On Christmas Eve of 1944, German forces infiltrated the village of Sommocolonia in
the Tuscan region of Italy. The invasion was part of a larger planned operation called Winter Storm,
also known as the “Christmas Offensive.”
After heavy pressure from the black community to actively participate in combat,
several companies from the 92nd Infantry Division, known as the Buffalo Soldiers,
were sent to Italy to aid in penetrating the Gothic Line.
29-year-old Lieutenant John R. Fox, from the Cannon Company, 366th Infantry,
was serving as a forward observer when the Germans arrived at Sommocolonia.
As he was overseeing the battle from a second-story window in an abandoned building,
the Germans kept inflicting damage upon his unit and the villagers.
The enemies far outnumbered the scarce American troops who stayed behind,
and Fox knew that only a drastic measure would slow down the attack and save many lives...
The Buffalo Soldiers
Black soldiers have participated in every major conflict the United States has ever fought.
Still, most African American soldiers were assigned to segregated duties in defense lines,
construction, or otherwise minor tasks such as graves’ registration.
In fact, out of the almost one million Black
Americans that fought in the US Army during World War II,
only one black division saw infantry combat in the European Theater: the 92nd Infantry Division.
The Army first established the 92nd Infantry Division in October of 1917,
after the United States joined World War I.
Before leaving for France the following year, the American buffalo was chosen as the division's
symbol. It came from the Buffalo Soldier nickname commonly given to African American cavalrymen in
the 19th century. The men's uniforms had a circular shoulder patch that featured the
animal's shadow in an olive drab background. The 92nd also kept a live buffalo as a unit mascot.
After being reactivated in 1942, the 92nd began to train under Major General Edward Almond's command.
Even though the 92nd was referred to as a black unit,
the Buffalo Soldiers’ higher officers were white.
In late July of 1944, after years of pressure from the black community demanding that African
American soldiers be included in active combat, the first wave of Buffalo Soldiers disembarked in
Naples, Italy. A jubilant crowd of Black American soldiers from other units greeted them excitedly.
The rest of the division arrived a few months later.
Sommocolonia
Only a few weeks before the Buffalo Soldiers arrived in Italy,
Rome had been liberated from German control. Two days later, on June 6,
the war saw a turning point with the Allied invasion of Normandy.
But Italy was still in a precarious situation. During the summer of 1944,
the Allied forces moved towards Tuscany, taking Florence and setting up camp on the Gothic Line.
The Gothic Line was a German-occupied defensive line in the Lucca province
with more than 2,000 well-fortified machine gun nests, casemates, bunkers, observation posts,
and artillery fighting positions to repeal any Allied breach attempt.
As autumn arrived and the weather cooled down, Italian citizens trapped in the
Gothic Line villages suffered from starvation. One of the villages that
were hit the hardest was Sommocolonia, a hilltop settlement in Barga, Lucca.
The villagers survived on chestnuts and local-grown berries until the
Buffalo Soldiers arrived and shared their rations.
By late December, General Kurt von Tippelskirch from the German 14th Army ordered an attack
operation with eight infantry battalions on the American troops stationed in the Serchio Valley.
The objective was to pin units there which might otherwise be
relocated to the central front and capture several small towns such as Sommocolonia.
Thus began what became known as the Battle of Garfagnana, or the “Christmas Offensive.”
Attack on Sommocolonia
On Christmas Eve, 2nd Lieutenant John R. Fox, a Cincinnati native,
was serving as a forward observer in Sommocolonia when German infantrymen
from the elite 4th Mountain Battalion dressed in civilian clothes infiltrated the village.
At 4am, the 29-year-old Buffalo Soldier was abruptly awakened by the sound of mortar fire.
He rushed to his position and witnessed the
Sommocolonian streets covered in a cloud of artillery fire.
The enemy vastly outnumbered the small group of poorly-equipped American soldiers in the area.
Just 70 soldiers from the 92nd Infantry Division and 25 Italian partisans
had volunteered to stay behind in the Italian village. The unit was promptly ordered to retreat.
From his vantage point in a second-story window, Fox witnessed hundreds of German
soldiers pouring into the surrounding streets and dangerously approaching his position.
By 9am, Sommocolonia was the site of a brutal, hand-to-hand fighting scene.
The Americans knew that there was no way they could defeat the German offensive.
Still, they could slow it down so that the Allied forces could reorganize.
Another retreat order came three hours later when an Army captain
stationed in the nearby city of Braga radioed Lieutenant Graham Jenkins,
a volunteer officer in Sommocolonia, and told him to [QUOTE]: "Get the hell out of there."
However, the men in Sommocolonia continued fighting the Germans
until more than two-thirds of them were down.
Lieutenant Jenkins radioed a final message to the captain [QUOTE]: "They're coming after us. Please,
when you get back to the States, tell my wife and my kid and my mother that I love them."
No Way Out
Lieutenant Fox was trapped in an abandoned building's second floor. The streets were swarmed
with approaching enemy troops, and Fox sent out several radio commands asking for artillery fire
in the surrounding area: (QUOTE) "That was just where I wanted it. Bring it 60 yards!"
The commander on the other end vehemently protested,
as the requested attack would be too close to the troops on the ground.
Fox adjusted his command by half the distance, and the barrage was fired.
However, the Germans continued to press forward, dangerously threatening Fox's position. Seeing no
way out, he radioed an unusual command: to fire a heavy mortar concentration in his direction.
The artillery officer who received the message, Fox's close friend Lieutenant Otis Zachary,
was stunned and in disbelief. If he followed through with the order,
several 75 heavy-caliber artillery guns would pour fire directly on Fox's location.
Zachary knew that there was little chance Fox would survive the attack and replied (QUOTE):
"Fox, that will be on you. I can't do that."
But Fox was insistent, yelling into the radio for a final time (QUOTE):
"Fire it! There's more of them than there are of us. Give them hell."
Lieutenant Zachary hesitated to order the fire and turned to the Battalion Commander for guidance.
The artillery force eventually obliged, and the bombardment was unleashed.
Aftermath
A local priest later recalled seeing Lieutenant Fox lying down on the
ground next to his observation post, with around 100 German bodies surrounding him.
Only 18 men from the 92nd Infantry Division and the Italian Partisan defenders survived the
attack on Sommocolonia. They joined the US Fifth Army lines a few miles away later that evening.
The surviving Germans had taken the village
and rounded up the locals hidden in damaged buildings and behind trees.
Frightened and wounded, the prisoners were ordered to leave Sommocolonia at once.
Lieutenant Fox’s sacrifice helped slow down the German advances, giving American infantry and
artillery enough time to reorganize and plan a counterattack. Three days later, the German
offensive sputtered to a halt. And by New Year, Sommocolonia was firmly back in Allied hands.
After World War II ended, the citizens of Sommocolonia built a
memorial monument to commemorate nine men who perished during the attack,
eight Italian partisans and Lieutenant Fox. And 55 years later,
the villagers dedicated a peace park in memory of Fox and the brave Buffalo Soldiers.
The already scarce population of Sommocolonia saw a decrease during the following decades,
and by 2018, it only had 22 registered inhabitants.
Still, Fox’s tombstone remains in the village as a reminder that in 1944,
a brave African American man sacrificed his life for his nation.
Medal of Honor
Proper recognition for Lieutenant John Fox’s brave actions would have to wait almost 5 decades.
Fox was given the Distinguished Service Cross in 1982. But in the early 1990s,
the United States Army commissioned a team from Shaw University to investigate if there
had been racial disparity when selecting World War II Medal of Honor recipients.
The researchers concluded that there had been systematic discrimination for decades,
and in 1996 issued an official recommendation for Lieutenant
Fox and other nine Black soldiers to receive the military’s highest honor. That same year,
Congress passed a bill to allow the soldiers to be recognized, and seven of the ten were approved.
Finally, on January 12, 1997, Lieutenant John Fox's Distinguished Service Cross
was revoked and upgraded to a Medal of Honor, ensuring his rightful place in military history.
A day later, President Bill Clinton presented
the Medal of Honor to the seven soldiers in a formal ceremony.
Six of them were given posthumously, and Fox's widow Arlene accepted the medal on his behalf.
When Jane Fox Pope, the Lieutenant's younger sister,
was asked by The Cincinnati Enquirer her thoughts about the long delay,
she responded [QUOTE]: "It's one of those the-glass-is-half-empty-or-half-full things.
You can look at it in a bad way, or you can say that America is trying.
Things used to be really bad. Now they're getting better, and they'll be better yet."