Honoring Sergeant Carter Read Free Page B

enemy together…. The Negro gainedmuch from the war but there is room for improvement, a whole lot—about 99 percent.”
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    C ongress had voted to set aside the statute of limitations on awarding the Medals of Honor to the seven soldiers. The ceremony was set for January 13, 1997. Time was pressing. In September 1996, I made arrangements to fly back east to visit the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
    Making a trip to the National Archives was not a simple thing. I had to arrange for some time off from work; Ineeded to make sure that Mildred’s and the rest of the family’s needs were taken care; and, of course, there was the expense involved. I worked as a supervisor of the 911 emergency dispatch center in Los Angeles County. With enough advance notice I could get a colleague to cover for me or arrange some vacation time. With some preplanning and meals cooked in advance, the family could survive for a few days without me. My husband was supportive. He wasn’t altogether sure why I needed to make this trip, but he knew I was doing it to help his father. We would somehow squeeze the money needed out of the budget.
    That it fell to me to make the trip made sense in terms of family dynamics. When the initial call came from Gloria Long, I took it and dealt with it. I had to—Buddha and Mildred were too distraught over of William’s stroke and Iris’s death. The family was in crisis. If there was one thing I knew from my five years of experience as a 911 dispatcher and fourteen years as a supervisor, it was to remain calm and take things one step at a time. First, help Buddha and Mildred deal with their grief and worry. Then, gather information for the White House as best I could. Once I started the research, Buddha and Mildred, and later William, encouraged me to follow through, although with all of them there seemed to be a lingering reticence, an almost palpable uneasiness. They wanted Eddie to get the Medal of Honor, but they seemed apprehensive about where my research might lead. Mildredcould no longer tell me what had happened. Buddha and Redd never really knew; they only knew the bad feelings that Eddie’s military experience had left in the family. The feelings were painful and they didn’t want to talk about them. Their inner conflict made it impossible for them to probe, to uncover what might be hidden in trunks or archives.
    I was met at the National Archives by Kenneth Schles-singer, an archivist. I told him of the upcoming Medal of Honor event and explained that I was trying to get information for the family and for public dissemination. I wanted to see anything that might be helpful in understanding Sergeant Carter’s experiences and the general situation of black soldiers in the Army during the war and any problems they might have encountered there. Mr. Schlessinger directed me to the materials used by the Shaw University researchers and other important record groups. These included several sets of records and memos from Eddie’s unit, the Fifty-sixth Armored Infantry Battalion, that detailed the battalion’s movements in March 1945 at the time of the attack on the German town of Speyer. Sergeant Carter was not mentioned, but the maps, handwritten notes, and memos made the whole thing more real for me. Here were firsthand documents that recorded actions where Sergeant Carter was present. I leafed through the fading papers and tried to imagine what it was like for him. I realized that I could never know what he went through, but holding notes and messagesthat had been written while the fighting was actually going on made me feel close to Eddie.
    I also found War Department press releases that praised the bravery and fighting spirit of black troops in the all-black Ninety-second Infantry Division in Europe, the Ninety-third in the Pacific, the 761st Tank Battalion, and the 332d Army Air Force Fighter Group—the famed Tuskegee