Red and Yellow

I read a bit more about our village in wartime. One million US troops were stationed in UK prior to the Normandy landings. 100,000 of them were black, many from southern, Jim Crow states where segregation was the law throughout the war. Eleanor Roosevelt urged her husband that segregation within the army should be abolished, but the generals were adamant that the army was no place for "social experimentation" during a war

The UK cabinet was worried, partly on purely racist grounds - such as the effect on the morale of British forces abroad that their unprotected wives and daughters back home might be debauched by black men - but some more nuanced concerns included how the hosting of a segregated army might affect the many Commonwealth troops stationed here, or how the enemy might use the fact in propaganda. Also, were the British police force to help enforce the segregation of American troops (they did not, but they allowed US military police to do so)?

Cities were partitioned into black zones and white zones. Towns and villages were open only to white troops on one night, and only black the next. Our village hosted only black soldiers, commanded by a handful of white officers. Chipping Norton was the same until a white battalion moved in, and black troops there were told that their time off was to be spent in villages such as ours

The little book about our village points out that these black men were fighting fascism in the name of 'freedom' - a freedom that they could not expect to enjoy in full themselves, even if they secured a victory

All very fascinating, but thankfully this kind of overt racial prejudice is confined to the past and not something a modern cabinet has to spend much time on

The moment in the year has arrived when we suddenly notice the flowering currant is in bloom - nature's signal that the beekeeping season is upon us (watch this space). Sometimes, the Forsythia is over before the currant appears - I think the cold and rain has held it back this year, and they make a gaudy combination - all the richer for being intermingled