Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR.

I'm B.A. Parker.

If you grew up with elders who served in the military, you might have had some version of this moment.

It's a family gathering, and an elder casually tells you about their time in World War II,

or the Korean War, or the Vietnam War, or Desert Storm.

I've had this conversation about all of them.

The most cherished came from my grandpa Roy.

He was a private in World War II who drove trucks, and though he never really spoke about the war itself, he did

regal me with stories about all the places he got to visit, from driving in Myanmar, which he called

Burma, to running from insects in Australia, to crossing the equator in South America. It was a singular

experience for a young black man who'd never left his hometown

before, crossing the ocean to fight for freedom abroad that he wasn't even fully granted at home.

All of that young lived experience is synthesized into his official army portrait, hanging in

our family's living room.

My grandpa is smiling in his uniform, holding a cigarette, and that's all we got.

Clint Smith, the author, poet, and staff writer at the Atlantic, has a similar story from his own family. My grandfather's brother served in World War II.

He was part of the Red Ball Express,

which was a group of largely black soldiers who were not allowed to participate in combat.

Most black servicemen weren't allowed access to firearms, and so they largely played support roles. You have general after general on the record saying that if it worked for these soldiers

and their sacrifice and their bravery and their courage, the supplies, the food, the ammunition

wouldn't have gotten to the front lines and the war wouldn't have been won.

France 1944.

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