the war in their old non-combat service units. Though largely forgotten after the war, the temporary experiment with black combat troops proved a success - a small, but important step toward permanent integration during the Korean War. A total of 708 African Americans were killed in combat during World War II. In 1945, Frederick C. Branch became the first African-American United States Marine Corps officer. A blue plaque commemorating the contribution of African-American soldiers based in Wales during World War II was installed by the Nubian Jak Community Trust at RAF Carew Cheriton on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, June 6, 2019. The presence of African-American soldiers in the U.K. and subsequent encounters with the native population has been shown to have reduced the racial prejudice against black people if even decades later, and, for the most part, African American soldiers were more welcome in the countries of European Allies than U.S. officials wished them to be. But they were not welcome in some other parts of the world, which became a problem to be solved for Brig. Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1942, he told the War Department that, by his research, Black troops would not be welcomed for various reasons in Australia, Alaska, most of the south Caribbean nations, the British West Indies, Panama and Liberia. And U.S. military leaders themselves did not want them in Iceland, Greenland, Labrador and the British Isles. The War Department response to the information was mixed, and by 1944 the war had progressed into a need for all troops that could be deployed. As in World War I, Black soldiers were primarily channeled to support labor, most of them as members of the Quartermaster Corps. Among the most crucial and difficult of Quartermaster responsibilities was burial of the dead and the construction of temporary and permanent cemeteries. The best-known work of the Quartermaster Corps in World War II was the brief Red Ball Express, which ferried food, supplies and fuel along the rapid advance of Allied forces from the Normandy Invasion to the incursion into Germany. Six thousand trucks operating 24 hours a day, most with two African American drivers on circular routes carried 400,000 tons of supplies through increasingly liberated Europe between August 25 and November 16, 1944. The work was relentless, exhausting and dangerous, and credited with helping to bring about the ultimate success of the Normandy Invasion.