This WWII battle wasn't against Nazis. It was between Black and white GIs in England
BAMBER BRIDGE, England — In the early 1980s, a Black maintenance worker in northern England noticed what he thought was termite damage in the wooden facade of a bank.
"I flippantly said to my colleagues, 'You've got big termites!'" Clinton Smith, now 70, recalls. "And they looked at me with complete dismay and said, 'No, they're not termite holes, lad — they're bullet holes.'"
They were bullet holes from a deadly World War II battle in Bamber Bridge, a tiny village in the northern English county of Lancashire. What surprised Smith most was that this battle wasn't against the Nazis. It was between Black and white U.S. soldiers stationed nearby.
When American troops deployed to Europe to fight Hitler, they brought Jim Crow with them. And when Black soldiers stationed in Bamber Bridge stood up to the racism and discrimination, one of them was shot dead, and more than 30 others were court-martialed for mutiny.
Eighty years later, they have yet to be exonerated.
The Battle of Bamber Bridge — which took place 80 years ago this weekend, on June 24-25, 1943 — was a precursor to battles that would unfold on American streets
