A special service at Westminster Abbey last week marked the end of this years war heroes buffs season. As in previous occasions, Africans remained unmentioned. Many Africans were left with no rewards after a world war they were tricked or coerced into joining. Above, French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A special service at Westminster Abbey last week marked the end of this years war heroes buffs season. A mooted affair occurred in Paris. As in the previous gatherings, Africans remained unmentioned.
Queen Elizabeth led a retinue to mark the Armistice Day. Thats the eleventh day of the eleventh month and fifth hour in 1918 when the Great War ended with Germanys defeat.
In Paris, Chancellor Angela Merkel joined President Nicolas Sarkozy. For all practical purposes, Germans and Italians ignored the day. The war gave them Adolf Hitler and Fascist Benito Mussolini who led them to World War II rubble.
The United States calls the day the Veterans Day, appropriately. Wars will never end. In any case, the United States is forever engaged in shoot-outs here and there. Anyway, patriots mounted parades and towns praised war heroes.
The Westminster gathering also marked the end of the World War I generation of soldiers. The last three known British warriors died this year. One left a dubious recipe for male longevity: cigarettes, whisky and wild women.
The Paris gathering was notable in that for the first time a French and German leader marked the date in one capital. Since the end of World War II, the two nations have ended their pastime of humiliating each other.
Singling Britain, France, Germany, and Italy here isnt an accident. Other than Italy, they used Africans in World War I in ways resembling slavery. All but Germany, then wallowing in Aryan race superiority, used Africans in World War II.
In both wars, three categories of Africans existed: Blacks, Arabs, and white South Africans. Historians estimate close to a million geographical Africans fought in World War I.
Armed anyone
The French and the Germans armed anyone who could fight in the first war. Britain wasnt about to give natives war experience. Blacks were for menial chores, carrier corps, and trench digging.
As a fighting force though, Africans were marginal in the World War I. In any case, most were coerced or tricked into joining the army. During World War II, many volunteers, others needed jobs. Last week, the BBC published figures in a book due next year, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second Word War.
Britain had a majority of African troops, 807,797. They came from every country Britannia ruled, including tiny Gambia. Talk of scrapping the barrel! African troops presence was most felt during the Burma campaign where two in 10 were white.
Yet when thanking his troops at the end of the campaign, Allied commander, General William Slim, made no mention of the Africans.
Presumably, war had made them British, although pay and rank remained low. Somehow, a Ghanaian managed lieutenant.
Combed its colonies
Like the British, France combed its colonies for troops, 190,000 in both the traitorous Vichy and General Charles de Gaulles Free French armies. At the insistence of US segregationist commanders, not a single black soldier appeared in the liberation of Paris. Yet Free French army couldnt raise an all white division. Italy and Belgium had relatively small contingents and many Ethiopian patriots fought on the British side.
Without exception, when the war ended, Britain and France stripped these soldiers off their uniforms and shipped them home to make do with little. A great deal has been made of political awakening that resulted from African experience during the war. That though, is no consolation. In his platitudinous remarks, Mr Sarkozy observed that the French and the Germans cried the same. Well, so did Africans in the war and mourning their own braves, dead other peoples wars.
In the next war heroes buff season, a French or British bigwig need show at a grave of a former African soldier and say the same. Thats being courteous, grateful, and civilised.
source.nation.ke
