Lawrence Brooks, the oldest World War II veteran, died Wednesday at 112 years old in his native Louisiana.
Drafted in 1940, Brooks served in a segregated U.S. army as part of the mostly Black 91st Engineer Battalion where he climbed the ranks to Private 1st Class. Originally from a small village outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana he often recalled the freedom he experienced while part of the battalion stationed in Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines.
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“I was treated so much better in Australia than I was by my own white people. I wondered about that,” he once said, according to NBC News.
Brooks returned home to a Jim Crow era South and found work as a forklift operator until he retired in his 70s. He did not receive GI Bill benefits when he left the army and had to give up his dream of going to school.
“He served the same five years. He was bombed and strafed in the South Pacific but was not offered a low-interest bank loan, a reduced down payment for a house, or an education,” said Vanessa Brooks, his daughter and caregiver, according to NPR.
