Harlem's Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I (review)

Regimental histories are a genre of military history that is not usually associated with World War I. Author Stephen L. Harris, however, has brought this form of writing to the First World War and done it in admirable fashion. Harris's previous regimental history, Duty, Honor, Privilege, is now followed by his book on one of the most famous regiments of the Great War, the African-American U.S. 369th Infantry Regiment, known universally as Harlem's Hell Fighters.

Harris is a good writer who makes superior use of his sources, especially those from the African-American community, to bring to life not only the men of this fabled unit but also the era itself, and the cultural milieu from which they came. As a result, his work is more of a cultural history of the regiment than a military history. The book's primary strength is the author's ability to provide excellent insight into the everyday life and experience of the common African-American soldiers of the regiment. Through colorful vignettes, Harris provides detail on the soldiers' experiences in camp and training in America, interaction with civilians and other soldiers, as well as combat. Harris spends a large portion of the book detailing the raising of the regiment and its experiences in the U.S., focusing on incidents of racism directed against the men of the regiment, or African Americans in general. Indeed, the soldiers' struggles with racism within the U.S. Army, and within American society as a whole, are a major theme of the work. His remaining discussion of military operations in the war is tightly focused on individual experiences which provide interesting anecdotes, but leave the reader with little sense of overall events and the significance of the engagements in question.

The book suffers from a lack of research in French primary and secondary sources which, since the 369th Regiment spent its entire frontline service with the French army, is a major shortcoming and leads to a lack of understanding of the methods, structure, and history of the French forces to which the regiment was assigned. Harris can also be uneven and illogical in his constant references to contemporary racism within the military. For example, Harris contends that American reluctance to use African Americans as combat soldiers was racist, while at the same time asserting that French use of African and African-American soldiers as combat troops was also racist. That this position is contradictory is a dilemma that Harris fails to come to grips with and thus he falls short of making a more meaningful contribution to an understanding of race relations and African-American military service. There is also no attempt to place the service of the 369th in context by providing some comparison with the experiences of other African-American units serving overseas in the Great War.

Overall this is an informative history of African-American soldiers in the Great War, and will appeal to cultural historians interested in social history and race relations of the early-twentieth-century United States, as well as those interested in African-American history and the study of war and society.