I, like Hugh Muir (Opinion, 31 December), have enjoyed Linda Hervieux’s recent book Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-day’s Black Heroes. Her research on how the Welsh people greeted the black GIs was reinforced by Ralph Ellison, who later in 1952 published his landmark novel Invisible Man. Ellison spent some time in Britain in the US merchant navy during the war. His travels took him to Swansea, Cardiff and Barry in South Wales, and in 1944 he fictionalised his real experiences in a short story called In a Strange Country. He remembered the “warm hospitality of a few private homes” and a Red Cross club in Swansea where the ladies prepared “amazing things with powdered eggs and a delicious salad from the flesh of hares”. His time there was rounded off by a “memorable evening drinking in a private men’s club where the communal singing was excellent”. Of course many British people hoped that the war would soon be over and therefore the stay of the black Americans would be short. A few years later, when the first permanent black residents made their way here, the attitudes of some people began to change.
Dr Graham Smith
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
• Jessie Prior may have been “a Welsh woman who had never seen a non-white person before”. She would, however, have known of Paul Robeson and his close connections with Wales before the second world war through his singing, his films and his support for the Welsh miners during some very hard times. He was respected and loved throughout Wales.
Gwyneth Pendry
Caergybi, Ynys Mon
• I was an evacuee in Camborne in Cornwall from 1940 to 1945. As the war progressed, forces arrived from the UK, the US, our European allies and the Commonwealth and empire whose collective aim was to ensure that D-day was a success. We would not have won the war without this help.
Among the many nationalities there were black GIs, serving in segregated units. All the forces were treated with respect and kindness.
I had the opportunity to hear all the black choirs from their segregated units. The Cornishmen sang in a stately, serious, hymn-like way but, in complete contrast, the black Americans had all the rhythms of Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and the jazz age. The movements of their bodies in time with their voices turned the Methodist chapels where they performed from sedate places of nonconformity into palaces of swing. I was hearing negro spirituals for the first time.
Cornwall being a musical place, the black GIs were not only praised for their performances but were offered the food special to Cornwall. We noticed their good manners and I know now that the surprise on their faces confirmed that they did not expect white people to treat them as equals and brothers.
It was not long after the second world war when racists reappeared with the common use of signs saying “no blacks and Irish” and the letters KBW, meaning “Keep Brixton White”. So many people believe there is an original British race and do not accept that all of us are descended from immigrants, making us a mongrel race who speak a mongrel language. Not only have we emigrated to many parts of the world to create an empire but we have also moved many other races around the world for our economic benefit.
Bill Coughlan
Chelmsford, Essex
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