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[[image - black & white photograph of soldiers on horseback]]

In the Armed Forces

[[image - black & white photograph of Brigadier General Davis]]
[[caption]] BRIGADIER GENERAL BENJAMIN O. DAVIS, HIGHEST RANKING NEGRO OFFICER [[/caption]]

BECAUSE WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY, because we are proud of our achievements in a few short years, because our future like the future of all freedom lovers depends upon the triumph of democracy, we are now fighting shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans in the present world conflict. We already have our own roll-call of heroes and martyrs. A Negro, Robert H. Brooks of Sadieville, Kentucky, was the first war casualty of the United States Armored Forces. Private Brooks, son of a sharecropper family, was killed near Fort Stotsenburg in the Philippines on December 8, 1941. Since that time the parade ground at Fort Knox, Kentucky, has been named Brooks Field in his honor.