by Lynne Olson
The home visit idea, however, ran into immediate roadblocks. Many U.S. military commanders opposed it, preferring their troops to have as little contact with local citizens as possible. In a letter to her parents, Janet Murrow noted that several of her British friends, who were anxious to entertain GIs, had been rebuffed by American military authorities and were “bewildered, hurt, and completely baffled.” She added: “Many, many opportunities to make friends are being missed—and it’s not the fault of the British.”
But the fiercest opponent of closer American-British interaction was the American Red Cross, which the U.S. Army had placed in charge of GIs’ welfare in Britain when they were away from their bases. The Red Cross operated dozens of clubs for American troops throughout the country, including the famed Rainbow Corner in Piccadilly Circus, which boasted snack bars serving hamburgers and Cokes, hot showers, pinball machines, jukeboxes, a shoeshine parlor, and pool tables. The Red Cross clubs were meant to be distinctly American oases, offering homesick GIs a cornucopia of homestyle comforts and amenities that could be found nowhere else in Britain. Indeed, if the American Red Cross had had its way, it and the clubs it ran would have been completely isolated from Britain and its people.
Unfortunately for the organization, the British had a great deal to do with the clubs: the British government had paid for their acquisition, renovation, and equipment, and British women, most of them Women’s Voluntary Service members, made up the vast majority of their staffs. Red Cross officials couldn’t do much about that—there weren’t enough American women in Britain to staff the clubs—but they did insist that the WVS members doff their own distinctive outfits and put on American Red Cross uniforms if they were to continue working in what was meant to be an all-American environment. “The men in these facilities we run have a right to expect to come into contact only with Americans,” one Red Cross official declared.
Not surprisingly, Lady Reading and her members were furious. The WVS head protested directly to Eisenhower, who was sympathetic but could not budge the Red Cross from its stand. “The British women … rightfully feel they have earned [their uniforms] through their service in the blitzes, and this is certainly true,” Harry Butcher mused in his diary. “If the situation was reversed, what would American women do? You know damn well.”
The American Red Cross further isolated the GIs to whom it catered by imposing a partial ban on British and other Allied troops from its clubs. (Non-American soldiers were allowed in only if a GI invited them to share a meal. They were not permitted to use any of the clubs’ other facilities.) While still a WAAF, Mary Lee Settle was turned away from Rainbow Corner during one of her leaves in London. It made no difference that she was an American, a Red Cross supervisor told Settle. She was in a British uniform, and Rainbow Corner was not a place for Allied troops. Settle stared hard at the woman. “All right,” she said. “And if you want to join the war sometime, I’ll lend you my uniform.” She stormed out and never set foot in the place again.
In a letter passed on to George Marshall, Anthony Eden accused the American Red Cross of building barriers rather than bridges between American soldiers and British citizens, adding that the organization “deliberately discourages any intrusion of British friendliness.” James Warburg, the head of the Office of War Information’s foreign propaganda department, agreed. “The greatest danger to Anglo-American relations resulting from the presence of American troops in Great Britain,” Warburg told Eisenhower, “appears to be the [desire] of some of our government and private agencies … to build a little America within the British Isles.”
Roosevelt and Marshall, however, made no apologies for supplying GIs in privation-plagued Britain with as many of the comforts and conveniences of home as they could. It was important, they believed, to keep the morale of these citizen soldiers, most of them draftees, as high as possible while they prepared for battle. In the last two years of the war, considerable scarce shipping space was used to transport such goods as meat, fresh vegetables and fruits, coffee, eggs, and cigarettes to Britain for GI consumption. When British officials urged him to let their country supply U.S. troops with food, Roosevelt replied bluntly: “American soldiers could not live on British rations.” Any attempt to cut back on the GIs’ relatively high standard of living, Marshall told one British official, would lead to “thousands of mothers writing to their Congressmen to complain that the American army authorities were not providing properly for their sons.”
Though Eisenhower agreed with his superiors about the importance of keeping up the troops’ morale, he bemoaned the fact that most of the soldiers under his command, while demanding the rights and privileges of American citizenship, had little knowledge of or interest in living up to the responsibilities that came with that citizenship. “Differences between democracy and totalitarianism were matters of academic rather than personal interest,” Eisenhower wrote. “Soldiers saw no apparent reason why the conflict between the two was any concern of America.” There was, he added, “a dismaying lack of comprehension on the part of our soldiers as to the fundamental causes of the war.”
A young Army sergeant named Forrest Pogue, who years later would write a highly acclaimed biography of Marshall, echoed Eisenhower’s concerns. During the war, Pogue observed, he often talked with his buddies about “the listlessness of the American soldier, and the fact that he seldom seemed to know what he was fighting for. Some of [my friends] argued that there had never been any reason for our coming over, that all the U.S. needed was a strong navy. I doubted if we could ever make people see what they were fighting for, unless we were invaded.”
IN THE SUMMER of 1942, Gil Winant wrote a letter to Roosevelt, urging that something be done to minimize the vast difference in pay between British and U.S. troops. Among his suggestions was a campaign to encourage GIs to buy special high-interest Treasury bonds that could be redeemed as soon as they were discharged. FDR rejected the ambassador’s ideas, declaring that there was “no simple and wholly satisfactory solution” to the problems created by the Americans’ comparatively high pay and living conditions.
Problems there certainly were. As Winant had feared, the GIs’ superior rations, smart uniforms, greater pay, and access to a plethora of consumer items caused resentment and hostility among many Britons, particularly among servicemen who envied the popularity of the free-spending Americans with young British women. “They could have looked like Quasimodo,” observed one British soldier, “and it would have made no difference, as long as they were American.” Another Tommy declared: “The Yanks were the most joyful thing that ever happened to British womanhood. They had everything—money in particular, glamour, boldness, cigarettes, chocolate, nylons, Jeeps….”
When they arrived in Britain, American soldiers were handed a small newspaper with the word WELCOME emblazoned in large capital letters on the front page. Underneath was the message: “Wherever you go in this country, you will be among friends. Our fighting men look upon you as comrades and brothers-in-arms.” But, as one former GI remarked, “Some of these brothers finished up in the arms of [British soldiers’] sweethearts and even wives…. I think the Tommies had good grounds for resentment.”
Frequent barroom brawls between British and American soldiers were among the problems with which Winant and the U.S. military had to deal. Another was a venereal disease epidemic among GIs in late 1943 and 1944. Approximately 30 percent of the VD cases were contracted in London, where armies of prostitutes, armed with flashlights in the blackout, congregated around Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and other popular GI haunts. “In the darkness of London 1944, every doorway was a love nest,” recalled an American military policeman.
Many proper young British women were warned by their parents and others that Americans “were wild, promiscuous, and a threat to every female under 70” and that no nice girl would ever consent to be seen with them. Yet, when they actually encountered GIs, they discovered that, while brash and flirtatious, a good number of the
Yanks were not the lecherous ogres they had been made out to be. “There was a hard core of drinkers and womanizers,” observed one woman who had been a teenager during the war. She added, however, that most Americans she met treated her with courtesy and respect—and at the same time injected gaiety and laughter into an atmosphere notably deficient of both.
She was hardly alone in that view. Although the GIs’ swaggering boastfulness and determination to enjoy themselves grated on many Britons’ nerves, others found their zest for life to be a welcome antidote to the numbing austerity and gray monotony of wartime life in Britain. “As good as a tonic,” one Briton called the Americans. A teenager in Liverpool declared: “The arrival of the GIs was certainly something our drab, dreary old town needed.” A woman who worked at an American military club during the war noted that entering the club “was like stepping into another world. The war, rationing, and coupons were all forgotten.” When she left each night, “I would step out into the blackout, back to reality, leaving behind the warmth and friendship of America.”
WHILE THE QUESTION of GIs and sex proved to be a major headache for U.S. and British authorities, the issue of race was even more explosive. The American military was rigidly segregated, and the more than 100,000 U.S. black soldiers in Britain were kept as separate as possible from their white counterparts, both at work and off duty. Pubs, dance halls, and clubs in some towns were designated for whites or blacks only. In other places, an elaborate system of rotating passes was set up, to allow blacks and whites to go into town on different nights.
Britain, which then had very few blacks within its borders, was not a segregated country, and its citizens, many of whom had never seen a nonwhite person, were shocked by the American policy—and the blatant racism that underlay it. As Eisenhower explained to his bosses in Washington: “To most English people, including the village girls—even those of perfectly fine character—the Negro soldier is just another man.” U.S. military leaders didn’t see it that way. Having initially resisted the inclusion of blacks in the Army, they were forced by Roosevelt to accept a 10 percent quota of black soldiers in every theater of war, most of whom were then assigned to menial noncombatant duties, such as peeling potatoes, cleaning latrines, and digging ditches. In the minds of the British, such marginalization and discrimination were particularly unseemly on the part of an ally that claimed to be fighting for freedom and democracy for all men.
Britons were especially appalled by the intense hostility and contempt that some white GIs, many of them from the segregated South, showed to their black colleagues. They refused to enter pubs that served black Americans, tried to evict blacks from pubs and dance halls, declined to dance with British girls who had danced with blacks, and smashed glasses from which blacks had drunk. When a British airman invited a black soldier to sit down in a compartment on a crowded train from Cardiff to York, a white GI shouted, “Get out, you goddamned nigger!” The Tommy later said he told the American “to belt up, and he came for me. My teeth were knocked right through my tongue.” An aircraft worker from Blackpool recalled: “I have personally seen the American troops literally kick—and I mean kick—the coloured soldiers off the pavement, yelling ‘stinking black pigs’ and ‘black trash’ and ‘uppity niggers.’ ”
The British government, caught in the middle of this burgeoning controversy between its own people and its most vital ally, tried to have it both ways. Officially, government leaders distanced themselves from the U.S. segregation policy, declaring that Britain would not sanction “discrimination as regards the treatment of coloured troops” and that there “must be no restriction of facilities.” Unofficially, however, they supported the policy, ordering the British military to instruct their forces, particularly those in the women’s branches, not to socialize with black Americans. “It was desirable,” the War Cabinet concluded, “that the people of this country should avoid becoming too friendly with coloured American troops.” Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s minister of information, wrote: “The American policy of segregation is the best practical contribution to the avoidance of trouble. Let us second it in every way.”
Black servicemen, however, were very popular among the British public, who viewed them as polite, soft-spoken, and self-effacing—that is, much like the British themselves. “The general consensus of opinion,” George Orwell remarked, “seems to be that the only American soldiers with decent manners are the Negroes.” Another Englishman commented: “I don’t mind the Yanks, but I don’t care much for the white fellows they’ve brought with them.” A sizable percentage of Britons, taken aback by their government’s complicity in a policy they considered immoral, resisted any official attempt to treat black GIs as inferior human beings. “The opinion has been expressed from many quarters,” a Ministry of Information report noted, “that we should not allow American views on this matter to be imposed on this country.”
When the order to keep aloof from black Americans was read to one British Army bomb disposal squad, its members responded with scornful hoots and jeers. “It savoured of Hitlerism,” remarked one squad member. “ ‘Just like Hitler and the Jews’ was our reaction to the order.” Pubs displayed signs on their doors reading: “For British people and coloured Americans only.” On some buses, conductors told blacks not to give up their seats to whites because “they were in England now.” When a black GI, on the basis of extremely tenuous evidence, was found guilty of rape and sentenced to death, there was a huge public outcry in the country. Deluged with protesting letters and phone calls, Eisenhower ordered an investigation of the case, which found the evidence to be insufficient. The serviceman was cleared of the charge and restored to duty.
The race question became even more sensitive when white GIs humiliated or attacked blacks who were citizens of British Commonwealth countries. In one case, Learie Constantine, a famed cricket player from the West Indies, was asked to leave a hotel after several American officers staying there threatened to cancel their reservations if he was not ejected. In another instance, a West Indian sergeant in the RAF was beaten up by two Americans for dancing with a white girl. “The Negro British nationals are rightly incensed,” admitted one U.S. Army commander. “They … have been cursed, made to get off the sidewalk, leave eating places, and separated from their white wives by American soldiers.”
More enlightened than most American military leaders when it came to race, Eisenhower tried to crack down on such attacks. He also forbade U.S. commanders to restrict black soldiers’ association with British civilians and ordered that black GIs be treated no differently than whites. “The colored troops,” he told American reporters, “are to have everything as good” as their white counterparts. But, as was true in the United States, equality, when accompanied by segregation and ingrained racism, proved to be impossible to achieve. Despite Eisenhower’s directives, many local commanders turned a blind eye to instances of discrimination on and off their bases.
Overall, few Americans in wartime Britain acquitted themselves well in regard to their country’s treatment of blacks. Ed Murrow, for example, offered a tortured semi-defense of an indefensible institution—slavery—during a discussion of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the BBC. An outspoken liberal on most social issues, Murrow had been raised by poor Southern parents whose families had strong ties to the Confederacy; one of his grandfathers had fought in the Confederate army. While acknowledging that the system of slavery had produced “abuses,” Murrow insisted that slaves were “well cared for generally” and argued that “American slavery was on the whole a humane and civilized institution compared with the present practices of the Germans”—a breathtakingly lame defense, as the CBS broadcaster assuredly knew.
Clearly conflicted by the racial question, Murrow, at the same time, was not averse to letting his fellow Americans know how black servicemen felt about their mistreatment by fellow soldiers. During the making of the CBS dramatic series An American in England, Joseph Julian, one of the actors, recorded an interview wi
th a black Army corporal, who made clear how much he preferred the company of the British to his own countrymen. “Sure, man, they drink with you, they talk with you. There ain’t no difference with them. I’d like to stay here after the war except the United States is still your home, and you have a feeling you want to go back to your home, no matter how bad things are.”
Julian asked Norman Corwin, the creator, writer, and producer of the series, to include the interview in one of the episodes. Noting that it might stir up trouble at home, Corwin agreed but said the final decision was Murrow’s. When he was shown the dialogue, Murrow slammed a fist into the palm of his hand and exclaimed: “Let’s do it! Let’s raise a little hell back home!” The series’ next program contained the corporal’s remarks.
For his part, Gil Winant, concerned about the prospect of trouble, expressed some reservations to Roosevelt early in the war about the advisability of sending black GIs to Britain. Once the decision was made, however, the ambassador, by all accounts, worked hard to lessen the resulting strife and tension that cropped up between Americans and Britons and black and white GIs. At the U.S. embassy’s initiative, the British-American Liaison Board, a joint Anglo-American committee, was set up to investigate and try to settle problems between the British public and American troops. Winant recruited Janet Murrow as the committee’s chief U.S. representative; for several months, she traveled throughout the country, reporting on clashes between white and black American soldiers and other instances of local friction.