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A month ago Kathy recommended this book. I have just finished reading the
copy sent me by the publisher. Yes, certainly a very readable book, but to
me immensely frustrating as sometimes the author jumps from one topic to
another in consecutive paragraphs.

 

I love this quotation from Alexander Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo,
introducing the chapter ‘Bombing the Reich’:

‘Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never
close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh
and open in the heart’

 

Mark Johnson, Caribbean Volunteers at War: The Forgotten Story of Britain’s
own “Tuskegee Airmen”, Pen & Sword 2014, £19,99

I was intrigued, and distressed, by the very title of this book: the
Tuskegee Airmen were a segregated force in the USA, while the West Indians
and Africans serving in the RAF during WWII were certainly NOT segregated.
Why on earth this unsuitable analogy? Didn’t the publishers question it?
Didn’t they know of the segregation in the American military?

When I read the Afterword I learned that the author was a relative of Flt.
Lt. John Blair, one of the airmen referred to and quoted again and again in
this book. And the author is a retired officer of the Jamaica Regiment, part
of the Jamaica Defence Force. This perhaps explains why reading the first
part of the book – I almost felt I was in conversation with the author, as
he jumps from one topic to the next, almost paragraph by paragraph. The
final chapters are a little more focussed.

So what can we learn? There is an introduction to the history of the
‘British West Indies’, but in our conversation I would ask questions about
the assertion of a wonderful education system in Jamaica, about the effect
of the presence of Canadian and US soldiers and the internment of German
POWs on the island, and then ask for an explanation for the imprisonment of
Bustamente by the colonial government. Brief accounts of U-boat activities
in the Caribbean Sea, the numbers of Black seamen in the merchant marine,
financial donations by West Indians, the official lifting of the colour bar
in the British military but its non-application, the forestry workers sent
to Scotland, are interspersed with bits of the personal histories of the
West Indians who had been accepted by the RAF.

The author argues that it was only because of the appalling death rates in
the RAF in the first year of the war that it was decided to accept at least
some of the Africans and West Indians who had made their own way to Britain,
and then to recruit in the colonies in the Caribbean. The personal histories
scattered throughout the book tell us about recruitment, training,
experiences in both the Fighter and Bomber commands, and then as POWs. 

Interestingly, from his interviews the author learned that the attitudes of
the English towards the Black crew stationed on a number of airfields was
‘curiosity rather than hostility’. (p.68) I wish he had asked questions
about the feelings these pilots, navigators, bombers on being told that
their aim was ‘the killing of German workers’ (p.73), the deaths of, for
example,  42,000 in the bombing of Hamburg and 100,000 in Dresden. We do
learn a little on how some felt about the horrific death rates of their
comrades – for example, 2,298 ‘Commonwealth aircrew’ died in the battles
around the Mediterranean (p.66) and 500 Bombers were lost in the bombing of
Berlin in 1943-4. (p.120) Twenty-five percent of the West Indian aircrew
received decorations.

An airman new to me is Arthur Young an 18-year old Black recruit from
Cardiff: an airgunner/wireless operator in Bomber Command who died when his
Lancaster bomber crashed. Another member of the crew was ‘a medical student
from the Punjab in India’. (pp.123-4 – sadly, no references) 

I also did not know that the RAF wanted to reinstate the colour bar in 1944,
but the Colonial Office opposed this. The Air Ministry then ‘in fact
implemented an unofficial policy of discrimination, whereby black candidates
were permitted to apply, but most selection boards were “verbally instructed
as to the course they should pursue”, which was to “eliminate them”’. In
1945 Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor advised on the ‘unsuitability of a
gentleman… who looks as though he has just dropped out of a tree for service
in an arm as prestigious as the RAF’. (p.158)

 

The book finishes with two appendices: a ‘List of Coloured Caribbean
Volunteer Aircrew 1939-1945’, which lists 495 men by ‘country’ of origin;
and brief biographies of five German fighter pilots and the commandant of
the main camp in which Caribbean POWs were interned.

So an interesting book, full of information scattered in bits and pieces
throughout all the chapters, and certainly wonderful quotations - a few from
published sources, but most from interviews. Sadly, the author appears not
to have known the books by Robert Murray (Lest We Forget), E. Martin Noble
(Jamaica Airman) Eric Ferron (“Man, You’ve Mixed”) or Amos A. Ford (Telling
the Truth), which might have been of some use when conducting his
interviews.

However, I must question the publishers for the extraordinary Bibliography,
which is not in alphabetical order, either by title or author. There is a
list of useful websites.