369

369: Used, Honored, and Left Behind

By Keith Marshman & Stephanie Gentry

Edited by Sherylanne Tomlinson

The story of the 369th Infantry Regiment is often told as a celebration of courage. This book tells the part that followed.

369: Used, Honored, and Left Behind is a rigorously documented historical analysis of the Harlem Hellfighters and Private Henry Johnson, examining not only what they did during World War I, but how institutions processed their service afterward. Rather than retelling familiar battlefield narratives, this work reconstructs the conditions, decisions, and administrative structures that shaped recognition, neglect, and abandonment.

The book proceeds in two movements. The first recovers what can still be known: pre-war conditions, recruitment, training, frontline deployment under French command, the night of combat that made Henry Johnson known, and the medical and administrative aftermath that followed. Where records are absent, the absence itself is examined as evidence of institutional behavior rather than narrative loss.

The second movement analyzes power. It traces why honor did not lead to support, why recognition was delayed until it was safe, and how military and political systems separated service from continuity. The result is not a memorial, but a record-one that explains how courage can be required, acknowledged, and then structurally abandoned.

This is not activist history.

It is institutional analysis.

Written in a restrained, documentary style and grounded in recoverable evidence, 369 offers a definitive account of how systems use service, manage recognition, and contain consequence.