What were the chances? Thousands of miles from home, in a foreign land devastated by war, old friends bumped into each other on the street.
The young men decided to spend the rest of the day together, attending a church service and then having a turkey dinner. At least, that was the plan. Their impromptu reunion was cut short just before the meal.
An Army officer blasted the two soldiers — one Black and the other White — with a hate-filled rant for being together in public. In the segregated military of the day, the two men were not allowed to socialize. Back then, the punishment for Black and White soldiers associating with one another was more severe than if they fraternized with civilians in occupied Germany.
The White soldier’s experiences in the Army had a profound effect on him. The 19-year-old corporal — who also survived the horrors of combat and witnessed unspeakable atrocities while liberating Nazi death camps — vowed to become a pacifist and to work for racial harmony.
Anthony Dominick Benedetto made good on his promise when he later marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., under his professional name: Tony Bennett. The experience prompted the legendary singer of jazz songs and American standards, who died Friday at 96, to speak out for peace and equality for the rest of his life.
“I couldn’t get over the fact that they condemned us for just being friends, and especially while we served our country in wartime,” Bennett wrote in his 1998 autobiography, “The Good Life.” “There we were, just two kids happy to see each other, trying to forget for the moment the horror of the war, but for the brass it just boiled down to the color of our skin.”
Born Aug. 3, 1926, Bennett came of age just as World War II was drawing to a close. At the time, the sensitive son of an Italian immigrant enlisted in the Army and was shocked by the level of institutional discrimination and racial hatred he encountered in the military.
“Our sergeant was an old-fashioned southern bigot, and he had it in for me right from the start because I was an Italian from New York City,” he recalled about basic training. “I wasn’t the only one who experienced prejudice — it was just as bad for other ethnic groups, especially the Blacks and Jews.”
If that was a surprise, Bennett was in no way prepared for what came next. The young soldier was one of thousands of replacement troops who were thrust into front-line combat in January 1945 at the tail end of the Battle of the Bulge. He witnessed death and destruction at an untoward level as his company in the Seventh Army fought its way across France and into Germany.
“The main thing I got out of my military service was the realization that I was completely opposed to war,” Bennett wrote in his autobiography, adding, “I don’t care what anybody says: no human being should have to go to war, especially an eighteen-year-old boy.”
As bad as that was, Bennett was stunned when his regiment liberated a concentration camp in Landsberg, Germany — a subcamp for the notorious Dachau death camp. Women and children had been slaughtered long before the Americans arrived, while half the surviving, emaciated men had been shot only the day before.
“I’ll never forget the desperate faces and empty stares of the prisoners as they wandered aimlessly around the campgrounds,” he wrote. They “had been brutalized for so long that at first they couldn’t believe we were there to help them and not to kill them.”
The war in Europe ended with Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945. Bennett remained with the occupying American army and was transferred to Special Services, where he entertained the troops with his remarkable singing voice. Bennett toured the country, performing in concerts and shows wherever soldiers were stationed.
On Thanksgiving Day, Bennett was in Mannheim when he bumped into his old friend Frank Smith. They had been in a quartet together at the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan in 1942 and were excited to see each other again.
“I was thrilled to see a familiar face from back home after being surrounded by strangers for so many months,” Bennett remembered. “He took me with him to a holiday service at a Baptist church he’d found. We wanted to spend the whole day together — it just felt so good to be with a friend.”
Bennett invited Smith to join him for Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the fixings for American servicemen. The pair got as far as the lobby of the building the Army was using as a mess hall when they were berated by an irate officer. In the segregated military of the day, the two men were not allowed to be seen with each other at a military function, never mind share a meal together.
“This officer took out a razor blade and cut my corporal stripes off my uniform right then and there,” Bennett wrote. “He spit on them and threw them on the floor, and said, ‘Get your ass out of here!’”
Bennett was reassigned from Special Services to Graves Registration, where he dug up the bodies of American soldiers killed in combat for reburial in military cemeteries. The experience “was just as bad as it sounds,” he recalled.
Fortunately, a friendly Army officer discovered what had happened and pulled strings to get Bennett back to singing in Europe. Soon, he was performing on the radio for American Forces Network with the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. The world took notice, delivering the break he needed to propel his future fame.
Bennett never forgot what he witnessed in World War II. The memories led him to become a civil rights activist. In 1965, his friend and singer Harry Belafonte asked him to walk in a civil rights march planned by King in Selma. Bennett accepted without hesitation.
“I kept flashing back to a time twenty years ago when my buddies and I fought our way into Germany,” he wrote in his autobiography. “It felt the same way down in Selma: the white state troopers were really hostile, and they were not shy about showing it.”
Bennett remembered being “terrified by the violence,” but it only confirmed his belief that no one “should suffer simply because of the color of his skin.” He continued to speak out against bigotry and hatred throughout his career, often performing with African American entertainers at a time when it wasn’t socially acceptable.
Bennett went on to become one of the best performers of jazz and American standards, earning the Grammy Award for album of the year in 1995. For his support of civil rights, he also received the Citizen of the World Award and Humanitarian Award from the United Nations in 2007. Still, those horrifying and harried moments of war and civil strife were never far from his mind.
“My life experiences, ranging from the Battle of the Bulge to marching with Martin Luther King, made me a life-long humanist and pacifist,” Bennett said in 2011, “and reinforced my belief that violence begets violence and that war is the lowest form of human behavior.”
