D-Day veteran Jon Hendricks - a black soldier with racist white officers

Jazz singer Jon Hendricks took part in a segregated black D-Day landing in France. Abused by racist officers but welcomed by local French girls, soon he deserted and was shot at by US soldiers - then court-marshalled and sentenced to 3 years jail. Here he returns to a Normandy beach in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings. In 2004 a film 'Back to Normandie' was made.
"It was a step above slavery. To be put into a segregated army - in a nation that pretends to be a democracy - and pretends to be fighting Nazism - is a joke! It's bizarre. The officers were all white, and racist. If they said Good Morning to you, it was an insult. They just had hatred, which had been drummed into them since they were babies from the womb. White people in the South were well-taught."
Jon Hendricks was most known as part of the ground-breaking multiracial vocal group Lambert Hendricks & Ross, pioneering 'vocalese' and working with Charlie Parker, Count Basie and many others. He wrote the lyrics to Georgie Fame's no. 1 hit 'Yeh Yeh' amongst many other songs. He lived to the age of 96, in 2017.
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