Today is a day for quiet reflection as we honour the sacrifices of all members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty in all conflicts and wars since those who laid down their lives in the First World War. This is the day in 1918 when the guns fell silent on the Western Front after more than four years of fighting.
But if today is about ‘remembering’, then it should not only be about the Western Front, the 1914-18 war was indeed a World War and few places were untouched by it.
I followed a link on the BBC website this morning to an article entitled ‘What role did the British Empire play in the war?’ I thought this ‘Bitesize’ article would be illuminating. It was, but perhaps not in the way I had hoped.
I learnt that ‘British colonies sent over two and a half million men to fight for Britain during the war.’ They came from ‘India’ (which the article adds, at that time included Pakistan and Bangladesh) and ‘colonies as far away as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia (which is now Zimbabwe) also sent thousands of soldiers.’ ‘Bitesize’ history indeed.
Perhaps it is unfair to expect the full story from a self proclaimed ‘bitesize’ piece, but that shouldn’t stop us from filling in some of the gaps. Britain’s colonies in the area of the the Caribbean sent around 15,600 men to serve in the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), a small number in the grand scheme of things but that doesn’t mean their contribution should be forgotten.
There is a book by Dominiek Dendooven which covers the presence of the BWIR on the Western Front and there will soon be a book covering the contribution of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the BWIR (we are spending today proof reading it!). These men, around two thousand of them, trained at a camp at Seaford in Sussex and then went on to serve in campaigns in Egypt and Palestine and also in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and in East Africa, a few also served in Flanders. They served with distinction but many never returned to their homes and are commemorated from Dar-es-Salaam to Basra and many places in between. Their stories have never previously been told.
Today, we remember all of them.
