5/21/2023 0 Comments Still Life by A.M. Johnson![]() ![]() ![]() As far as anyone knew, he was buried in a pauper’s field in Albany. It didn’t take long for his wife and three children to leave. Johnson’s inability to hold down a job led him to the bottle. He made it back home to Albany, New York, and resumed his job as a Red Cap porter at the train station, but he never could overcome his injuries-his left foot had been shattered, and a metal plate held it together. He simply tried to carry on as well as a black man could in the country he had been willing to give his life for. Uneducated and in his early twenties, Henry Johnson had no expectations that he could correct the errors in his military record. His discharge records erroneously made no mention of his injuries, and so Johnson was denied not only a Purple Heart, but a disability allowance as well. With dozens of bullet and shrapnel wounds, he knew he was lucky to have survived. ![]() Like hundreds of thousands of young American men, Henry Johnson returned from World War I and tried to make a life for himself in spite of what he had experienced in a strange and distant land. ![]()
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