Thad Bryson, a young black man from Old Fort, North Carolina met the Tuskegee Airmen. Shortly after that his regiment, the 97th Engineering Regiment quite suddenly left Florida—for Alaska!
Thad Bryson meets the Tuskegee Airmen
Thad’s son Fred shared with us his dad’s stories. Like a lot of veterans, Thad didn’t talk about it much; but, when he did, the word cold came up a lot. And, coming from the memory of a man who slept in a tent at 70 below, the word “cold” reverberates.
More on Winter in the Tanana Valley Alaska
Thad grew up complaining about sharing a tiny bedroom in a two-room farmhouse, but in his Alaska tent he would have “given anything to be back in that despised bedroom”.
In Thad’s old age, son Fred often drove him to visit his old friend and Alaska partner, Boyd. Thad and Boyd had partnered “through hell.”
Fred’s recounting of Thad’s memories led inevitably to the intricacies of race.
In 1942 in a segregated Army, young white officers led the young black soldiers to the road. Young white men and young black men in the 1930’s grew up in two different Americas; shared the same physical space but little else. If black men thought about white men or white men about black, they thought in caricature. Most of the white officers brought prejudice to the Army and the Army amplified it. Most of the black soldiers brought fear to the Army. And the Army amplified it.
Fred made the startling comment that he wished he knew his dad’s company commander’s name; wished he knew because Thad remembered him with affection.
Off the road but still in Alaska in early 1943, Thad served Company B as a cook, and one morning a white gas kitchen stove blew up in his face; seriously burned him and threatened his eyesight. From his cot in the hospital tent he told the captain he wanted to stay with the regiment, but the captain would have none of it.
The captain faced off with the reluctant Army doctors, insisted that they send Thad back to Walter Reed hospital for treatment. Treatment at Walter Reed almost certainly saved his sight. That same company commander arranged for a medical discharge that sent Thad home to Old Fort.
Fred wonders about that white captain. And, God knows, we do to.
Researcher Chris, of course, knew his name. Captain Roger Forrestal. “Yes,” Fred said with a big smile. “That was it.”
Researcher is trying hard to find Forrestal’s kids.