Foreign News: We Sho’ Like It Here

In a small English town, passers-by gazed politely at big, sauntering black fellows in strange U.S. uniforms, wondered who on earth they were. With equal politeness the Negroes told them: they were American Indians. The first Negro troops ever to land in the tight little isle— two Quartermaster Corps truck companies— they had not yet learned that Jim Crow never got to England.

But soon they were balancing teacups on their knees in white folks’ houses, smoking tight-rolled English cigarets and guzzling flat English ale. When they wrote the folks back home, perhaps they complained of the damp English weather, the limp food. Or perhaps they mentioned stout John Parrish, pubkeeper of The Bull, who said: “My pub is open to everyone who behaves himself. The Negroes could teach some of our boys some manners.”

Yeah, man, this sure was a queer country that Uncle Sam had sent them to. But shyly, last week in London, a Negro soldier admitted: “We sho’ like it here.”