Printing Office, 1977), Chapter XXIII.]

Similar judgments were expressed concerning the combat capability of
the other major black unit, the 93d Infantry Division.[5-36] When
elements of the 93d, the 25th Regimental Combat Team in particular,
participated in the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands,
their performance was the subject of constant scrutiny by order of the
Chief of Staff.[5-37] The combat record of the 25th included enough
examples of command and individual failure to reinforce the War
Department's decision in mid-1944 to use the individual units of the
division in security, laboring, and training duties in quiet areas of
the theater, leaving combat to more seasoned units.[5-38] During the
last year of the war the 93d performed missions that were essential
but not typical for combat divisions.

[Footnote 5-36: A third black division, the 2d
Cavalry, never saw combat because it was disbanded
upon arrival in the Mediterranean theater.]

[Footnote 5-37: Rad, Marshall to Lt Gen Millard
Harmon, CG, USAFISPA, 18 Mar 44, CM-OUT 7514 (18
Mar 44).]

[Footnote 5-38: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
pp. 498-517. Lee discusses here the record of the
93d Infantry Division and War Department decisions
concerning its use.]

Analyses of the division's performance ran along familiar lines. The
XIV Corps commander, under whom the division served, rated the
performance of the 25th Regimental Combat Team infantry as fair and
artillery as good, but found the unit, at least those parts commanded
by black officers, lacking in initiative, inadequately trained, and
poorly disciplined. Other reports tended to agree. All of them, along
with reports on the 24th Infantry, another black unit serving in the
area, were assembled in Washington for Assistant Secretary McCloy.
While he admitted important limitations in the performance of the
units, McCloy nevertheless remained encouraged. Not so the Secretary
of War. "I do not believe," he told McCloy, "they can be turned into
really effective combat troops without all officers being white."[5-39]

[Footnote 5-39: The above digested reports and
quotations are from Lee, _Employment of Negro
Troops_, pp. 513-17.]

Black