These came from evacuees, those who experienced the London Blitz and flying bombs, who were in the Royal Air Force, were prisoners of war, in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and those with memories of VE Day. Having stitched together all those I could find in archives with interviews I conducted myself, I ended up with a wide range of testimonies. the Imperial War Museum, the National Archives, the BBC) to find the testimonies. This often meant going through various archives (i.e. I was not always able to get first-hand testimonies myself, so for anyone I was unable to speak to directly, I instead searched the public domain for prior interviews they may have done.

Instead, I use a number of first-hand testimonies to help to give an insight, in the case of Under Fire, into what the war was like for many black people living in or serving with Britain. I do not come from an academic background and so academic theory and jargon are not part of my approach to recording and writing history. In all of my books, I have included first-hand testimonies of the people who made up this history. (See the link below for more on this within the RAF, and on Britain’s comparatively progressive attitude to black service personnel during World War 2). Their signs read:Īnd yet, Britain of course had not always been a place of complete racial equality either.Ĭolour bars had existed in the British Armed Forces before the war, though this was lifted in 1939. The author Anthony Burgess had spent time in the village of Bamber Bridge during the war and reported that when US military authorities requested pub landlords enact a US-style colour bar, they went along with it. The dispute eventually led to a street fight, and later a gun battle. This occurred when American military policemen got into a dispute in a pub with a black American serviceman.īritish people took his side of the argument against the MPs. Social lives, and, during the war, the services, were not racially divided in Britain.Ī prominent example of a literal clash between these two cultures was the 1943 Battle of Bamber Bridge. There are stories of white British people finding the hard line on racial segregation in the American military to be shocking. The black British experience was, in many ways, better than that of black American servicemen. Then there were the Armed Forces, and many black servicemen helped bolster numbers in the RAF, the Army and the Royal Navy. The efforts of these people were crucial to the home front.

Many volunteered to be civilian defence workers, such as firewatchers, air-raid wardens, firemen, stretcher-bearers, first aid workers and mobile canteen personnel.Īdditional factory workers, foresters and nurses were also recruited from across the Empire, including from Africa and the Caribbean.

In spite of racism, black people from across the British Empire, from places as far away as Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, came forward to help fight the Axis powers.įor those already in Britain, like Aunt Esther, black citizens were under fire along with the rest of the population.

Ww2 black book