Gilbert Johnson was born on October 30, 1905, to a farming family in rural Mount Hebron, Alabama.

In 1933, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve and was accepted into the Stewards Branch, the only job available to blacks at that time, where he served in the Navy for nearly 10 years.

[2] In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, requiring the Marine Corps to accept blacks and forbidding discrimination by military contractors.

He earned his nickname because during his initial Marine Corps training at Montford Point, he wore three service stripes (hashmarks) on the sleeve of his uniform, indicating his previous enlistments in the Army and Navy.

As a member of the 52d Defense Battalion, on Guam in World War II, Johnson asked that black Marines be assigned to combat patrols, from which they had been exempt.