File talk:12th AD Soldier 1945.gif

There's a reason these are GIF

There's a reason the U.S. Army stores these as GIFs. A monochrome GIF is 100% lossless, and, at this quality, are much smaller than comparable JPEGs. While PNGs would be superior anywhere else, Wikipedia does not shrink PNGs thumbnails very well, and the image is often larger than even the full sized image. — trlkly 15:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Probably NOT 12th Armored Division

This photo is problematic as a 12th Armored Division soldier. Regardless of how it might have been cited in the original source, it is inaccurate. The American soldier is, to use the Army expression at the time, "colored." He does appear to be in tanker's uniform though. Could therefore be 761st Tank Battalion or 758th Tank Battalion, both of which were designated "colored" units and served with distinction in Europe. The forest of tall trees is more likely to be northern Europe than Italy, so my money is on the the 761st.Bilhartz (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Bilhartz erroneously deleted the photograph from the 12th Armored Division entry of a soldier guarding surrendered German soldiers, questioning the accuracy of the original source. The original photograph is from the collection of the United States National Archives, National Archives Identifier: 535840, http://research.archives.gov/description/535840, from Group 208 of the Records of the Office of War Information, 1926 – 1951. The original caption reads “A Negro soldier of the 12th Armored Division stands guard over a group of Nazi prisoners captured in the surrounding German forest, 04/1945”. The 12th AD had African-American soldiers in companies permanently attached to the 23rd, 43rd and 714th Tank Battalions, and the 17th, 56th and 66th Armored Infantry Battalions beginning in March 1945, and in April when the photo caption indicated the images was taken, the 12th AD was fighting in Bavaria, renowned as a forested region (Bayerischer Wald https://www.bayerischer-wald.de/Urlaubsthemen/Nationalpark-Naturparke-mehr/Nationalpark-Bayerischer-Wald). Large numbers of surrendering German troops were being captured in April 1945 (The 12th AD captured over 7 times its own strength in enemy prisoners of war). The photograph and caption entirely comports with U.S military and Divisional history official accounts, and was therefore replaced within the Wikipedia article. N0TABENE (talk) 20:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

You are absolutely right and I stand corrected. I had forgotten the 12AD received black troops officially known as Seventh Army Provisional Rifles Companies, 1, 2, and 3 (had to look that part up!). One company was attached to each of the 17th, 56th and 66 AIB's, and was known colloquially as Company D in each unit. Despite having received inferior training in the US, they quickly came up to speed and fought with valor and were treated as equals within the 12th AD. I will make a point of adding them into the 12AD wikipedia article. Thanks for speaking up! Cheers, Greg Bilhartz (talk) 20:06, 6 April 2015 (UTC)