Colonel Charles Arundel Moody OBE, born 1917
(Son of Dr. Harold Moody)
First black Officer in the British Army, rising to the rank of Major. Awarded the rank of Colonel in the Jamaican Army, awarded an OBE, first Commanding Officer of the JamaicanTerritorial Army.
Charles Arundel Moody became the first black officer in the British Army during the Second World War, when he joined the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment in 1940.
His father Dr. Moody had protested to the government about the “Colour bar” in the armed forces, which had prevented Charles Moody and other black men from undertaking officer training.
Dr. Moody wrote to the Colonial Secretary and the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, complaining of such discrimination and by speaking out on the subject at public meetings.
Charles Moody served with distinction in the Infantry and the Artillery in England, Africa, Italy, and finally Egypt, where he became a Major in 1945.
At the end of the war he returned to Jamaica with B Company of the Caribbean Regiment, settling there for the next forty years. Charles Moody became a Colonel in the Jamaican Army in 1961. He became the first Commanding Officer of the Jamaican Territorial Army and was awarded an OBE in 1966.