Africa's heroes

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

When in August this year the world commemorates the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, we should also pay attention to the fact that three months earlier the war had been practically declared over. This is a sign that most of the Western world remains unaware of the true scope of the war, especially the fronts that took place outside Europe. The attitude to the victims in Hiroshima is evidence of that. As well as the fate of those who fought in the war on the African front, or the ones who were on the European fronts most and who came from the African colonies of the so called Great Powers, often forcefully thrown into a war that wasn't theirs.

In 1939, hundreds of thousands of West African soldiers were sent to fight on the European battlefields, and countless other men from the British colonies were used as carriers and aides-de-camp. In France, Germany and Italy, in India and Burma and in the Pacific islands, African soldiers fought and died for their European colonial overlords.

The official narrative is that the African soldiers were volunteers. In reality though, things were quite different. Many of those veterans now testify about forceful mobilization. People were being pulled out of their homes and workplaces, and recruited for the war. The British, French and Belgians all did that. They needed manpower, and they would stop at nothing to get it from their colonies - even if they had to prosecute those who refused. The penalty for desertion was death by a firing squad.

These men didn't know who they were being sent to fight for and why, very few even knew what fascism or Nazism meant. They were just told that the Germans had attacked, and the Germans considered us Africans inhuman, apes. And that was all. So there was this chance to prove to the world that we weren't.

The Senegalese writer and film director Ousmane Sembene, a former colonial soldier, writes that at the time he and his compatriots were able to see the other face of white Europeans: ragged, muddy, dying. "That helped us realise that all men are the same". And that is why many former African soldiers later took active part in the resistance and independence movements and organisations that fought against colonialism in their respective countries.

But not all of them went that way. The activists from the liberation movements have often accused the vets that they were working with the colonial forces, and aiding the oppressors. Many former soldiers are now doomed to living in misery and squalor, they are completely forgotten, despite their immense contribution to the victory over fascism. These people are forgotten, often abused, living without dignity, although they had put their life on the line for a foreign cause, and saw many of their comrades dying in the bloody mess that was the world war.

These people have to be celebrated, too. They were part of this victory as well.

Comments

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

And let's not forget Africa's heroes of WW1. More than a million people from this continent died in that war, defending the interests of their colonial masters. And that sacrifice is also mostly forgotten today.