"In an army that took a perverse pride in calling itself 'Forgotten', the Africans, and what they did, are truly forgotten today." Julian Thompson, War in Burma
In 2007, I was sitting in an undergraduate history seminar
discussing the Second World War's South East Asian theatre. Something was
touched upon (and unfortunately not expanded upon) that surprised and intrigued
me: during the Burma campaign, East and West Africans fought for the British in the
Fourteenth Army against the Japanese. I would later discover that it wasn't
just the odd platoon, company or battalion - but a total of 90,000 personnel,
one sixth of the army's strength. This was a snippet of history too big to
ignore - after a little digging, I discovered there was a story to be told,
albeit wrapped up in the relative dryness of a final-year dissertation, published here in its entirety.
Deservedly though, others have recently picked up the
story-telling mantle to reveal more about this remarkable chapter in British
colonial history. Nigerian novelist Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy deserves particular
praise for its account of, as Biyi puts it, the Second World War's "least
documented and most brutal theatre". Elsewhere, a BBC News feature
and an Al Jazeera photofeature (the latter features Isaac Fadoyebo, a character whose excellent
wartime diary is recalled in my thesis) have helped make the story more
accessible. Further photos have been published by individuals, namely a superb set of 20 images by Flickr's Mike Bkr - one of which forms the background to this website. Perhaps these efforts will help to rectify the Fourteenth's reputation as
the 'forgotten army' - or more specifically, that of the forgotten army's forgotten
formations: the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions, known collectively as the
Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) and the 11th East African Division.
My dissertation consists of 10 chapters broken down
into individual pages, all of which can be accessed via right-hand navigation
links.
