The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe (9 page)

by the French police far more than the comportment of whites.

A local French police report from Trouville, near the Deauville logistics headquarters, said “the proprietors of the cafés and restaurants have been informed not to serve alcohol and food to American soldiers and especially to soldiers of the Negro race [race nègre].” A police report by the departmental police command noted that “the attitude of the allied military is correct except as concerns the black Americans, who seem to need greater supervision.” In Vire, through which the Red Ball Express ran, and where a large contingent of black troops was based, one police report named vari- ous incidents involving black soldiers, and concluded by saying “there is no longer a unit of Military Police in Vire, and it would be desirable, if the blacks continue to be stationed here in the area, that MPs be placed here as a means of dealing with such situations.” An- other regional overview of Calvados declared wryly in March 1945 that “the comportment of the black Ameri- can soldiers has improved—we note only one rape, in Breuil-en-Bessin; the victim was 82 years old.” But in Mézidon, according to another report, “black Ameri- can soldiers have become the scourge of the region. They get drunk and run after the women who no longer dare to set foot outside after nightfall.” And the town

of Vire remained a constant trouble spot, according to police: “ The people of Vire continue to complain about the actions of colored American troops stationed in the vicinity.”
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The emphasis by French authorities upon race when discussing public disorder was not limited to African- American soldiers. From April 1945 on through the summer, police reports, while emphasizing the contin- ued cordiality between Allied and French authorities, reported extensive complaints about the behavior of French North African soldiers in Calvados. “ The French units stationed in the region now number at least 1,500 men; most of them are North African soldiers. If the general relations between the civilians and the soldiers are correct, and even sometimes cordial, the same can- not be said of the relations between the population and the North African troops.” Such incidents included the following transgressions, according to one report in mid-April: a melee between a woman “of loose morals” and a Moroccan soldier resulted in the knife stabbing of a civilian onlooker; North African soldiers bran- dished firearms in public to rob locals of wine, leading to scuffles and injuries among civilians and soldiers; in Caen, a North African, described as “un soldat in- digène,” stabbed a passerby in the neck with a razor after being refused a cigarette; gendarmes stopped

and searched two North African soldiers because they “looked suspicious” and found they were carrying two English bayonets under their uniforms. Another report depicted a full-fledged conflict between French police and North African soldiers, triggered by an incident in a bar. Two North African soldiers felt they were not served quickly enough and slapped the daughter of the proprietor in the face; the mother and father in- tervened but at this moment one of the soldiers drew a knife and pursued the daughter into the bakery next door. While the baker was fending off the soldier, an of- ficer of the gendarmerie arrived and helped the baker overpower and disarm the soldier. As the two soldiers were being arrested, however, a truck bearing a dozen North African soldiers arrived, and these men used force to free their comrades. The police called rein- forcements but could not prevail upon the soldiers to surrender the two soldiers; so the police followed the truckload of soldiers back to their base. There, after a serious scuffle that led to injuries to the police, the men were overwhelmed and arrested, with the aid of other soldiers at the base. Clearly, public disorder involving African-American and North African troops occurred in Calvados. Yet it also appears that French police were far more likely to report incidents involving soldiers of color than incidents involving white British or Ameri- can soldiers. French police, it seems, saw armed black

and Arab men, even if wearing American or French military uniforms, as threats to their efforts to restore “order” to Normandy—an order in which nonwhite people did not figure.
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The French police may have emphasized the racial dimension of public disorder to establish a point of solidarity with the purveyors of American military jus- tice. Indeed, one of the reasons why French and Allied relations at the top levels of official authority were so “correct and cordial” was their shared racial preju- dices, especially when dealing with allegations against black troops. The records of the Army’s Judge Advocate General show plainly that while less than 10 percent of American troops in the entire European Theater of Op- erations (ETO) were African-American, 22 percent of all criminal offenses brought before the courts were at- tributed to black soldiers.
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More telling, 42 percent of all offenses involving sexual assault were attributed to black soldiers, and in France 77 percent of the soldiers charged with rape were African-American.
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Further- more, black men accused of sexual assault received far harsher punishment than whites. Of the 151 soldiers in the ETO who were actually condemned to death by courts-martial for the offense of rape, 65 percent were black. Still more astonishing: of the 151 capital sen- tences for rape, only 29 were actually carried out—but

of those, 25 soldiers were black, while a mere 4 were white. Put another way, 87 percent of the U.S. soldiers hanged on the charge of raping women in the ETO were black. All these numbers, and others relating to other crimes, can be summed up fairly simply by stating that of the 70 men the U.S. Army hanged for crimes in Eu- rope, 55 were African-American.
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The evidence presented at the courts-martial sheds light on the hidden underside of the liberation and occupation of northern France. It is plain from these records that some American soldiers—how many can never be known—assaulted French people, in some cases with sadistic and lethal force. The evidence shows that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common; it also shows that black soldiers convicted of such awful acts received very severe pun-

ishments, while white soldiers received lighter sen- tences.
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Why the disparity in sentencing? Simply, it was much easier for a condemned white man to get a capital sen- tence reduced than it was for a condemned black man to receive the same leniency. This is because the Army, at the express request of General Eisenhower and the War Department, gave weight to an accused soldier’s combat record during sentencing. The War Depart- ment in an order of August 2, 1945, stated that “while a creditable combat record does not endow the indi- vidual with any special immunity, neglect to give it due weight is equally an injustice and an impairment of public respect for the Army’s administration of mili- tary justice.” Yet not only a creditable combat record was required; even combat fatigue and “exhaustion on the battlefield” were considered as mitigating cir- cumstances. Since African-American troops rarely saw action in the front line, they usually had no combat re- cord to shield them.
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A second reason for the severity of sentences toward black troops is that Army justice saw sexual violence by African-American troops as dangerous and threat- ening not simply to French women but to the moral or- der that the Army wished to establish in France. The Judge Advocate General Board of Review, in consider- ing the conviction for rape by two privates of a woman in Bricquebec, near Cherbourg, just three weeks after D-Day, made plain its opinion that the rape of French

women by “colored American soldiers” was part of “a pattern which has made its unwelcome appearance with increasing frequency.” This alleged pattern was denounced by the provost marshall of the Norman- dy Base Section as well: “the reputation of American troops was badly besmirched at this time by the mis- behavior of a small percentage of troops,” and he noted that “most of these undisciplinary attacks were caused by colored troops and great efforts were made to bring this situation under control, with special attention to the colored units.” In short, black soldiers were target- ed for special measures, to deflect scrutiny away from white soldiers’ misbehavior and to deflect criticisms aimed at the American army.
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In the context of liberation, this evidence, when placed alongside police reports from French archives, sug- gests a broader conclusion: that French and American authorities collaborated to impose a racial order onto liberated Normandy. Some American soldiers pillaged, robbed, raped, and murdered French people during 1944 and 1945, but black men paid a far higher price for such transgressions, and French and U.S. authori- ties found a degree of common cause in exacting that bloody toll.

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A

S THE WAR moved onward through France and into Belgium and to Germany itself, the interest of the Allied armies in Normandy’s fate waned

and the citizens of Calvados felt bereft. The region’s housing shortage was severe, and food was still strictly rationed in Caen, with bread down to 100 grams per day and 120 grams of meat per week. A particular griev- ance of the locals was that the 12,000 German POWs in Calvados, who were put to work on road-building crews, were given better rations and clothing by the Al- lies than the French themselves enjoyed. “People com- pare their appearance when the two groups [French and German laborers] arrive for work at the various public works,” wrote the prefect of the department. “ The Germans arrive by car or truck, clothed in rain- coats, with good shoes. The French arrive on foot, with bad shoes and an assortment of cast-off clothing, some civilian, some military.” With no summer and fall har- vest, cattle lacked fodder and straw and in December, the subprefect of Bayeux termed the condition of live- stock in the region “critical.” Petty theft and looting of emptied or damaged houses was a constant problem for municipal police, as the crime blotter in the daily newspapers reveals. Basic services such as streetcars, buses, and trains, and electricity were not in place un- til December and even then were intermittent at best. The region was beset by a criminal racket that traf-

ficked in stolen military goods, which the police found impossible to control, since Allied soldiers were deeply involved. And prostitution—a trade that was legal in France when practiced in licensed houses with regu- lar inspections—had become a major public health problem; women had begun to ply their trade secretly among a desperately eager military clientele, leading to rampant venereal disease.
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Caen residents wondered why they had been forsaken. Drawing on a vocabulary rich in suggestive overtones of Christian suffering, an editorial in the Caen-based newspaper Liberté de Normandie, one of the first dai- lies of liberated Normandy, cried out that “Martyred Calvados Must Not Be Forgotten.” “For the success of our allies,” the paper wrote, “Calvados has paid an un- bearable tribute. Entire villages have been pulverized, towns razed, cities wiped out…. We do not complain. Fate determined that we should become the ransom for Liberty, and we have strong enough hearts to ac- cept this holocaust with pride. We only ask that we not be forgotten. And yet, we are being forgotten.” The editorial appealed for aid from the rest of the country: “ We, in our murdered towns, we have nothing; liber- ated France, which has happily avoided our tragic con- dition, will you not come to our aid?” Caen, it seemed, had suffered so that France might be resurrected; but

there had been no recognition of the sacrifice.
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