Black soldiers and racial abuse on the Gothic Line: 80 years later the Pentagon has a special program to ID uknown 92nd Buffalo soldiers U.S. military Gothic Line cemetery in Florence Pt. 3

``The further backwards you can look, the further forward you can see,'' Winston Churchill and the need to know history. At the top of the hillside U.S. military cemetery on the fringe of the Italian city of Florence there is a large wall that describes the Allied Force troop movements that fought on the Gothic Line from August 1944 to April 1945. There is a dizzying array of arrows that provides an inkling of how complicated the story of the final phase of what is often referred to as WWII's ``Forgotten Front.'' There is smaller plaque that mentions how the U.S. Army Fifth Corp led by U.S. General Mark Clark included the only U.S. African American infantry division to face combat in WWII. Often referred to as the ``Buffalo Soldiers'' they included the 92nd Infantry Division and an attachment known as the 366th Regiment, many of whom had joined the military after serving in ROTC programs while pursuing a college education. What the plaque description does not mention is the racial abuse these black soldiers and their segregated units faced as they fought, in the words of a Pentagon historian, two wars: one against the Nazis and Italian Fascists and another against white racist U.S. commanders. The cemetery also does not mention that there is an ongoing special U.S. Department of Defense project to identify more than 50 unknown African American soldiers buried in the Florence cemetery. Despite the ongoing efforts by the Trump Administration and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to whitewash the story of racial abuse in the U.S. military before, during and after WWII, the special project to ID the unknown African American soldiers continues. Launched in 2014 the remains of seven soldiers - some from the 92nd Division and some from the attached 366th Regiment - have been identified. To provide more details about the special Pentagon project, the program's historian Ed Valentin explains in this episode the background and details of how work continues using various identification techniques including DNA analyses, field work, archive research and other methodologies. He also expressed optimism the program would be announcing new identification success in the coming year.