THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
Due to the low manpower requirements, during the Second World War, of the Bermuda Militia Artillery, with its four coastal artillery pieces in two batteries, its intake of new volunteers and conscripts remained relatively low, by comparison, both to the colony's Black, male population (whose service had long been restricted to this one unit,) and to the growth seen by the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, which remained, like the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers, restricted to Whites.
What was really needed was infantry, but, with more than half the population being Black, the island's manpower was greatly underutilized with the pre-war organization of the Colony's Territorial forces. It became quickly obvious that infantry applications for the Colony's Black manpower had to be realized. The original segregation of the units had been meant to achieve two things: to avoid the racial antagonism that was feared from integrated units- with or without racial discrimination in promotion; and to restrict the access of Black volunteers to firearms (firearms for sporting uses had long been legal for civilians, but some mechanism had existed to prevent Blacks enjoying that pastime). Many of the White Colonists lived in fear of Black insurrection, though this may have been based more on the blatant, if unacknowledged, discrimination practiced, then, rather than any observed militant tendencies noted amongst their Black countrymen.
In any case, the wasteful barring of Black islanders from the infantry was no longer viable during thee Second World War. Rather than antagonize White infantrymen by integrating the BVRC and BVE, it was decided to create a new infantry unit, recruiting Blacks, as a war expedient, and this was titled The Bermuda Militia Infantry. This must have quickly grown to dwarf the BMA, but was administratively linked to the older unit under the overarcing identity of the Bermuda Militia.
Conscription, which had never been introduced during the Great War, was adopted very shortly after the start of the Second World War. Seperate Acts of the Colonial Parliament (Assembly,) covered the Black and White conscription, and -though the Black and White units worked closely together under the Imperial Garrison comand structure, the administration of the Territorial units remained largely seperated along racial lines. As had been the case with the BMA, the service of Blacks in the BMI was restricted to the ranks. Officers were sought from among the Island's White population, or loaned by Regular Army units.
Due to the tendency of the contemporary media, and of subsequent historians, to focus on the organization, manpower, and service of the White units, and of White servicemen, while neglecting the Black units and servicemen, it is not easy, today, to find such information on these units, from easily accesible library or archive materials - which is certainly not the case for the well-documented histories of the White units.
Consequently, this writer has yet to fix even the year in which the BMI was raised, though it was almost certainly disbanded in 1946. The island's Territorial forces returned to their pre-war structure (though the BVE, having become excess to need, were disbanded, also) and Black's were again effectively barred from infantry service until the BMA converted to the infantry role in 1953.
With the creation of the BMI, the BVRC saw its area of responsibilty reduced to two areas: the guarding of the Admiralty lands at the West End, including the HM Dockyard on Ireland Island, and Saint George's Garrison, from which they were responsible for the St. George's and Saint David's island, and maintaining boat patrols East of St. George's and Castle Harbours.
The BMI took over the responsibility for the wider expanse between these areas (it should be understood that Regular Army infantry remained as the core of the Garrison, based at Prospect Camp, throughout the war).
It might be assumed the island was relatively safely removed from the sharp end of the war, but it's main role, as always, was as a naval base. It became more important, still, as Allied merchant shipping began to be gathered into convoys, which formed up in either Newfoundland or Bermuda before crossing the Atlantic. The two Air Stations operating at the start of the war were joined by two more, American, ones from 1941. The island remainedd a vital staging point for trans-Atlantic flight throughout the war. Together the Trans-Atlantic cable, and fuel and other supplies assets of strategic value, the island played a role out of all proportion to its size, and the threat of German sabotage, naval bombardment or even military expidition could not be ruled out until the German Navy's surface fleet had been largelly confined to European waters, and the operation of its submarines made to dangerous for them to take foolish risks trying to creep into defended harbours ( though the U-Boat commander Gunther Prien had clearly demonstrated that possibility with his daring infiltration into, and attack upon, Scapa Flow in 1939.
Consequently, the island was considered to be very much an active front of the War, and those serving in the Imperial Garrison received the campaign medal for the Battle of the Atlantic, the Atlantic Star. Although a small contingent, composed largely of riflemen from the BVRC, was sent to the Lincolnshire Regiment in June, 1940, and the Bermuda Flying School did train volunteers from the local forces and send them to the RAF, a moratorium was quickly placed by the War Office on the drafting of local Territorials off of the island so as not to deplete the Garrison. By 1943, it was felt that the German ability to launch any kind of attack on the island was so reduced, that, together with the presence of large numbers of US forces, by then, present, drafts could be allowed to proceed from the local forces to Europe. The BVRC detached another contingent for their Great War partner, Lincolns. The Bermuda Militia contigent, drawn from both gunners and infantry, though probably more of the later, was detached as an infantry contingent. This was to form the training cadre of a new unit, the Caribbean Regiment, raised in nearby North Carolina ( 'nearby' to Bermuda-Cape Hatteras is the nearest land to Bermuda, at approximately 640 miles!)
The adventures of this contingent are covered within the entry for the Caribbean Regiment.