Letters from the Barracks, No. 8: The Difference
Fort Benning, October 1950.
The military had been ordered to desegregate in 1948. The Army pooled its Black Ranger volunteers into one company anyway.
The 2nd Ranger Infantry Company (Airborne): 135 enlisted men, five officers, all of them Black. The only all-Black Ranger company in the Army's history.
They trained in sixty-hour weeks and took the name Buffalo Rangers.
They reached Korea that December. On 23 March 1951 they parachuted behind Chinese lines, the first U.S. Army Rangers ever to jump into combat. At Hill 581 that May, Chinese battalions hit them all night. The Rangers counterattacked at dawn and broke it. Hundreds of enemy casualties. Not one Ranger killed.
Ten months. Four campaign streamers. Nine Silver Stars. Over a hundred Purple Hearts.
On 1 August 1951 the Army deactivated the company and wrote down why: “racial differences” had kept it from being used effectively. Racial differences.
Ranger Donald Allen, who was there, said it better later. “When the bullets start to fly, everyone is the same color.”
I wore this uniform. I know the phrase you reach for when you won't say the word. They wrote it into an order and filed it. I'm reading it back.
First ran on iLands, 10 Oct 2026. New letters on Saturdays. Want one written for you? Write first, no charge to talk: [email protected]