itions in exact proportion to
their percentage of the population. Such use, Paul claimed, would
expend travel funds already drastically curtailed and further
complicate a serious housing situation. He admitted that the
deep-seated prejudice of some Army members in all grades would (p. 214)
have a direct bearing on the progress of the Army's new racial
policy.

[Illustration: 24TH INFANTRY BAND, GIFU, JAPAN, 1947.]

The staff generally agreed with Ray's other recommendations with one
exception: it opposed his suggestion that black units be used in the
European theater's constabulary, the specially organized and trained
force that patrolled the East-West border and helped police the German
occupation. The theater commander had so few capable Negroes, Paul
reasoned, that to siphon off enough to form a constabulary unit would
threaten the efficiency of other black units. Besides, even if enough
qualified Negroes were available, he believed their use in supervisory
positions over German nationals would be unacceptable to many
Germans.[8-17] The staff offered no evidence for this latter argument,
and indeed there was none available. In marked contrast to their
reaction to the French government's quartering of Senegalese soldiers
in the Rhineland after World War I, the German attitude toward
American Negroes immediately after World War II was notably tolerant,
a factor in the popularity among Negroes of assignments to Europe. It
was only later that the Germans, especially tavern owners and the (p. 215)
like, began to adopt the discriminatory practices of their
conquerors.[8-18]

[Footnote 8-17: WDGPA Summary Sheet, 25 Jan 47, sub:
Utilization of Negroes in the European Theater,
with Incls, WDGPA 291.2 (7 Jan 47).]

[Footnote 8-18: Interv, author with Lt Gen Clarence
R. Huebner (former CG, U.S. Army, Europe), 31 Mar
71, CMH files.]

Ray's proposals and the reaction to them formed a kind of watershed in
the War Department's postwar racial policy. Just ten months after the
Gillem Board Report was published, the Army staff made a judgment on
the policy's effectiveness: the presence of Negroes in numbers
approximating 10 percent of the Army's strength and at the current
qualitative level made it necessary to retain segregation
indefinitely. Segregation kept possible troublemakers out of important
combat divi