"Tan Yanks"

In the Bougainville jungles white and colored troops live together in soldierly understanding, TIME Correspondent Robert Martin reported last week. Units of the 93rd Division, first all-Negro infantry division to be sent overseas in this war, had fought and acquitted themselves with honor.

For the Negro troops, acceptance by their white comrades-in-arms was some thing to shout about. There had been gibes when units of the 93rd landed on Bougainville, on the heels of the Americal Division. The Americal knew by then what jungle fighting was like. They doubted that the "Tan Yanks" would stand up under the jungle's strange and silent horrors.

The tight-lipped Negroes had moved in.

Among their units was the old 24th Regiment, which had supported Teddy Roosevelt in 1898 in the Rough Riders' charge up San Juan Hill. Two-thirds of their officers were Negroes, 90% of them college graduates. The enlisted men were boys who had lived in Harlem tenements, plowed Georgia farms, carted crates in San Francisco.

With Prayer. It was animal-like war fare on Bougainville. The Negroes did not like it, any more than white men did.

Sometimes their officers had to tongue-lash them into action. But unseasoned white troops had also gone through that first paralyzing terror of jungle combat.

Private James O'Banner, a mild-mannered, youngster from Memphis, Tenn., was the first man to get a Nip. His carbine snap shot stirred up a hornet's nest. A dozen Negroes were slain, 25 were wounded. But 30 Japanese were dead before the melee was over.

The men of the 93rd learned fast. They were resourceful. Corporal Lemon Hicks of Silver City, Miss, and four buddies got lost behind enemy lines. When they blundered into a command post they picked off one Jap, melted back into the thick and steaming underbrush. They ran into a Jap minefield and methodically picked their way through it. They located their own lines by the sound of distant artillery, finally crossed safely back. Said Lemon: "All of us prayed."

One unit, moving out along the muddy Laruma River, fought it out with Japs for two days, destroyed five of their pill boxes, crossed the river with fixed bayo nets and put their disorganized enemies to rout.

With Flame. Their artillerymen learned to "walk" shells toward distant objectives. Their fire was so accurate that Jap prisoners thought U.S. troops had installed listening posts deep in the jungles to tip off Japanese movements.

Fighting alongside white units, the Negro doughboys helped extend outposts across the Saua River. With bazookas, flamethrowers and Browning automatic fire they beat off frontal attacks by day, creeping infiltration by night, until the Bougainville base was finally secured. By last week they were either veterans or casualties of the jungle war and white troops were no longer reluctant to serve beside them. Proudest of their record is Major General Raymond G. Lehman, of Sleepy Eye, Minn., commander of the 93rd, who has been a Regular Army officer since 1917 and commands Negro troops because he likes to lead them.

Says General Lehman: "They have the same courage, the same fear and fighting spunk as any other soldiers. They are quick to learn and eager to perform. They can give & take, and they are about the best disciplined men in the Army."

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