The Last Black Regiment

Reviews in American History has few occasions to consider a book so controversial that its publication has been the object of attempted suppression. Black Soldier, White Army is an exception.

The book originated as an effort by the United States Army Center of Military History to allay charges by veterans and friends of the Korean War’s 24th Regimental Combat Team that the Army’s initial official history of the war displayed a racist bias in its account of that unit, which was all African American except for some white officers. Black Soldier, White Army itself, however, ran afoul of similar criticism as soon as a draft of it was circulated during 1996. Black veterans have maintained that the new book also perpetuates unfair stereotypes of African-American units and soldiers as unsatisfactory, and they sought legal grounds to prevent publication. David K. Carlisle, in 1950 a second lieutenant just graduated from the United States Military Academy and serving with the black 77th Engineer Combat Company, one of the supporting units of the 24th RCT, has been quoted by The Washington Post as saying: “After all of the stuff these soldiers [of the 24th] went through, here we are years later and the Army publishes this crap about them.” ¹

Carlisle and Charles M. Bussey, first lieutenant commanding the 77th ECC in 1950, have together written their own manuscript history of the 24th and 77th in Korea, “In a Higher Tradition,” which Carlisle lent to Clay Blair, and which Blair used in writing The Forgotten War: America in Korea 1950–1953 (1987). One of Blair’s principal purposes in his volume was to probe “the performance of black troops in combat,” because “the Army officially and categorically condemned the performance of black units in Korea,” while “black activists have countercharged that the alleged poor showing of many black units in Korea did not occur because blacks were cowardly or incompetent, as the Army implied, but because many of the white officers who led the black units were cowardly or incompetent racists.” ² With a reassessment of black combat performance in mind, Blair used the Carlisle-Bussey manuscript as a principal basis for challenging the Army’s official history version of the first Korean action in which the 24th Infantry was involved. Comparing the latter version, Blair’s, and that of Black Soldier, White Army offers a beginning both toward understanding the controversy over the record of the 24th and toward assessing the merits of David Carlisle’s harsh words about Black Soldier, White Army.

The 24th RCT, the 24th Infantry linked with the black 159th Field Artillery Battalion, landed in the Republic of Korea at Pusan on July 13, 1950, as part of Major General William B. Kean’s 25th Infantry Division, drawn from the occupation of Japan. About July 19, the army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North Koreans, continuing the headlong advance that began with the invasion of South Korea on June 25, captured Yech’on, a road junction of some importance, whence the North Korean People’s Army could move either east to the coast of the peninsula or south to the Naktong River. Thereupon Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, commanding the Eighth United States Army in Korea (EUSAK) and all United Nations ground operations, ordered General Kean to recapture Yech’on. Kean passed on the assignment to the 24th RCT. On July 20 the 3d Battalion, 24th Infantry moved against Yech’on. According to the initial Army official history volume, Roy E. Appleman’s South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June-November 1950) (United States Army in the Korean War, 1961), Company K entered the town during the afternoon in what was apparently “The first action between elements of the 25th Division and enemy forces, if indeed it was an action at all.” ³ When other parts of the 3d...