J’can author salutes uncle in book on World Wars

As Jamaicans attended Remembrance Day events on Friday to honour soldiers who served in World Wars I and II, Beulah Coombs took The Gleaner on a journey into the past, through the service of her uncle, Robert Smith.

She shared that it was her mother’s lament while watching such ceremonies while living in England that became the spark igniting research that would culminate in a book, My Uncle Robert – The True Story of A Jamaican World War I Soldier.

Originally called Armistice Day to commemorate the agreement that brought to an end the First World War in 1918, Remembrance Day has been observed annually across the British Commonwealth since 1919 on the 11th day of the 11th month, with a special two-minute silence for fallen soldiers at the 11th hour. Commemorations are also held in other parts of the world.

The commemorative service was a must for Coombs’ family while in England, where she still resides, but it was the haunting, anguished wail of her mother Sarah Smith, more than anything else, which has nagged Coombs over the decades.

“Mi poor bredda dead in the First World War,” was the constant refrain from her mom, year after year.

As a child, Coombs did not press her mother for more information about the brother she had barely known but whom she always mourned.

It wasn’t until a recent visit to Jamaica that Coombs finally asked about her uncle and learnt that his name was Robert Adolphus Smith, hailing from a little village called Good Hope in Kellits, Clarendon.

That information set her on a fact-finding mission which led to her penning the book to educate others about the contribution of West Indians, especially Jamaicans, in both World Wars.

Smith was recruited in 1917 as part of the British West Indies Regiment and assigned to the 7th Battalion.

From England, he was among the troops deployed to fight in countries such as France and Belgium. He was killed in the latter, at age 23, when they came under serious bombardment in September of that year.

“He is buried in a place called Ypres in Belgium and we were able to go and visit his grave, with his name on the headstone, and we got photographs of all of that and in the book and also the report that his commanding officer wrote on the day that he and the others were killed. And there are other Jamaicans killed at the same time, [who were] buried beside him,” Coombs told The Gleaner.

Coombs said her mother was finally able to get some measure of closure, after decades of wondering about the fate of a bother, who was already an adult when she was born in 1914.

MOMENT OF HEALING

Sarah Smith was not able to make the trip to Belgium, but when Coombs shared photos of the headstone with information about Robert’s death with her, it was a long overdue moment of healing for the entire family.

Coombs is hoping that through her book, more Caribbean people will learn of the pivotal and significant contributions of their ancestors to the British Empire, long before the Windrush era.

She said it is not widely known among persons of Jamaican heritage and others that many Jamaicans fought for Britain in both World Wars.

“I was born in Jamaica, but grew up and went through the education system in England, and this fact was not included in history lessons or depicted in any of the many war films I have seen. As well as general ignorance about the participation of black soldiers in the wars, the recent Windrush fiasco in England also made me realise that British people are not aware of the history of Caribbean people’s presence in Britain today; that they came to rebuild the country after the Second World War and that they came as British citizens,” she told The Gleaner.

“The people working in the Home Office, through ignorance of this aspect of their own history, just lumped those who came in the 1950s and 1960s with recent arrivals,” Coombs added, referring to the Windrush scandal, which recently rocked Britain.

“The book gives guidance about how anyone who had relatives who fought in any of the World Wars, and who never returned home, could go about trying to trace what happened to them,” she added.