Black Warrirors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II
Ivan Houston - Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II
The person who helped me with the book that my talk will be based will also attend the meeting. His name is Gordon Cohn and he is a retired professor from USC, and also a professional writer. My talk will be based on my book, "Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II" and my return to Italy almost 70 years after the end of World War II.
Here is a brief outline of my remarks:
Numbering 4,000 select officers and men, Combat Team 370 was a part of the 92nd Infantry Division, the only African American division to fight in Europe during World War II. I will discuss my experiences, when, as a teenage California college student, I entered the U.S. Army and served with the 3rd Battalion, 370th Infantry Regiment in Italy.
My talk comes from minute-by-minute records of my unit's activities compiled by me and other soldiers during our deployment in Italy. I will describe both the historic encounters and achievements of my fellow black soldiers during this breakthrough period in American military history. I will discuss how we fought alongside other American troops, including Japanese Americans and soldiers from Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa and India. Finally, I will give a firsthand account of how we, segregated Buffalo Soldiers, fought not only the power of the Nazi war machine but also racism and the widely held belief that we were not up to the task.
The 2nd part of my talk is about being contacted by a young Italian woman, the owner of the 15th Century Villa La Dogana (formerly the Villa Orsini). Mattea Piazzesi was searching the internet to update the web site for the Villa which is now a Bed and Breakfast.) She found that I had written about the fighting in World War II which led to its capture by my battalion in 1944. She got in touch with me and invited me and my family to be her guests at the Villa.. I will discuss my visits to Italy in 2012, 2013 and 2014 when I led the 70th annual ceremony of the World War II liberation of the city of Lucca and was present when my book, translated by Giulia Larturo in collaboration with the language department of the University of Pisa, was published.
Finally I will discuss the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, where over 4,398 Americans who fell in the battles of Northern Italy are buried. Among those 4,398, there are over 400 Buffalo Soldiers. Some were my age, 19, when they fell.