Army Man Finally Awarded Bronze Star Earned in WWII
by admin on Jul.07, 2009, under Veterans
It was a miserable existence all winter long some six decades ago as Morris N. Bishop was among the Allied forces fighting the Germans, hunkering in a freezing foxhole in the mountains of Italy.
Then, when the Army sergeant returned home from World War II in full uniform, he couldn’t even buy a hot dog in Washington.
It was 1946, the U.S. was still widely segregated, and Bishop is black.
A member of the only all-black infantry division in Europe, the 92nd, or “Buffalo” division, Bishop at 21 was deployed to the front lines, where he sprayed machine gun fire toward entrenched enemy lines in August 1944. There he stayed until the following May, when the war ended in Europe.
On Monday, his 86th birthday, Bishop finally got the recognition that was coming to him for his service when city and state officials and the Army honored him as he was presented the Army’s Bronze Star medal, reserved for those who show bravery in combat. Read on…
Morris Bishop didn’t originally think that receiving this medal was necessary, but later changed his mind and accepted it in honor of his fellow soldiers.
“It gets me sentimental, when I think about the buddies that I lost,” he said after the ceremony, noting that most of his comrades were either wounded or killed in the war. “Some of them were very good friends.”
Bishop certainly earned his Bronze Star. Personally I think that he not only was amazingly brave facing the German forces in Italy, but coming home and having to face the racism directed towards him. All of our returning soldiers deserved respect and freedom to enjoy what they could of their lives after having lived in such hellish conditions in war torn Europe.
