LIBERATORS, FIGHTING ON TWO FRONTS IN WORLD WAR II IN SOUTH AFRICA

  1992 1st Edition 303pp Hardcover with B&W photos Book Very Good, DJ Very Good some very minor shelfwear, contents very clean and crisp, tightly bound. Large heavy book, extra postage required: R55.00 An account of Black American soldiers in World War II who combated racism in the segregated military and on the home front. In April 1945, some Black American soldiers were among the first 'liberators' to enter Nazi death camps, encountering the survivors described by one GI as "walking skeletons." Companion volume to an upcoming PBS special, this work recounts the tragic saga of the 761st Tank Battalion, whose African American personnel trained for two years in the racist backwaters of the South, made a major contribution to Gen. George Patton's Third Army in the WW II European campaigns, then returned to the U.S. after the war to find that discrimination against them had grown worse. The 761st's military record is impressive. The battalion fought farther east than any other U.S. unit (but was prevented from making the historic link-up with the Red Army, a ceremony reserved for white troops), and led the way for U.S. forces in the liberation of Jewish survivors at Dachau and Buchenwald. In the saddest irony of all, the authors (all New York City film producers) describe how the African Americans received a warm welcome in England and from German civilians during occupation duty, and as a result were roundly resented by their white comrades in arms. Photos.