Reply #27: My father was part of a Tuskeegee Airmen Fighter Group

[HamdenRice]

He was not a pilot. He was part of the ground crews, and in particular, worked in their separate hospital, trying to suppress the constant outbreaks of malaria endemic to the Italian countryside.

That experience completely changed his life. He entered the Army Airforce as little more than a southern peasant; he left believing he could become educated and middle class.

The pilots and officers, contrary to the way it was in much of the army, "fraternized" with the enlisted men a lot, on the basis of their common identity. One officer in particular used to have long talks with him and the other enlisted men who were his friends about what the world would be like after the war.

The stories my father told me were astounding. My favorite story was about the Fighter Group's intelligence officer, who was so light skinned that he looked white. When a pilot was shot down behind enemy lines, the intelligence officer's job was to impersonate an Italian or German civilian, go behind enemy lines, meet up with the partisans or resistance, and bring the pilot back to the air field. That intelligence officer became a prominent African American business man and politician in New York City.

I wish my father had lived to see this election and inauguration.