World War I
In World War I Puerto Ricans opened fire, in what is considered to be the first shot of that war on behalf of the United States, on an armed German supply ship trying to force its way out of San Juan Bay. As members of the "Porto Rico Regiment" they were sent to Panama to guard and defend the Panama Canal Zone. In New York, many Puerto Ricans of African descent joined the 396th Infantry Regiment which was mostly composed of African Americans. As members of the 396th Infantry Regiment, also known as the "Harlem Hellfighters," they were not allowed to fight alongside their white counterparts; however, they were permitted to fight as members of a French unit in French uniforms and were awarded the French Croix de guerre. Before the United States entered World War II, Puerto Ricans were already fighting on European soil, not only in the Rif War, but also on both sides of the Spanish Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Puerto Rican Military Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920’s and 1930’s when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother’s keeper.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)