck drivers, stevedores, engineers—rather than to combat duty.

After completing basic training Eddie was shipped out to Fort Benning, Georgia, and assigned to 3535th Quartermaster Truck Company. In less than a year he would be promoted to staff sergeant. But if Eddie was shocked by the racism he found in Texas, he was appalled by what he found in Georgia. Both the civilian white population and the Army were bastions of racism. “They don't treat you at all like soldiers,” he complained. “It's more like slaves. When this war is over, you'll see plenty of tough and bitter boys coming home,” he prophesied, with more truth than he could have known.

Two days later he voiced his anger, bitterness, and despair at the mistreatment of black people, especially black soldiers, by whites. In a letter to Mildred dated January 25, 1942, he wrote:

“After I get out of the Army and should [the United States] have another war, I'll not join the Army. I'll go to jail before I go. The treatment that they give the Negro in the South is plenty of reason. If that is what we have to fight for, why fight? Fight to save the white man's money? The Negro is nothing but the cat's paw. I have every bit of love and respect I ever had for the United States. I know I shouldn't be telling you these things. But why should the Negro fight for something he will not get? Should we fight for mops, buckets, and brooms, and then be treated as they are treating us? Hell no! We fight, then we should be able to break bread and eat it together with the rest of our white brothers. ‘All men are created equal.' If so, why can't we share the spoils?

“The officers down here tell us that they don't need niggers in the Army. Then why in the hell don't they let us go. After all, a mop, bucket, and broom are not worth giving one's life for. The white man is the lowest animal there is. Nothing is too low or dirty for him to do.” Sensing that his anger might worry Mildred, Eddie added, “I am letting my hate get the best of me. So please overlook my top blowing.”

Eddie seemed to take a deep breath and then he continued his letter: “The main thing is that I still love you,
Mil. Nothing will ever stop me from coming home…. I dreamed of you last night, sweets. I dreamed that we were out boat riding on a beautiful lake. The water was clear as glass. Everything looked beautiful. Even as you do. Nothing will stop my being true.”

In the steady flow of what he called his “epistles” to Mildred he insisted that he wanted her to come to him and get married. But there was some hesitation—on both sides. Eddie loved Mildred but he was afraid of getting too close to someone for fear of losing her, as he had lost his mother. Mildred stirred tender feelings in him and this had a strong impact on him, but he still had doubts that she would truly want him as her husband. She wasn't a needy person. She had a secure and full life. As for Mildred, she was captivated by Eddie, but having come through a difficult relationship with her former husband, she was worried about stability and commitment. She also sensed Eddie's hesitation, but she didn't know its source. With Eddie now a soldier and far away, she probably worried that they might drift apart, that he might not remain faithful to her.

Each of them struggled with doubts, but eventually they agreed that Mildred should come to Georgia and they would get married. Mildred joined him in May 1942, and they were married on June 10. Mildred left Iris and Charles with her parents in Los Angeles. Iris suffered with asthma, and Mildred was fearful that the humid Southern climate would affect her adversely. Eddie was
worried that, given the hostile racial climate in the South, a rambunctious young black boy might fall in harm's way. The family settled in a small, cramped house in the nearby town of Columbus. Although their life was circumscribed, Eddie was happy to have Mildred and Buddha with him.

Despite his anger over Southern racism voiced in his letters to Mildred, Eddie was doing well in the Army and gaining some notoriety. In October 1942, he was featured in an article in
The Pine-Bur,
the post newspaper. The article noted that his “career as a soldier of fortune has taken him around the world.” It recounted his growing up in India and China, and his combat experience in China and Spain. “He is now married and the proud father of a large son,” the article ended.

A year after marrying Eddie, Mildred gave birth to a second son, William. They named William for Eddie's brother, who was in the service at a different military base. With Mildred, Eddie felt a wholeness he had never known before.

Meanwhile, his relationship with his own family had reached a nadir. Eddie and his brother William had always been close. William had been married for a short time, but his wife walked out on him, leaving him heartbroken. Eddie's relationship with Miriam, whom he regarded as out of control, was often strained. And since returning to the United States, Eddie had kept his distance from his father and stepmother. He wrote to them
occasionally but complained that they didn't respond. “They don't answer my letters,” Eddie told Mildred, “so I'll discontinue my letters.” The old wound between father and son never healed, and now it had become an ugly scar.

E
ddie loved married life and he greatly enjoyed his young family. Despite the evident segregation and discrimination, he also relished his life in the Army. His officers were impressed by his knowledge, capability, and enthusiasm, and as a result he was promoted to staff sergeant. But Eddie was a combat soldier, a warrior against tyranny, and he was itching to get into the fight against fascism.

In the fall of 1944 his hopes were raised when his unit was notified that they would be shipped overseas. He packed up his family and sent them back to Mildred's parents in Los Angeles. His truck company was shipped first to England and then on November 13, 1944, they arrived in southern France expecting to be sent to the front lines. Instead they were assigned to transporting supplies to the fighting forces and cleaning out snipers in the rear areas.

Despite his disappointment, Eddie kept an upbeat tone in his letters home. On November 22 he wrote to Mildred to wish her a happy birthday. “Dear Pet: You see,
I haven't forgotten the date. Dec. 1st is your birthday, is it not? If I wasn't several thousand miles away I would give you one thousand burning kisses for your very own. This is another one of my letters you may keep as a promissory note to be made good at the first opportunity. In the meanwhile, I'll be thinking only of you. If you should care to make me happy, write soon and mail me a few crumbs of that birthday cake, which I'm sure your mother baked for the sweetest of girls.”

In a letter written on December 17, Eddie admitted the deep impact Mildred's love had made in his life: “Your claim is that you do not understand me—yet you are the only one who has ever understood me. You made me love you when once upon a time I was sure that it was impossible for me to love anyone but my mother. You did what others could not do. You are my emancipator. Life would be unbearable without having someone to fight for and to come home to after the war.” For most of his life Eddie had steeled himself against feelings of tenderness for anyone other than his mother. Mildred taught him to love again.

Eddie was a soldier and he was anxious to get into the infantry. From the moment he landed in Europe he volunteered daily for combat duty. He wanted to get to the front lines, but he was never accepted. Finally he got his chance. The German counteroffensive at Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, took a disastrous toll. Reinforcements were desperately needed, but few GIs—that is, few white
GIs—were available. Thousands of black troops stood at the ready, and many of them were eager to join combat units. Having no alternative, the Army finally opened its ranks to black volunteers. An initial circular soliciting volunteers stated that black soldiers would be assigned to units without regard to race or color and implied that they would be fighting side by side with white troops. This was hastily retracted and replaced by a new circular stating that volunteers would be accepted with-out regard to race or color, with no suggestion of inter-racial fighting units. In fact, the black volunteers would be assigned to all-black infantry units under the com-mand of white officers, in accordance with the policy adopted by General Eisenhower and the Army. The all-black units would operate within the structure of larger white units.

Some 4,500 black soldiers volunteered; 2,800 were accepted for training, and 2,221 made it into combat duty. Sergeant Carter was among the first to be accepted, but like other black sergeants, he was required to relinquish his stripes and accept a reduction in rank to private. The Army didn't want any black sergeants supervising white enlisted men. Eddie had worked hard to earn the rank of sergeant, but he gladly gave it up to serve his country on the front lines.

Eddie continued to write frequently to Mildred. The Army prohibited soldiers from disclosing details of their whereabouts or combat operations, but Eddie kept her apprised of his well-being. In addition to inquiring about
her and the children, he could turn on the charm when he wanted to and his letters often waxed romantic. Eddie professed his everlasting love for Mildred, although at the same time he admitted harboring some misgivings about emotional expressiveness.

In January 1945, as a bitterly cold winter gripped Europe, Eddie was assigned to the Ground Force Reinforcement Command in France to be trained with other black volunteers as combat soldiers. At the completion of the training period Eddie was assigned to the Twelfth Armored Division, Fifty-sixth Armored Infantry Battalion, Provisional Company 1 (also known as D Company, or Dog Company). The commanding officer of D Company was First Lieutenant Floyd Vanderhoef; Lieutenant Russell Blair was the executive officer. At the time of his new assignment on March 12, 1945, Eddie had no idea that he was about to take part in one of the largest assaults in the history of the war, the Rhineland assault, under the leadership of General George Patton. The Twelfth Armored Division had been temporarily assigned from the Seventh Army to Patton's Third Army, where it would become known as Patton's famous “Mystery Division.” The orders for the change came down on March 17. The Twelfth Armored was ordered to move from Saint Avold to an area near Siereck Les Baines, where it was attached to the Third Army's XX Corps. The Mystery Division came into being as shoulder patches and unit vehicle markings were removed. The Hellcats, as Twelfth Armored members proudly called their unit, were now part of Patton's “Blood and Guts” Third Army.

The Third Army had been given the task of crossing the Rhine River. Patton was anxious to beat the British, who were under the command of Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery. He was determined that his troops would be the first to make a successful assault across the river. Under tight security the Twelfth Armored moved into a position near Trier, Germany, from which it could spearhead the drive to the Rhine. The plan was to pass through the Ninety-fourth Infantry Division, race to the river, and secure a crossing. Mopping up enemy strongholds would be the job of the infantry unit that followed in the wake of the assault.

“As we advanced toward Trier,” Dog Company's Russell Blair remembered, “we were pretty exposed, riding on top of tanks and in wide-open six-by-six trucks in an armored column. Whenever we encountered any action, the troops would deploy in front of and to the side of the tanks, with the tanks firing over their heads. Carter was doing a good job with his squad, and the men respected him.”

Company commander Vanderhoef was also impressed by Eddie. “Blair and I were trying to develop leaders for the squads. We promoted several of the black soldiers. Carter was the first one. He was the ideal soldier. He wanted to do the right thing. He had absolutely no qualms about being there, and he insisted that his men do what they were supposed to do. He was one of the best leaders we had in that company.”

The Twelfth Armored Division was organized into three combat commands, each consisting of tanks, armored infantry, and artillery. Eddie's unit, the Fifty-
sixth Infantry, was made part of Combat Command B (CCB). The units advanced into Germany and across the Saar Palatinate, making steady headway and taking hundreds of Germans prisoner. Smashed German equipment littered the route. The orders were to keep going and search for an intact bridge at the town of Ludwigshafen. The units met strong resistance at Freimheim, but this did not stop the advance. CCB pushed on and cut the autobahn, a segment of German's vaunted superhighway system. In the advance from Birkenfeld to Ramsen on March 20, some 2,200 German soldiers were taken prisoner and another 1,000 enemy troops killed. Late that night elements of the Fifty-sixth infantry reached the Rhine River.

The Germans had blown up the bridge at Ludwigshafen so the Americans bivouacked at a little town nearby. The next day, March 22, CCB was sent along the Rhine to attack Speyer and capture the bridge across the Rhine there. “We knew from reconnaissance,” Blair said, “that there were some thick woods between Ludwigshafen and Speyer, with a heavy German force. Late in the afternoon they moved Dog Company into position to clean out the woods the next day so that we wouldn't have a problem when we attacked Speyer.” Blair was assigned to take the command vehicles and bivouac in what had formerly been an SS barracks. “The next morning, March 23, the weather was beautiful. At daylight D Company jumped off to clean the woods out, but the Germans had
withdrawn during the night. They pulled D Company back to join the attack on Speyer.”

As Eddie and his rifle squad were riding on a tank advancing toward the town, the column came under bazooka and small-arms fire from a large warehouse. Everyone scattered and took cover. Quickly surveying the situation, Eddie volunteered to lead three men to reconnoiter the warehouse. Two of his men were killed and the third wounded within minutes. Eddie advanced alone, despite being wounded himself multiple times, managing to silence two machine-gun nests and a mortar crew. Within thirty yards of the warehouse he took cover behind an earthen bank.

His own officers thought he was probably dead and commenced shooting at the warehouse with a rocket launcher. Eddie waited there for two hours when a squad of German soldiers, checking to see if he was dead, approached his position. Waiting until the right moment, he leapt up and opened fire with his Thompson submachine gun. He cut down six of the Germans, and the other two quickly surrendered. Using the two prisoners as a shield, one in front of him and the other behind, Eddie made his way back across the field to his unit.

Vanderhoef and Blair were amazed to see Eddie return with the two prisoners. Even though he was wounded, he refused to be evacuated to a hospital until be had climbed to an observation post established by the officers and pointed out German machine-gun positions.
With this help and the information obtained from the prisoners Eddie captured, the American forces cleared the road and continued their advance into Speyer. Eddie, though wounded and alone, had defeated a last-ditch German effort to stop the American advance.

The bridge at Speyer was blown up by the retreating Germans, but American tanks were ferried across the Rhine and soon engineers built a treadway bridge across the river at Nierstein. The Rhineland drive by Patton's Mystery Division was unstoppable.

 

W
hile recovering from his wounds in an Army hospital, Eddie wrote to Mildred to tell her of his condition: “Dear Lover: Just a line or two letting you know that I am still able to kick. Sweets, please overlook my not writing sooner. We have been fighting pretty steady. I have killed and killed Jerries until I couldn't see straight. I guess the War Dept. has written you concerning my getting shot up a little. A Jerry machine gun hit me in my left hand—three holes in my left arm, one hole in my left leg, two holes in my right leg and one hole in the right foot. And also in the head. I have nine bullet holes in all. Not so bad at that, is it? I hope that I'll get well in time so that I can get back to my outfit. I would sure like to get to Berlin. My outfit has the fightingest bunch of doughboys there is in it.” In the hospital Eddie was presented with a Purple Heart, which he promptly sent to Mildred for safekeeping. By then he had also earned two Battle Stars.

Eddie followed with more of his usual chatty, upbeat letters: “How is everything with exotic you?” he wrote in another. “As for myself, well, I have never felt better. By the time you get this letter I should be on my way to Berlin. I have a score to settle with Jerry. Although I was shot up a bit, I feel as though I can outfight any Jerry on two feet. We of the armored infantry are the first to make the break through in the Jerry lines. And then the regular infantry follows after us. So you see, we go through a lot of hell. Only Jerry catches one hell of a lot more. The American doughboy is one darn good soldier. General Patton, as you already know, is our leader. One thing I like about him is that he has plenty of guts. He is a regular G.I. Joe.”