Word: 41st
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...astounded 39th (white) Infantry on the Ninth's southern flank. Again the engineers wove through and around the enemy lines, ran some of their truck-tanks clear to the division command post (but caught no generals; they had fled). Before the games ended, in horrid confusion, the 41st was credited with halting the Ninth Division's planned attack for at least a day, perhaps disrupting it completely...
Black Watch. To civilians who think of Army engineers as pick-&-shovel soldiers, the performance of the 41st might have seemed surprisingly belligerent. But not to soldiers: combat engineers fight with guns as well as shovels, often lead attacking troops into battle when enemy fortifications, tank-traps, etc. have to be demolished. Lieut. Colonel Wood's use of simulated tanks was something extra, just to show what Negro engineers could do in a pinch...
...last summer. All of his officers are white; all of them are 30 or younger. (In the U.S. Army, Negro regiments get picked officers, and officers generally vie for assignment to them.) His 1,250 privates and noncoms are Negroes, mostly from the South. Together they have made the 41st a slambang outfit which has supplied the training cadres for 14 other engineer regiments. In all, some 3,300 Negro recruits have gone through Joe Wood's mill...
Understanding and sharing his Negroes' love for foofaraw, Lieut. Colonel Wood has gone the limit to give the 41st splash and dash. His companies are organized by sizes: all the men in any company are within an inch of the same height (Company A's men are five feet, eleven inches and over; Company F's, five feet six and under). When the 41st was born, it had no band and wanted one badly. A Negro sergeant collected some battered drums and bugles, made them do until the regiment got a real band. Now the band leads...
Often the dark stalwarts of the 41st sing while marching at attention. In regimental reviews, they like to sweep past at the double-quick, their faces ashine with sweat and pride. As working engineers, they built three swimming pools, also six concrete bomb shelters for artillery observers at Fort Bragg. They also created a 25-acre lake and use it for landing exercises and practice in assault boats. A kibitzer at this drill last week was New York's Congressman (and Reserve Colonel) Hamilton Fish Jr., who was an officer in a Negro regiment in World...