The often overlooked story of the African soldiers who risked their lives and left their families to fight for the British must finally be recognised – as the sacrifice of their white counterparts is
On 15 August 2020, the 75th ‘Victory over Japan Day’ will be marked. Will it recognise the service in World War Two of international combatants worldwide, including a million Africans? Or did they fight in another man’s war for little recognition?
The ‘VE Day 75’ celebrations in May 2020 perpetuated a fictive British-only victory, mythologising plucky English Spitfire pilots flying over the Cliffs of Dover to the strains of Vera Lynn, downplaying European, colonial and international servicemen. VJ Day is always less commemorated, but it is vital this year to recognise the contributions of international combatants. This is especially so for the often-forgotten African soldiers and their families, whose service was never recognised or rewarded equally. Their families continue to ask ‘why?’ after almost all of those involved have passed on.
West African soldiers from the British colonies of Nigeria, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Sierra Leone and the Gambia were crucial in winning the six-year jungle war in Burma (now Myanmar), fighting in appalling conditions to defend India from being overrun by Japan in World War Two.
165,000 West Africans served – of whom 126,000 were Nigerians, more than 15,000 died and 30,000 were injured, many suffering permanent disabilities. Yet official and media accounts from 1945 onwards neglected African combatants in the war, the effects on their families, communities and their role in independence.
Why were West African soldiers fighting an imperial war to keep Japan out of India?
British colonial rule in West Africa originated in the mid-19th Century, reaching northern Nigeria after defeating the Fulani Empire in 1903. British colonial governors, law, police, taxes, education and social structures were imposed, with the aim of ‘modernising indigenous culture’.
West African troops were recruited to British colonial armies for the formation of The West African Frontier Force in 1900, with regiments raised from each colonial state. The force served within Africa during World War One and, from the outbreak of war again in 1939, it expanded rapidly.
Nigerian regiments formed the majority of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), 10th Battalion of the 14th British Army and its 81st and 82nd West Africa Divisions. But many Nigerians had little direct contact with the colonial administration. Though increasingly aware of the British as their rulers, they knew much less about India, Japan, an emerging global great-power war, and nothing of Burma or its jungle.
Arguably, this was not their war, but an imperial conflict in which the Japanese conquest of south-east Asia in 1940-1943 threatened to overrun India. But the fall of France to Germany in 1940 changed this. France had a vast, thinly populated empire in West Africa, which bordered Nigeria and other British colonies. The prospect of German control over these territories through Vichy France threatened British interests until their defeat in 1942. West Africa was hugely valuable to the Empire for its natural resources of rubber and minerals, its harbours, and above all for its men.
The Human Cost
When war broke out, the West African colonies supported the British cause and general popular and political support boosted recruitment.
General George Giffard commanded West African forces in World War One and, as commander of the RWAFF, saw potential for large-scale recruitment. Few white officers were available, so expatriate Poles and Scots were assigned.
Local chiefs were issued quotas to recruit ‘volunteers’, with the promise of their wages being remitted to the villages. Many men volunteered, with powerful social pressures to enlist. But, in recruiting as many soldiers as possible, there was forceful conscription: an entire platoon was composed of convicts from Kano Gaol, and men were often seized from the streets.
Robert Rae was a young Scots officer in the RWAFF in 1942 involved in recruiting and training Hausa soldiers (from whom he learned to speak Hausa) around Sokoto, the most northern province of Nigeria. They formed the 10th Battalion Nigerian Regiment, part of the British 14th (‘forgotten’) Army West African Divisions. They fought in the brutal Arakan campaign in Burma in 1944-1945 against Japan, where many were killed or injured in the hostile jungle environment. He fell ill with jungle fever, his life being saved by three of his soldiers. He returned, recovered and lived to 90, leaving an account of his service.
Many were less fortunate, being killed, seriously injured, or suffering mental illness from their traumatic experiences.
Two brothers, Kobe and Tobe, from Ugbo-Okpala in Enugu State, Nigeria, volunteered. Their mother was a widow, her husband had been captured by slave traders. Narratives of war usually concentrate on the men, but the less-known effects on women’s lives also matter.