George Bemand

George Edward Kingsley Bemand (19 March 1892 – 26 December 1916) was one of a small number of officers of partial African descent to serve in the British Army in World War I.[lower-alpha 1] He was killed in action in France.

George was born in Jamaica in 1892 to George Bemand senior and his wife Minnie. He was the child of a white English father and a black Jamaican mother.[1] The family moved to London in 1908 on RMS Lusitania, with the passenger list in New York recording Minnie and her son as "African-Black".[1] George attended Dulwich College and then in 1913 went to University College, London to study Engineering. At the start of the Great War he joined the University of London Officers' Training Corps and on 24 May 1915[2] was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery; in his attestation form he categorised himself as being of pure European descent.[3]

He was sent to France in August 1916 (his school records November 1915[4]). While serving with a trench mortar battery, he was killed by a shell on Boxing Day 1916 near Béthune, and is buried at Le Touret Military Cemetery.[5]

His younger brother Harold served in the ranks as a gunner and died of wounds in 1917, aged 19.[6]

References
  1. Others included Walter Tull, Allan Noel Minns and David Clemetson.[1] Almost a century earlier Nathaniel Wells had received a Yeomanry commission in 1818.


  1. "The officer who refused to lie about being black". BBC News. 27 April 2015. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
  2. "No. 29179". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 June 1915. p. 5315.
  3. George Edward Kingsley Bemand – the first black officer in the British Army?, Great War London, London and Londoners in the First World War
  4. The fallen of the Great War, Dulwich College
  5. Second Lieutenant G E K BEMAND, Commonwealth War Graves Commission
  6. Gunner HAROLD LESLIE BEMAND, Commonwealth War Graves Commission
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