Brits born to African American GIs stationed in the UK during WWII trace their heritage

A woman who was born to an African-American GI stationed in the UK during WWII has revealed she tried to bleach her skin after receiving racist abuse growing up in rural countryside on Britain’s Secret War Babies. 

The Channel 4 documentary follows two people, John Stockley in Weymouth and Mary Phillips in South Wales, both of whom were born illegitimately to white British mothers and African-American GIs during the Second World War. 

During the second world war, nearly three million US soldiers passed through Britain, 240,000 of whom were African American. 

After GIs struck up relationships with local women, an estimated 2,000 children were born – including John and Mary, who are on a mission to trace their Black heritage. 

During the programme, Mary emotionally opened up to her daughters about the racial abuse she suffered growing up, saying: ‘So I just used to get some bleach and with cloth and wash my face.’

Later, presenter Sean Fletcher was able to help track down Mary’s father, and told her she had three half-siblings who she was later introduced to. 

Good Morning Britain journalist Sean, who said he relates to feeling like an outsider in a predominately white village, helped Mary embark on their emotional journeys to find out who their father’s were and learn more about their Black heritage. 

For both Mary and John, growing up with their fathers’ identity shrouded in mystery, life was difficult.   

 Mary grew up as an only child with her grandparents. 

Her mother married her stepdad when she was about four years old, however, Mary never left her grandparents’ home to join them.   

She knew about her father from a young age. She said his name was Herman Askew and he had sent a letter to Mary and her mother when she was child asking them both to go and live with him in Missouri. 

However, her grandmother kept the letter and didn’t pass it on. 

The only fact Mary knew for much of her life was that she was named after her father’s mother.

However this didn’t help her track him down. She found two Herman Askew’s that could have been her father, but one wasn’t enlisted in the American Army at the time of her birth and the other was registered as White American. 

Mary struggled with her identity and during the programme admitted that she didn’t tell her children that their grandfather wasn’t their biological grandfather until they were a lot older. 

She said: ‘I still feel a bit guilty about not telling them earlier. 

‘I don’t know why I did. So another thing is well, holding it in from earlier in my life, I should imagine.’ 

Mary, who is now in her seventies, explained to her children how she faced racist abuse, saying other children would call her the ‘N word’. 

She told her children: ‘You didn’t exactly know what it meant, but you knew it was colour and you knew it was a word that meant you weren’t the same as everybody else. 

‘And you wanted to do something about it.’

After telling her children she would try to use a bleach to wash her skin, her youngest daughter couldn’t hold back her tears and leant in towards her mother for a hug. 

Her older daughter remained composed and went on to share how she, a generation later, had also experienced abuse at the hands of other children in their rural Welsh village. 

She explained: ‘People kept asking me “why are you dark? Where are you from?” sort of thing.

‘I used to say, “I don’t know. My mum and dad is Welsh,” sort of thing.

‘I remember being put in the middle, and them singing “brown girl in the ring,” because that was a song at the time by Boney M.’ 

She said that this kind of interaction with her peers would make her ‘feel small again.’ 

A stunned Mary exclaimed: ‘It’s not nice for me to you that you had to go through similar or the same to what what I did.’ 

Her children recalled when Mary told them about her parentage and remember her being deeply ashamed of being illegitimate. 

Sean dove further into this racism that was so deeply rooted in rural villages in Britain, when Mary was growing up. 

He discovered documents from the government detailing how the African American GIs should be segregated from the British women and in one chilling report from the Chief Constable of Oxford it advises:

‘Every step must be taken to stop British women miss-conducting themselves with Colored Troops if for no other reason than that we do not desire to have a certain proportion of the population semi colored in rural districts in this country in the future.’ 

Sean revealed how, unlike Mary who had a mother who loved her, many illegitimate GI babies ended up being taken into care. 

Sean explained: ‘Mothers were faced with the stigma of having an illegitimate mixed race child was shunned by their communities and often by their families as well. So many felt they had little option but to give up their children.’

During the programme, Sean began researching Mary’s father  and through deeper research discovered that the Herman Askew labelled as White, was in fact based at a military base near Gilwell, just outside of Abergavenny, which was only 10 miles away from her mother. 

Sean discovered that the timings matched up but was confused about the fact he was white and so looked into the unit he was at, which changed everything. 

Sean presented her with her father’s draft card and a picture of him, which she emotionally shared with her three children on a video call. 

He revealed to a shocked Mary that he was in the 700 and third Medical Sanitary Company unit, which when you look it up was an African American unit, confirming that the man was black and her father.  

Mary broke down in tears, exclaiming that she couldn’t believe she had had the answers for 20 years on a piece of paper. 

Meanwhile the discovery also revealed to Mary that she had siblings she never knew she had.  

Mary discovered that she had three sisters and a brother in Chicago and also travelled to the US to meet them. 

She met two of her sisters who filled in the gaps for her about her father, who passed away when the girls were only young. 

They shared family pictures with Mary bonded with her, saying: ‘There’s no denying that that’s our sister. This experience is not going to stop here. You know what I mean? 

‘We’re family now. So it’s a relationship forever. Hopefully we’ll be able to fill in the gaps.’

Mary said: ‘There’s always been something missing. I felt this hole. 

‘I don’t know why you would call it a hole that needs to be filled. As I’ve grown up all these years as an only child to find out there’s others like me. 

‘There’s people who are family. That home is overflowing.’