The Mad Bull’s Blog, Version 3

I was doing a little surfing today and it led to a little history lesson. Somewhere back in time between 1987 and 1989 I was attending UWI, pursuing a degree in English Literature, can you believe it? Anyway, in the first year of that course of study, I took a class called West Indian Literature or something like that. One of the books that I read was “The Wine of Astonishment“, by Earl Lovelace.

This was a very interesting book on many, many levels, though I don’t remember them all now. It was set in Bonasse, a village in Trinidad, and it was as story about the Spiritual Baptists, a home grown religion, I guess you would call it, and their being outlawed. The story is told through the eyes of a couple of youngsters, Bee and Bolo, over the couse of their teen years and going on into their young adulthood.

That story taught me a few things about Trinidad & Tobago at a time when all I knew about it was that it was somewhere over to Jamaica’s right hand side in the atlas, in the Lesser Antilles, and how to spell its name. It brought out to me the fact that the population there was mostly a half and half split between Blacks and Indians, I learned about things like stick fighting and I learned that though this was a different country from mine, there were quite a few similarities between it and Jamaica. Another thing I learned was that at some point in the past, the Americans had an army base in T&T. It didn’t give the details of how this base came to be there, but it was a fact that I thought odd at the time. There is more…

I didn’t pursue it then, but today, I was browsing over by Caribbean Free Radio where a link took me to some of Georgia’s pictures which she hosts at Flickr. Some of the pictures portrayed Georgia and her posse in some lush bush, and I was wondering whether she and her crew took a trip over to Guyana or what?. A bit of research (clicking on one of the pictures) revealed that they were really in some place called Cumuto. “Where was Cumuto?”, I wondered. I googled it and came up on a mention of it in Wikipedia. Its a town / district in T&T, so my initial assumption was wrong. As I read on, I saw that Cumuto, back in the 1940’s and ’50s was where the old American Army base was situated. Mention was made about how this base came to be.

Of course, this reference immediately brought back to me my reading of the base in the “Wine of Astonishment” and so I clicked through to read up on the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. Now I understand how the American base came about. Apparently there was an American Base on the south coast of Jamaica too. I wonder if that is what Vernam Field was? I know it was an airfield at sometime in the past, and I had heard it had some military role, but that is all I knew… Seems like it was a good guess!

I purchased a microfilm of historical
information about the bases, Vernam Field and Fort Simonds, from the U. S.
Air Force Museum. It’s very interesting … unfortunately done on negative
microfilm so that any accompanying pictures cannot be well reproduced.

I was interested in knowing more about why the two areas were given those
names, and this is what I found. From a report, headed Fort Simonds,
Jamaica, B. W. I., 30 December 1943:

Historical Data, Vernam Field, Jamaica Base Command, 21 November 1941 - 30
December 1943

Vernam Field is named for 1st Lt. Remington De B. Vernam, who was born in
New York State, 24 March 1896. He enlisted in the Aviation Section, AEF, in
Paris during 1917, and received his training in France. He was commissioned
1st Lt. 23rd November 1917. Lt. VErnam was cited for extraordinary heroism
at Busiancy, France, 1st October 1918. Reported missing in action 31st
October 1918, following combat with the enemy, he was taken prisoner and
died of wounds 1st DEcember 1918, adn is buried at Lonchavry, France. He
was awarded the DSC, posthumously, on 12th February 1919. Lt. Vernam
accounted for three or more enemy planes, for two or more enemy balloons.
- Dorothy Kew

Thanks, Dorothy…

Of course, some of you will know that Vernam Field went on to become the first place where motor car racing took place in Jamaica, drag racing really. Now its not really used much for that. There are better tracks elsewhere, like Dover in St. Ann.

So, how is all this important? Good question! It really isn’t. I just found it interesting, and thought I’d take you all along with me on this journey of discovery. Hope you enjoyed this anecdote.

Latah!

Tags: General, I think its interesting!, Idle Chatter //