Daily Times

The village of Bamber Bridge in northwestern England is proud of the blow it struck against racism in the U.S. military during World War II. When an all-Black truck regiment was stationed in the village, residents refused to accept the segregation ingrained in the U.S. Army. Ignoring pressure from British and American authorities, pubs welcomed the GIs, local women chatted and danced with them, and English soldiers drank alongside men they saw as allies in the war against fascism.

But simmering tensions between Black soldiers and white military police exploded on June 24, 1943, when a dispute outside a pub escalated into a night of gunfire and rebellion that left Private William Crossland dead and dozens of soldiers from the truck regiment facing court martial. When Crossland’s niece learned about the circumstances of her uncle’s death from an Associated Press reporter, she called for a new investigation to uncover exactly how he died. The community has chosen to focus on its stand against segregation as it commemorates the 80th anniversary of what’s now known as the Battle of Bamber Bridge and America reassesses its past treatment of Black men and women in the armed forces.

“I think maybe it’s a sense of pride that there was no bigotry towards (the soldiers),” said Valerie Fell, who was just 2 in 1943 but whose family ran Ye Olde Hob Inn, the 400-year-old thatched-roof pub where the conflict started. “They deserved the respect of the uniform that they were wearing. … That’s how people felt about it.” That was in stark contrast to the treatment Black soldiers received in the wartime Army, which was still segregated by law. The men of the 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment (Aviation) stationed at Bamber Bridge complained that they received poor food and often had to sleep in their trucks when they stopped at white bases, according to evidence presented during the court martial proceedings. They also said white military police harassed Black troops, hassling them for minor transgressions that were often ignored for other soldiers.

Black soldiers accounted for about 10% of the American troops who flooded into Britain during the war. Serving in segregated units led by white officers, most were relegated to non-combat roles such as driving trucks that delivered supplies to military bases. U.S. authorities tried to extend those policies beyond their bases, asking pubs and restaurants to separate the races.

Bamber Bridge, then home to about 6,800 people, wasn’t the only British community to resist this pressure. In a country that was almost entirely white, there was no tradition of segregation, and after four years of war, people welcomed any help they received from overseas. What’s different about Bamber Bridge is the desire of local people to preserve this story and pass it on to others, said Alan Rice, co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research at the University of Central Lancashire. “If we’re going to have a fight against racism or fascism, these are the stories we need to talk about,” Rice said. “If you’re fighting fascism, which these people were, it’s ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous, that the U.S. Army (were) encouraging a form of fascism – segregation.”

Clinton Smith, head of the Black history group in nearby Preston, was among those who revived interest in the Battle of Bamber Bridge in the 1980s when he discovered bullet holes in the side of a bank and started asking long-time residents what had happened.