GUEST POST: Charlotte Marchant on mapping Black GI bases in Britain
Earlier this year, The Mixed Museum received funding from Anglia Ruskin University’s Safe & Inclusive Communities Fund for our Director, Dr Chamion Caballero, to work with Professor Lucy Bland and independent researcher Charlotte Marchant to investigate the locations of Black GIs bases in East Anglia during WW2. Building on her previous work into Black GI bases in Cornwall, the funding allowed Charlotte to visit the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington. It also provided space for the team – assisted by TMM’s intern Ivan Lin from UCL – to explore how digital mapping could help us showcase the findings, and develop plans to extend the mapping project to locate all Black GI bases in the UK.
In this special guest post, Charlotte shares the project’s background and methodology, and how the team plans to build on the findings.
Revisiting Phil Grinton’s unit station lists
I began this project and new phase of research, by travelling to the US National Archives in College Park, Maryland to consult and photograph the most relevant records of interest. Specifically, the military histories of individual units based in East Anglia, as well as the European Theatre of Operations USA (ETOUSA) station lists detailing the locations of all US Armed Forces units, both Black and white, stationed in the UK at regular intervals during the war.
Importantly, the vast majority of these documents have not yet been digitised and/or are only partially available as both secondary and tertiary sources. The most valuable of these online secondary sources has undoubtedly been retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Phil Grinton’s meticulously transcribed station lists produced around the early 2000s. Over the years, these have also been crucial for other researchers studying the deployment and activities of US forces in the UK during the war, parts of which have been cited and feature most prominently on the websites of museums such as the American Air Museum and The D-Day Story, Portsmouth."
Despite the usefulness of these lists and their wide dissemination online, Grinton’s transcribed lists have inherent limitations. Firstly, they are purely textual, frequently use complex military abbreviations and have limited interpretation for general public consumption. Secondly, and arguably most importantly from a researcher’s perspective, as with any transcription task carried out by hand, there are inevitably errors. This was particularly true for certain dated station lists, where the primary source makes no distinction between Black and white units, meaning that Grinton had to fill in the gaps himself. It has therefore been crucial to assess the reliability and validity of such sources, noting any absences and errors.
Visiting the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington
With four full days in the archive to gather as many primary sources as possible, I spent the first three photographing as many British station lists as I could. Although US units were present in the country as early as 1942, the first available station list at NARA starts in June 1943. Because of the constant movement within the army, these lists were republished every two to three weeks, an administrative formality that continued for several years beyond the end of the war and covered various military theatres. To give an idea of the scale of my task, by the immediate lead-up to the Normandy landings in June 1944, when the number of Americans in Britain had reached peak numbers, lists were exceeding 200 A4-sized pages. In total, I took over 20,000 photographs in three days.
While photographing these lists was both exciting and gratifying, the personal highlight of my trip came on the fourth day, which I dedicated to uncovering unit histories. It was then that I discovered uncatalogued photographs tucked away in the back of some histories and handwritten accounts. It is quite likely that many of these unit histories and photographs have not been looked at in decades, if at all.
Locating Black GI units in Britain: cohesion, collaboration and interpretation
The next stage of the project was to determine how to compile this research and interpret it for the benefit of our public audiences. To experiment with data visualisation and mapping, I chose to focus on a single date and a specific area of East Anglia: 21 February 1944 and the county of Suffolk, which housed the most units on this date. I then integrated all aspects of the data to form a comprehensive picture. For instance, the 21 February 1944 station list details all units in the area, while the unit histories provide information on the number of men (strength, that is, the numbers of men in the unit), role, and movement of each unit and, in rarer cases, personnel details and photographs. NARA also has a dedicated photographic collection containing other images that fit into this picture.
To visualise and enhance this data with digital mapping, we worked closely with Ivan Lin, then a master’s candidate in Digital Humanities at UCL and intern at The Mixed Museum (TMM), who provided expert guidance on selecting an appropriate digital mapping system, prioritising accessibility, searchability, and long-term sustainability. As part of his three-week remote placement at TMM, Ivan produced an invaluable report assessing the mapping options available to us, as well as their pros and cons. As a result of Ivan’s recommendations, we will be using Google Maps to host the data due to its functionality, user familiarity, digital sustainability and potential for hosting increasingly complex layers. Currently, I am building a Google Maps model to visually represent my compilation of research and produce a pilot map of Black units in Suffolk on 21 February 1944.
It has been so encouraging to see the level of interest in the project, even at this early stage, from both military historians and those with a personal connection to the history, not least the ‘brown babies’ of WW2. We are grateful to ARU’s Safe and Inclusive Communities Fund for supporting this initial investigation, and are hopeful that the results from this proof of concept project will allow us to make a compelling case for funding a larger collaborative interactive mapping project, incorporating a wider geographical area and time period.
Charlotte Marchant
Read about Charlotte’s research into Black GI bases in Cornwall
Learn about the background to the Mapping Project and read Ivan's reflections on his placement with us
Visit the ‘brown babies’ of WW2 digital exhibition at TMM to learn more about the experiences of Black GIs in Britain
NARA photographic references
“Personnel of HQ and HQ Det, 529th QM Btn as of 22 Apr 44”. April 1944, enclosed in 529th QM Battalion Unit History, Jan 1943 – Dec 1944; Unit Histories, 1940 – 1967; Quartermaster Battalions; Records of U.S. Army Operational, Tactical, and Support of Organizations (World War II and Thereafter); Record Group 338; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Photograph No 3A 13056; “A modern paving machine is used by these members of an aviation engineer battalion while constructing an airfield in England. 826 Aviation Engineer Battalion. Eye, Northants, England. June 1943”. June 1943; War Theatre 12 – England - Fields & Installations; Prints: Photographs of U.S. Air Force and Predecessor Agencies Activities, Facilities and Personnel – World War II and Korean War, ca. 1940 – ca. 1980; Record Group 342 – FH; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.