Posted on 02/10/2012 4:28:22 PM PST by naturalman1975
BLACK US troops mutinied in Townsville in 1942 and turned machineguns on their officers, in a secret chapter of the war in the Pacific that has come to light through the papers of the late US president Lyndon B. Johnson.
The scandal was hushed up for nearly 70 years after being described in a report given to and apparently kept by Johnson as "one of the biggest stories of the war which can't be written, shouldn't be written".
The subject of rumour and speculation for decades in the north Queensland city, it has now emerged that the mutiny was probably reported at the time to the White House by Johnson, then a young and ambitious US congressman, after he visited Australia in June 1942 on a fact-finding mission for president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The report Johnson took back to Washington, written for him by US journalist Robert Sherrod, tells how 600 African-American GIs seized their base and went on the rampage, trying to kill their white officers.
Some terrorised local civilians.
Armed Australian troops were sent in at the height of the emergency on the US base.
George Gnezdiloff, then a 20-year-old private in the north Queensland-raised 51st battalion, was told to block Ross River Road with his bren gun carrier. Other soldiers were issued with a password, Bucks, as they deployed to bottle up the Americans.
Gnezdiloff and his crew were ordered to shoot the mutineers on sight. "We had ammo, the lot," the now 90-year-old recalled yesterday from his home in Proserpine, 300km south of Townsville.
"We weren't mucking around, I can tell you."
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
We had our own....Camp Logan (Houston, TX) in 1917.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Riot_(1917)
Very interesting for those who were not aware.
I thought Truman desegregated the military
On a side note, what ever happened to that soldier who fragged the tent at the beginning of the Iraq invasion?
me = DUH !!!!!!!
“They try to suggest that Pvt. Slovik was the only one, but this is not the case.”
Slovik was supposedly the only soldier executed for desertion, but many were executed for murder, rape, etc. [Don’t ask what the ‘etc.’ includes, I’m just covering the bases.]
He signed the order in 1948, but in a large organisation such reorganisation takes time. It wasn't until 1954 that the process was completed.
30,000 rounds and they didn’t hit anyone? The movie won’t be called THE TUSKEGEE MARKSMEN.
“...expended 30,000 rounds of machine gun ammo. Luckily no one was hurt but they were after the white officers.”
Agreed on the lucky no one got hurt. But talk about needing more range time!
How in the world can one possibly fire 30,000 rounds and not hit anyone?
thanks for the info
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks naturalman1975. World War II ping. |
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Pvt. Slovik was the only SHOT, nothing is said about the only one to be executed, at least not in the texts I have read.
Sounds like a season or two of the A-Team.
Sounds like a season or two of the A-Team.
My family, too, knew someone who survived the Bataan march.
The man was highly critical of MacArthur, saying the General evacuated his furniture rather than Army nurses, leaving them to the Japanese.
Roswell Mexico.
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