Metzger is a Ph.D., specializing in literature and drama at The University of New Mexico. In this essay, she discusses how Fuller dramatizes the black soldiers' struggle and the two wars that black soldiers fought in World War II.

During World War II, the military finally succumbed to pressure to create black combat battalions. For most of the war, these units were largely for show and had very little role in the war effort, but near the end of the war when the need for more men surfaced, a few of these units were finally mobilized and sent to Europe. Some of these men, who had anticipated they would finally engage in battle, instead helped to liberate concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, and Lambach. What they saw shocked them. These black soldiers, who had come from the segregation of 1940s America, were face to face with...