As we got inside, these people came out of these barracks-like buildings, they striped their uniforms on, and just in devastated shape. One of the fellows came out who spoke English, and he said, Are you Americans? And I said, Yes. He said, Thank God.
the ground and started to pray. I know I talked to one woman. That's interesting.
I talked to this woman who was a child, a young child. And I told her who I was. I was on my knees talking to her. And I told her my name. And, you know, it was just a nice kid who was just, and she wasn't in too good of shape.
But she was in better shape than most of them for some reason. And we talked, and it was over. One day I was in Boston here, and I went to a meeting of the survivors.
It was several years ago. It must have been 10, 12 years ago. And this woman, she was at the fair yesterday, but this woman screamed. and ran over to me and said, I know you, I know you, I know you.
And I'm saying, this woman doesn't know me at all. What is she talking about? And she identified herself as the little girl I talked to at Daha. And I was just amazed how she would remember me. She said, I know you by your eyes.
I was sitting on the roadside somewhere up in Germany, and I was heating my sea rations over a can of sternum. And this guy... I'm filthy and dirty. This guy comes up in a Jeep, and he's clean.
He says, he's from Yank Magazine. He said, we want to take a picture of you. And I said, well, you want to take a picture of me? He said, it's just a great picture, you sitting at the roadside here with your weapon.
So he took a picture of me. And he said, let me ask you something. He says, how do you as a black soldier reconcile the fact and live with the fact that you're discriminated against, you're segregated against, you're...
You're treated badly, and yet you fight, and yet you have a long record here of fighting because that's the only way you'd be here. And he says, what's it all about? And I said, the only way I can explain this is that I guess I'm fighting for the right to fight when I get back home.
Is that one of the things that kept you going too? I think so. In fact, I'm sure it was.
It was. I just kept saying, we've got to end this crazy thing. And that's the reason why, since the war, I've been involved with Dr. King. I think I've been in a jail in every state in the South. So I've been constantly fighting for people's rights.