‘You are now the guest of Uncle Sam.’

Resting easy – some of the boys even smoking – our bellies full, looking forward to a few days in the land of the free, some of us, as Jamaicans are prone to do, concurred verbally: ‘Yes, sir – umm umm.’

This momentarily took the officer by surprise, his back stiffening before carrying on. ‘While you are here, all facilities pertinent to your rank will be open to you.’ He stopped here, waiting for a reaction more animated than just the nodding and grinning he received. ‘You will be able to use the movie theatre, the playing fields, all mess facilities, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘Where is this et cetera?’ the small island boys whispered to each other.

‘While on the camp you will be under the command of your own NCOs and following British military law.’

Who cared about law as long as the British were not cooking the food?

‘But . . .’ I was not the only one waiting for this first catch ‘. . . you will be, for the duration of your stay, confined to the camp.’

Oh there was much sucking of teeth and moaning, ‘Cha . . . cha . . . cha . . .’ snapping round the room like firecrackers. There was no eyebrow left unknitted.

The officer had to put up his hand to settle the room. ‘The reason . . .’

‘Cha . . . cha . . . cha . . .’

‘Your attention, please. The reason for this decision, which your own NCOs can go into in more detail – but the reason for this decision is to minimise the risk of contracting disease. The British military authorities are quite clear that any serviceman contracting a disease while here will not be allowed to travel any further and will be returned to his country of origin forthwith.’

This did not settle us. With stomachs full, our thoughts had all returned to women. Although I did not want to be turned round having come so far, this war business was getting me down. No one knew how long we would be immured on this camp without seeing a curvaceous bosom, a rounded hip, a shapely leg. How long without female company? A week, a month? No American girl was to see me in uniform – oh, boy, this was serious. The room hummed – this officer had put his finger in and stirred up the nest.

‘I know, I know, you’re all disappointed. But while you are at this military establishment,’ his voice was rising, ‘and guests of the Government of the United States of America you will have the run of this camp. Everyone here has been ordered to see that your stay with us is the best welcome Uncle Sam could give to the negroes of an ally.’ He was shouting now. ‘You will mix with white service personnel. Have you boys any idea how lucky you are? You will not be treated as negroes!’

Perhaps my cousin Elwood was right. ‘Man, this is a white man’s war. Why you wanna lose your life for a white man? For Jamaica, yes. To have your own country, yes. That is worth a fight. To see black skin in the governor’s house doing more than just serving at the table and sweeping the floor. A black man at Tate and Lyle doing more than just cutting cane. That is worth a fight. I join you then, man. But you think winning this war going to change anything for me and you?’

Anthropoid – I looked to the dictionary to find the meaning of this word used by Hitler and his friends to describe Jews and coloured men. I got a punch in the head when the implication jumped from the page and struck me: ‘resembling a human but primitive, like an ape’. Two whacks I got. For I am a black man whose father was born a Jew.

My father said one thing to his nine children over and over – so often that we mouthed the words as they came from his lips. ‘Remember,’ he’d say, ‘you could have been Jewish.’ This to him was the worst curse that could befall anyone. He was, with his black curling hair and pale olive skin, ‘a circumcised member of the Jewish faith’. He would tell us this when the words he spoke still made sense – which was about four rums into his drunkenness. Six rums down he was tearful about his bar mitzvah. Eight, and we heard tales of his ancestors trading salt. It was towards the bottom of the bottle, slurring and gesticulating crazily, that he would berate his estranged Jewish mother, father, the Torah, the synagogue and the silly hats. ‘Thank Jesus Christ that I saw the light,’ he’d cry. It was during the First World War, in the fields near Ypres, my father first saw this light. He met Jesus on the battlefield. He insisted on the truth of this. Jesus shared a tin of fish with him and lent him some writing paper and no one can tell him otherwise. ‘I became a Christian because of that friendship with Jesus Christ,’ he would exclaim, just before passing out.

No more Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashana, and Passover for him. Finally banished from his family, this gold-cross-wearing Jew was cast out from his community in Mandeville. So many backs were turned on him that my father claimed a bitter talent: ‘I can know if a man is a Jew from his rear.’

My mother, Louise, took him in, pleased to be parading round this nearly white husband. As a salesman my father supplied shops in the north of the islands with furniture. As a husband he supplied my mother with children – first two sons, my brother Lester and me, then seven girls. Seven sisters!

A fervent convert, my father took Christianity very seriously. He would march his family every Sunday to the Anglican church. Why he never drove his car? ‘You must never work on the Sabbath,’ he would say.

After the service we children would be lined up with Mummy whispering, ‘No cuss words, no blasphemy, no patois.’ We all observed as our father skipped round the white people who worshipped there. Taking their reluctant hands and shaking them. Laughing too hearty at jokes that were barely funny. Patting backs just before they turned round from him. Fawning to these white people who stood haughty and aloof in his presence.

The picture in the newspaper was of a German Jew. He wore a cloth star on a dirty coat. He walked along a street, hunched and humbled, while non-Jews eyed him with an expression of disgust Lester and I knew only too well from those Sunday services. With the fervour of a crusade my brother wanted to fight in this war. But when the British Royal Air Force asked him the question, ‘Are you of pure English descent?’ Lester replied, ‘Come take my blood and see.’ Nobody believed him when, rejected by the RAF, he returned home burdened with the knowledge that the Mother Country only required members of the white races for this fight. ‘Never,’ my father, remembering Ypres, shouted. ‘Never!’ The factories of America claimed my hunched and humbled brother instead.

My cousin Elwood could not understand, ‘They turn down your brother when him colour no suit them and now that them change their mind you wanna go licky-licky to them. Cha, you should be fighting the British not joining them. Stay. Their back is turn now – we can win.’ There might have been truth in this. But I was ready to fight this master race theory. For my father was a Jew and my brother is a black man. I told Elwood, ‘If this war is not won then you can be certain nothing here will ever change.’

Now, from what I could understand, this American officer with the angular head was telling us that weWest Indians, being subjects of His Majesty King George VI, had, for the time being, superior black skin. We were allowed to live with white soldiers, while the inferior American negro was not. I was perplexed. No, we were all perplexed. We Jamaicans, knowing our island is one of the largest in the Caribbean, think ourselves sophisticated men of the world. Better than the ‘small islanders’ whose universe only runs a few miles in either direction before it falls into the sea. But even the most feeble-minded small islanders could detect something odd about the situation. While being shown round the camp a smiling face would tell us, ‘You see, your American nigger don’t work. If his belly’s full he won’t work. When he’s hungry again then he’ll do just enough. Same kinda thing happens in the animal kingdom. But you boys being British are different.’ While being shown to our seats in the all-white picture show, handed bars of chocolate and cigarettes to share, men would say, ‘I am loyal to my flag but you would never catch no self-respecting white man going into battle with a nigger.’ At a dance in the mess being persuaded to boogie-woogie and jive – to let go, man, go! – into our black faces, up against our black skin they said, ‘We do not mix the negro and the white races here because it lowers the efficiency of our fighting units. Your American nigger ain’t really cut out to fight.’