Believing that it was a misguided order coming out of the division, the men of the 5th of K, 394th, sent a delegation to Frankfurt hoping to speak directly to Eisenhower and ask that the separation orders be rescinded. Strange’s platoon members armed themselves, set up a perimeter around their barracks and threatened armed rebellion if MPs attempted to cross the line and force them to return to their segregated units. It was all to no avail. They eventually learned that the order had come directly from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) and applied to all the black platoons.

Strawder and his platoon eventually found themselves in a cigarette camp in France, where several hundred separated black veterans threatened open mutiny when they were ordered to take up picks and shovels and build barracks for white servicemen being processed for home. Somebody said, ‘We’re not doing anything,’ Strawder recalled. So we didn’t do anything. They called in the MPs and they threatened to put us in the guardhouse, but they couldn’t discipline us. Strawder realized how serious the situation was, noting the number of pistols and knives his fellow volunteers had in their possession.

Having issued such an unjust order, SHAEF realized too late that it now faced a considerable problem. To placate these vets, the Army called in General Benjamin O. Davis, America’s first black general, who calmed the situation and promised that the volunteers would return home with the 69th Division. But for many 5th Platoon men, the promise came too late and they were sent home with different units. Some speculated that the Army separated them from their parent divisions because most of these outfits were slated for duty in the Pacific, where integration of combat units had not yet been tested and the commanders there did not want racial strife to affect combat efficiency in the planned invasion of Japan.

With black soldiers stripped from the white outfits, the remarkable combat achievements of thousands of brave black infantrymen were left out of nearly every tale told of World War II. Although they had been forced back into the shadows, the men who volunteered at the sharp end did not forget.

It was not until 1948 that President Harry S. Truman forced the end of a shameful policy that was without merit, ordering all branches of the military desegregated. Volunteer Arthur Holmes believed the integration of the black platoons was a turning point. The platoons had a lot to do with the later integration of the Army in 1948. I never believed they would put us black boys up there with white boys. And I didn’t believe it until we were actually being shot at. I thought they would put us back with the quartermaster working in supply.

Even with Truman’s landmark legislation, it again took the exigencies of combat to complete the job. Most units were still segregated when the Korean War broke out in 1950, and it was not until the Army was again faced with a critical shortage of replacements that the president’s order went into full effect.

While the integration of the black platoons in 1945 was a temporary measure that many in the Army believed had been forced on them, some saw great significance in the performance of those first black platoons. General Davis recognized the importance of what had occurred, saying, The decision from the High Command [to integrate the black platoons] is the greatest since enactment of the Constitutional amendments following the emancipation.

Bruce Wright, a volunteer infantryman who served with the 1st Infantry Division and later rose to become a justice on the New York Supreme Court, believed that the new policy opened a door that could never again be closed: I was doing something for a dream. I was living to see partial integration coming to be a matter of fact.

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David P. Colley is the author of Blood for Dignity, which chronicles the history of black platoons in World War II. This article originally appeared in the November 2006 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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