We just celebrated Memorial Day last month, which allowed us to recognize those men and women who have served our country in the military. There is one Sigma brother, Second Lieutenant Norwood C. Fairfax, that is a War World I hero, but very little is discussed about his heroic combat efforts on the Western Front. If you search his name you can find a few accounts of his defining moment in history, but our fraternity’s 1957 history book “Our Causes Speeds On??? gives some details about his death:
Brother Fairfax was one of the few Negro officers who were killed in action during the war. He met death in the Argonne sector of the Western Front on September 28, 1918. Ralph W. Tyler, the only accredited Negro correspondent with the American forces, reported the fatal engagement in these words:
“Recently, in an engagement already reported, a colored unit was ordered to charge, and take if possible, a very difficult objective held by the Germans. Captains Bro. Fairfax and Green, two colored officers, were in command of the detachments. They made the charge, running into several miles of barb-wire entanglements, and hampered by a murderous fire from nests of German machine guns which were camouflaged. Just before charging, one of the colored sergeants, running up to Captain Bro. Fairfax, said: ‘Do you know there is a nest of German machine guns ahead?’ The Captain replied: ‘I only know we have been ordered to go forward, and we are going.’ Those were the last words he said, before giving the command to charge, ‘into the jaws of death.’ The colored troops followed their intrepid leader with all the enthusiasm and dash characteristic of patriots and courageous fighters. They went forward, they obeyed the order, and as a result 62 men and two officers were listed in the casualties reported, Captains Bro. Fairfax and Green being among those who fell to rise no more. Captain Bro. Fairfax’s last words: ‘I only know we have been ordered to go forward, and we are going,’ are words that will forever live in the memory of their race; they are words that match those of Sergeant Carney, the color sergeant of the 54th Massachusetts during the Civil War, who, although badly wounded, held the tattered, shot-pierced Stars and Stripes aloft and exclaimed: ‘The old flag never touched the ground.’ Men who have served under Captains Bro. Fairfax and Green say two braver officers never fought ‘and fell.”
Salute to Bro. Fairfax who gave his life in a cause that left many men bewildered and brought on an uneasy peace that satisfied neither victor or vanquished.