In the pre-dawn hours of May 15, 1918, Private Henry Johnson was pulling sentry duty with Private Needham Roberts in a French trench that faced the German line just west of the Argonne Forest. Johnson and Roberts were members of the 369th Infantry Regiment from New York. The 369th, known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” was an African American regiment, one of the first led by Black officers and NCOs in the US Army. The regiment had joined the French line as replacements, and its soldiers were given French equipment to face German front-line veterans of four years of trench warfare.
At 2 a.m., Johnson and Roberts heard German trench raiders clipping wire, preparing to surprise the Allied troops, spread mayhem, and seize prisoners in hopes of gathering intelligence. Johnson started throwing grenades into the darkness, toward the sound of the Germans, while Roberts ran back to the main line to alert the French. In the melee that followed, Johnson expended all of his grenades and grappled with the Germans in hand-to-hand combat, armed with a 14-inch bolo knife. He killed four Germans, plunging his knife into the head of one of them, and wounded 20 more, all while sustaining over 20 gunshot wounds. He also saved the severely wounded Roberts from being taken prisoner.
From then on, the 369th never lost a man to capture. It endured more uninterrupted combat time than any American regiment in the war, and its fighters were the first to reach the Rhine. Johnson and Roberts were also the first American privates to receive the Croix de Guerre from the French government in World War I.
But when Johnson returned home...continue here.
One of the salient features of American patriotism is its willingness to reflect on America’s failures as well as its glories. As Smith writes, “Patriotism can be self-critical. Consider the belated recognition of war heroes who had been overlooked due to their race, but were then awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor decades after their actions. What does this demonstrate, other than an enlarged conception of who belongs in the American family?” American patriotism, according to Smith, should be sharply distinguished from the extremes of national self-hatred, cosmopolitanism that naively universalizes humanity, and a nationalism that breeds dangerous divisiveness and suspicion. Patriotism, unlike these intemperate attitudes, is found in a blend of reason and love. As Smith defines it, patriotism “is an expression of our highest ideals and commitments, not only to what we are, but also to what we might be.”
American patriotism is morally aspirational, self-reflective, and self-correcting. Patriots recognize their flaws and sins, and they resolve to learn from those sins. They do not overcorrect, nor do they abandon hope in the ideals established in the founding documents, those ideals that define the essential nature of the republic.
-- John D. Wilsey
