Remaining Tuskegee Airmen recount racial bigotry, days as pilots serving their country in WWII
Updated 3:22 pm, Thursday, March 10, 2011
In the rotunda of the White House under Presidents' Clinton, Bush and Obama, men ranging in age from 70 to 90 stood to witness the ultimate words that they, as American soldiers, longed to hear — their names being called as recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor some 65 years after all of the victory parades and ticker tape joyfully given to other soldiers had faded away ... an honor, many feel, was too long in coming.
These men were the Tuskegee Airmen, African-American pilots and crewmen who flew 15,553 sorties and completed 1,578 missions during World War II, providing fighter escorts to strategic targets in Europe.
These were men who served with distinction over North Africa, Sicily and Anzio. White bomber crews ultimately called them “The Black Red Tailed Angels” because of the red paint on their plane's tail assemblies and because they protected the white pilots on their missions. Then-Col. Benjamin O. Davis trained the first black pilots to fight in battle at Tuskegee Institute in an Alabama town of the same name, in a unit called the 99th Squadron, and showed the world what these men were capable of — men who were written off as “mentally and physically deficient” because of their race.
After nearly 30 years their obscurity was brought to an end with the founding of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. in 1972 in Detroit.
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The San Antonio chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., established in 1987, is a part of the national organization whose collective aim is to help further the education of young men and women in math, science and aviation. In addition, the San Antonio chapter co-hosts the Aviation Career and Education (ACE) Camps sponsored annually. Its goal is to honor the legacy of excellence, courage, and determination demonstrated by the Tuskegee Airmen.
In a recent meeting of the San Antonio chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, four of six surviving members — Warren H. Eusan, John “Mule” Miles, Gene Derricotte and Granville Coggs — discussed their new and overdue notoriety.
Not all of them were fighter pilots, but the SAC-TAI group makes up the core of the acclaimed 99th Squadron, later renamed the 332nd Squadron. From instructors to pilots to mechanical support staff, these men played a pivotal role in the war effort.
Said Miles, “We worked hard all day and went to school at night.” They had, he added, something to prove.
Though President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military, these men told stories that they've tried to forget of the disrespect and blatant discrimination they endured even after the order was given.
In a backlash of hatred, these airmen fine-tuned the art of restraint through another type of courage called self-control. Eighty-eight-year-old Miles said, “The key to that was my faith in God; because if it had not been for the Lord on my side, who knows where I would be?” Miles would go on to also play ball for The American Negro Baseball League in Chicago after the war.
Although times were hard, 90-year-old Eusan recalled, “It made us stick together and there was a pride there that said we had to make it.”
It was not until the movie “The Tuskegee Airmen” appeared that the race to rectify the huge national slight against these men began, with President Bill Clinton leading the way.
Miles paraphrased Gen. Colin Powell when he addressed them in 2007: “You have caused America to look at the mirror of her soul ... because you have shown what a black man can do.”
Derricotte, at age 84 the youngest of the group, explained, “Essentially no one knew there was such a thing as the Tuskegee Airmen. Now when I speak at schools and in the community, people tell me how sorry they are for the way we were treated and tell me how proud they are of me, of us.”
Sixty-five years is an extremely long time to wait to finally be honored, Coggs said. “The honor and recognition we are now receiving is unimaginable. I just wish that those who died without seeing it could be here.”
Even now, the bond forged between them over 65 years ago is still as strong as ever. The men joke, banter and reflect on their past lives. Eusan says, “Did you know Derricotte was a student of mine that I trained to master the instrumentation on our planes?” When asked by Derricotte what kind of student he was, Eusan said, “You got an ‘A,' didn't you? You're here right now, aren't you?”
Both men laughed. A beautiful thing to hear considering what they endured; many men would have crumbled.
Coggs reflected, “The only way you could describe the Tuskegee Airmen is that they were a cut above.”
The Tuskegee Airmen, a cut above. Living legends.