African Americans weren’t even initially allowed to serve in combat. They filled the quartermaster service companies and supplied food, fuel and ammunition to the front.
On the transport over, Wiggins and other Blacks were assigned to the bowels of the ship, while whites bunked on the higher decks. When they camped, everything was separate — where they ate, where they saw a doc, where they slept. Once in the Netherlands, a Black soldier couldn’t go into a bar if white soldiers were there.
In September, the U.S. Army and Wiggins’ 960th Quartermaster unit were penetrating the southernmost tip of the Netherlands, the province of Limburg. The Army set up headquarters in the city of Maastricht and commandeered acreage in Margraten, a small farming village, for the mounting casualties.
The Black soldiers became a curiosity. Few, if any, of the Dutch had ever seen a Black person. Moreover, the villagers had been occupied by the Germans since 1940. The Nazis described Black Americans as having tails like monkeys and an appetite for human flesh. Once, Wiggins walked up to a group of girls who had gathered for weeks, at a distance, to watch the men work. He offered his hand in greeting and one girl touched it. She then drew it back and stared at it as if to see if would change color.
Soon, the residents seemed simply grateful for anyone who was there to help them recover. Several of the Black soldiers in turn “adopted” them. It wasn’t unusual for Black truck drivers to rumble through the village and drop a crate of food in front of a home.
By that October, a rainy fall began, a record cold winter was on its way, and the 960th had its orders.
“On that first day, we realized that whatever life experiences we’d had as African Americans, this was our obligation,” Wiggins said during his 2009 speech at the Margraten ceremony, “to set aside our prejudices, our colors, and our fears and give to these young Americans the honor, the respect and the dignity that they so well deserved.”
Each gravesite had to be precise: 6 feet long, 6 feet deep, 3 feet wide. The men had to take a dead soldier, open his mouth and place a dog tag inside for identification.
There were no caskets. The gravediggers had to respectfully bury their men in mattress covers.
One soldier would sit a dead man up while another slid the cover over his head, down his stiff body and over his feet.
The newly deceased were easier to maneuver.
Each end of the cover was tied and the body lowered into the grave.
Too many times, there were no identification tags or mouths to put them in. Too many times the Black soldiers buried severed legs and arms.