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Gary K. Busch
The recent celebration of the D-Day landing and the multiple recollections of the ageing participants in the battles of that war issued in a period of recollection of the horrors of that war and the bravery of the participants; particularly by the survivors. Celebrities from both the Axis and the Allied Powers were there; even the French, Russians and Italians who fought on both sides of the war.
The only ones missing were the valiant African soldiers who fought and died in these same battles, served at the front and perished in the prisoner-of-war camps.
Their heroism and dedication went unnoticed and unregarded. This is a pity and a great shame for the hosts of these celebrations.
It should have been no surprise to the Africans, however, as their treatment after the war was a triumph of racist and discriminatory behaviour towards them by those whose homelands the Africans had fought to save.
These African soldiers were many and ubiquitous. They fought in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Far East, especially Burma, Ceylon, and India. There were over a million African soldiers engaged in this war.
For them the war started at its very beginning; not the attack on Poland which triggered the European response in 1939, but even earlier in 1935 when the Italian Fascist troops, backed by African soldiers from Eritrea, attacked Ethiopia.
African troops were engaged in this war as a result of the colonial occupation of their countries and the compulsion of the colonial powers on the colonies to provide manpower for the war effort. Some were volunteers but most were compelled to become soldiers.
Each colonial power had a different method of conscription but the end result was the same.
In his book, “Fighting For Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War”, historian David Killingray says more than half a million African troops served with the British forces between 1939 and 1945 — 289 530 of them with the King’s African Rifles from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Malawi.
He describes it as the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. Most of the Africans were told that they had no choice.
They were told that they must fight and were picked up by army trucks from their home villages and sent for basic training, often with the complicity of the native chiefs and district supervisors.
The Belgians just rounded up whomever they saw and dropped them off at a local army base; usually after some initial brutality.
The French had created a body of African soldiers earlier. Since 1857 the French colonialists created a surrogate army of African soldiers from the Africans living in the several states composing the AOF (French West Africa) and the AEF (French Equatorial Africa).
They called these soldiers the Tirailleurs Senegalais although they weren’t limited to inhabitants of Senegal.
The Tirailleurs Senegalais were created as the first permanent units of black African soldiers under French rule in 1857. These were not professional soldiers; they were drawn from the ranks of the ex-slaves and social outcasts who were sold to the French by the local African chiefs.
From 1857 to 1905 the main recruiting of these soldiers was the rachat (repurchase) system in which slaves were purchased from their local owners by the French and turned into mercenary soldiers. The practice of buying slaves by the army was ended officially in 1882 but it was observed more in the breach than the observance.
In 1905 the French colonies in Africa were put under civilian rather than military rule.
However, this removal of French military rule over the region meant that ever more African proxies were needed for policing, fighting resistance forces, and as garrison troops.
These surrogate troops were used to put down local uprisings and expand French rule. The Tirailleurs Senegalais participated in the conquest of Morocco in the early 1900s.
In 1912 a new partial-conscription law was passed, making it easier for the French to recruit surrogates.
With the French entry into World War I these Tirailleurs Senegalais were sent to Europe to defend France. The number of West African troops serving under French command in World War I comprised about 170,891 men, and approximately 30 000 of them were killed.
In Senegal alone more than a third of all males of military age were mobilized and sent to France to fight.
After the war the French colonial authorities passed the Conscription Law of 1919, which called for universal male conscription in peacetime as well as wartime.
Hundreds of thousands of the Tirailleurs Senegalais were compelled to fight in France’s colonial wars and to provide labour brigades for the colonial authorities.
During World War II these African troops played an important role. The Tirailleurs Senegalais troops were used in even greater numbers, initially by Vichy France and later by the Free French.
In 1940, African troops comprised roughly nice percent of the French army. The French recruited more than 200,000 black Africans during the war. Approximately 25,000 were killed in battle. Many were also interned in German labour camps and thousands of black African Prisoners of War (POWs) were murdered by the Wehrmacht in 1940.
British forces in the Middle East under Wavell invaded Syria and Lebanon from Palestine and Transjordan on Sunday, 8 June 1941 (with columns arriving from Iraq later in the campaign) under the codenamed “Operation Exporter”.
At that time the ‘Allies’ were only the members of the British Commonwealth. The Soviet Union had not yet been invaded and the Japanese had yet to bomb Pearl Harbour.
The Africans, wrenched from their homes by colonial conscription laws, the rachat and kidnapping fought bravely and well during the Second World War.
It was a pity and a shame that their contribution to the war effort, marked in lives lost, injuries suffered, and harsh conditions should have been allowed to go unrecognised at the ceremonies.
Not one African country was invited to participate.
It is an insult to the memory of these brave African soldiers. — Pambazuka News.
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