Note (Back) — CHAPTER 17

There was little the Army staff could do. The continental commands had the same overstrength problem, and the staff considered the European Command an inappropriate place to raise black percentages. By mid-1953 Negroes accounted for some 16 percent of Army personnel in Europe and, more important to the command, the number of Negroes with combat occupation specialties continued to increase at the same rate. As an alternative to the untenable practice of reclassifying combat-trained men for noncombat assignments purely on account of race, Gruenther again raised the acceptable ratio of blacks in combat units. At the same time he directed the Seventh Army commander to treat ratios in the future merely as guidelines, to be adhered to as circumstances permitted.[17-85] The percentage of Negroes in the command leveled off at this time, but not before the black proportion of the command's transportation units reached 48.8 percent. Summing up his command's policy on integration, Gruenther concluded: "I cannot permit the assignment of large numbers of unqualified personnel, regardless of race, to prejudice the operation readiness of our units in an effort to attain 100 percent racial integration, however desirable that goal may be."[17-86] A heavy influx of white replacements with transportation specialties allowed the European Command to finish integrating the elements of the Seventh Army in July 1954.[17-87] The last black unit in the command, the 94th Engineer Battalion, was inactivated in November.