Thank you! for some reason, I did not think you were reading AW! Thanks so much. Yes, Jill's mother is white. It's in there, and some of it is inferred. I had seen pictures of women of color in the British service but I think they suffered much as the men did from the limited research I did. I remembered you saying that the WRENS at Bletchley Park were connected, wealthy women and t his became another instance of happy coincidence (this happens a lot in the story) as that was the direction I was taking Jilly's backstory. Her mother is from a wealthy, well connected family in the sugar cane business and her father's family is poor and black, though her father had the added cache of being a cricket player. There's this whole scene I had written and took out for later involving Jill discussing how Puddleglum's skin was brownish green and how much she liked being in a majority again, even if it was a majority of two to one with Eustace.

The full measure of British treatment of its colonial citizens in its service is one I really can't fully comprehend. There was obviously discrimination though I don't think it was as bad as the American, fully segregated service. There is a lot of anecdotal information about how well the Brits got along with the American black servicemen. And then you see posters like this:

Source: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pv/pv/courses/posters/images3/colonies3.jpg