Among the more than 160,000 men who stormed the beaches of France on June, 6, 1944, there was one combat battalion of African Americans. Like most of America, the U.S. Army was segregated by race in World War II. The Army believed soldiers of color were physically and intellectually inferior to white men. Yet the African Americans of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion had a unique and dangerous mission: They raised hydrogen-filled balloons armed with bombs over the beaches to protect Allied soldiers and matériel from German dive-bombers. A plane that snagged the cable anchoring the balloon to earth risked being blown to bits.
In the seven decades since that blood-soaked day in France, the men of the 320th have been written out of D-Day — movies do not show them; most books do not mention them. But they were there, they fought, and some of their own died in service to their country. In June 2009, journalist Linda Hervieux wrote about a member of the 320th who received the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award, in a piece for the Daily News marking the 65th anniversary of D-Day — and the idea for her new book, “Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War,” was born.
Waverly Woodson squinted into the distance. From the deck of the boat, he could see little. A thick cloud blanket hung overhead, and the heavy air pressed in from all sides. Drenched fatigues clung to Woodson’s weary limbs. For hours now he had peered into the blackness.
First light. In the dark, choppy waters of the English Channel, Woodson found serenity, even beauty. It would be one of his last tranquil moments on this very long day.
To 20-year-old Woodson, freedom meant a great deal. For him, there was no ambivalence entwined in fighting for his country, even if that country didn’t support equality for all its citizens. If you asked Woodson, he would tell you: This was a war in which he believed with all his heart. He was in this boat, in this war, to defeat the Nazis and their brutally racist worldview.
Unlike many of his friends in West Philadelphia, Woodson hadn’t waited for a draft notice. He’d left his premed studies at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, where he was in his second year, and enlisted in the army on December 15, 1942.
His younger brother, Eugene Lloyd Woodson, had signed up, too, and was stationed in Texas with a unit of the Tuskegee Airmen. It was a source of tremendous pride for their parents, and the doings of the Woodson brothers would become regular items in the black newspapers back home.
It was after dark on June 5, 1944, when the five medics of 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion left England aboard a landing craft tank. The LCTs were large steel barges with a deckhouse and space below decks for a crew of a dozen men. Woodson’s LCT carried one Sherman tank, two jeeps, three trucks, and some fifty-five men, mostly from the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division, along with navy crew.
The LCTs were the largest boats that would land directly on the beaches on June 6, though the bumpy ninety-mile ride from England pushed every boundary of misery.
* * *
In spite of turbulent seas, the order to go had been a relief. Woodson and the four medics had endured several uncomfortable days aboard this metal bucket, jockeying for space with the five dozen men.
Behind the boat carrying the medics, the rest of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion was scattered among more than 150 landing craft. Thousands of barrage balloons had been inflated in England by Royal Air Force crews and then tethered to ships and the smaller craft for the journey to France. Floating high above the ships, the balloons formed a miles-wide aerial curtain, their shining silvery shapes carved in relief against the flat pewter sky.
Their job was to protect the fleet from German dive-bombers, which would be loath to tangle with the lethal balloon cables. Once ashore, the men of the 320th would rush the balloons onto the beach, transferring the protective veil to land.
Omaha is where the medics were headed. They would be the first African Americans ashore — if they made it to the beach alive.
* * *
As the boat carrying Woodson and the medics approached Omaha Beach, all eyes were on the water. Around them, men bobbed in a sea made red by their own blood. Those still alive waited to be pulled from the drink by boats that might never come.
The skippers of the landing craft had been ordered to ignore their cries for help, and men in motor launches with megaphones dissuaded those with second thoughts. “You are not a rescue ship!” hollered one of them. “Get onshore!”
First, Woodson’s craft hit a mine, which blew out the motor. Then another blast exploded on the right side, felling troops like matchsticks.
The heavy fire kept coming. The LCT’s forty-millimeter guns, which had been blazing moments earlier, now lay silent: The bodies of their gunners hung lifeless as if from a gruesome clothesline.
A shell landed on the hood of a jeep, incinerating the four men inside. Woodson crouched beside a truck filled with medical supplies. A soldier beside Woodson was hit and killed. Woodson’s lower extremities burned. He reached down and brought a hand up covered in blood. “I am dying,” he thought.
One of the medics slapped dressings on his buttocks and inner thigh, ripped open by shrapnel. “Close,” Woodson would say later, “mighty close.”
The medics tended to the few men still living. The helpless craft drifted to a stop. The ramp fell with a bang, and to Woodson’s surprise, the tank came alive. It rolled down the ramp onto the beach and turned right.
The men followed it, splashing down in four feet of water. Woodson and medics Eugene Worthy and Alfred Bell, both from Memphis, hit the beach and ran, slugs popping mini-geysers of sand at their feet. Woodson looked back and saw the tank’s turret in flames. No men were coming out. It was 9:00 a.m.
In the shelter of the shingle, Woodson unpacked a tent roll he had pulled out of the water. Now there was a medical station. The rising tide carried in the dead and threatened to drown the living.
Under constant fire, the medics dragged the wounded and the dead out of the shooting gallery at the water’s edge. Their Red Cross brassards made them easy targets for German snipers hiding in the bluffs, who ignored the rules of war and fired on many medics that day.
There were too many men who needed saving. Their cries for help would haunt Woodson.
On Omaha, war was a great equalizer. “At that time,” Woodson would say later, “they didn’t care what color my skin was.”
Throughout the day and night and into the next day, Woodson worked through his pain to save lives. He pulled out bullets, patched gaping wounds, and dispensed blood plasma. He amputated a right foot. When he thought he could do no more, he resuscitated four drowning men.
Thirty hours after he set his boots on Omaha Beach, after treating hundreds of men even though he was twice wounded by shrapnel, Woody Woodson collapsed.
He was the 320th’s undisputed hero.
A sole piece of paper exists revealing that Waverly Woodson was nominated for the Medal of Honor for his service on Omaha Beach. In the end, Woodson had to settle for fourth place, the Bronze Star. No African Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to seven African Americans, after an Army study concluded that pervasive racism was to blame for the failure to recognize black soldiers in World War II. Woodson was not among them. For the second time in his long life, Waverly Woodson was forgotten.
For more about “Forgotten,” see www.lindahervieux.com
