Stuck between life and death in WWII, Cincy native Lt. John Fox chose his country
Maybe you’ve heard of 1st Lt. John Robert Fox. His story bears repeating, often.
The Cincinnati native served with the segregated 92nd Infantry Division, known as the Buffalo Soldiers, during World War II. It was the only all-Black division that saw combat in Europe.
The day after Christmas 1944, Fox made the ultimate sacrifice when he called an artillery strike to his own position to help protect an Italian village.
He was one of 1,357 U.S. Army casualties from Hamilton County during the war. There were thousands more in wars before and since, from all branches of service.
May his story be a reminder on this Memorial Day to honor the American military personnel who died in service of their country.
‘In Memory of Enquirer Men’: Plaque honors newspaper’s WWII dead
He loved the honor and respect of the military
Fox, born May 18, 1915, grew up in Cincinnati's Wyoming suburb and graduated from Wyoming High School.
He started at Ohio State University, but Black students were not allowed in the school’s ROTC program then, so he transferred to Wilberforce University, a historically Black college near Xenia, Ohio. He earned a degree in engineering and completed his ROTC training, then was commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1941.
“My brother joined the military because he loved the respect, the discipline, the honor it represented,” his sister Jane Fox Pope told The Enquirer in 1996.
A racist stereotype that Black soldiers were cowardly and quick to run when under fire was pervasive in the military at the time. This frustrated the 1.2 million Black servicemen who were eager to prove their bravery and fight for their country.
‘We knew we had killed our own man’
In late 1944, the 92nd Division came to the aide of the village of Sommocolonia, Italy, near the German and Italian defensive line.
Over Christmas, Fox volunteered to be part of a small forward observation group. Their dangerous job was to scope out the enemy positions to direct artillery fire. Fox took up an observation post on the second floor of a house.
German troops attacked early in the morning Dec. 26. Most of the Allied forces had pulled back, but Fox and his team stayed behind to radio in where to aim their guns.
With the town overrun by Germans, Fox called for artillery fire even closer to his own position. His friend Lt. Otis Zachary at the command post protested that the barrage of mortar and artillery shells would be right on top of him.
Fox’s last radio communication was, “Fire it! There’s more of them than there are of us. Give them hell!”
Zachary hesitated to give the order to fire, but after higher officials gave approval, he complied.
“To this day, I’ll never know why I did it,” Zachary told The Enquirer in 1996. “My entire battery cried for three minutes after that order. We knew we had killed our own man.”
The heavy fire halted the German forces, and a few days later the Allies retook the village. Fox’s body was found alongside 100 dead German soldiers.
Fox, age 29, left behind his wife, Arlene, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sandra.
Recognition of Black soldiers was a long time coming
Not every hero is honored the same.
Brig. Gen. William H. Colbern endorsed Fox to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but the recommendation disappeared. Decades passed before the Army finally recognized Fox’s sacrifice with the award in 1982.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. Army commissioned a study by a team of military historians to investigate how awards for bravery had been bestowed. No Black servicemen had received the Medal of Honor during World War II.
“This study found that the lack of an award of the Medal of Honor to a black soldier was most definitely, but indirectly, the result of racial bias,” the study concluded. “This lack of an award was rooted in the same racial assumptions and attitudes that characterized Army policy toward blacks and that pervaded the attitudes of more than a few of the key commanders of black combat units.”
On Jan. 13, 1997, President Bill Clinton presented the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration given for acts of extraordinary valor, to seven Black servicemen, including Fox. Six of the seven were awarded posthumously.
“I have asked for this every year since 1944,” Zachary said when the honor to Fox was announced.
The belated recognition came 52 years after Fox’s death.
“I think it sends a message to all – like a wake-up call – that when a man does his duty, his color isn’t important,” Arlene Fox said after accepting her husband’s Medal of Honor. “I don’t know why that had to be an issue. When you are doing your duty, nobody stops to say what color you are.”
Sources: Enquirer and Community Press archives, National Medal of Honor Museum, Congressional Medal of Honor Society, National WWII Museum, Wikipedia, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Lt. John Fox had 1 message before heroic WWII death: 'Give them hell'
