Community Memories
Throughout the many statements collected by us, it was noticeable that there was the remembrance of the surprise seeing those Black troops suddenly arriving in a village and often referring that they had never seen a Black person before. All of them said that those African-Americans were kind, friendly and they were quite pleasant, ‘even more than the White ones’. People also remember fondly of the copious amount of food they shared with the British, and, yes, the gum and chocolate was a reality, with the children quite often chasing the Black GIs asking for treats.
According to our contributors, children would chase the soldiers asking for ‘gum, chum’! It was something they learned quite quickly after the arrival of the troops to the area.
Source: https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1007
Many sources refer to the first encounters of American troops and British people, since ‘close to three million American servicemen and women passed through Britain during the Second World War. Their arrival was heralded as a ‘friendly invasion’ when the first American GIs landed on Britain’s shores in 1942 bringing with them candy, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, nylons, and racial segregation’, being this last one a hard to swallow by locals. In fact, British people took the defence of the Black GIs quite seriously, demonstrating visibly and loudly that they would not discriminate and, in fact, they would prefer the Black Americans to the White ones, as “the general consensus of opinion is that the only American soldiers with decent manners are Negroes.”
