Hello and welcome once again to History2Ebs. I'm Tim. Welcome to the podcast where we take a light-hearted look at the dark side of history. The topic of our podcast today is Harlem Hellfighter, Henry Johnson.
The title of the podcast is the Battle of Henry Johnson. Henry Johnson was an African-American who served with the Harlem Hellfighters during the First World War. We're going to talk about his life, but before we do, let me remind you that we are a true crime history comedy podcast. We use adult language.
There probably won't be so much adult language now to the five-mile sale of doubles in that intersection. We tend to use more adult language when Brandy is here. She tends to use more adult language. Brandy is very proud of her.
I keep wanting to get up a collection for her so she can go to finishing school because I really think it needs that. I think she only got to stage one. If she was in a 12-step program, she only made it to the first step. Wouldn't you like to see her walking with a book on top of her hair?
So, for our listeners out there, please encourage Brandy to write send your emails, encouraging Brandy to complete finishing school. She needs to work on her ladies' kiss. She is not Lady Like It All. Being on that page, and I don't want to start a whole lot of trying.
Our Facebook page, yesterday's a podcast. There's a lot of un-lady-like ladies on that page. So, you're thinking a few of our listeners could use some finish school. Okay.
They're charming. They're very charming. They're very charming. They're very charming.
They're very charming and very beautiful. They tend to use a lot of foul language. Oh, they're shocking to me. Yes.
So, if foul language just offends you, we probably won't use much of it on this particular episode. But you don't have to. Well, we are. We're talking about a history topic today.
Highbrow stuff. We can't do it in a devil's. Right. Because she likes to talk about crime and serial killers and murder and mayhem.
Penis is gross. Because a lot about penis is gross. Penis is a lot of penis talk when she's around. But Brandy's not with us today.
We hope that Brandy will be with us joining us for our next podcast. We really don't care. Well, is this so hard getting the three of us together because we have such different schedules and I know you're going to be out for a couple of days. Brandy's out this afternoon.
So we try to do these when we can. Sometimes we love to do them when all three of us are here and are able to do them. But sometimes we just have to go with two of us. So today it's going to be me and the man who's considered the most dangerous man in podcasting.
A man who has been called an oasis in the desert of despair. The very honorable. The Reverend. The Colonel.
Charles Bullrigard. Hawker. Walter is the third affectionately known as Southern Gen. How are you today?
Colonel. I'm not good to me. What's wrong, Colonel? Well, I took a beating on the page from one of us.
On our Facebook page. Miss Maggie Glover. The lovely Maggie Glover. Very talented.
My treacherous traitor is Niece Dummy. About mansplaining to me. Oh, yeah. Because in the last episode we had to kind of explain some things to Brandy.
She accused you of mansplaining. Exactly. And I can't help it to the girl's ignorant to me. I mean, you tell her things and all of a sudden your mansplaining.
But you know what, never, never, what term never gets brought up to me. What's that? Woman's Blaining. Does that happen a lot to you?
It happens all the time to me. Women's Blaining stuff to me all the time that I already know. And they, it's just unfair. It's sexist.
I see. So you feel like you're dead for it anymore. You feel like you were being. Woman's Blaining too.
I'm sorry for that. Because you know, I know. Okay. I get out of the shower the other day.
This weekend I get out of the shower. I get dressed. Whatever. My wife comes in and looks at me.
The towel doesn't go on the floor. Well, I know the towel doesn't go on the damn floor. That's woman's Blaining. She thinks I'm angry.
No, I'm lazy, Dummy. I didn't pick it up. There is a difference. Woman's Blaining in the deck like you ignorant.
I know it don't go on the damn floor. I didn't pick it up. That's laziness. She was stating the obvious.
I see. I didn't know it. Woman's Blaining to me. That cup don't go there.
I know that cup don't go there to me. That's woman's Blaining. I see. So maybe a lot at home and you get to work with Brandy.
Brandy, I'm telling you ladies out there living in those big ass glass houses. Watch when you start throwing those stones. Because you're probably woman's Blaining to somebody right now. Okay.
That's what I got right now. Okay. Well, that's good. All right.
So let's talk about this topic. Shall we? I know you love to do these history topics. I know these history.
Because we can, like you said, when Brandy's here. We're going to keep it simple. We'll work in the next time. Yeah.
She kind of, you can tell us. Well, she gets very excited when we talk about blood and guts and all the penis talks. Chopped up people. Yeah, she likes that.
But today's going to be a topic about the First World War. Working on a couple of different topics on the First World War. This is the first of them. But this one is on Harlem Hellfighters.
They were a unit of African American soldiers who served during the First World War. Because the US prepared to enter World War I in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson faced a major problem. The US Army was far too small to join in the fray. I think I read that they were, or maybe seen this in the documentary, that in 1917 the US Army Standing Army was 15,000.
Yeah, it was very small. Very, very small. And although many African Americans were eager to fight in the war and to serve their country, they were often turned away from military service. When the United States first entered the war, the goal was to raise a million man army.
But after six months, they only had something like 80,000 volunteers. So they were following- Those coming up a little short. A little short. Not folks- Well, I mean, this is like your three of the war, right?
And it's just been, you know, soldiers were just getting slaughtered in Europe at the time. And not surprisingly, people was not rushing. It wasn't like World War II where it was a popular war. Nobody bombed us.
Right, exactly. Exactly. Well, I mean, I guess you could say some people were upset at a loose titanium. But it wasn't as clear cut as the Second World War.
When the United States realized that it did not have close to the- close to the enough of soldiers they needed, Wilson decided that he would institute a military draft. It created the Congress-created the Selective Service Act of 1917, which required all men from the ages of 21 to 30 to register for the draft. And this included African Americans as well. Now, keep in mind, when we're talking about 1917, we're talking about- Most of the country, or at least in the South, was segregated with the Jim Crow laws, segregated whites from African Americans.
Both were pretty segregated, too. Yeah, and African Americans were treated like second-class citizens, right? So for African American men, this was an opportunity to prove to the White American that they could serve alongside white soldiers and serve just as valiantly as whites. So 400,000 African Americans were drafted under the 1917 Selective Service Act, but only 42,000 African American soldiers, including the 369th Division of State of New York, served overseas during combat.
That division became known as the Harlem Hellfighters because most of the unit- It was a national guard unit, it was an all-black national guard unit. Out of New York, most of their members lived in Harlem, New York, which was, if you know New York City, Harlem was for a long time predominantly African American, that section of the city, Burrow. The Harlem Hellfighters would receive their nickname from the Germans who refer to them as Hellfighters, and as I said, 70% of the 369th Infantry Division considered Harlem their homes. Alright, so the African Americans in World War I served in racially segregated units.
It would be, it was the Second World War before the units were integrated in the Army, and most was limited into serving in labor battalions. So the Army really didn't see the trust African Americans to serve, you know, in the front line as regular soldiers, at least in fighting capacity at that time. The Harlem Hellfighters would fight heroically on the front lines in World War I, and the whole regiment would receive the French's highest honor for soldiers, the Crote-Gare, so the whole regiment would receive that, because of their bravery. The Hellfighters served for more than six months on the front line in France during the First World War, and suffered more than 1,400 casualties.
The Hellfighters never lost a prisoner or gave up a foot of captured ground. Their motto, you'd like his motto, Colonel? God damn, let's go. Let's go, as their motto.
My motto is, God damn, I'm sitting on his couch. It's similar, but different. Alright, a little bit different. Ah damn, I turned up the TV.
I never leave me alone. Yeah, that's a good one. Anyway, the Hellfighters fought for more than six months on the front line and suffered, as I said, more than 1,400 casualties. They spent 191 days in the trenches.
Now, yeah, that's a long time. We're talking about the trenches. It was a pretty rough existence in the First World War. They served more than, in the trenches longer than any other American unit.
They would become the first unit to, American unit to cross the Rhine into Germany. This is the most famous Harlem Hellfighter was a private by the name of Henry Johnson. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Henry because his story is very cool. William Henry Johnson was born on July 15, 1892, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
You want to retire in North Carolina? I want to go to Charlotte, North Carolina. I want to have a little two-bedroom cottage just in case I have a guest. I don't want to have no internet.
I don't want to have no cell phone. I want to have me a little sunglasses on the beach, Timmy. Just you, Renee and Rudy. Um, optional, Timmy.
Is Rudy optional? Um, well, if I don't bring Renee and Rudy ain't coming. And I'm not altogether certain that Renee really deserves to come meet Timmy. So I'm going to go retire.
I'm going to let Renee retire to Chicago. I'm going to retire to North Carolina. I'm going to drink myself into a Blivian, Timmy. I have not drank it.
30 years. Right. So now you retire when you retire, you'll be able to? I will drink.
Have you ever seen a movie leaving Las Vegas? Yes. I'm going to go down to North Carolina and rip me a little bungalow. So you'll be leaving Charlotte?
Leaving Charlotte. And I'm going to drink myself into a sad, sorry death, Timmy. I've never seen you drink. So I haven't been that thing.
I mean, I don't want you to drink yourself a death, but if you don't have a lie, Timmy, I've got to have a go. It is a go. And you got to die sooner or later. I don't think I can do it in a month.
At least you can control it. You can control it that way. You're going to die either way. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. That was a pretty sad movie. But I love Elizabeth Shoe.
Yeah, I do too. I like her too. She was the hooker, right? She was the sex worker.
I like hookers. I know you're having fun this for. Well, not her. You wouldn't have rented her, but...
Well, no. You buy them to you. Renee, what do you do on them? Yeah, you bought.
Shit. Yeah. You buy. So they go away in the morning.
Anyway, William Henry Johnson was born on July 15th. We're going to get a lot of help from him. I know. I know.
I know. I believe me. I have a lot of respect for sex workers. Well, I do too.
I love them. They provide a community service, I think. And they're honest to me. Most of them.
But they're nice people. They're just much maligned, but they're good people. Most of them. William Henry Johnson was born on July 15th, 1892 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Little is known about his childhood. Other than he grew up in a large family of sharecroppers in the segregated South. Again, this was after the Civil War. Much of the South was segregated.
And African Americans were regulated to basically second-class citizenship. The family was dirt poor. And Henry had to drop out of school in the third grade to work the farm. Henry's father died when he was 11 years old, leaving Henry's mother to raise nine children on her own.
That's a lot of children. A lot of kids. A lot of kids. In his early teens, Henry moved in with relatives living in the North in Albany, New York, where he got a job as a red cap porter at the Albany Union Station.
He would typically work 18 hours a day, six days a week. Sounds like a corno. Yeah. For very little pay.
That sounded like you. No. If they would have said typically works three hours a day. Who would that?
For very little pay. That's you? No. Three hours a day.
What is our cohort? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be Brandy. Mm-hmm.
Typically working three hours a day. I'm sure she works three hours a day. Do you consider coming in and drinking a couple of Starbucks and leaving going home? That's a pretty good gig if you can get it.
Yeah, it really is. Anyway, Henry worked 18 hours a day, six days a week. He promised his mother he would never work on Sunday. The money he earned, he sent home to his mother in down south to support her and her siblings.
He was well-liked by all who knew him. He loved to sing, and he seemed to always have a smile on his face. He was a very laid-back guy, considered polite, hard-working, and always willing to help others. Now, on June 5, 1917, like many other men, Henry Johnson registered for the Selective Service after the outbreak of World War I.
Since the U.S. military was segregated at the time, Johnson was drafted and put in the All-Black New York National Guard 15th Infantry Regiment, which was then mustered into federal service and designated as the 369th Infantry Regiment based in Harlem. So this is the unit we were discussing. It would later become known as the Harlem Hellfighters.
Henry went to basic training in Camp Whitman in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in July 1917. So about over 100 years ago. The unit, the 369th, as I said earlier, most of the African-American units were regulated to supportive roles. So they got the menial work, they were not trusted or valued enough to be viewed as an effective fighting unit.
So it was the dirty work that they had to do. And that's basically what the 369th was assigned to do. They were deployed to France and reached the Western Front in January of 1918. In France, the poorly trained Harlem Hellfighters mostly performed really basic tasks, like unloading ships, digging latrines, and that sort of thing.
But now what was going on at the time, the U.S. expeditionary force was under the command of General Blackjack Pershing and the French Army, which had suffered severe losses during the war, were eager to get the Americans involved in the fighting to help support them, right? So they wanted the Americans to be taken into their army, but Pershing did not want that. He wanted the American army to be under his control and did not want to have a separate command.
But the French were so desperate that they just pleaded with Pershing to please. And at this point the American army was not very well trained. They were not very well equipped at this point either. So they were finishing their training in France.
Basically what happened, the French were just, you know, insistent that they get some help from the Americans right away. So instead of giving them France white troops, he assigned a 369th to serve under the French command. So he's basically saying, you know, he didn't think a whole lot of this unit. So we're, you know, the African-American unit can support French.
So French, of course, were not preoccupied with race as much as Americans. So they welcomed them. And men were treated very well by the French. And you'll see this again in the Second World War where it's real eye-opening for, you know, if you were raised in the segregated society where you were a second-class citizen and all of a sudden you're overseas where you're treated with respect and, you know, you're valued, you know, it's kind of eye-opening.
So the French were eager. You know, the French had colonies, of course, in Africa and all over the world. And they had a big, their army was made up of a mix, a very diverse mix of people. So they were very happy to take in the 369th.
At this point, France had been fighting for long years and of course they've experienced massive casualties. They needed reinforcements. And so they, again, sought help from General Pershing and the 369th unit began to fight along the French troops on the Western Front. These were the first American troops to see battle in the First World War.
The white troops are still training in France continuing the training. They didn't train other ones. They were just like, yeah, no, this would go down. And like I said, they were not even well equipped and we'll get into this in a minute.
So General Pershing was first reluctant to commit the Black troops to battle. He seemed to value their contributions, but there was political pressure from the United States, back in the States, to keep the Black soldiers in their place. And this was a lot to do with politicians, especially in the South, who wanted the Blacks. You know, they didn't want their white soldiers to fight alongside African Americans.
So it's just crazy. So they gave them the grunt work. So, but finally, as I said, Pershing allowed the 369th to fight along the French counterparts. And the health fighters were sent to an outpost on the Western edge of the Argonne Forest in France, and private Henry Johnson and his best friend, who he went through training with, a guy named Needon Roberts from Trenton, New Jersey.
We're giving French helmets, French weapons, and enough French words to understand commands from their superior. On their way to the front, Johnson noticed a stream of wounded soldiers. Many of them were blind and missing limbs, walking in their direction. And behind them were trucks that were overflowed with many different corpses.
When Johnson asked a white soldier where all the wounded were coming from, the soldier just chuckled and said, you'll find out soon enough. So they're going toward the front where all these folks who are wounded, soldiers who are wounded, blinded by gas or dead are coming back. So it's been a good sign. You know, this is just a side note, but if you're interested in this, you ought to look up Patton's Panthers.
Patton was kind of a funny guy, and he was running out of tank guys and had a battalion of black tank commanders. And they told him he was black, and he was a guy who believed that black soldiers were inferior, they couldn't think quick enough, whatever. But he got to the point where he said, who the hell I asked what color they were, I just need tankers. Well, in a movie, Patton, where he's given that famous speech, he actually gave that speech to the black tank commanders.
Now that's not shown in the movie, but it was actually, they're called Patton's Panthers. They're standing in front of the flag, each flag. They were Patton's Panthers. He looked at it up.
It's a very interesting story to him. I always get him. I always get, I always get, I think George C. Scott, and when I think of Patton, it's just that.
So do I. Yeah. Every time I say I have a real picture of Patton, it's like, oh, that's not George C. You know, I think it's the greatest thing I've ever, one of the greatest quotes is, no dumb son bitch ever won a war by dying for his country.
Yeah. You want to war by killing another guy. You're making the other guy die for him. Yeah.
So the 369th regiment was replacing a French unit that had just been wiped out by the Germans, artillery and mustard gas. The American. I got distracted on that story. I was filling our listeners in.
Okay. So my neighbor went into a nursing home. This is why I got into this story. You know, I love to go down rabbit holes.
Yeah, go right here. My neighbor went into a nursing home. Okay. My boys are small.
They're about, the twins are about five years old, Logan's about two weeks ago, I've visited our neighbor up there. And I met this guy named Charlie. And Charlie was, you know, and when you have little kids in a nursing home, they're going regularly. Everybody gets to know him, you know, because they like to see little kids and the twins were very cute.
But there was this one guy in one room that kind of took a liking to him. He was a black man named Charlie. And Charlie was one of Patton's Panthers. That's how I know about that.
He told me stories about, yeah, his fighting and the things he done. He was a fascinating guy. When I used to go up to the nursing home, you know, I visited my neighbor Matt, but Charlie was up there and I'd always stop by and spend some time with Charlie. And that's what made me.
That's why I got on Patton's Panthers. And that's how I know about that. But, you know, it's, I worked in it. I used to work in a retirement, at a retirement center.
And I would talk, you know, I would just, you know, I'd just do a lot of maintenance and stuff. And I would talk to these folks who were in their 80s and 90s. Now this was in the early 80s, 1980s. So these people were born, turn of the century.
They saw a lot of the early 20th century. And they're just amazing to talk to. And you know, no one, you know, most time no one bothered to talk to them or visit them. And they're just fascinating with all their stories.
He was fascinating because he lived doing it really, you know, not to get into a lot of social commentary on this, but it was very interesting for the boys because they got to know Charlie very well. You know, they're always visiting him. So when, you know, they got a little bit older and you started talking about, you know, the civil rights things and you know how Charlie, when he came home from the war, could not go into a restaurant. Yeah.
You know, he had to go into the, I mean, he'd done all this stuff in war and he could not drink from the same water fountain. Yeah. It made it much less abstract to the boys because they were looking at how could you treat Charlie that way? You know, I mean, little kids.
Yeah. And I understand what you're saying. And you know, it is, like you said, it is kind of abstract for some folks, but it really has not been that long ago. I mean, I think I mentioned this before.
When I was a kid, you know, I grew up in the 60s. I was born in early 60s. I started going to movies probably when I was seven or eight years old now. This was after the civil rights legislation in 1964.
But I remember at theater, in our movie theater, in our hometown, that still had the white only signs or collard signs. I mean, with our lives. I mean, with our lives. It's been within our life.
With the line in your lifetimes that there were small cities around Cincinnati, that it was accepted that if you were black, you were not to be there at nighttime. Yeah. I mean, the police would literally, if the police didn't harass you, the people would. So you know, it's, it's so for a guy like him, you know, Charlie, to live through all of this change.
And you know, he's been a witness to everything. And you know, we were pretty young. I can remember, you know, the riots in 68. You know, we lived in a project.
I can remember the National Guard being on the roofs of the project. I grew up in a small town, a great portrait. And it was segregated. I mean, it wasn't officially segregated, but there was an area town.
It was called Blufftown. That's what it was called. It's what everyone called it. And that's where, you know, 98% of the African Americans lived.
They would, they just would not live outside there. And they was, they did not feel welcome outside of there. Now that's changed now. But I mean, it's been, it hasn't been that long ago when we talk about some of these things.
It's not that long ago. But anyway, back to Henry. So on May, on May, the case, anyway, the Americans, the Americans, so they started, you know, they're going to the front to work with the French. Now the American Army was so poorly equipped, get this, in the early stages, that many in the units did not even have weapons.
Now, this is what you're going to give me more than a spoon now. There were cases in which soldiers were ordered. You remember, this is trench warfare, right? And you know, you have a, you know, American or British soldiers, French soldiers in one trench and then maybe a hundred yards, you have German soldiers, and they're, you know, they're blasting the hell out of each other.
Well, you know, every once in a while, they would be an offensive where soldiers would do what they call go over the top, right? They blow a whistle and then they'd just run over the top. Into, basically commit suicide because they just run into machine gun fire. Well when they were told to go over the top in what was called dead man's land, they would ask to do this without weapons early on.
And they were told just when they asked about, you know, how much somebody's dead. And that exactly was it. They told them, just wait, just take the weapon. A guy that had a weapon before you, then we just sent over the top.
Yeah, just take a weapon off the first edge soldier you see. And I mean, first of all, I can't even imagine running into just going over the top, just to run into enemy fire, but then with no weapons at all. I mean, it's crazy. No, no, no, no.
I'm trying to get now to me this weekend. She made me she wanted to clean out the garage. Now I would have gone over the top of the fire rather than clean out the garage. But otherwise I'm thinking, I'd be saying, have you lost your damn mind?
You can't even give me so much as a fork and you want me to go kill these Germans? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, I guess in a lot of cases, it wouldn't even matter if you had weapons or not, but still, especially when they say the dead guy right there, he's only three feet from the trench just grab his. It was just must have just been horrific. Anyway, on May 14th, 1918, the 369th Regiment arrived to the front lines.
Henry Johnson and his friend Needham Roberts were posted on lookout duty on the midnight to four AM shift. Now this was the most dangerous shift. And the only advantage of having lookout duty from midnight to four AM was that those on duties were given weapons. So there was that.
That's a big thing, kind of. Yeah. So on May 14, I give bullets. Exactly.
So in 1918, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts weren't on lookout duty long before German snipers began to fire at them. Just after 2 AM, the duo was attacked by a detachment of some 40 German troops. Oh, wow. So now the colonel is going to tell us what happened next.
Right, Colonel? I am, Timmy. Now both men have been wounded here. Now Robert Sosaviel needed he was unable to shoot a stand.
But Henry Johnson held fast and fought back with hand grenades and his rifle. After the shots rang out, Johnson and Roberts lined up a box of grenade and a dugout to have ready up a German raiding party tried to make another move. Two minutes later, Johnson heard the sniping and clipping. Snipping and clipping.
I'm sorry, Timmy. Wirecutters around the perimeter fence. And this is where they had the barbed wire. Barbed wire as a protected perimeter, right?
Yep. So he held a grenade toward defense, which brought a volley of return gunfire because that aggravates people when you throw hand grenades out of Timmy. Especially when they were trying to sniff the wire. They're just trying to do some maintenance.
So anyway, the Germans start shooting back and have thrown grenades and Roberts didn't get too far before he decided to return to help Johnson fight. But he was hit with a grenade and wounded too badly in his arm to do any fighting. Now these guys are really fucked up in this battle. Now Johnson just tells him to lay in a trench and hand him hand grenades, which Johnson threw grenades at the Germans.
But there were too many of the damn Germans in the advance in every direction. Johnson ran out of grenades. He took German bullets listening to me and they hadn't lipped but fired his rifle in this like Michael Meyer. Fired his rifle into the darkness there.
He's getting shot in the head and everything. He was, I think you get to this, but I think he had some like 24 wins or something like that. He took more bullets in his side than his hand but kept shooting until he shoved an American cartridge strip into his French rifle and it jammed. Because you can't count it well, he can't mix up.
But now the Germans, they were on top of them. Johnson swung his rifle like a club and kept him at bay until the stock of his rifle splintered. He's swinging his rifle at him. I believe Rambo is based on this guy.
He was pretty bad at him. This is a guy that Chuck Norris had just walked by and said, I don't want to. So anyway, he's pummeling these some bitches with his rifle and then he went down with a blow to his head. Overwhelmed he saw that the Germans are trying to take Robert's prisoner.
Okay. Now the only weapon he had left was a bow low knife. So he climbed up from the ground and charged hacking away at the Germans before they could get a clean shot at him, Timmy. He's charging with a knife.
He's charged. There's 40 Germans. They got, well, he's probably put a few down, but they got rifles and everything else. And he's just like, you know what?
Fuck you. I got a clean of garage when I get home. Fuck you. I don't care.
I got a knife. I'm good. Yeah. He stabbed one German in the stomach, fell to lieutenant, took a pistol shot to his arm before driving his knife between the ribs of a soldier who climbed on his back.
So he's stabbing people with Germans on his back and stabs a guy in the back. Now he manages to drag Roberts away from the Germans who retreated as they heard French and American forces coming toward him. The Henry Johnson slashed and stabbed several German soldiers until the raiding party finally said withdraw. Retreat.
They're retreating from a guy with a knife. It's a bad ass. Some bitches. If I ever go out drinking, I want to go in a bar with this guy.
Now when reinforcements arrived, Johnson passed out and was taken to a field hospital. By daylight, the carnage was evident. Johnson had killed four Germans and wounded 20 more. Even after suffering, Timmy, 21 wounds in hand-to-hand combat, Henry Johnson had prevented the Germans from bursting through the French line.
In fierce hand-to-hand combat, the former Red Cap port of the New York Central Railway single-handedly wounded or killed 24 enemy soldiers. Now who's the guy we, Alvin York? Yeah, that's some bitch at least had a gun. Well, and you think about Alvin York, though.
I mean, and it was incredible not to take anything away from what Sergeant York did. But you think of, you know, they made movies about him. Yeah. You know, he never heard of this guy.
Right, exactly. That's the point. So he did get a little bit of coverage. The story was from a page news in the press called the incident, the Battle of Henry Johnson.
Yeah, most of it was really played up in France. Yeah. You know, back home. Yeah, because it was on the French lines and they had some recognition.
They didn't really care about being black or white. Right. Right. Now both of them Roberts were given the, uh, Groidegger, one of France's highest military honors, but his heroic stand went unrewarded in the United States, Timmy.
After the war, Robert Needham and Henry stayed and touched for a while. Now Needham, Roberts was disabled by his wounds and unable to maintain steady employment after the Great War. Roberts, he earned a few dollars by giving paid lectures about his wartime experiences in early 40s and gave radio addresses and other speeches as part of the army's effort to recruit African Americans for World War II. Roberts died in Newark, New Jersey.
April 18th, 1949 was buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Newark. According to the news accounts, Timmy, him and his wife Lola jointly decided to commit suicide and hung themselves in the basement of the home. Yeah. I mean, these guys came back, you know, as we said, they went to France.
They were, uh, yeah, they were fighting in the most atrocious conditions. And they were, you know, they were valued by the French, but when they got back home, they were getting a job. They were back to be in second class citizens again. Second class citizens kept probably caking the job.
He's, you know, going around trying to talk a little bit to make a little bit of money, but right. Um, but the pay to Henry Johnson was just a sad to me, like hundreds of thousands of young men, American men, he returned from World War one, tried to make a life for himself in spite of what he had experienced in a very strange and distant land. Now with dozens of bullets and strap in the wounds, he knew he was lucky to survive. All told, he'd suffered 21 separate wounds during that battle.
Now here's where it really gets messed up to me. His discharge records were messed up, made no mention of his injuries, and he was not only denied his Purple Heart, but his disability allowance. Yeah, so he's coming back. He's disabled.
He's not, he's not getting any help from the army at all. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. And you know, a Purple Heart's a funny thing because you don't really win two Purple Hearts.
You can only win one Purple Heart. My brother-in-law had, they say that he won two Purple Hearts. He was in Vietnam, but a Purple Heart, what they do is they give you the Purple Heart, the first one, and in every wound after that, you get a little star to put on a Purple Heart. So he wouldn't even have enough room to put 20 stars on a Purple Heart.
But anyway, he's uneducated and he's in his early twenties and Mr. Johnson has no expectations that he could correct the errors in his military record. He tried to carry on as well as a black man could in a country and he'd been willing to give his life for. In 1919, co-founder of the American Legion, Teddy Roosevelt, son of the former U.S.
President- Teddy Roosevelt- Teddy Roosevelt, I'm sorry, Teddy Roosevelt Junior to me, right? Son of Teddy Roosevelt referred to Johnson as one of the five bravest Americans to have served in World War I. Teddy Roosevelt, Junior served with distinction in the First World War, and he actually died during the Second World War. During the Second World War II?
Yeah. He was that D-Day? Yeah. He didn't die.
I think he died of illness. I think he died of illness. Yeah, I was a heart attack. I think he died of illness.
Well, Sergeant Henry Johnson participated with his regiment in a victory parade on Fifth Avenue in February 1919. He got paid to take part in a series of lectures. He appeared one evening in St. Louis and instead of delivering the expected tale of racial harmony in the trenches, he revealed the abuse of which black soldiers had suffered, such as white soldiers refusing to even share a trench with blacks.
Now that did not go over well to me. Soon after this, one was issued for his arrest for wearing his uniform beyond the prescribed date of his commission and all his paid lecturing engagements just dried up. Now how many people get charged with wearing your uniform after your commission is over with? Yeah.
Obviously he was being charged so he would shut up about the injustice of the kind of relationship with the former. Yeah, he wanted to hear a story about how great the white soldiers and black soldiers got along when he came home and said, no, that ain't really true. Now with no other source of income, Henry Johnson made it back to Albany, New York, and he resumed his job as a red cap porter at the train station, but he can never really overcome those injuries and his left foot had been shattered and the metal plate held it together. He was denied this ability pension.
He tried again. He had a very purple heart despite the lack of official recognition from the US government there, Timmy. That's a shame. Yeah.
And his inability to hold down a job, let him drink heavily. In 27, he developed the consumption, Timmy, and became unable to work with no social safety net in place at that time. He ended up living in the streets. He ended up dying on myocarditis in July 1st, 1929.
He was only 32 years old. What a shame. He was buried in a poppers field. He was a man.
He was buried in a poppers field in Albany, New York. Well, I think they think and they thought at the time he was buried in poppers field. But it was believed to be his right. Now he earned the nickname the Black Death in combat by the enemy.
I've never been there. And I was quickly forgotten. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, Johnson's treatment was not a typical of African American soldiers returning home from the war.
Even though they fought for freedom abroad, they returned to a country still segregated by race. The Jim Crow laws in the south and strong prejudice in the north reminded the Black soldiers that despite everything they'd done, they were still second-class citizens. Several members of the Harlem Hellfighters went into being lynched in the south. First in obtaining fitting recognition for Henry Johnson grew during the 70s and 80s.
In November, 1991, a monument was erected in Albany, New York, Washington Park, and a section of northern Boulevard was renamed Henry Johnson Boulevard. In June 1966, he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart by President Bill Clinton. So that's what, when was that? 1996.
I was... Like 80 years later. Almost 80 years later. 2001, 72 years after his death, it was discovered that he'd not been buried in a poppers grave.
But as everyone believed, it turned out, he'd been buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. That's good. So he was buried in Arlington. Now historians who located his burial place believe that there could be no more appropriate honor for this man who proved his valor on the night of May 14, 1918 in the Argonne Forest to me.
In February 2003, the distinguished service crossed the Army's second highest award was awarded to Sergeant Henry Johnson. John Howe, a Vietnam War veteran who had campaigned tirelessly for recognition for Johnson and U.S. Army General Nathaniel James, president of the 369 Veterans Association, were present at the ceremony in Albany. In 2012, some unpublished papers of general blackjack purging were discovered, including newspapers where handwritten recommendation from general purging nominating Henry Johnson for the Medal of Honor.
That's amazing. His papers were found 100 years ago. They found these papers from purging who intended to nominate him for the Medal of Honor. But for some unknown reason, it was never submitted.
But on December 3, Jimmy, 2014, and that would be what roughly... Four years ago? Yeah, but I believe this is almost 100 years later. 96 years later.
The National Defense Bill included a provision at the National Defense Center. He had it by Senator Chuck Schumer to award Johnson the Medal of Honor. On May 14, 2015, the White House announced that Sergeant Johnson will be receiving the Medal of Honor, obviously, posthumously, presented by President Barack Obama. In the June 2 ceremony, Johnson's Medal was received on his behalf by the Command Sergeant Major Lewis Wilson of the New York National Guard.
President Obama said, the least we can do is say, we know who you are, we know what you did for us, we are forever grateful. All right. So, took 100 years, but did him no good. I know, but at least he was officially recognized by the U.S.
government. That's, you know, I think it probably happens in a lot of cases where guys serve with distinction and don't get recognized like they should, but the element of racism makes it even worse. I don't know. All right, Colonel, your final thoughts.
Oh, by the way, that 369th is still a regiment. I mean, he's still a fine regiment. He served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wow.
Your final thoughts on Henry Johnson. He's an amazing man. I'll tell you what, he's the guy you'd want to go out drinking with. He's pretty bad at it.
He's pretty bad at it. He's pretty crazy stuff. He just jumps out of there with a knife and says, but what are you going to do when all you got is a knife? Yeah, I'm doing it.
I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Actually, three stories related to the First World War and it was such a terrible war and such a horrific war, but some interesting stories. All right.
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