Nadia Cattouse

"Nadia Cattouse, who has died aged 99, was among the first group of Caribbean women volunteers to sign up for British Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) during the Second World War; returning to Britain after the war, she found success as an actress and folk singer.
Nadia Evadne Cattouse was born in Belize City, British Honduras (now Belize), on November 2 1924. Her mother, Kathleen, née Fairweather, was a teacher; her father, Albert, was a civil servant who went on to become deputy prime minister of British Honduras.
When, in early 1943, she heard that the British Army was recruiting volunteers for the ATS, “I was so eager I jumped on my bike straight away to get to Drill Hall.” After travelling to Jamaica with six other recruits for initial training she and other West Indian women volunteers began their journey to Britain.
This took them through some of the US “Dixie” states, and Nadia recalled that they were unprepared for the racism they encountered. In Miami, the hotel booked for them by the British Army turned them away; another establishment, managed by a Scotsman, agreed to take them in, but only if they entered by the back door.
At the railway station for the train to Washington, they found two queues, one for whites and a “Jim Crow” queue for blacks. Unused to segregation in the West Indies, they joined the white queue, but were warned by African-Americans in the other line that “something bad” might happen to them on the train.
Eventually, after refusing to travel in the “Jim Crow” car, they were given a “white” carriage to themselves, but they were turned away from the dining car and had to make do with food bought from platform buffets.
Nadia arrived in England in June 1944 and was sent for training as a signals operator to Edinburgh where, she recalled, “there was no racial tension – no problem at all. We had cameraderie.”
As well as serving in signals, Nadia also served part-time as an ATS physical training instructor. After the war she qualified as a teacher in Glasgow before returning to British Honduras, where she became the head teacher of a mission school and lectured at a teacher training college."
Nadia Cattouse, wartime ATS volunteer who faced racism and became a ‘giant of the folk-song revival’