America Triumphant:
Black Panthers

Not for God and Country but for me and my people. This was my motivation pure and simple when I entered the Army.

— Capt. John Long, “The Black Patton,” Company B, 761st Tank Battalion

It was the 1970s in Alabama, and everything revolved around one issue: race. Among white people, the bitter resentment that we’re not supposed to admit flared with that word we’re not supposed to say. Unless my mother was around. Black American soldiers liberated the camp at Mauthausen in May 1945. As far as she was concerned, in every black man ran the blood of heroes.

“To look at Warren G.H. Crecy, you'd never think
that here was a ‘killer,’ who had slain more of the enemy
than any man in the 761st.” — Stars & Stripes.

This unit was the 761st “Black Panther” Tank Battalion. Thanks to 60 years’ worth of racists repressing the unit’s fine combat record and overeager partisans trying to inflate it (as in the film The Liberators, “documenting” the unit at the liberation of Dachau when it was in Austria at the time), the 761st remains an unjustly obscure formation. Not until 1978 did the unit receive its Presidential Unit Citation, and even then, the citation contains factual errors.

After hard effort by Gen. Leslie McNair, commander of the Army’s ground forces, 98 black tankers began training at the Armored Forces School in March 1941. By June, enough black men had been trained to form the segregated 758th Tank Battalion. The battalion moved to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, where they provided a cadre for the new 761st in April 1942. McNair apparently foresaw creation of a black armored division, but this did not come to pass.

Lt. Robinson

Initially, almost all of the 761st’s officers were white. More and more black officers were assigned, including Lt. Jackie Robinson (who would be court-martialed and acquitted, after refusing to sit in the back of a military bus at Fort Hood, Texas). Alerted for overseas duty in June 1944, the battalion landed in France in October 1944. Gen. George S. Patton asked for the 761st, and assigned it to his Third Army’s 26th Infantry Division.

Upon their arrival, Patton greeted them with one of his most famous speeches (when shown in the movie Patton, George C. Scott is addressing white soldiers):

They say it is patriotic to die for your country. Well, let’s see how many patriots we can make out of those German motherfuckers! There is one thing you men will be able to say when you go home. You may all thank God that thirty years from now when you are sitting with you grandson upon your knee and he asks, “Grandfather, what did you do in World War II?” you won’t have to say, “I shoveled shit in Mississippi.”

Company D performs maintenance.

The battalion entered combat in November, and within days Sgt. Ruben Rivers earned the Medal of Honor (though it would be over 30 years before his bravery was properly acknowledged). But its high point came the next month when along with the 26th Infantry Division it headed north to face the German attack in the Ardennes region, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Committed in company strength alongside the 26th’s infantry, the black tankers fought the elite Führer Grenadier Brigade in atrocious terrain.

Afterwards, the 761st joined Third Army’s advance into Germany and Austria, meeting Soviet soldiers at the Enns River in Austria despite chronic fuel shortages. Battalion veterans still believe these were intentional, to prevent a black unit’s achieving the signal honor of making the first link-up with the Red Army.

In America Triumphant, the 761st appears as an independent tank battalion, entering with the 26th Infantry Division, but it can (as was done in the actual battle) be assigned to support other units. It has no special powers for its elite status; while probably the best of the indepedent battalions in the game, giving it another combat factor would double its strength. What it does deserve is a distinctive counter, and we’ve provided one as a free download here.

Mike Bennighof
April 2005