1. Charles William Duncan Hutchison was a British-Ghanaian anti-fascist, soldier, and ambulance driver most famous for being the only Black-British member of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
17 Facts About Charlie Hutchison
1. 2.
Immediately joining the British military following Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany, Charlie Hutchison served the British Army between 1939 and 1946.
3.
Charlie Hutchison spent almost 10 years engaged in battles against various fascist forces throughout Europe, before starting a family in 1947 and living the rest of his life quietly in South England.
4.
Charlie Hutchison was born on 10 May 1918 in Eynsham, west of Oxford.
5.
Charlie Hutchison was the fourth of five children belonging to Lilly Rose from Eynsham, and Charles Francis from the Gold Coast.
6.
In December 1936, Charlie Hutchison went to Spain and joined the International Brigades to fight against the Nationalist faction supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War.
7.
The British Battalion had not yet been fully formed by the time Charlie Hutchison first arrived in Spain, so he joined the British and Irish dominated No 1 Company of the mainly French Marseilla.
8.
Charlie Hutchison was not only one of the earliest British volunteers and one of the youngest but was the only black or mixed-race British volunteer to join the International Brigade.
9.
Charlie Hutchison fought for the International Brigade during almost the entirety of the war and was sent to the front-line to fight in the Battle of Lopera shortly after arriving in Spain.
10.
Charlie Hutchison requested temporary leave, yet due to a logistics blunder, his leave was never granted.
11.
Charlie Hutchison continued to serve the Spanish Republic until December 1938, when he returned to Britain to continue his activism as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
12.
Charlie Hutchison immediately joined the British military and served in France before taking part in the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation.
13.
Charlie Hutchison resumed his work as a lorry driver and was an active member of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and was active within anti-apartheid activism and nuclear disarmament.
14.
Charlie Hutchison sent his children to secular socialist themed Sunday schools.
15.
Charlie Hutchison played a role in the creation of the International Bridge memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London.
16.
The research into Charlie Hutchison's life conducted by the same sixth-form students would lead to the creation of their college's African Studies Centre.
17.
Much of the information historians know about Charlie Hutchison's life has only been discovered very recently and has been recorded in few histories of the Spanish Civil War, two being Richard Baxell's Unlikely Warriors, and the Communist Party of Britain's Red Lives.