John M. Doyle posted: "THE HUMAN TUGBOAT ALMOST FORGOTTEN RESCUE SWIMMER When war-rattled America, hungry for live heroes in the Fall of 1942, first learned about the Negro Navy mess attendant who saved 15 injured sailors after their ship was sunk in shark infested waters"
When war-rattled America, hungry for live heroes in the Fall of 1942, first learned about the Negro Navy mess attendant who saved 15 injured sailors after their ship was sunk in shark infested waters off the Japanese-held island of Guadalcanal, his identity was a mystery.
The hero, known only as "French," was celebrated on the radio, in newspapers -- even on bubble gum trading cards -- and dubbed the "Human Tugboat" for swimming for hours towing the life raft with a rope around his waist despite enemy gunfire and sharks nearby. It was another mystery, after he was identified months later as Mess Attendant 1st Class Charles Jackson French, why he didn't receive a medal for his heroism.
A graphic depicting Mess Specialist 1st Class Charles Jackson French pulling sailors in a raft away from the destroyer USS Gregory (APD-3) as the ship sinks on September 5, 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal. (U.S. Navy graphic)
Racial attitudes in the Navy and indeed the entire country back then probably had much to do with that snub. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, all of the U.S. armed services were segregated. Black Army units, often commanded by white officers who came from the Jim Crow South, were usually detailed to non-combat assignments like truck drivers, construction workers and stevedores. There were no Blacks in the Marine Corps and the Navy's African-American sailors were limited to serving as Mess Attendants and Stewards, basically waiters and officers' valets.
That's what 23-year-old French was, a steward, and that's why almost none of the white officers and sailors on the USS Gregory, an aging destroyer converted into a high speed transport vessel, knew his full name.
Born in Foreman, Arkansas on September 25, 1919, French was orphaned at an early age and moved to Omaha, Nebraska to live with his sister. When he turned 18 he enlisted in the Navy serving four years as a mess attendant on the heavy cruiser USS Houston. He returned to Omaha but reenlisted in the Navy four days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In March 1942 he was assigned to the Gregory.
Stewards in the officer's ward room of a U.S. Navy cruiser serve a meal to junior officers, on April 13, 1945 during World War II. ( U.S. Navy Photograph)
U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands on August 7, 1942 -- the first U.S. offensive campaign in the Pacific Theater -- sparking intense combat on land, sea and in the air for six months. The Gregory and another transport were patrolling the area between Guadalcanal and Savo Island when they came under fire from three Japanese destroyers about 1 a.m. on September 5, 1942. Within minutes of being hit, the Gregory's boilers burst and the mess deck was in flames. The captain gave the abandon ship order.
French was among the few uninjured sailors in the water when the Japanese guns turned their attention and searchlights from the blazing ship to the men in the water. French found a life raft and started paddling around picking up injured sailors, including Ensign Robert Adrian who had injured legs and blast fragments in his eyes. The sailors feared if they drifted to Guadalcanal, they could be captured or killed by Japanese troops.
The 5-foot-8, 195-pound French started to tie a rope around his waist. Adrian attempted to talk him into getting out of the shark-infested waters, but French said he was more afraid of the Japanese than he was of the sharks. "Just tell me if I'm going the right way," French said as he began to tow the raft full of injured sailors, according to a Navy account.
Swimming until sunrise, French and the raft he was towing were spotted by a scout aircraft and a Marine landing craft was sent to pick them up. A month later Adrian was at NBC's radio studios in Hollywood recounting the escape and rescue on a weekly program, "It Happened in the Service." Because Adrian was immediately hospitalized he never learned the full name of the heroic swimmer. The story was picked up by the Associated Press the next day and spread around the country. A Philadelphia company that sold bubble gum with baseball-like cards depicting war heroes released one card labeled "Negro Swimmer Tows Survivors." But card No. 129 of the War Gum Trading Card Company's 1942 set noted the hero was"known only as French," according to a 2023 article in Swimming World magazine.
In late October 1942, French's identity was discovered. For a while French was lionized by the African-American press, cheered by crowds at bond rallies and during halftime at a college football game in Omaha. His picture appeared on a calendar and newspaper comic strips. Based on Ensign Adrian's incident report there were rumors French, like Pearl Harbor hero Doris "Dorie" Miller, would be awarded the Navy Cross, the service's second-highest award for bravery in combat. Instead he received only a letter of commendation from Navy Admiral William "Bull" Halsey.
French left the Navy as a Steward's Mate 1st Class and settled in San Diego with his wife. He died in 1956 without any further recognition from the Navy until the 2020s.
On May 21, 2022 the surface rescue swimmer training pool at Naval Aviation Schools Command Swim site in San Diego was renamed in his honor. At that event he was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded for heroism by the Department of the Navy. It is the same medal awarded to young Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy for saving his crew after their PT-109 torpedo boat was cut in half and sank after a collision with a Japanese warship in the dark. (Editor's Note: We wonder why towing a life raft loaded with wounded sailors under enemy spotlights and machine gun fire doesn't rise to the level of combat heroism).
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced in January that a future Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer will be named the USS Charles J. French. "For too long, we did not recognize Petty Officer French appropriately, but we've begun to correct that," Del Toro said. USS French will be the Navy's 91st Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and will be built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi beginning in 2026, according to Maritime Executive magazine.
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REMEMBERING FORGOTTEN UNITS.
BLACK PANTHERS OF THE 761ST TANK BATTALION.
For nearly 80 years, America keeps forgetting and then rediscovering the first all black U.S. Army tank battalion to see combat in World War II.
Shoulder sleeve patch of the U.S. Army's all black 761st Tank Battalion in 1944 (via wikipedia)
The motto of the 761st Tank Battalion is "Come Out Fighting" and that's exactly what they did against German forces across six European countries in 1944-1945. And they have kept fighting ever since to get the recognition they deserve from the U.S. Army and from their fellow Americans.
Formed in April 1942, at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, the 761st Tank Battalion trained amid the restrictions and racism of the Jim Crow South. The soldiers were housed in tents rather than the wooden barracks of white soldiers in a swampy area near a sewage disposal plant. Things were more galling when they were transferred at Camp Hood, Texas where German prisoners of war (POWs) had less restrictions placed on them --including access to the white officers club -- denied to black soldiers.
Legendary Word War II General George Patton had a low opinion of black soldiers' ability to operate and fight in tanks and he reluctantly accepted the 761st, only when it turned out to be the most capable tank battalion still in the United States.
Shortly after arriving in Normandy, France on October 10, 1944, the 761st -- nicknamed the "Black Panthers" -- were in constant combat for a record 183 days. They battled the German Wehrmacht across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, where they liberated Gunskirchen concentration camp on May 2, 1945, discovering some 15,000 Hungarian Jews near death from starvation.
The "Black Panthers" captured 30 cities and towns, eliminated 4,000 enemy troops and captured 3,000 prisoners. They destroyed hundreds of tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery pieces and pillboxes. The battalion played a key role in Patton's Third Army during the audacious 100-mile race through winter snows and crack German units to relieve the besieged 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
In March 1945, the battalion, now part of the Seventh Army, cracked Siegfried Line in the final drive into Germany. Along the way the unit, which started out with a little over 700 men -- 36 officers (six of them white, including the commander) and 676 black enlisted men -- garnered eleven Silver Star medals, 60 Bronze stars -- most of them for valor and approximately 300 received Purple Heart medals for wounds or death in battle.
The battalion didn't return to the United States until 1946 and the big welcome home parades were becoming a rarity. The United States the "Black Panthers" returned to wasn't much different from the segregated one they left in 1944. "Men who had fought bravely for their country in severe combat alongside white infantrymen, who had depended for their lives on the black tankers' support, now found themselves treated as second-class citizens and sent to sit in the back of buses behind white people who had never left home," Edward G. Lengel noted in a piece about the 761st on the National WWII Museum's website.
The forgetting began then, too. The 761st was recommended for a Presidential Unit Citation in 1945, but it didn't happen veteran "Black Panthers" kept pushing, lobbying Congress to pass a bill. Finally in 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the papers for the unit citation.
Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers, half Cherokee-half Black, was a tank commander in Company A of the 761st when his Sherman Medium tank rolled over a German land mine ripping his leg open to the bone No. He refused morphine and medical evacuation and stayed in the fight, taking command of another tank until he was killed in action November 19, 1944 -- just 11 days into the battalion's combat deployment. He was recommended for a posthumous Medal of Honor, but like many servicemen of color during the war, award ceremony didn't happen until happen until years later when President Bill Clinton presented the medal to Rivers' relatives in 1997.
Every decade or so, a book like 2004's "Brothers in Arms" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,or a documentary like the one narrated by Denzel Washington in 1992 appears to remind people of the sacrifices and bravery of the men of the 761st. Oscar winner Morgan Freeman is the executive producer of a documentary on the History Channel that came out in August. "I really wanted to see the 761st finally get the recognition they deserved, because these men really did come out fighting," Freeman says in the film's trailer.
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SOMETHING EXTRA.
The Woman Called Moses was also a Civil War Scout and possibly a Spymaster.
Harriet Tubman (National Park Service)
Last year, for Women's History Month we posted a lengthy feature on Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, focusing on her service as a scout, spy, nurse and cook for the Union Army during the Civil War — and her battle with government bureaucracy to get paid for her service.
If you missed it last time, you can view it again, just click here.
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SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York
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