By Audrey Dewjee
In 1944 a quiet part of the Yorkshire coast near the small seaside resort of Filey received two contingents of RAF recruits from around the Caribbean. RAF Hunmanby Moor was originally set up as the first training depot for the RAF Regiment which had been raised (after the loss of Crete) because it was felt that the RAF should have its own defensive troops. Subsequently the station provided courses of weapons training for other branches of the RAF, including aircrew members.
RAF Hunmanby Moor was the place decided upon for the Caribbean recruits to do their initial training in Britain, and where the decisions would be made about which trade they would follow in future. Two thousand men arrived in June. A further 2,000 arrived in November by which time many members of the first contingent had moved on, though some, who were waiting for training places in popular trades, were still there.
In winter, Hunmanby Moor was a cold bleak place and the accommodation was very basic. The Government had taken over the site from Billy Butlin, who had bought it just before war broke out as the location of his planned Filey Holiday Camp. The site was high up overlooking the great sweep of Filey Bay and it had its own railway station which was very handy for transporting large numbers of recruits. This is the story of one of them.
Charles Austin Dawkins was born in the little village of Bartons near Old Harbour (near Spanish Town), Kingston, Jamaica, in the parish of St. Catherine on 24 February 1919, the son of Martha Zipporah Dawkins and Elijah Morgan. He grew up in the countryside where rewarding work was hard to get. He didn’t receive a great deal of education in the Jamaica of the time, but he was remembered by those who knew him there as being naturally intelligent, kind and caring, who spent time helping youngsters with their schooling.
In 1943 the British Government started recruiting in the West Indies. Men between the ages of 18 and 32 were wanted to join the RAF and go to Britain to help the “Mother Country” fight against Nazi tyranny. On 22 September 1943 an advert appeared in the Kingston Gleaner, Charlie enlisted the following summer and is pictured below in his RAF uniform before leaving the island:
Adventurous young men from all over the Caribbean realised that, despite the dangers involved, this was a wonderful opportunity to escape the confines of a small island and see something of the world. Quite a number lied about their ages in order to enlist: younger ones adding a year or two to their ages and older men doing the opposite. Charlie Dawkins was 25 when he joined up on 28 July 1944.
The Caribbean volunteers did some initial training in Jamaica, and then set off on the long and dangerous journey to Britain. Sailing on the SS Cuba, Charlie and his fellow recruits first went to New York so that they could travel to Britain as part of a convoy. While crossing the Atlantic, ships could be attacked at any time. Some recruits describe watching a ship at the back of the convoy being picked off by U-boats and its bows going up in the air before it disappeared beneath the waves. Others describe the seasickness on the voyage and the terrible cold.
More mature than many of his colleagues, Charlie was no doubt a reassuring influence for the younger ones when they were far away from home and the going got tough.
Airmen in the first contingent arriving at Liverpool in June 1944 © IWM CH13438
Charlie travelled to Britain with the second contingent that arrived in Greenock, a port on the River Clyde in Scotland, in November 1944. The men were welcomed by a band and by members of the WRVS (Women’s Royal Voluntary Service) who handed out mugs of hot cocoa. From there they were sent by train to RAF Hunmanby Moor, which they reached on 12 November.
Even those in the first contingent who arrived in June 1944 had suffered from temperatures in Yorkshire that were much colder than they were used to back home in the West Indies. When doing gun practice, for example, their fingers were too cold to work efficiently. The men who arrived in November must have been horrified by the dark days, the rationed food, the uncomfortable accommodation and the bitterly cold weather. They had their first experience of snow, and before long a number of the men were taken ill with pneumonia.
The 2,000 men in the second contingent would have been less of a shock to the locals than the 2,000 who arrived in June, but they must still have been something of a novelty. Local reactions seem to have been varied. Hospitality was offered by the congregation of nearby Reighton Chapel, but other people were clearly afraid of their new neighbours. One recruit, Alex Elden, who would return to the UK on the Empire Windrush in 1948, recalled a visit to a shop in the town with three other men. The shop assistant came running downstairs to greet her customers but got such a fright at the sight of four black men that she ran to get a male colleague to serve them.
© IWM D21140 © IWM D21136
New recruits stayed at Filey for about six weeks, spending the time on weapons training, “square bashing” (doing military drill) and getting used to service life in war-torn Britain. They did a lot of Physical Training and no doubt at this early stage, Charlie’s powers as a runner became apparent to his instructors. After these initial weeks, the men started to be moved on to other RAF stations to begin training in the specific trade in which they were enrolled. The men were supposed to be able to choose which trade they wanted to follow and, while some got their choice, others wanting to join the most popular trades often found they had to make do with the one they were allocated.
Charlie moved on to the School of Administrative Trades, RAF Kirkham, Lancashire (beside the Blackpool to Preston Road) on 21 January 1945, before being sent on to RAF Bicester, Oxfordshire, on 5 April.
At the beginning of November he was moved again to RAF Norton Disney, Lincolnshire, where he remained until October 1947. Exactly what work Charlie did there is unknown, but according to information on the internet, RAF Norton Disney was “a Forward Filling Depot and was a bomb, ammunition and oxygen depot.”
Charlie rose through the ranks from Aircraftman Second Class (AC2) to Aircraftman First Class (AC1) and then became a Leading Aircraftman. While still in the service, Charlie represented the RAF in running events as a champion sprinter.
Being attractive and a good dancer, Charlie was never short of a girlfriend and his album contains photographs of a number of good-looking women. However, some time in late 1947 Charlie met 16-year-old Joyce Gledhill at the Mecca ballroom in Leeds and fell in love.
Charlie and Joyce shortly after they met
Charlie Joyce and her best friend, Barbara
After VE Day on 8 May 1945, everyone in the forces was entitled to take up EVT (Educational and Vocational Training) which was designed to help them get better jobs when they re-entered civilian life. Charlie was temporarily released from the RAF in October 1947 to take a course at a training centre in Leeds to further his welding skills. In February 1948 he reported to RAF Rufforth, just outside York, for his final four months in service. He was discharged from the RAF on 4 June 1948 – just 18 days before the SS Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks.
While most men had to be satisfied with comments on the standard of their work while in the RAF as “good” or “satisfactory,” Charlie could be proud of the fact that his degree of trade proficiency was recorded as “superior”.
The comments at the end of his certificate of discharge read:
“A willing and capable worker who has given every satisfaction at his trade of Equipment Assistant. He has received training and has had experience of welding (oxy-acetylene and electric) and for which employment he is strongly recommended.”
It was Government policy that servicemen from the Caribbean should be repatriated to their home countries after the end of the war, but somehow Charlie managed to remain in Britain. On discharge he had to decide whether to return to Jamaica or stay in the U.K. He felt that he could better support his mother back home if he stayed here, as he would be able to earn a good wage, some of which he could send to her. So he headed back to Leeds to be near Joyce.
Charlie back in “civvy street” shortly after being demobbed
When the couple discovered Joyce was pregnant, early in 1949, it was Charlie who went to tell her parents. At the same time he offered his financial support for the baby. Joyce’s parents, however, thought that the best solution was for her to give the baby up for adoption directly after the birth and arrangements were made at St. Mary’s Hospital, Green Hill Road, Leeds.
In the 1940s, unlike today, having a baby without being married carried great social stigma and there was no government financial support to assist a single mother in raising a child. As a consequence most unmarried mothers found it impossible to keep their babies, however badly they wanted to, and had to give them up for adoption. Having a mixed-race child carried even more stigma and it was a brave woman who attempted to hang on to her child.
Shortly before the baby was due, when at the point of finalising plans for the adoption at St. Mary’s, Joyce’s mother had an amazing change of heart. Seeing the distress on her daughter’s face, she said, “the baby’s coming home, and I will sort things out.” So little Elaine Gledhill stayed with her birth family and her surname was later changed to Dawkins after her parents’ marriage.
Had Charlie been an American the outcome would have been very different. African American GIs were forbidden to marry their white British girlfriends under any circumstances. At the time, 30 US states had laws forbidding inter-racial marriage. When over 40,000 white British GI brides eventually went to America after the war, the husbands they joined were all white. Approximately 2,000 children were born to African American GIs and white British women and a book has recently been written about them. Britain’s ‘Brown Babies’ by Lucy Bland (Manchester University Press, 2019) tells the stories of more than 40 of them. Most had difficult childhoods and few were ever reunited with the fathers they never knew. Thankfully West Indian and British couples did not have this problem and some enduring happy marriages ensued from wartime romances.
When Charlie returned to Leeds, his first lodgings were at 26 Springfield Place. By late 1949 he had joined a number of other ex-RAF men at 20 Clarendon Place, close to the University, which came to be known by locals as the house where the “darkies” lived.[1]
Joyce gave birth to Elaine in August 1949 and before long Charlie and another West Indian ex-RAF man, Hugh Young, nicknamed “Tokyo,” bought a house together at 2 Cricketers Terrace, Leeds. They each paid £500 to the previous owners, a Mr. & Mrs. Bowers. The Dawkins family eventually lived upstairs, while the Young family lived in the basement, both families sharing the ground floor and garden for the next five years. Charlie and Joyce were married at Leeds Registry Office in July 1951 and their eldest son Allan was born in September. Two more sons, Keith and Stephen followed in 1953 and 1960 respectively.
Joyce with her mother and baby Elaine Hugh “Tokyo” Young
Given that inter-racial marriage was frowned on at the time and that most people reacted in a racist way to the settlement in Britain of people of colour, early married life must have had its difficulties. Nevertheless, the West Indian men who settled in Leeds seem to have had no difficulty in attracting partners and the white women in photographs of the time certainly look very happy.
Allan Dawkins (centre) with playmates Allan and Keith with their cousins, c.1957
In order to provide recreation and entertainment for themselves, Charlie and several of the other ex-airmen, along with a few more-recent arrivals, got together to form the Caribbean Cricket Club which played in the Barkston Ash cricket league.
Members of the Caribbean Cricket Club Spectators – wives and families at a match
The Cricket Club became the centre of their social life. Wives and children attended the matches, which they looked forward to every summer weekend. The women shared catering duties and always provided the team and their opponents with a good tea after home fixtures. The cricketers’ prowess resulted in them winning matches and trophies. They played all over Yorkshire and the North of England, once even playing against the Colonial Cricket Club as far away as Birmingham. With their circle of friends, the families organised trips to the seaside in the summer.
Day trip to the seaside Keith, Allan and two friends
Alford Gardner, an ex-RAF man and another founder member of the Caribbean Cricket Club, found Charlie a job with the company where he was already employed as a mechanic. Satisfied with Alford’s work, his bosses asked him if he had any friends he could recommend. Alford suggested Charlie Dawkins and another ex-RAF man, Herbert Alexander “Johnny” Johnson, and both were taken on as welders earning 2/6 (two shillings and sixpence = 25p) per hour. Alford also found work with the firm for a fourth ex-airman, Freddie Williams, who was also a mechanic. Their job was to strip engines out of tanks and recycle the oil pumps so they could be sent to Kuwait for use by Shell Oil. The work only lasted for a year because they ran out of tanks. Charlie then found a job with Fairburn Lawson.
After a number of years at Fairburn Lawson, Charlie moved to Taylor Rustless Stainless Steel Fittings Company on Whitehall Road, where he continued to use his welding skills. Charlie was able to take two lengthy holidays back home in Jamaica, on the same trips visiting other family members in the United States. His first month-long trip was in 1964.
Charlie worked for Taylor Rustless (later known as Pland Stainless) for almost 30 years before being made redundant. After a couple of frustrating years without work, which upset Charlie greatly, he again found employment, and in 1982 he paid a three-week visit to his family in Jamaica and the USA. He retired in 1985, aged 66, and he and Joyce looked forward to enjoying their free time together visiting various seaside resorts and beauty spots. Sadly, four months later Charlie was dead. Joyce – who was only 54 – was distraught, and felt that they had been cheated out of their retirement time together. Joyce missed her husband terribly until the day she died, aged 86.
Other-worldly things happened on his passing. It was the normal practice on Sundays in the Dawkins household for Joyce to cook the dinner and then Charlie would clear the table, wash up and set the kitchen back to rights. On Sunday 14 July 1985, after their meal, Charlie collapsed at the dinner table and the ambulance was called. However, this was to no avail and Charlie died within an hour. The family, who were in deep shock, didn’t immediately clear the table and sort out the mess left by the emergency.
About an hour after Charlie’s death, Joyce was in the next room while Stephen was in the kitchen with Allan who was making a pot of tea at a side table to try and calm their nerves. Someone tried to open the front door, but it was held by the latch. Allan takes up the story: “My youngest brother Stephen went to answer the door, and there wasn’t anyone there. However, in what must have been no more than 2 or 3 seconds, my brother felt something enter the room (as if it went right through him), and when we all turned around to face the centre of the room, the table and chairs were all arranged as if no one had sat at the table.”
When Allen visited Jamaica in January 1986, two of Charlie’s old friends who had lived next door to him when he was young said that on the day of his death he appeared at the bottom of their garden, by the gate, and waved to them as if greeting them, and then he disappeared.
Charlie’s story is similar in many ways to the stories of other West Indian men who arrived at RAF Hunmanby Moor in 1944 and eventually settled in Britain. After the war, Charlie lived a relatively quiet but very worthwhile life. He was much loved by his wife and children. His son Allan says “Dad had been trained as a master tailor by his father in Jamaica, so he made clothes for us children. He was a great cook, which was useful as Mum didn’t know how to boil an egg when they first married, and he was good with his hands and could make things with wood and metal. He passed on to us good old fashioned values which he had learned in Jamaica, where schools were more disciplined and elders were respected. He instilled in us good Christian principles, such as honesty, integrity and self-discipline. He impressed on us the value of a good education and encouraged us to aspire to greater things and better ourselves wherever we could. He was kind and thoughtful, and well-informed and wise beyond his years and educational opportunities. – Dad was indeed a very special person.”
Charles Austin Dawkins (24 February 1919 -14 July 1985)
[1] Incorrectly recorded as 20 Clarendon Road in Kester Aspden, The Hounding of David Oluwale, Vintage, 2008.