The first major study of the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of
African soldiers who served with the British army during the Second
World War.
During the Second World War over half-a-million African troops served
with the British Army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in
the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy and Burma - the largest
single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. This
account, based mainly on oral evidence and soldiers' letters, tells the
story of the African experience of the war. It is a 'history from below'
that describes how men were recruited for a war about which most knew
very little. Army life exposed them to a range of new and startling
experiences: new foods and forms of discipline, uniforms, machines and
rifles, notions of industrial time, travel overseas, new languages and
cultures, numeracy and literacy.
What impact did service in the army have on African men and their
families? What new skills did soldiers acquire and to what purposes were
they put on their return? What was the social impact of overseas travel,
and how did the broad umbrella of army welfare services change soldiers'
expectations of civilian life? And what role if any did ex-servicemen
play in post-war nationalist politics? In this book African soldiers
describe in their own words what it was like to undergo army training,
to travel on a vast ocean, to experience battle, and their hopes and
disappointments on demobilisation.
DAVID KILLINGRAY is Professor Emeritus of History, Goldsmiths, and
Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
University of London.
