Veterans' Day in the Eyes of a Black WWI Veteran

Joshua Levenberg

8/21/2021

Veteran's Day in the Eyes of a Black WWI Veteran

Veteran's Day 1918: On the eleventh month of the eleventh day of the eleventh hour, the Great War collapsed on its heels, all hostilities ceased in Europe, empires crumbled, and new states were created. And yet, no significant change happened to the Negro in America, still chained by the bonds of virtual slavery, hate, poverty, and violence.

Flash forward fifty years later: The land of the free is flush with parades, balloons, and speeches about the golden jubilee of the armistice even though waves of political violence had torn up the streets of New York, Chicago, and Baltimore just months beforehand. And the life of the Negro? Well, it improved under the auspices of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At the age of seventy-seven, I am able to drink in the public water fountain, able to be catered at a public diner, able to ride on a bus seat like my white comrades. Fifty years ago, such rights would have been impossible in America. Today, I am standing wheelchair-bound on the podium as President Lyndon B. Johnson honors me and other veterans for fighting their whole G-ddamn lives for freedom. Fifty years ago, I would have been disbarred from joining the crowd of pasty white folks in their gowns and jackets and bowlers. Today, my grandson is engaged in the wild jungles of Vietnam, not just with men of his own skin color but of brown and red and yellow and white. Fifty years ago, I would have been segregated from all contact with non-Negroes except for racist superior officers who barked curt, useless orders left and right.

That is why, by November 11, 1918, when all the blood had stopped spilling, when all the bodies stopped dropping, when all the helmets and bowlers were thrown in the rusty air, I was not cooperating with the discriminatory U.S. Army but for the Canadians. Why, you ask, was I honored in America if not an American veteran? Because not only did I exit West Point a graduate but also a volunteer in the last year of the war. It was completely legal to volunteer in another army if you desired the benefit of higher pay and lack of a color barrier. Plus, your citizenship would not be invalidated by living in another country. That did not mean the transition was easy. No, it was slower than if I decided to stay with American fighting forces. My name had to be inspected, my date of birth had to be inspected, every component of my visa had to be inspected to see if I was viable for a transfer. Despite succeeding, I was looked down on by officers and regulars alike for my background.

How could a Black twenty-four-year-old Yankee from Skokie, Illinois with a bare history of armed relatives (my father was discharged from the Buffalo Soldiers) think he's skilled enough to join the Canadian Corps?

There were very few Negroes in the armed forces and even fewer foreigners so it made sense for me to be held in suspicion. I could hold a bayonet well, and I was a decent runner at my local high school, but there were allegations that my loyalties lied not to any person or contingent or country but to money. Yes, they believed I was a self-serving mercenary, and that lie served its purpose from the brisk fall of 1915 to the winter of 1916, enough time to gain respect from my comrades. Otherwise, my slop and gruel were equal to anybody else's. Nobody refused me the right to sleep in linen, nobody refused me the right to dine, converse, and slumber with white soldiers. I was even paid twenty Canadian dollars each month, lower than what the majority of troops made yet higher than what the U.S. Army would pay me. And I did make one friend immediately, a machine gunner by the name of Jonathan Salt. Just like me, he was of foreign origin, hailing from Trinidad to be exact. Not only was his wife Black but his prejudice was only aimed at the Turks who humiliated him on the Middle Eastern Front and led him to be discharged from the British Army.