0.2 The great war (part i)  (Page 27/14)

Eugene Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1895 to a Creek Indian mother and an African American father. He grew up in a racially divided and openly antagonistic period of US history. But, he had heard that race did not matter to the people of France.

He stole away on the Marta Russ , a German freighter ship. In 1913, at the age of 18 or 19, he arrived in Paris. For several months he took odd jobs to include taking a jab at boxing in his newly-adopted country until the Guns of August interrupted the lives of Eugene Bullard and tens of millions of other Europeans. Hearing the call to defend his newly adopted country, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion on his nineteenth birthday and very quickly saw action against German forces. Bullard was not the only American fighting for France: over 500 white Americans joined the French military and maybe a dozen Blacks, to include another African American boxer, Bob Scalon.

Bullard fought with a tenacity of purpose. Regardless if it was with a machine gun or hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, Bullard’s bravery and fighting spirit were legendary throughout the French military. The Battle of Artois was, like so many battles of the Great War, horrific in the sheer amount of loss of life. Bullard’s unit, which consisted of over 4,000 men, was cut to pieces. Only about 27% of his unit survived that battle unscathed. Bullard saw further action in Champagne and Verdun. Verdun was particularly horrific. With tens upon tens of thousands of people slaughtered by the new German “Big Bertha” artillery guns, some described the carnage resembling a “Chicago slaughterhouse” as pieces of humans lay all around, blown into trees, and ground into the very soil.

A piece of German shrapnel at Verdun killed four of Bullard’s comrades, blew all but four teeth out of Bullard’s mouth, shattered one of his legs, and ultimately ended his career as an infantryman. As he recovered, Bullard found out that he was to be awarded France’s highest military honor for bravery: the Croix de Guerre.

While Eugene Bullard fought for and in France years before the United States would join the warring parties, Americans back home listened to racially charged music such as the 1917 hit by Earl Fuller’s Famous Jazz Band entitled A Coon Band Contest , or pre-war favorites such as A Cyclone in Dark Town (Arthur Pryors Band, 1911), The Whistling Coon (Bill Murray, 1911), and Mammy’s Shufflin’ Dance (The American Quartet, 1912). Needless to say, American popular culture during the first two decades of the twentieth century was not sympathetic to race relations.

While recuperating in a French field hospital, William Irwin, an American reporter for the Saturday Evening Post first introduced Americans to Bullard, with a back-hand compliment, referring to him as a “black Hercules ... not at all like the Negro we knew at home.”