Hello I'm Tom Engberg visual information specialist for the Southern Ohio NPS Parks.
A few years back we had the special opportunity to sit down with Mr. Harold Warren,
a World War II Buffalo Soldier veteran who served with the 92nd division
in Italy. Mr. Warren sat down with superintendent Robert Stewart to discuss his life and times in
the army and after he was discharged from the army after World War II. On behalf of all the staff at
Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument and the National Park Service we wish to thank all
veterans throughout the country for their time and their service and dedication to our great country.
Now, we're proud to present a special interview conducted by superintendent Robert Stewart
with World War II Buffalo Soldier veteran Mr. Harold Warren.
my name is uh Harold Johnston Warren Jr
born grew up in Huntington, West Virginia.
and uh lived there until i was 17 years old when i went away to college
and can you tell us where you went to school would you study uh yes well the school i
that i went to was a small small college in west virginia which was very well known at the time
excuse me it was known all over the country as west virginia state college
and west virginia state college they had a good academic reputation
and the students from all over the country went there and of course it was a a a
historically black black college located in the in the charleston west virginia area
so i went there three semesters i finished three semesters there when i was was uh drafted into
into the army in world war ii can you tell me some of your earliest memories of your time in the army
well some of their some of the earliest memories were not too bad really because when
i went in the army i went in with a uh with a group of uh men with whom i had been in rotc with
and and it was just like you you know you go in the army with all your college buddies and it so
there wasn't anything strange about it when we when we got there this was uh
fort sill oklahoma was where i did my basic training and when we got there there was a
there was a sergeant standing there from my hometown whom i knew sergeant tommy lloyd and and
he looked up and he saw me and a friend of mine and he says oh my god
the army has gone to hell he and so he he yelled at my friend and me he said you'll be sorry
you'd be sorry but at any rate and from then on everything he did to help us out he did he'd give
us the easy detail and so forth but basic training in oklahoma was uh was very interesting and
we trained on the uh large artillery pieces
and the the gun i was on required they called it the long time it required 15 15 men to to operate
so what influenced you to want to share your story for us today well i um
i doubt now that there are very many of the buffalo soldiers still living i have no idea and
it's a story that that needs to be told because it's it was the history of the buffalo soldiers
is so basic to the history of the history of the country and the the opening of the american
west and the sweeping of the indians off the plains one might say and the buffalo soldiers
back down through the years were involved in all of that and that their episodes and their
are not are not known and are not are not taught in history and nobody knows anything about them
so i would like to get as much information as i know having been one of them out into the public
and that's the reason that's the basic reason i wanted to talk to you about
that
now what circumstances led for you to let you to join the army
well i was i was i was drafted from from west virginia state college i was in the rotc
over there and that's the reason i went into the armies because i
all of us were taken in at the same time from west virginia state college
did you come from a military background military family i did not come from a
military background or military family no no my dad was a was a dentist my dad graduated
dental school in 1918 and my mother was an elementary school teacher and so we
he was a very very successful successful dentist in a little town in west virginia called
logan logan west virginia was about 60 miles away from huntington and and uh
so we they did they did quite well economically even though the depression was on they did quite
well in in west virginia at the time he and she worked in he and my mother working together and
i had i had one sister sister still living who ultimately became a a professor at the
university of cincinnati one thing i'd like to share with you is that this interview is going to
be housed at the colonel charles young buffalo soldiers national monument
okay and uh i'd like to know how did the legacy of colonel young affect you or how does that inspire
how did it inspire you well i never i really never knew much about it i had i had heard of his
i heard of his uh expertise as an army officer and as a high-ranking army officer
and a number of people had heard this story about how he rode horseback from wilberforce
to washington d.c but and it appeared as so they did not want to promote him to the rank of
brigadier general and that story was pretty well known but beyond that i didn't know much about
colonel young i know that on the street where we where we live where we live now he uh
re he had relatives that lived a couple of doors up the street from us yes younger people
it's all connected it's all connected yeah it's all the nakedness
it's amazing how some of these connections do work out you know
we went over on a merchant marine vessel and the name of the the name of the merchant
marine vessel was the mariposa and and uh mariposa is butterfly in spanish and they
they suggested to us that we didn't have to go in a convoy because that that boat
that mariposa was such a swift boat you know that that
can you believe this that it could outrun a german tor german torpedo or something and
you know there's nothing you know there's no truth to that but we uh going over we never
we never had any difficulty we landed in we landed in in north africa and we
stayed and we stayed in north africa for for a number of a number of weeks and uh
places like well morocco is up there and there were a couple of other a couple of other countries
where we were in and but so that's how we that's how we got over that's how we we got overseas
and we were we we yes we were we were nervous of course about going into combat you know
well you you really you really don't know you you you don't know what to expect but in our case we
uh we went into we went into combat in a little town a little town up up there in italy called
oh boy the name of the town escapes me but prior to that
they had brought two american soldiers to two white gentlemen in
to talk to us and these men had been all the way through all the way through the battle of the i
guess the battle of the balls and they had come on up and so they came up and they talked to us
and they suggested to us certain things that that we would find you know when we went into combat so
that was that was helpful but their their story was a tragic one it was so tragic uh in that
the night the day the first night they came up and they went in
they went into this little town in italy and we had a we had a a there was a password
and so they told one of my friends who was standing guard they they said well anybody
who approaches this base or this camp later on if they if they don't know the password you
shoot the kill and those young men came back and they did not know the password and this
and my fellow shoulders shot them dead so that was very that was very tragic but by virtue of
what they knew and and the combat which they had experienced
we lit we knew a little bit about what to expect uh but but you never know and and and and
i mean you one tries to simulate or to to actual battlefield conditions but you you never you
never know what's going to go what's going to happen in a firefight i had a i had a friend
who
was was was ordered to um
to as we were advancing he was ordered to protect the left flank of our of our advancement
and when he when this friend got over there he saw a a soldier he
saw a white soldier with an american uniform on and he went to approach this soldier to
find out to ask him a question about something and when he came upon this this man he discovered
it was a german soldier with with an american uniform on and at that time i was told that if any
any americans of german descent went to went to germany and and the nazis found out about it
well they would put them in in the german army so many of the many of the young germans were
young americans who had grown up here and knew all the american colloquialisms and and and and
and all about life in america and it was difficult to tell
which was switched but in this instance when he came up to fund this guy he noticed that this
fellow had uh german weapons and what happened was this this german soldier killed my friend but then
he the german soldier was captured and i think he might have been killed in that same
in that same episode so uh there were any number of uh various uh
various uh incidents which which one would become engaged in you know in acts of combat
i did not get shot or anything but i began to i began to get the feeling that uh
that my luck was going to run out and that there was
maybe a a a shell or a bullet being made in berlin that had my name on it so uh
i i i was concerned very concerned about that you know you have you have that they
have mortars and and and they the germans had a uh had a uh artillery piece which was called a uh
an 88 in 88 and they could just they could put that thing in they could put
that shell in your back pocket and they would fire that fire that one at one man
and they did they did have some very good weapons too the germans had some very good weapons
i was
on the on the front line
consistently for about three or three and a half months starting in september
of 44 i believe it must have been starting in september 44 and so
i got i never got i was never wounded i was never wounded i was never hit by
a shrapnel or anything like that but i did get i did get hurt up there and i
got my back and i entered my back some sort of way so they sent me back to the hospital
in a town called the villa reggio in italy and when i went back there to the hospital well
uh one of the uh one of the uh colonels back there who looked at me and was happened to be a uh
have to be in an ophthalmologist from from columbus ohio and
he determined that i had always been nearsighted i had always worn eyeglasses and
he determined that the job that i had
that i i didn't need that type of job in in the combat infantry being as nearsighted as i was so
he assigned me to another unit which was really uh limited limited duty they called it but it was
in a a fire in what turned out to be a fire department and of course they they had rarely did
was there a fire or anything in italy you know with all the stone buildings and all
so they let me out of the actual uh combat infantry mainly because of my my
limited my my my vision so then when i went into when i went into this other outfit this meant that
we would be stationed in the same little italian town we were we'd stay in that same italian town
for months and then i uh and i'd like to associate with the native italians and to
visit them and to try to learn from them and so i i made good use of the time that i had as
as a soldier in that that fire department so you spent a total of over a year obviously oh
yes yes i did i was i was overseas maybe about maybe about 14 months
were there any instances of discrimination that you faced while here in the united states or
overseas oh yeah yes yes we we face we we face discrimination in in in the united states and uh
uh overseas i mean initially in in europe uh we we we found we found no discrimination at all
i would say in europe but uh as the time went on uh racism was was was
was was i would think would was brought into europe by some of the
some of the americans but uh initially in europe i mean one was it was just
it was just uh wonderful to to feel as free as one did at that time there was no absolutely no
no problem irrespective of what color might be there was no problem when when the troops went
to europe for the first time but stateside is where you face the most oh yes oh yes yes we
we had come through places in in the united states and as as a group of soldiers
and where we wouldn't we would see ladies on the platform for example down in a
town in in louisiana a lady on the platform he was giving out donuts and food to soldiers and we
we wouldn't we wouldn't even go out there because we didn't think that she would give us any of that
you know and she she noticed it and she she held a train up and she said well this you know this is
for you men too which was kind of surprising but it just got to the place where you know if you as
a saying goes if when if you were black you know get back because uh every everywhere we went we
were we were discriminated against in this country even even though we were we were in uniform
one thing they did have in europe we noticed
and and then in italy they had a a class system and there were certain certain people who were
born in a certain class and they never you know they never rose above that class but when we uh
when we went over there what i knew i i knew a lady who was who would be considered a
lower class in in their society over there
and she did general labor and wash clothes and things for other people and
when uh when the some of the uh upper class italians found out that that i had been
a college student over here and my dad had been a dentist and all that well then
they've suggested to me that i should i should not be seen on the street with this lady helping
her or helping her carry her laundry on like that because you know people in my class didn't
associate that way with that but with those people but that was something that always stuck
in my mind and people can always find some way to uh to make somebody feel less than you know
work real hard at that i really enjoyed my my stay in italy because i uh i learned to
speak the language pretty well and i learned to read the language quite well
which was very which was very helpful to me in my army experience over there because we
there were italian italian partisans or they call them part of johnny who would go up into the
go up into the hills where the german troops were and they would scope out the german positions
there you know there say and and they would come back and bring this information back type written
in italian and it would say there were so many germans at this latitude or this longitude
and their four here with the machine gun and four there and everything and and
since i could read that language pretty well well my captain and and the officers
above me depended upon me to translate that for them and this turned out to be quite
quite helpful helpful to me individually was my ability to uh i always did have a sort somewhat
of a pension for languages particularly uh romance languages like spanish and and and so uh
that was very that was very very helpful to me in any number of times being able to
to uh read this documentation for for for my my captain my captain was
was a white was a white captain and prior to prior to service in the in the army he had
he had rather i would say rather menial jobs in the state of virginia as school bus driver and one
or two other things but turned out to be quite a quite a good officer and i liked him and and
i respected him and with what he what he ordered me to do i would do
you were overseas for about 14 months about 14 months you came back home came back home
how did uh how did you adjust to being back home in the united states uh very very very difficult
a difficult adjustment and really not my not realizing how difficult it was but my mother
my mother noticed it and my sister noticed it a lot of a lot of anger for some reason and and uh
uh unable to um unable to fit into certain situations comfortably you know it was uh
it was a it was a rough adjustment for me to get get back into a civilian life
so after college you were drafted into the army and i like to know
how did it feel to serve your country during world war ii as a buffalo soldier
well i think that if one can have a service experience and that can come
can escape being being badly badly wounded or i think that is that
one's status as a veteran is is helpful for the rest of one's life
all kind of benefits uh some which which you would never think of
come to to veterans and if i think army service or or service to the to to the nation in that way
i really think that that that everyone should should have to do that and uh one one
one learns so much you learn how to get along with with people you learn how to be a team
team member learn how to take orders and to follow in instructions and
the uh the military the military expense experience i think is is very beneficial to anyone
who is who is uh who undergoes it did you realize at the time that you were making history oh no
no absolutely not didn't didn't think much about the future and and now when this would have been
oh when well i left left college to go into the army or think around 1943
and to be and if you had said something to me in 1943 about 20 20 18. oh no no no
it couldn't mean it couldn't be me in 2018 talking about this but here we are
here we are here we are yeah fairly good shape still
so how did the military prepare you for the rest of your life oh well the military
prepares one for as i think i mentioned earlier uh once you're in the military
after that you learn how to get along as i said with all kinds of people
it just gives you a a wider a wider perspective in in in living and and how to and how to associate
in comfortably in all types of conditions we had such such good benefits you know the
the with the gi bill of rights and like that in which we could which uh enabled us to go to
to go to college free of charge and all like that that when i began to take advantage of those well
that things got better i decided when i got out that i would not go back to that small college
back in west virginia i decided with the gi bill paying for everything that i would go to some
to larger universities so i went to i went to
and got a degree from georgetown university in washington dc and i also have a degree from the
university of new mexico in albuquerque new mexico and i found that
in those classes and in those classrooms i was i was able to compete with and to
be in classes with with people from all really from all over the world
you know who had gone to who had come to georgetown or who had come to new mexico to school
and uh very very beneficial to me in that way so you went into civil service yes after after
well actually what happened was i was
i had finished georgetown university
and uh i had a cousin who was living out in living out in cleveland and uh he had been in the army
he was he he had been in the in the uh buffalo soldiers also but he was a little older than i
am and and he said well why don't you come out come out here to cleveland you know and see if
you see if you might find anything out here that might interest you well while i was in cleveland
i got a call from my hometown they want they wanted uh
the high school there the 12th grade english teacher had died in in october
and they wanted someone to fill out her term so they called me and asked me if i would if
i would come back and fill out there fill out her terms so i went back down there and i lived with
lived with my mother and taught school there for for uh one year the school the schools in
in west virginia were were segregated the name of the school was douglas douglas high school
huntington west virginia and so when when that job was over
then i i had i had no work so i suggested to my mother that i had heard that
that dayton ohio was a was a good town for jobs and like that and and so i asked her to uh
let me let me use her car and then i and i said i'm going up to dayton and just pitch
tent and see what happens and when i got up to dayton i'm telling you just
you it it was just such a superb such a superb city a working city
jobs everywhere people literally approaching you on the street and saying well whatever wherever it
is you're working you know we'll pay you more and uh the the people the the people in the city were
were friendly and helpful and then i thought there was no place like dayton ohio and so i was able
to uh actually there was a friend who worked out here out at wright-patterson and he told me that
he could get me a job at wright patterson so i i went over there and he introduced me to a colonel
over there and the colonel said oh yes we have you know we have a job for you and he said we'll just
uh contact personnel and i'll tell them that the colonel said now i want you on this job so
the person so the personnel person that i that i talked to said well you you really don't qualify
for the job this colonel wants you to have he says but he says you had you just have
fine qualifications and he says uh i'll open some tests for you said some tests have been closed
he says well i'll open these tests for you and he says if you pass these tests he says i'll give you
a much better job than this colonel had for you and he said it was a job which will guarantee you
promotions you know right on up so of course i went i went over there and i took took the
the uh didn't amount to much of anything and then i got credit for having been uh so credited for
being a soldier for being overseas and all of that so that started my that started my career with uh
with uh with with wright patterson as a civil service employee wow so being a buffalo soldier
opened many doors for you oh it did it did wow yeah it opened many doors for me
so what advice could you give to the youth of today
well the advice i could give to the youth of today is would be
get to get some military experience
if you can and i would i would strongly i would strongly advise that and uh
to have have that because having that in your background having that in your experience
uh will prepare one for for just a a much better life if if if you have military experience
i'd like to i'd like to end this one with a moment of moment of levity if i could we were
in a fire fight with the germans and when i say we i mean my little my little company were about
eight to ten of us and they chased us down chased us down a road firing at us and and
we went into a courtyard we went into a courtyard and in in in the courtyard there was a
a well which came up came up above ground and
the germans didn't they didn't come into that courtyard but all the soldiers
ran upstairs in in in this uh this stone house this was a house where civilians lived but had
had left because of the war all around them and all the soldiers with me ran in
to this place went up on the second floor except me i stayed downstairs and and i stayed
outside there just where the where the well was and so then i decided that
i would go i would go inside and and so i went inside the building where my captain and and and
the other uh the other soldiers were upstairs and i was right below them and i reached down to put
the safety on my gun to keep it from going off and i missed the safety and hit the trigger and that
that gun exploded and it just oh just i could see stars and everything else but it could not have
the shell could not have missed and missed my chin hardly any more than that but the problem was
the the shell went through the floor upstairs where my captain and and and the other soldiers
were and he knew i was the only one down there so i could hear him screaming you know more and more
get control of that weapon down there he was screaming at me and so but i thought that was
i thought that was sort of after it was all over i thought that was sort of a funny
episode but things a lot of things like that like that happened and and strange things do happen
do happen in battle wow so in your life you have made history
you've traveled the world you've seen many things learn a lot of different languages yes yes almost
well it sounds like in the same vein of colonel charles young
it was a pleasure and an honor speaking with you today sir well it's been my pleasure to come
thank you so much
you