Interview outtakes from THE WAR:
"I ended receiving seventeen whole blood transfusions. I recall about, oh, I’d say, ten of them. And the other seven were given to me while I was unconscious or sleeping. But the hospital in our area had a policy, a good one, a rather strange but good one. Before they gave you the blood, they showed you the bottle and on that bottle was a label that had the name, rank, serial number and the unit. And so, here is someone with some fancy name, Thomas Jefferson Lee, serial number, rank PFC. 92nd division. Now, 92nd division was a unit that we were attached to in the last battle and they’re all made up of African-Americans. The officers were for the most part white. But the enlisted personnel were African-Americans and all of the bottles I saw, about ten of them, were from the 92nd division. And I, I assumed the rest of them were from 92nd. So I must have had seventeen bottles of good African-American blood. And so here I am." |
