Oral histories
Hear the real, lived experiences of Caribbean Londoners who served in the Second World War. Meet Connie, Hector and Sam.
London Museum has a collection of around 5,000 oral histories dating between 1985 to today, which capture lived experiences of London.
The following clips are recorded in the mid-late 1990s, with Caribbean Londoners who served during the Second World War.
Some language in these clips may be offensive and outdated. It is presented as it exists in the original audio recording for the benefit of research. This material in no way reflects the views of London Museum. Understand more about how we manage sensitive content.
Connie Mark
Connie Mark MBE BEM was born and raised in Jamaica and joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War. She later settled in London and was a community activist championing causes such as the memorialisation of Mary Seacole and West Indian veterans.
Clip one
Change in that all these white men came down from England. And I remember they took trucks and they go all in the mountains, all the little nooks and crannies, and encouraging all the young men to come to fight for Britain. And a lot of them, they just bungled them. A lot of them were underage. They just bungled them in the trucks, brought them to Kingston, gave them a thing, brought them on a boat and brought them to war. But 100% of them who came at that time came for the RAF. They were more RAF than they were Army.
Clip two
Things with names. People reported missing. People reported dead. And these charts were downtown Kingston in the square. And every day you'd go down and see. And you might see your friend's father reported missing or your friend's brother, or you might have been in school and see somebody bawling the next day and coming in, "Oh, my brother just died," reported missing or reported dead. So we knew there was a war on all right. And then afterwards, because I was a senior secretary, whenever the troop ships were coming in, I had to go down and meet it with my boss to get the medical reports. So, you would see people coming in, one on one foot in plaster cast.
Clip three
There's another woman again. She worked in an ammunition factory in London, and the ammunition factory was bombed, and all the shrapnels... When I had to type the report, I literally can remember I went cold. And one day she came and lift up her dress and showed me, and I shuddered at it. Her skin looked as if they were playing naughts and crosses on it, because the shrapnels went all over her body.
Clip four
... you know? And having to type the medical reports really brought home what war was to me. And, I mean, I was coming up 20, 21. I was still... I mean, in a way, in my formative years, because I went to school, I went to college, and I was nearly 20. And at that time, I'd never been to a dance.
Hector Watson
Hector was born and raised in Jamaica and served in the RAF during the Second World War. He was in Coventry on VE Day and later settled in London.
Clip one
We gave plane. We had a squadron. Jamaica Squadron, 139 Squadron.
We also sent men from the West Indies right to where is was started the Panama Canal, to enlargen it. The greater miracle was supplied food to the United Kingdom throughout the war. It was West Indians who went there to work on the farms for them. The ammunition factories was West Indian who went there to work in the factories. Well, they call it ammunition workers.
Clip two
In England, where the war broke out, Churchill, Bevin and the trade union man in those days, deciding to take technicians. At that time, I was too young. They take technicians to the factories here, in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, in the Midlands where they had the factories, Manchester, Liverpool. Young boys.
They recruited lumberjacks from Guiana, British Honduras, take them up to Scotland. And one of the lords up in Scotland there, whose estate they were on, went down to the war office and says, "These boys won't work." I think it was then Anthony Eden. Anthony Eden was Foreign Secretary. He says, "How you mean those boys won't work?"
He says, "They just won't do enough work." He says, "What you do for them? What's the entertainment?" He says, "Oh, no entertainment. I take them up there, put them down." He said, "What are the clothes they have?" "Their tropical clothes." He says, "Look, man, you go back. Give them warm gears. Don't confine them to the camp. Let them go out."
The next week, they couldn't control them. Yeah, they were chopping down the damn trees then so damn fast. Then they say, "Okay, they are good." They recruited more.
Clip three
In the Merchant Navy a lot of West Indians lost their life in the Merchant Navy, because the ships that come down to Trinidad, with a skeleton crew, load up with the oil to come across, take on new crews. Flipping U-boats outside their... As they two days out. They blow them up. So the contribution towards the war was very, very great.
Clip four
1939, September. No, okay, I'm picturing myself where I was at the time. Was it a Sunday? But the church bells rung. And then they went silent. Yeah, the church bells, they all around. Oh, you could hear the sound all over the country, that's very clear. And then it affect us otherwise because we couldn't get the shipping coming in and going out.
Clip five
Oh, yes. By 1940, you could see the difference. We had blackouts, just like here. We have prisoners coming in. Refugees coming in. When they were bombarding Malta, the Maltese, they ship them there. The Germans in the Caribbean, where they get them as prisoner and all that, they send them there.
Sam King
Sam King MBE was born and raised in Jamaica and served in the RAF during the Second World War. He later returned to England on the Empire Windrush and worked for the RAF and Royal Mail. He became Mayor of the London Borough of Southwark in 1983/84 and co-founded the Windrush Foundation in 1995.
Clip one
The fact that the British empire was at war, I don't think it was perfect, but I think it was better than Nazi Germany. So I wanted to join the armed service. But you could not because you were from the colony, so I had to do farming. When England was on the threshold of losing the war, by 1942, I think John Bull realised they couldn't beat Nazi Germany.
And then they asked, "For God's sake, send us more plane." And Jamaica was the first place outside of Britain to put pennies together. And I was at school when we collected pennies, put in the place to buy a squadron of spitfires. A lot of people don't realise that. Outside of England, Jamaica was the first place to buy a squadron of spitfires because I think it was Taffat Crips said "For God's sake, send us more planes."
Clip two
I've got to add here, somewhere over there, in the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica, that they're asking for people to join the Royal Air Force to help the mother country. And the promise is if you joined, that when you return you'll have a job. That was very important.
So, although it sounds good, you have to go and have a test. And I went to put, and naturally you applied to that and they send you the relative information, you fill it all up. And they give you a date to go to the test station station.
When I went there, I would say there was about 2,000 people. A lot of people. And there were examination. Although you wanted to come to war, not as simple as that. You had to take a test.
Clip three
Oh, yes. About a fortnight after we went to Mona, which is Palisades, which is now University of Jamaica. And once you were in, you... Naturally, you sign and you were in. The Queen's Regulations were read to you, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, I never get a chance to go back to Jamaica.
We did a month's training and we had two hours or about an hour's leave before you left. And one Sunday morning, we were on a troop ship and that was that.
