Whites and African Americans were urged not to mingle during off-duty hours. “You accepted discrimination,” recalls Washington Rector of the 3916th Quartermaster Truck Company. “We were warned not to fraternize with whites for fear problems would arise.” The races were sufficiently separated that even today some white veterans of the Express are unaware that most of the drivers on the Red Ball were African Americans. Emerick recalls informing a soldier that he was a Red Ball driver. The soldier looked at him incredulously and asked why he was not black.

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The Red Ball Express was officially terminated on November 16, 1944, when it had completed its mission. New express lines with different designations were being formed, some for specific tasks. The White Ball Express, for example, was established in early October 1944, with routes extending from Le Havre and Rouen to the Paris area.

Other routes included the Little Red Ball, which carried priority supplies from Normandy to Paris; the Green Diamond Express, which moved supplies from Normandy to railheads 100 miles inland; the Red Lion Express, which supplied the 21st Army Group in Belgium; the ABC Express Route (Antwerp­Brussels­Charleroi), which carried supplies from the port of Antwerp to depots 90 miles inland; and the XYZ Route, the last long-haul trucking operation, which carried supplies across Germany in the final weeks of the war.

Although its days were few, the Red Ball never really died. Its name and mystique were so embedded in the history of World War II, even during the war, that most of the men who drove trucks, even well after the route’s demise, always believed they were on the Red Ball. The other express lines became mere footnotes in history. Welby Franz, a trucking company commander who later became president of the American Trucking Association, arrived in France from Iran in February 1945. He still believes his unit was on the Red Ball. “That’s what we were all told,” he says. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the Transportation Corps issued a patch that included a red ball, to commemorate the Red Ball Express, centered on a yellow shield. Franz’s men were issued the patch in April 1945.

The Red Ball was successful in large part because Americans understood the strategic value of the motor vehicle that already was playing a critical role in the growth and development of their country. The U.S. Army had also learned the value of motor transport in warfare early in the century. During the 1916 punitive expedition against Pancho Villa, General John “Blackjack” Pershing’s force found that the truck was vastly superior to the horse in a war of maneuvers. With minimal maintenance, trucks could supply Pershing’s force 24 hours a day.

In 1919, the U.S. Army dispatched a cross-continental convoy to test the efficiency of the truck as the mainstay for supplying a fast-moving army. One junior officer on the expedition who was impressed by the potential of motor transport was Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower. The tactical and strategic importance of the truck was not lost on the future supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe.

The Red Ball also was possible because of the awesome industrial might of America. During the war, the United States mass-produced millions of military vehicles. More than 800,000 21/2-ton trucks were manufactured in the United States during the war. No other army during World War II had as many trucks, and America supplied hundreds of thousands to Allied armies, including more than 395,000 to the Red Army alone.

It was the truck as much as the tank that enabled the U.S. Army to become the premier mechanized force in the world during World War II. Many believed that honor went to the Wehrmacht, but even as late as 1944 the Germans relied heavily on horse-drawn wagons. Incredibly, the Germans employed more than 2.8 million horses to supply their legions during the war. Without the truck, American tanks would have been immobilized and U.S. troops would have slogged across Europe barely ahead of their supplies.

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