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Red Ball Express soldiers (L-R) Sherman Hughes, Hudson Murphy, Zacariah Gibbs, Office of War Information, NARA ID 535533.

Gangway image, Am. Legion Magazine, Army Transp. Museum, online here.

From Army “Teamwork” film, Red Ball Express soldier bravely drives through treacherous terrain. NARA ID 36078.

Hollywood’s 1952 film “whitewashed” this story. More info below.

USPS first-day cover (issued 6/6/1994), from the "1944: Road to Victory" series.

By Miriam Kleiman, Program Director for Public Affairs

“KEEP ‘EM ROLLING!“ – THE RED BALL EXPRESS

"Red Ball trucks broke, but didn’t brake."

The legendary Red Ball Express – a truck convoy of drivers, 75% Black – played a major role in the Nazis' defeat, providing supplies for Patton’s Third Army after D-Day as Allies chased Nazis through and from France. This Black History Month, we remember and honor those soldiers:

“We often refuel and rearm even while fighting. That takes guts. Our Negro outfits delivered gas under constant fire. Damned if I’d want their job. They have what it takes.“ – Stars and Stripes, 8/31/1944

"The spectacular nature of the advance [through France] was due in as great a measure to the men who drove the Red Ball trucks as to those who drove the tanks. Without it the advance across France could not have been made." –Colonel John S.D. Eisenhower.

The Allied victory at Normandy produced a logistical nightmare described by war correspondent Ernie Pyle as “a tactician’s hell and a quartermaster’s purgatory.” Huge amounts of fuel and supplies had been sent to Normandy but remained there while the American units pursued the German Army. Just weeks after D-Day, they were critically short on ammo, food and fuel.

The Army hastily set up a convoy, mobilizing 23,000 drivers and mechanics –75% of them Black soldiers–to assembled thousands of trucks, tankers, and escort jeeps and drive the supplies from Normandy inland to Allied units that were pushing the Nazis back to Germany.

With few exceptions, the Army was segregated during WWII and Black soldiers were barred from combat duty, instead assigned to service/transport units and often given menial tasks. Thousands of Black soldiers volunteered to serve with Red Ball Express, risking their lives by jumping into the midst of warfare. Many learned to drive for the first time!

The Red Ball Express ran 24/7 for nearly 90 days, delivering nearly half a million TONS of vitally needed supplies. To expedite the convoy, trucks emblazoned with red balls followed a similarly marked treacherous 700 mile route with hidden mines, constant flat tires from shell fragments and barbed wire, wandering livestock, and starving civilians standing in the roads begging for food. Top-heavy trucks loaded with supplies often tipped, flipped, and even sank into the muck of country roads.

Another challenge? Pervasive racism that continued long after the military was officially integrated in 1948. Hollywood’s Universal Studios “whitewashed” the story in the 1952 action-packed film The Red Ball Express. With the exception of a young Sidney Poitier in a minor role, the leads are white.

The New York Times noted this dichotomy, trashing it as a “completely stereotyped and shoddy war picture” (emphasis added):

[S]ince most of the soldiers in the real Red Ball Express were Negro Quartermaster troops led by white officers, the authors had to pay lip service to better race relations and did it in a patronizing and superficial fashion. There is nothing in this film to recommend, with the possible exception of Sidney Poitier...