Unnamed Negro Troops

This icon represents the "Negro troops" that Devries commands in both World War II and the Korean War (134). When Faulkner has the story's narrator say that in Korea, Devries "commands troops containing Negroes" rather than "Negro troops," as in the earlier war (134), he seems to be acknowledging the actual, slow history of racial integration in the military. World War II was the first time the U.S. Army allowed blacks to serve in combat, but kept them in segregated units that were commanded, as the narrator notes, by white officers. Unofficially blacks were integrated into white units as replacements during the Battle of the Bulge, but it wasn't until after the war that President Truman officially de-segregated the Army, and not until Korea that black soldiers officially fought alongside whites - and then again only after the need for replacements became acute.