Rawls is meant to be the most well-spoken of these three. He reads a lot, and is self-educated. But it did seem more natural for him to slip in to a patois as he riled himself up about Walter’s “passing”. So I guess your analysis is correct.

But I’m not sure that was a conscious decision on m part. I think it’s more that these are new characters, and I haven’t quite nailed down their voices. I’m also fairly self-conscious about their dialogue. I want to give them distinctive and realistic speech patterns, but I’m really concerned about overdoing it. I don’t want them to come across like caricatures. It may take me a little while to settle into a rhythm.

Exactly. Rawls isn’t completely right when he ways that they “don’t put colored soldiers on no posters,” but his point is valid. Propaganda itself was segregated, just like everything else. There was propaganda for whites and propaganda for blacks, and they didn’t overlap.

As a propaganda figure, the Bombardier is a heroic character, and the racial climate of the time would never let a black man be portrayed as a hero, and especially not as a member of a primarily white group of heroes.

I guess the problem would be more likely that he is officer grade, not crew grade. At least that is what I noticed while being around US military (in the nineties). The gap between officer ranks and crew are way bigger than, for example, the german army. Of course, the gap was bigger in the british army and even more in the french.

Wow, really? Thanks for the information.

The Air Force didn’t become a separate branch of the armed services until 1947. At the time of WWII, it was part of the Army.

Huh and you are right. In the photos and video evidence of the times the flag was stars to the rear on patches or armbands. Probably just goes to show that military decisions tend not to wax poetic during large scale wars.

While the article is correct on the the hows and whys of the flag patch on the modern military uniform, it’s not true of the uniform during and after WW2. Actually, the flag patch wasn’t a part of the army uniform during WW2, if we want to get really historically accurate about it. They were worn specifically by paratroopers during the invasion of France to identify them as American, because they were dropped behind enemy lines and were at risk of being mistaken for Axis soldiers by the main assault forces approaching from the coast. We’ve chosen to include it on the uniforms of certain members of The Specialists, but at this point even in our alternate universe its usage is not standard.