Tensions had been high following a failed attempt by US commanders to racially segregate pubs in the village, and worsened after the 1943 Detroit race riot.

During the Second World War, Bamber Bridge hosted American servicemen from the 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment, part of the Eighth Air Force.

[3] Racial tensions were exacerbated by the race riots in Detroit earlier that week, which had led to 34 deaths, including 25 black casualties.

[5] On the evening of 24 June 1943, some soldiers from the 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment were drinking with the English villagers in Ye Olde Hob Inn.

On entering the pub, they encountered one soldier, Private Eugene Nunn who was dressed in a field jacket rather than the required class A uniform, and asked him to step outside.

Lieutenant Edwin D. Jones, the unit's only black officer, managed to persuade the soldiers that Heris would be able to round up the MPs and see that justice was done.

[2][3] However, at midnight, several jeeps full of MPs arrived at the camp, including one improvised armoured car armed with a large machine gun.

[3] Although a court martial convicted 32 black soldiers of mutiny and related crimes, poor leadership and racist attitudes among the MPs were blamed as the cause.

In August, four of the black soldiers involved in the initial brawl were sentenced to hard labour, one to two and a half years and the others to three, and all to dishonourable discharges, with one of those convictions being overturned on review.

[9] General Ira C. Eaker, commander of the Eighth Air Force, placed most of the blame for the violence on the white officers and MPs because of their poor leadership and use of racial slurs.

[11] The author Anthony Burgess, who lived in the Bamber Bridge area after the war, wrote about the event briefly in The New York Times in 1973 and in his autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God.

[5][12] Popular interest in the event increased in the late 1980s after a maintenance worker discovered bullet holes from the battle in the walls of a Bamber Bridge bank.

[7] The Battle of Bamber Bridge was one of the several instances during World War II where racial tensions and clashes erupted between American soldiers on foreign soil.