Leeds Library events: Meet the city's last surviving Jamaican World War Two veteran starring in new exhibition

From April 27 to June 24, Leeds Central Library will be home to the exhibition named For King, Country and Home – highlighting the lives of Jamaican veterans who volunteered to serve the country as young men. Among the veterans that will be featured is 97-year-old Alford Gardner, who is the last surviving Jamaican WW2 veteran in Leeds.

His son, Howard, believes the exhibition highlights a story that deserves to be told. He said: “It was very important work that they did because there weren’t enough English people to do the jobs they were doing.

“But for me this story’s been whitewashed out of the history of the war, nobody knows about it. So I hope this exhibition educates people and reminds everyone what West Indians have done over the years.”

The exhibition launched with a special event for guests, including Alford and the children of other servicemen, and is now open to the public. Alford’s story will be told for the first time in his forthcoming book, Finding Home: A Windrush Story, written with his son Howard and to be published in June.

In the book, there are details of how Alford signed up after seeing an advert in Jamaica and how he travelled to the country in June 1944, three days before D-Day at the age of 18. After the war, Alford took an engineering training course in Leeds before being sent back to Jamaica at the end of 1947. He returned to Leeds in June 1948 where he settled, secured a job as an engineer and started a family.

Featured alongside Alford will be Errol James, who gave up his teacher training in Jamaica to join the RAF in 1944 at the age of 18. Like Alford, Errol was among the first generation of West Indians to settle in Leeds after the war.

Another veteran, Charlie Dawkins, will also be remembered in the exhibition. At 25, he joined the RAF and arrived in the country in 1944 to work as a welder at air bases. These veterans were one of the 6,000 people that answered the call to defend Britain in the Second World War after the so-called ‘colour ban’ was lifted.

The exhibition, curated by Out of Many Festival director Susan Pitter, is paying tribute to Caribbean veterans who are unidentified. They are remembered through a collection of moving portraits exchanged between the RAF men after the war as mementos of their brotherhood, friendship and time serving shoulder-to-shoulder with each other.

Susan said: “It has been an honour to work with the children of Jamaican World War Two veterans to give an insight into the stories of their lives and their families. The significance of their service, joining the RAF as young men and teenage boys to fight a war thousands of miles away should not be underestimated. They were true pioneers who are too often unrecognised or undervalued. Their contributions are a part of British history that deserves to be championed.”

Find out more information on the Jamaican Society Website.