Tech 5 Grade Samuel Teatrice Woods (May 16, 1919 – October 7, 1945)
761st Tank Battalion
by Patrick Hodges and Elizabeth Klements
Early Life
Samuel Teatrice Woods was born in Madison, FL, on May 16, 1919 to Addie Woods.1 His father may have died when he was young, because Woods identified his mother as a widow in the 1940 census.2 We know little about Addie and Samuel’s early lives. Madison was a rural county on the Georgia border, settled by cotton planters in the mid-nineteenth century.3 Addie’s family may have been descendants of enslaved workers for the local cotton plantations who stayed in the area after emancipation as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. At some point between 1919 and the 1930s, Addie and Samuel moved to the city of Jacksonville, FL.4 This may have been due to the economic instability of the Great Depression, or because of the racial violence prevalent in the area. Between 1900 and 1930, Florida had more lynchings per capita than any other state in the US, and Madison County ranked in the top ten most active lynching counties in Florida.5
In 1940, Addie and Samuel lived in LaVilla, a historically African-American neighborhood in Jacksonville which its inhabitants turned into a thriving entertainment district in the 1930s and 1940s. A center of African-American arts and culture, it hosted famous entertainers, such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billy Holiday, earning it the name a “Harlem of the South.”6 Addie worked seventy-six hours a week as a maid for Mrs. Lillian Kirby-Smith and her family in the affluent, white neighborhood of Riverside.7 She had a grammar-school education, but her son completed high school, an uncommon feat for many Floridians, and particularly for an African American living in the Jim Crow South.8 Black schools, legally segregated by race, received little or no public funding. As a result, only a small minority of African Americans in the South were able to attend high school.9 Samuel’s education is a prominent testament to the importance of education in the Woods household and a clear indication of his mother’s commitment to ensuring her child the best possible future.
By 1940, Samuel graduated school and was working for Mr. William Pappus.10 In the 1940 census, seen here, Samuel identified himself as a “collection boy” for a “bolita operation.”11 Bolita was a Cuban lottery game popular among Florida’s working-class Hispanic, Italian, and African American communities in the early to mid-twentieth century. It was illegal in Florida, but the bolita rings paid off law enforcement and government officials so that they could operate in public and without police interference.12 Although Mr. Pappus was mainly in the cigar and tobacco industry, it is possible that he also ran one of these rings, and Samuel was responsible for going out and selling the bolita tickets.13 Samuel and his mother also supplemented their income by taking in a lodger, a handyman named Ted Mathis.14 Samuel changed jobs between 1940 and 1943, as his enlistment records identified his occupation as a telegraph messenger.15 Telegraphs were an important means of communication and news at the time. Operators wired messages over electrical telegraph lines, from one telegraph office to another. Once received, the local office staff delivered these messages to the customers, often by bicycle.16
Military Service
On October 16, 1940, Woods registered for the selective service, but the Army did not call Woods up until almost three years later, on July 23, 1943.17 This may have been due to overt discrimination in the draft process; white draft boards often passed over African Americans and favored white soldiers.18 Aged twenty-four, Woods began his basic training at the nearby Camp Blanding, FL.19 This was a former National Guard Camp, which Florida leased to the US Army in 1940 to serve as an active-duty training center, largely in response to the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, Woods was one of approximately 800,000 soldiers who served and trained at the camp.20
Camp Blanding, like most military installations in the US, was home to frequent race-related violence which spilled into the nearby towns as well. During the summer of 1942, a year before Woods enlisted, white policemen in Jacksonville brutally beat two black servicemen and brandished shotguns and machine guns as a means of intimidating the local black population. When the US entered the war, African Americans across the nation embarked on the “Double V” campaign, with civil rights groups dedicated to the “double victory” – freedom and democracy at home and abroad. The local white leaders feared that the presence of dignified black men in Army uniforms would inspire their local black populations to protest the Jim Crow system and responded with state-sponsored violence and intimidation.21
Woods became one of approximately 902,000 African Americans – seven percent of all servicemen – in the military during World War II.22 The US military segregated African Americans into all-black units with white officers. They assigned most African Americans enlistees to the quartermaster, engineer, and transportation corps: all service branches responsible for supplying and maintaining the white combat units. This was the result of a racist fears and prejudices among the civilian and military leadership, who both feared the social consequences of training African Americans in combat and doubted their abilities as soldiers.23 Woods was an exception. He joined the 761st Tank Battalion, a segregated armored combat unit known as the “Black Panthers.”24
The 761st was the first segregated tank unit to enter combat during World War II, and as such, its members challenged racial stereotypes and proved themselves to be one of the most effective tank units of the war. It had 676 soldiers and thirty-six officers, only six of whom were white. These men made up six companies: three M4A3 Sherman Tank combat companies, a M5 Stuart Light Tank combat company, a service support company, and a headquarters company. The M4A3 Sherman Tank companies were further broken down into four platoons, three of which had five tanks, and the fourth of which had two 76-Millimeter Sherman Tanks. The service support company provided the battalion with food, ammunition, and equipment maintenance, and the headquarters company provided necessary administrative support and command on the battlefield.25
The Black Panthers first arrived in the European Theatre on October 10, 1944, at Omaha Beach in France, where, just four months before, the Allies had mounted the Normandy invasion.26 Bringing tank units ashore here was a significant feat of Allied engineering. They had to quickly build a port known as Mulberry Harbor – a process which usually takes decades – in order to continue to push toward Germany. The temporary port, made up of sunken ships and tons of concrete, had been partly built and brought over by British engineers. It allowed the 761st, along with hundreds of thousands of other soldiers and vehicles, to move quickly into France after crossing the English Channel.27
From Omaha Beach, Woods and the 761st travelled over 400 miles in October to reach the Allies’ front lines near the Belgium and German borders. It became part of the Third US Army, under the command of General George S. Patton. In November and December 1944, it pushed toward Germany, liberating northeastern France, town by town. It entered Germany in early December when its commanders redirected it to the Belgian border, in response to the German counter-offensive launched there on December 16, 1944. The Battle of the Bulge, as it became known in the US, ended with an Allied victory after two months of combat in the bitter cold and heavy snow of the Ardennes Forest.28 There, the 761st engaged in “one of their toughest fights” as they fought to take the Belgian town of Tillet, defended by troops from the elite German Führer Begliet brigade.29 During this period, Woods developed trench foot and had to recover at a general military hospital.30 This was a non-contagious disease that occurs due to prolonged and persistent exposure to cold, wet weather; it afflicted many soldiers, especially those exposed to the miserable conditions of the Battle of the Bulge.31
Sometime after his hospitalization, Woods received a promotion to Technician Fifth Grade.32 The Army created the technician ranks as a way to promote soldiers with specialized technical skills. These technician ranks gave individuals a higher pay grade, but no new authority in their unit. A Technician Fifth Grade, like Woods, was the equivalent of a corporal; it ranked below a commissioned corporal but above a Private First Class. As a result of this promotion, Woods would have served in an elevated role in his unit, either by maintaining the equipment of his fellow soldiers or even driving a tank.33
Woods recovered from trench foot by February 1945 and rejoined his battalion. After the Battle of the Bulge, the US military command sent the 761st to liberate the town of Jabeek, about 140 miles north of the Ardennes, on the Dutch-German border. Then the Black Panthers joined the US 79th Infantry Division and moved west through occupied Holland into Germany.34 With other Allied forces, it pushed through the Siegfried Line, Germany’s western defense, in March, and continued moving southeast across the country, sporadically encountering stiff German resistance until it reached Steyr in northern Austria in May 1945.35 There, the Black Panthers helped liberate two Nazi concentration camps: one in Bavaria and one in Austria. On May 2, 1945, they freed prisoners at the Kirchham Bei Pocking subcamp of the Flossenburg concentration camp about 150 miles east of Munich. It held about 400 men, many of whom were Jewish prisoners who had been forced to construct barracks and runways for a military airbase.36 Just two days later, the 761st and other Army units traveled about twenty miles northeast to liberate the Gunskirchen subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, which held approximately 400 political prisoners and a few thousand Hungarian Jews who had done forced manual labor. There, the 761st and other American soldiers witnessed the dire conditions of the Nazi camps. The survivors were emaciated and near death, and the barracks and nearby woods housed hundreds of dead bodies.37 No soldier could have ever forgotten what they saw when they liberated the Nazi camps.
Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the 761st remained in Germany as part of the Allied occupying force until June 1946, while many of the white troops went home. It was stationed first at the city of Bissengen, then Teisendorf in the US occupation zone in southwest Germany.38 In peace, as in war, the same discriminatory policies shaped the experiences of African American soldiers in occupied Germany. The US military leaders posted them in rural areas, rather than the important cities, and assigned them the same service and support roles that they carried out during the war. The white military police imposed segregation in some German towns, forcing African American servicemen out of establishments frequented by the white soldiers.39
Tech Fifth Grade Samuel Woods passed away after the war ended, on October 7, 1945, at the age of twenty-six.40 In the two years prior to his death, he had travelled over 2000 miles across Europe, survived 183 days of straight combat, and died while his battalion was stationed as an occupying force in Teisendorf. He died in the line of duty, but his cause of death remains unknown. The Honor List of Dead and Missing, as seen here, recorded his death as “DNB” or “died non-battle.”41 Woods may have died from illness, an accident, or an incident of racially motivated violence.
Legacy
His fellow soldiers likely buried Samuel Woods in Germany, but the US Army later reinterred him at the Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France, at block J, row 10, grave 7. He was survived by his mother, Addie Woods, who still lived in Jacksonville, FL, at the time of his passing.42 The legacy of the Black Panthers cannot be understated. Woods and the men that he served with in the 761st Tank Battalion were nothing short of extraordinary. They had a profound impact on both the war in Europe and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement at home. In Europe, they captured over 15,000 German soldiers and destroyed thirty-four German tanks and 331 machine gun nests.43 At home, their achievements sparked conversation and helped provide tangible evidence of African American achievement, bravery, patriotism, and equality.44 More than thirty years after Woods death, on January 24, 1978, President Jimmy Carter issued an overdue Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism to the 761st Tank Battalion, acknowledging the everlasting impact that Woods, and his unit, had on both the war effort and the Civil Rights movement.45
1 “World War II Draft Card,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed March 26, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods, serial number 3401.
2 “1940 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed March 25, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods, Duval County, Florida.
3 “About Madison,” City of Madison, Florida, accessed September 8, 2021, https://cityofmadisonfl.com/about-madison/.
4 “1940 U.S. Census,” entry for Samuel T. Woods.
5 “Florida Frontiers: ‘the Lynching of James Clark,’” The Florida Historical Society, accessed September 8, 2021, https://myfloridahistory.org/frontiers/article/129; Equal Justice Initiative, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” 3rd. edition, accessed March 25, 2021, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/.
6 Jennifer Graham, “LaVilla,” Uncovering Jax: Celebrating our History, accessed September 8, 2021, https://uncoveringjax.wordpress.com/lavilla/.
7 “1940 U.S. Census,” entry for Lillian A. Kirby-Smith, Jacksonville, Duval Count, Florida. The 1940 census recorded Addie twice, once at her home, and once at her employer’s home. Her employer reported that Addie worked 54 hours a week, while her son reported that she worked 76, so she may have had a second job.
8 “1940 U.S. Census,” entry for Samuel Woods.
9 Peter Irons, “Jim Crow’s Schools,” American Educator (Summer 2004), accessed March 29, 2021, https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2004/jim-crows-schools.
10 “World War II Draft Cards.”
11 “1940 U.S. Census,” entry for Samuel Woods.
12 Kendra Hazen, “Episode 30: Bolita,” A History of Central Florida, podcast episode, October 1, 2014, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/ahistoryofcentralfloridapodcast/31/.
13 “U.S., City Directories 1822-1995,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed September 9, 2021), entry for William Pappas, 709 David St. Jacksonville, 1938.
14 “1940 U.S. Census,” entry for Ted Mathis, Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida.
15 “U.S., WWII Army Enlistment Records,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed March 26, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods, service number 34790738.
16 Gregory John Downey, Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850-1950 (New York: Routledge, 2002).
17 “World War II Draft Cards.”
18 Tyler Bamford, “African Americans Fought for Freedom at Home and Abroad during World War II,” The National WWII Museum, accessed October 12, 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/african-americans-fought-freedom-home-and-abroad-during-world-war-ii.
19 “U.S., WWII Army Enlistment Records.”
20 “A History of Camp Blanding,” p. 2, University of Florida Digital Collection, accessed March 3, 2021. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00047691/00001/6j.
21 Lewis Nicholas Wynne and James Anthony Schnur, Florida at War (Saint Leo, FL: Saint Leo College Press, 1993), 49–69; Andrew Kersten, “African Americans and World War II,” OAH Magazine of History 16, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 13 – 17.
22 “Research Starters: US Military by the Numbers,” The National WWII Museum, accessed April 26, 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers.
23 Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, “African Americans and World War II: A Pictorial Essay,” Negro History Bulletin 51/57, no. 1/12 (December, 1993): 6-14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44177225.
24 “Headstone Inscription and Internment Record,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed March 26, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods, service number 34790738.
25 Craig A. Trice, “The Men That Served with Distinction: ‘The 761st Tank Battalion,’” (M.A. diss, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1997), 20, 23-24, 29.
26 Ed Lengel, “The Black Panthers Enter Combat: The 761st Tank Battalion, November 1944,” The National WWII Museum, accessed June 18, 2020, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-761st-tank-battalion.
27 Logan Nye, “How the Allies Built All-New Harbors in a Matter of Days after D-Day,” We Are The Mighty, April 29, 2020, https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/mulberry-harbor-d-day-engineering/; David Wogan, “In Arromanches, the artificial harbor that fed the Allied Invasion of Normandy still lives,” Scientific American, August 21, 2013, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/in-arromanches-the-artificial-harbor-that-fed-the-allied-invasion-of-normandy-still-lives/.
28 Trice, “The Men That Served with Distinction,” 30 – 40.
29 Ed Lengel, “The Black Panthers in the Snow: The 761st Tank Battalion at the Battle of the Bulge,” The National WWII Museum, accessed October 12, 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-761st-tank-battalion-battle-of-the-bulge.
30 “Hospital Admission Card Records,” database, Ancestry.com, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed March 25, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods, service number 34790738.
31 James C. White, “Trench Foot, Shelter Foot, and Immersion Foot,” The American Journal of Nursing 43, no. 8 (1943): 710 – 713.
32 “Headstone Inscription and Internment Record;” “Hospital Admission Card Records.” The promotion took place sometime between Woods’s hospital stay and his death.
33 Brendan Matsuyama, “U.S. Army Medium Tank Company (1943-45),” Battle Order, accessed April 21, 2021, https://www.battleorder.org/us-army-medium-tanks-ww2; CSM Dan Elder, “Short History of the Specialist Rank,” NCOhistory.com, accessed September 9, 2021, http://ncohistory.com/files/shsr.pdf.
34 Ed Lengel, “The Black Panthers Drive into Germany: The 761st Tank Battalion, 1945,” The National WWII Museum, accessed October 12, 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-germany-1945.
35 Trice, “The Men That Served with Distinction,” 42 – 46.
36 “Kirchham Subcamp,” KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg, accessed March 26, 2021, https://www.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de/en/history/satellite-camps/kirchham; Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 567 – 692.
37 Ryan Mattimore, “The Original Black Panthers Fought in the 761st Tank Battalion During WWII,” History.com, April 11, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/761st-tank-battalion-black-panthers-liberators-battle-of-the-bulge; “Timeline of Events: Liberation of Gunskirchen,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed March 26, 2021, https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/liberation-of-gunskirchen.
38 Trice, “The Men That Served with Distinction,” 40 – 46.
39 Alexis Clark, “When Jim Crow Reigned Amid the Rubble of Nazi Germany,” The New York Times Magazine, February 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/magazine/blacks-wwii-racism-germany.html.
40 “Headstone Inscription and Internment Records.”
41 “World War II Army and Air Force Casualty List,” database, Fold3.com, http://www.fold3.com (accessed March 25, 2021), entry for Samuel T. Woods
42 “Headstone Inscription and Internment Record.”
43 Walter Lewis, “A Brief History Of The 761st Tank Battalion In World War II,” Negro History Bulletin 29, no. 2 (1965): 46-47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24766622.
44 Bamford, “African Americans Fought for Freedom at Home and Abroad during World War II.”
45 Jimmy Carter, “The Presidential Unit Citation (Army) For Extraordinary Heroism To The 761st Tank Battalion, United States Army,” 761st.com, accessed March 29, 2021, http://www.761st.com/18update/2018a/index.php/history/presidential-unit-citation.