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Chapter Eighteen Alberta Harlem, 1944 Gonna shout and pray and never stop Until I get to the mountaintop. —african american spiritual alberta sweeney would have seen the flags hanging in windows all over Harlem . sewn by the mothers of soldiers, one blue star was embroidered against a white background for each child in military service. in recent days she would also have seen flags embroidered with gold stars—one star for each child killed in the war. With two sons in the army, my grandmother must have worried herself to sleep every night. at least John, who played french horn in the army band, was stationed at fort bragg, close to home. sam, however, was about to be sent overseas. in January 1944 the 1310th engineers were transferred to Huynton, near the city of liverpool in england. after his six months at Camp Claiborne, sam would have welcomed the change. the english were considerably less hostile to african americans than their counterparts in louisiana. one black veteran recalled the locals being “happy for us because they knew why we were there.” However, this warm reception did not sit well with some of the white american troops, and fistfights between black and white Gis were commonplace.1 on June 6, 1944, in a bid to retake the european continent, american troops landed off the coast of northern france. sam’s unit joined them six weeks later.2 as the allied troops pressed deeper into enemy territory, the 1310th engineers followed them, digging trenches and building roads. sam’s unit was never far from the front and occasionally came under enemy fire.3 He had been trained to use a .30-caliber M1 and had earned a medal for marksmanship. although i do not know if he actually shot anyone, samuel sweeney Jr. would have experienced the gruesome carnage and chaos of battle—blood and body parts strewn across the ground for miles and everywhere the smell of rotting flesh. 94 95 Alberta, Harlem, 1944 racial prejudice persisted, even on the battlefield. one veteran of the normandy invasion remembers being forced to ride in the back of the transport bus and being called “nigger” repeatedly by white combat soldiers. another recalls that, after he risked his life to bring supplies up to the front, white soldiers refused to share their food with him.4 as the european war came to a close, sam’s unit was sent to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. the weather there was hot and miserably humid, with temperatures reaching 90 degrees. ticks, leeches, and mosquitoes feasted on the exhausted, sweaty men as sam’s unit waded through swamps, hacked their way through thick tropical vegetation, and built bridges over crocodileinfested rivers. in the summer of 1945, sam contracted a throat virus and was sent to fort dix, new Jersey, to recuperate. by the time his ship arrived in the states, america had dropped the atom bomb, Japan had surrendered, and the war was over. although the 1310th engineer battalion would soon return to their mothers, wives, and sweethearts, sam did not take part in the victory celebrations taking place on the streets of Harlem. for sam, calamity had already struck. the virus he’d caught was incurable and, worse still, had already invaded his vocal cords. samuel sweeney Jr. would never sing again. another man would have shrugged off this development as a minor setback, but for sam, music was everything. the dream of being a professional entertainer had sustained him through the war, and when this dream was shattered sam sank into a profound depression. He began to smoke continuously, lighting one unfiltered Camel from the butt of the last, as if determined to destroy what little remained of his ability to make sound. Within weeks, sam’s voice, so rich and resonant before the war, was nothing but a raspy croak. alberta made the long drive to fort dix to visit her son several times each month. she always brought along an assortment of candy, hoping to lift sam’s spirits with gifts of his favorite foods. but sam was no longer the charming, sociable young man she once knew, the boy who had broken a string of hearts before going off to the army less than three years before. the man who now sat before her was a shell of his former self—gaunt and withdrawn, with haunted eyes. alberta cried in the car on the way home after every visit. although...

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