320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on D-Day
The mission of the 621 soldiers of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on D-Day was to launch hydrogen-filled balloons to protect troops on the ground from the Germans above. The War Department (and the Navy Department) were both segregated as they had been since their founding. The 320th was no different a group of soldiers commanded by white officers. It is estimated that at least 2,000 Black soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy that day and most of them were company and battalion support positions due to segregation. Of the men that survived they helped to form the Red Ball Express which was a truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving through Europe and then joined during the Battle of the Bulge.
None of the Black soldiers that were part of D-Day were awarded a Medal of Honor either during World War II or immediately afterwards until 1992 when a study conducted by Shaw University and commissioned by the Department of Defense and the Army asserted that "systematic racial discrimination had been present in the criteria for awarding medals during the war."
320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on D-Day
The mission of the 621 soldiers of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion on D-Day was to launch hydrogen-filled balloons to protect troops on the ground from the Germans above. The War Department (and the Navy Department) were both segregated as they had been since their founding. The 320th was no different a group of soldiers commanded by white officers. It is estimated that at least 2,000 Black soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy that day and most of them were company and battalion support positions due to segregation. Of the men that survived they helped to form the Red Ball Express which was a truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving through Europe and then joined during the Battle of the Bulge.
None of the Black soldiers that were part of D-Day were awarded a Medal of Honor either during World War II or immediately afterwards until 1992 when a study conducted by Shaw University and commissioned by the Department of Defense and the Army asserted that "systematic racial discrimination had been present in the criteria for awarding medals during the war."