Sergeant Arthur Joseph, Jr., wrote his memoir, Driving at the Edge of Death, about his experiences in World War II as a Red Ball Express driver and published it in 1992. Sgt. Joseph served in a segregated army. Joseph served with the First Army, Third Army, and the Seventh Army.
Arthur left on October 6, 1941, for basic training in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Afterward, he was sent to Fort Ord, California, with a regiment called the Fighting Fourth Army. His hope was to be sent to the Pacific, but that would never come to pass. Instead, he thought he was trained and drilled for what Joseph called an Army Boy Scout camp. Monotonous exercises and drills made him question the purposes. But training would soon include camouflaging trucks, using guns, and protecting and defending themselves with gas masks against poisonous gases in warfare.
The extensive training in truck operation would include blackout driving (no lights), how to maintain trucks, checking every nut and bolt, repairing the trucks in the war zone, practicing U-turns on sandy beaches, and backing up trucks for a mile or more, staying in the tracks of a truck in the rear. Sergeant Joseph and his men were preparing for foreign service. Additionally, they transported troops to and from field training.
The Black soldiers had a mistrust of the White soldiers, and a fight broke out among the drivers. Arthur thought that the White drivers were jealous of what the Black drivers achieved. But as time passed, the drivers adjusted to each other and worked well together; they practiced with 50 trucks and traveled 504 miles, their longest trip at the time. They practiced driving up hills while planes dropped flour bags on them for a “kill shot.” They drove trucks where no man had been before, took the convoy into the woods on unmarked roads, and used hand signals for night driving.
After one year of training with the trucks, they trained in map reading, orientation, and the use of landmarks. They were trained in weapons, ammunition, explosives, grenades, and the use of machine guns. To avoid boredom as they waited for their orders, they learned to make emergency repairs on trucks and, most importantly, to learn more about themselves. This group of drivers learned how to work together, Black and White.
On January 29, 1944, they were moving overseas, and Joseph wrote, “We are on our way to hell.”
Without the Red Ball Express Drivers, victory in WWII after D-Day may not have been possible. General Patton’s army was moving so fast that supplies could not keep up with him. The allies did an excellent job destroying all the railroads and bridges, so the only solution was to form a caravan of 6,000 trucks that drove for 82 days straight; each trip took 54 hours nonstop. Seventy-five percent of the drivers who delivered supplies to the troops were Black. In 82 days, they moved 412,193 tons of supplies.
Sgt. Arthur Joseph, Jr. was in charge of a platoon of truck drivers; 114 of his platoon received five Bronze Stars, one Silver Star, and Unit Citations Honorable.