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John J. Kruzel/ Department of Defense
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William Dabney never liked to talk much about his time fighting in World War II.
"He didn't keep his uniform or any of those things. In other words, he was through with the service," says Beulah Dabney, who married him in 1951.
It wasn't just the horrors of war — which he had seen up close at Omaha Beach in France on D-Day. What bothered Dabney was the treatment he and his fellow Black veterans got when they came home.
"One reason why we never had pictures of my dad in uniform," says their son, Vinnie Dabney, "was that coming back from the West Coast after they had been deployed to go to the Pacific Theater, after they fought all the way through the European Theater, they noticed that they had the ride in the back of the train. But Nazi POWs got the ride in first class, in the front of the train."