Berry explores widespread hatred and mistreatment of Black servicemen in the Great War. In particular, in her Historical Note, she emphasizes the importance of sex in the perpetuation of racism: “‘Degenerate’ Black men had to be kept far from white women” based on “fears of contaminating the ‘purity’ of the white race through interbreeding” (455). Despite incredibly patronizing and deeply racist US Army memos advising French military and civilians to avoid treating Black American soldiers with “familiarity and indulgence,” the “relatively egalitarian French embraced Black soldiers as brothers-in-arms” and “local women welcomed their company” (456).

Many white American servicemen resented this treatment of Black servicemen, believing that Black Americans “are a constant menace to the [white] American, who has to repress them sternly” (457). Joey’s tragic and brutal murder—“Bastards strangled him […] Beat his face in with their rifles”—is a consequence of this shocking racism, a retaliatory killing in response to Black Americans experiencing fair and kind treatment in France (228).

These racist views around sex and the myth of white purity also explain the difficulties that Aubrey and Colette experience as a couple in America in the 1920s; the union of a Black man and a white woman was perceived as deeply problematic and subversive.