Army Officers Find It Funny to Dress As Klan For Party With Black Soldiers

SFC Alonzo A. Galloway, age 80,

 Darmstadt, West Germany, March 11, 1965 — The United States Army has announced they have finished their inquiry into the 16 officers who dressed as Ku Klux Klansmen and displayed a mock burning cross at a masquerade party for the Fasching celebration (German pre-Lenten carnival) at the Cambrai Casern Officer’s Club on Feb 26. The Army spokesman did not admit to whitewashing the investigation but simply said the officers had been spoken to, and that they meant no offense.

“It was all in the spirit of satire of Fasching,” said the spokesman. He did acknowledge that the inquiry was initiated because of a complaint by a Black officer SFC Alonzo A. Galloway. Galloway told the independent news weekly, Overseas Weekly, that he felt compelled to complain because. “I must ask, was this done to intimidate us or to scare us? It was highly inappropriate, and they had to have some sense of what it meant.”

As satire one might say, the costuming left a great deal to be desired. The 16 officers all wore hoods and white sheets that symbolize the racist American organization. They also had a potted 3 ft cross lit by candles, the Klan often burns crosses in the Southern United States as a warning to Negroes and Jews that they should move away.

The fact that the officers were so well costumed and had this cross seems to contradict a statement by the Army spokesman that the offending officers chose their costumes in haste with little thought. One of the officers, First Lieutenant Walter A. Zimmerman, said that the group chose the robes because they didn’t have much time to pick out costumes. According to the Army spokesman it was Zimmerman, from St. Louis, and Chief Warrant Officer Harry M. George, from Brownsville, Texas who proposed the Ku Klux Klansmen idea. While only six of the 16 officers are from Southern states it is telling that the two leading contributors are from states with deep racial divides.

All 16 officers are attached to the 547^th Engineer Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Bowman of California.

Among the ironies of the moment is that in the United States Negro citizens are right now demonstrating and marching for their rights in the American city of Mongomery, Alabama. In these demonstrations, White authorities have viciously assaulted the Negros with clubs and other weapons, often from horses.

Another irony is that U.S. Army General F.K. Mearns. Fifth Corps Commander did not order the officers to end their charade himself but instead requested that a Black soldier, Sargent Norman Brown relay his directive for the men to get rid of the cross and dispose of the robes.

While there was a formal complaint about the incident and there were six Black soldiers at the party no disciplinary action was taken. The 16 offending officers were told to exercise better judgment in the future by Lieutenant Colonel Bowman in a special meeting.