Lions of the Jungle

"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.