Nov 04 , 2025

Henry Johnson and the Harlem Hellfighters' Valor at Argonne

They came at night. Shadows swallowed the trench. The thunder didn’t break. But Sgt. Henry Johnson—alone, wounded, outnumbered—rose like iron against a storm of Germans.

He fought with everything left in his soul. Blood slicked his hands, pain seared every breath. He refused to quit. He saved his brothers’ lives that night, refusing to let the enemy claim that shattered ground.

---

A Soldier Born in Harlem’s Fire

Henry Johnson wasn’t born on a battlefield. He came from the streets of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and later Harlem—a man forged in the furnace of Jim Crow’s bitter injustices. Raised with a fierce faith that God saw beyond skin, he carried a code: protect your own, stand for the right, never bow to cruelty.

His mother taught him scripture, planting seeds of hope and strength. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1). That’s what Henry believed, and clung to it when the war came calling in 1917.

Drafted into the 15th New York National Guard — later the 369th Infantry Regiment, the famed “Harlem Hellfighters” — Johnson walked into a world that doubted Black soldiers’ valor. The army compromised by relegating the 369th mostly to labor and support. But when given a chance, they fought harder than any man expected.

---

Fury in the Argonne: The Battle That Forged a Legend

The night of May 15, 1918, in the Argonne Forest, a nightmare unfurled. German raiders slipped through the darkness, attacking with knives and bombs in hand. Sgt. Johnson manned a listening post with Pvt. Needham Roberts — both knew what silence before a storm meant.

An ambush shattered the quiet. Germans descended on them from all sides, knives crashing, smoke choking the air. Johnson fought back, his rifle empty, so he pulled his pistol, then fought hand-to-hand.

Wounded repeatedly—bayoneted in the face, shot in the thigh—he kept pushing forward. More Germans charged. He grabbed a rock, smashed a rifle, and with a scream that echoed hell and heaven, he slew dozens, holding the line.

His actions didn’t just repel the raiding party — they saved the entire 369th trench line. Many credited him with preventing a massacre that night. When reinforcements arrived, they found Johnson bloodied but unbroken, guarding his post until he collapsed.

---

Honors and Pain: A Hero’s Long Road

Back home, the nation’s hands were slow to recognize a Black man’s valor. The French, impressed beyond measure, awarded Henry Johnson the Croix de Guerre with Palm—one of their highest honors. The medal’s citation called him a “model of courage and tenacity.”

But America’s Medal of Honor eluded him for decades. It wasn’t until 2015—nearly a century later—that Johnson posthumously received the highest U.S. military decoration.

“Sgt. Henry Johnson’s story is a testament to the courage and perseverance of the Harlem Hellfighters,” said President Barack Obama at the ceremony.

Comrades remembered him as a warrior unafraid to bleed for the brotherhood. Needham Roberts, his partner, called Johnson “a protector, a survivor, and a relentless fighter who refused to let his scars define him.”

---

Lessons Etched in Blood and Faith

Henry Johnson’s scars tell a story of fighting not only the enemy outside but the prejudice within his own country. He lived the paradox of valor overshadowed by color, the weight of heroism with the chain of injustice.

His courage was not just combat—it was defiance, a rebuke to a world eager to forget Black sacrifice. His life demands that we honor not only the medals but the men who wore them, who fought battles on two fronts: the gunfire and the color line.

We owe them more than memory. We owe them justice.

---

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

This is the spirit Henry Johnson carried into hell, the faith that tempered his fury and steadied his bloodied hands.

His legacy remains a burning torch—for every soldier who bears invisible wounds, every veteran fighting for recognition and peace.

Henry Johnson bled for us all. But in his sacrifice, he gave us a fighting chance at redemption.

---

Sources

1. New York Historical Society + Harlem Hellfighters: The African American Infantry Unit in WWI 2. U.S. Army Center of Military History + Medal of Honor Citation: Sgt. Henry Johnson 3. The White House Archives + President Barack Obama’s Medal of Honor Ceremony Speech, 2015 4. French Ministry of Defense + Croix de Guerre Records, 1918

---

Older Post Newer Post

---