Although their operations were
limited, the African troops who fought in the First World War proved that they
were loyal to the Empire. Furthermore, their successfully-fought campaigns highlighted
their potential value as a force outside Africa .
The West African troops that took part in the war were units from the West
African Frontier Force (WAFF). They played a vital part in driving out the
German forces from the African continent; their success culminating at the
battle of Mahiwa/Nyangao in October 1917. The African colonies had produced
57,000 soldiers and an astonishing 932,000 porters and labourers, most for
service in the German East African campaign.[1] There
could have been a higher proportion of black soldiers, but the Colonial Office
was nervous about black men fighting white, and senior officers wrongly
believed that the African lacked the steadiness and fortitude of the European.[2]
The war had also revealed the underlying racial prejudice that existed in the British Empire . Lord Lugard, who raised the first units
of the WAFF in 1897, was appalled by the idea of his wife being treated by a
black doctor – despite his close working relationships with a number of African
personnel.[3]
Historians have struggled to understand what motivated the Africans to fight in
the First World War, because they rarely recorded any of their experiences.
Many focussed on the possibility that the Germans would come in and take their
land. A Nigerian porter who served in the 1916-18 Cameroons
campaign was told ‘that we were going to the great war to help keep the King’s
soldiers who were preventing the Germans coming to our country and burning it’.[4]
Between the wars, the WAFF led a
relatively peaceful life – but in May 1919, Brigadier General Kirke, Deputy
Director of Military Operations, proposed that the War Office take over the
WAFF and their East African counterparts, the King’s African Rifles (KAR) from
the Colonial Office. Churchill had become Secretary of War and Air in November
1919, and he pressed his own ideas on the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. In
January 1920, he wrote ‘I am strongly in favour of our beginning to employ
African troops from West and East Africa, as well as from the Sudan , for
imperial purposes outside the African continent.’[5]
The view of the colonial authorities was not favourable towards Kirke or
Churchill’s proposals, and they made their feelings known at a conference in
the Colonial Office in April 1920. The two East African governors, Northey and
Coryndon, met Kirke and other War Office representatives. Kirke stressed his
belief that African troops should take a more important role in the defence of Britain ’s Empire: ‘It must be expected in a few
years that Indian troops would no longer be available for service outside India . It was
necessary, therefore, to contemplate that in, say, ten years we should need a
force of, say, 500,000 African troops available for service outside Africa.’ He
was partly accurate; in a little over twenty years time, the Empire would
require a substantial number of African troops to fight a war in the Far East –
an area that had traditionally fallen under the stewardship of the Indian Army.
Circumstances dictated that the
African colonial forces (ACF) be reduced in size during the 1920s and 1930s.
There was talk of sending East and West African troops to quell the revolt in Mesopotamia , but it had been largely subdued by the Royal
Air Force by the end of 1921. The rise of Italian fascism, however, created new
fears regarding African security. In May 1936, the War Office proposed to the
Committee of Imperial Defence a drastic reorganization of the ACF. They would
be restored to their pre-1930 strength, and there would be a move towards a
combined defence budget for East and West Africa .
It was agreed that, in the face of Italian aggression, the War Office should
take emergency control of the ACF. By mid-1938, a West African Expeditionary
Force for East Africa had been planned. It
consisted of two brigades; one from Nigeria and one from the Gold
Coast.[6]
It was June 1940 before the West
African brigade groups sailed. When Italy
entered the war, there were 10,000 troops at sea bound for East
Africa .[7]
They were to bear the brunt of the fighting, and were destined to acquit
themselves well against the Italians. They were unique in the sense that their
first line of transport was provided by carriers, who carried stores and parts
of weapons on their heads (as opposed to their British Army counterparts, who
used the more conventional method of motor transport). Indeed, it was natural
for an African to carry heavy or light loads on his head, with remarkable skill
and stamina.[8] This
would stand the West Africans in good stead for the forthcoming conflict in Burma . Brig
Swynnerton, of 1 (WA) Brigade, wrote that the West African was ‘the only
soldier among all the different nationalities from which the British Army in
Burma was drawn, who was capable of operating for months on end in the worst
country in the world, without vehicles and without mules and was alone able to
carry all his warlike stores with him’.[9]
The Africans’ talent for carrying heavy loads on their head was noticed by
members of the RWAFF prior to the outbreak of war in the Far
East . It was deemed a peculiarity by some, while others saw it as
a skill that could be utilised in jungle warfare. A. A. Mayard, who was posted
to West Africa with the RWAFF, said in June
1944:
Africans carry everything ‘for head’,
as they say, and today I made a note of all the things I saw being carried: an
alarm clock; a flat iron; a furled umbrella pointing fore and aft; a treadle
sewing machine; a coffin; a wardrobe; an army Dixie, and on top of that a large
bundle of firewood; a wicker basket of six live chickens; innumerable buckets,
and 4 gallon tin of water. And most of these things are carried without a
steadying hand. I have yet to see anyone drop anything.[10]
[1] L.
James, The Rise & Fall of the British
Empire (London :
Abacus, 2005), p.353.
[2] Ibid.,
p.354.
[3] Ibid.
[4] D.
Killingray, ‘Labour Exploitation for Military Campaigns in British Colonial
Africa 1870-1945’ Journal of Contemporary
History, Vol.24, No.3 (July 1989), p.484.
[5] W.O.
32/5356, Churchill to Cigs, 11 Jan. 1920; Colonial Office to War Office, 4 Feb.
1920.
[6] C.O.
820/32/34220, secret memo to S/S at Colonial Office, 11 June 1938.
[7] Killingray,
‘The Idea of a British Imperial African Army’, p.432.
[8] J.
Hamilton, War Bush, 81 (West African) Division in Burma 1943-1945 (Norwich : Michael Russell, 2001), p.28.
[9] Ibid.
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