Excerpt from Charity’s War

            The work, in three shifts over a twenty-four-hour day, was grueling, but Major Adams encouraged her soldiers to get out into the city of Birmingham on their time off and be seen among the residents. Soon, many of the WACs were receiving invitations to visit local households. Charity encouraged them to accept. She believed it was important for her soldiers to get acquainted with America’s allies, and, even more, she wanted the British to see these young women as the very best of the USA. It all went very smoothly, including the adherence to an 11 p.m. curfew. But as the invitations increased in volume and the home visits became very nearly routine, calls began to come in from citizens requesting that the women’s curfew be extended to 12:30 a.m. Receiving one or two such requests did not seem out of the ordinary, but before long numerous prospective hosts were calling in and always asking for a curfew extended precisely a half-hour beyond midnight. There was no question of anyone inviting a WAC to stay long after midnight, let alone overnight. It was always just half-past.

            Charity asked Sergeant Virginia Frazier, who served as her secretary and payroll clerk, to put her on the line when the next 12:30 request came in. She did not have to wait long. The call came in, the sergeant handed it off to the major, and Charity politely asked the caller why she wanted the curfew to be extended to 12:30. In response, the major got an earful.

            The caller explained that the citizens of Birmingham had become very fond of the Yanks. White male U.S. soldiers had been among them since early in the war, and there were many good conversations between troops and civilians. When the black WACs arrived, the Brummies, as the Birmingham residents called themselves, grew curious as to why the women were held to a strict 11 o’clock curfew, since the male soldiers stayed out and about much later. The men obligingly explained to the Brummies that all black people have tails, which, however, do not come out until midnight. They went on to explain that the commanding officer in charge of the black WACs wanted to make certain that her troops were in their quarters before that fateful witching hour. Astoundingly, most of the Brummies swallowed whole the tall tale they were being told. They reasoned that black men troops could readily hide their tails along the inseam of their pants but that the female troops, wearing skirts, could not hide theirs—especially since the tails were reportedly three to four feet long! The only way that the existence of the tails could be confirmed was to see the women after midnight.

            Charity was appalled on more than one level, but instead of expressing anger, hilarity, or disgust, she assured the caller that black people, whether male or female, did not have tails. We don’t know—because Charity did not say—whether the curfew was routinely extended, but she decided to dispatch several groups of WACs into public places after midnight to show the all-too-credulous Brummies that they had no tails to hide. As Charity also discovered, many black soldiers who were sent overseas were not above telling interesting stories about their own blackness. She cited one GI who explained to a curious Brit that his dark complexion was, in fact, the product of special shots he received so that he could fight at night—invisibly.

            As racism goes, the Tale of the Tail was so ridiculous that it could almost be laughed off. The lesson from it was not about British racism but American, since it began with tall tales told by white GIs. Overseas, Charity and her WACs could get a liberating respite from American bias and segregation, but they could not escape the racism casually rampant in the U.S. Army itself.