WW1; COMPLETING THE REMEMBRANCE.
In most of the nations who engaged in the conflict, the role played by the four million non-white non-Europeans who fought and laboured on the western front – and in other theatres of the war in Africa, the Middle East and Asia – has been airbrushed from popular memory.
………….So dedicated were the French to these theories that they convinced themselves that West Africans, being supposedly more primitive than Europeans, could better withstand the shock of battle and experienced physical pain less acutely.
This justified deploying them as shock troops in the first line of battle.
As a result, West African soldiers on the western front between 1917 and 1918 were two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed in action than white French infantrymen.
The British held similar views of the people of India.
Dismissing most of the people of the subcontinent as passive and effeminate, they only recruited from certain ethnic groups, the so-called “martial races”.
When the guns fell silent in 1918, both victors and vanquished turned against the black and brown men who had fought in what the victory medals then being struck for each allied soldier called “The Great War for Civilisation”.
…………In the US, the same racial neurosis inspired Lothrop Stoddard’s fellow Klansmen to embark upon a wave of murder and intimidation designed to ensure that any hopes of racial justice nursed by the thousands of African American soldiers then returning from the western front were snuffed out.
In 1919 at least 19 African American soldiers were lynched in the US, some for wearing their army uniforms in public, as they were perfectly entitled to do.
In 26 American cities, black communities were attacked and people murdered in the streets, during the so-called and now forgotten “red summer”.
Similar events took place in Britain, and are just as lost to popular memory. There were nine so-called race riots across Britain in 1919.
Black men who had worked on ships and in the factories, along with those who had fought for Britain at the front, were attacked by white mobs, and they and their families driven from their homes.
In Liverpool, Charles Wooten, a sailor who had served Britain in the war, was killed by a mob in the Liverpool docks. His murder can only be described as a lynching.
A century on, if we…….are serious about remembrance, then the process of remembering must not come to an end this November.
As well as remembering the service of the non-white soldiers and auxiliaries of the first world war, we have also to remember what happened to them and their dreams of justice in the months and years after the armistice.
DAVID OLUSOGA.
I watched 2 films yesterday commemorating the end of WW1. Pure horror. One of my grandfathers wasn’t killed, however, he returned with a gas intoxication which killed him slowly and painfully.
Can you imagine that all this tragedy wasn’t taught us in school? Shame- and disgraceful.
MH, thank you for sharing the story about your Grandpa. May he rest in peace. Indeed, we shall never forget them.
Thank you for the history lesson.
Thanks to David Olusoga and others the real story of WW1 and the contribution of black people shall never be extinguished.
Interesting piece.
The Gold Coast fired the first shot in World War I against the Germans in the Gold Coast (Ghana) Togo border. The first prisoners of war captured in WWI were also captured by the Gold Coast. We helped them to seize an important communication device from the Germans.
The Gold Coast, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Sudan and Egypt helped them to win World War II as well. General de Gaulle was in Congo Brazzaville, Chad and the Gold Coast during WWII. He broadcast from these locations to the Free Frances resistance forces from Africa.
The West African Frontier Force helped them in East Africa, and fought the Japanese in Burma during WWII.
The West African Air Reinforcement Route (aka Takoradi Route) resulted in the delivery of over 5000 aircraft – Hurricanes, Spitfires etc – to Cairo to replenish aircraft losses in the Mediterranean corridor. The operation resulted in the recapture of North African territories held by the Germans after France fell to Germany. The Allies were able to rout General Rommel and his German troops from North Africa. D-Day would not have been possible without the West African Air Reinforcement Route operation.
Now, they conveniently forget our contributions to their war efforts. Because we don’t know our own history, we do not remind them.