Army & Navy And Civilian Defense: Honors for Private Brooks

It seemed only proper that the Armored Force should honor its first casualty of World War II. So a ceremony was arranged at Fort Knox, to name the main parade ground Brooks Field after Private Robert Brooks, killed in action near Fort Stotsenberg in the Philippines. Armored Force public-relations officers telephoned to the Mayor of Sadieville, Ky., Brooks’s hometown, to ask him to invite the soldier’s mother and father to the ceremony. Gladly, said the Mayor. But was the Army aware that Brooks’s parents were Negro sharecroppers?

Sure enough, Private Brooks was discovered to have been a light-skinned Negro. The Army’s face reddened, but the Army’s parade-ground voice never faltered. The ceremony went ahead on schedule. Four Generals were on hand, 30 staff officers, a platoon of soldiers. Declared Major General Jacob L. Devers, Chief of the Armored Force: “In this, the greatest democracy the world has ever known, neither riches nor poverty, neither creed nor race, draws a line of demarcation in this hour of national crisis.”