A young WWII soldier’s remains could be those of Spike Lee’s lost cousin
Maceo A. Walker was 20 when he was killed in the battle of the Cinquale Canal, a little-remembered, four-day struggle between men of the segregated African-American 92nd Division and German forces in northern Italy during World War II.
It was a bloody battle, fought in the rain and mud as enemy artillery pounded the Americans crossing the waterway in 1945. Walker, a native of Baltimore and the only child of a butler and his wife, was lost in the chaos. His body was never found.
Seventy five years later, Army genealogists, seeking to put names to unidentified remains of some of the dozens of men killed in the battle, could find only two living relatives of Walker’s who might provide DNA for family comparison.
One, a second cousin, was a man in New York City named Shelton Lee, who went by the nickname, Spike. The other was Lee’s brother, David.
While experts determined that DNA from the famous filmmaker and his brother could not be used for comparisons because they were on another branch of the family tree, the Pentagon gained a high-profile ally in its effort to help African-American families who might have relatives missing in World War II.
Earlier this year, Spike Lee appeared in a video for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), urging people who think they might have a relative who went missing in the war to contact the agency.
“It’s not just my cousin,” Lee said in an interview at the time, “but all those brothers in the 92nd Division. Buffalo soldiers, who fought for this country, who believe in this country, and came home to the United States and were still not full-class citizens.”
On June 21, experts working on a project to identify lost men of the famous Black division, exhumed from a cemetery in Italy two bodies of soldiers from the 92nd killed in the fighting there.
One set of remains, designated X-124, was initially recovered near the Cinquale Canal after the battle, and experts wondered if it could be Lee’s second cousin, officials said.
The bodies were exhumed from the Florence American Cemetery, where almost 4,400 U.S. servicemen and women who perished during
World War II’s Italian campaign are buried. They will be flown to a government laboratory in Nebraska for analysis.
The work is part of an effort by the DPAA to account for 53 92nd Division soldiers who were listed as missing in action during World War II. The agency has already accounted for hundreds of service members.
“They were essentially fighting a war on two fronts,” said Sarah A. Barksdale, a DPAA historian working on the project: One on the battlefield, and one in the segregated
Army and segregated America.
The project “is not going to make up for the treatment they received,” she said. “But I think it’s really important to make sure that they’re part of our country’s memory of
World War II.”
So far, only three from the division have been identified. And the DPAA says it has been hampered, in part, by the difficulty in locating living relatives willing to provide their DNA for comparison with the DNA from unidentified remains.
Even when relatives are found, African Americans can be suspicious of government intentions and wary of providing DNA, officials said.
The government has a history of unethical medical treatment of African Americans, most notably during the notorious Tuskegee experiment of the mid-1900s, when infected participants in a syphilis study were not told a treatment for the disease had been found.
Lee’s 2008 movie “Miracle at St. Anna” — which is based on author James McBride’s 2003 novel of the same name — tells a story of soldiers from the 92nd Division.
Although the film was partly shot in Italy, neither Lee nor McBride then knew of Lee’s family connection to the division and the Italian campaign.
“I never knew Maceo A. Walker existed,” Lee said.
McBride said in an interview: “The 92nd was — should be — the most fabled Black unit in World War II. It’s been overlooked by historians for years.”
In the segregated army
of World War II, the 92nd Division was called the Buffalo division, a moniker initially given to AfricanAmerican soldiers who served in the western U.S. in the late 1800s.
The 92nd Division was mostly made up of African-American soldiers and White officers. It was poorly trained, poorly led, and largely unready when it was thrown into the fighting in Italy in 1944 and 1945, historians have said.
The U.S. and its allies were trying to dislodge strong Nazi forces in the mountainous landscape of northern Italy.
In February 1945, Walker’s 366th regiment and other elements of the 92nd fought a bitter standoff with the Germans around the canal, after which they were withdrawn, amid bitter criticism from the Army brass.
Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., said: “The infantry of this division lacks the emotional and mental stability necessary for combat,” according to Hondon B. Hargrove’s 1985 book,
“Buffalo Soldiers in Italy.”
But 700 men from the division gave their lives in Italy, the DPAA says, and thousands more were wounded.
Two men from the division, Lt. Vernon J. Baker and Lt. John R. Fox, were given the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. Fox was killed in action.
They and five others from different outfits were belatedly given the honor in 1997 by President Bill Clinton. They were the first African-American veterans of World War II to be given the nation’s highest award for valor.
Walker, a private first class in Co. I of the 366th, was killed February 10, 1945, according to the DPAA. The circumstances of his death are not known.
His father, Lewis or Louis, was listed in Census records as a chauffeur and butler for the wealthy clothing manufacturer David Crystal and his wife, Ida, sometimes in New Rochelle, N.Y., and sometimes in Hollywood, Fla.,
where the Crystals also had a home.
The battle at the Cinquale Canal happened over four days, from Feb. 8, 1945 to Feb. 11, 1945, Hargrove reported.
As the Americas struggled across the waterway, they were pummeled by enemy artillery, including guns taken from a warship and hidden in a tunnel in the mountains, Hargove wrote.
“The sound of gunfire ... never ceased,” recalled Lt. Dennette Harrod, of the 366th regiment. “The sound and the sight of the heavy shells falling and exploding among us was terrifying, but we stayed there until ordered back.”
Groups of men were killed by single artillery shells, and the water in the canal was tinged red with blood, one officer remembered.
“I don’t know how we did it, but we kept moving up, through all that shelling and mortar and machine gun fire, losing killed and wounded every step of the way,” Lt. Harrod remembered.