Sometimes a friend walks into your life out of nowhere, and you don’t ask why. You just enjoy the company and wonder at the odd fate that brought you together. Only later do you realize that your whole life depended on it.

There are many unique and fateful aspects of my father’s service in the all-black 369th Coast Artillery Regiment during World War II. William A. Morris, Jr. brings a black soldiers perspective to the state of the American military and the nation at that time. He recalls first hand, but without bitterness, the ravaging racial prejudices at work at places like Fort Dix in New Jersey and Camp Stewart in Georgia.