by Simon Lemieux
Black History Month is October, Remembrancetide comes in November, so a focus on non-White members of Britain’s armed forces who signed up and fought for ‘King and Country’ seems an appropriate and apt theme to take for the ‘History slot’ in this D&I newsletter. Firstly, look at the gravestone below.
It is like any other Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and
like many others, is actually situated in an English churchyard, here Cheriton
near Folkstone. The soldier commemorated
is William Tull, his date of death is 1920 but he is accounted a casualty of the
Great War having died at home from TB probably an effect of the gas poisoning
sustained in the trenches on the Western Front, aged 38. He was a sapper in the
Royal Engineers. The headstone is identical to tens of thousands of others
placed and lovingly cared for in cemeteries across Europe and beyond, commemorating
those who died during modern military conflicts involving our nation and its
colonies and dominions. Whether General or private, a mutineer ‘shot at dawn’
or a holder of a VC and bar, the son of a duke or a dustman, all are remembered
alike by the same headstone; in death if not in life, there is equality and a
uniformity of respect. To equality of rank, birth or military feats, one can
add race. William Tull was Black, one of thousands of Black, Indian and Chinese
soldiers and labourers who signed up to serve in the Imperial forces during the
Great War of 1914-18. The total number of African and West Indian soldiers who
served in the British Army during the war is calculated at around 180,000.
William Tull had a more famous brother, Walter Tull, who is better known being both one of the first Black professional footballers (he played for both Spurs and Northampton Town before the war) and has come to prominence for being the first Black officer in the professional British Army. He was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in 1917 but lost his life at the Second Battle of the Somme in March 1918. The acclaimed military historian, Andy Robertshaw whom many in Y10 and above will have encountered as our battlefields guide when we go to Ypres (current Y9 – you will meet Andy if you are going on the Y9 History trip to Kent), undertook some fascinating research to try and pinpoint where his unmarked grave lies, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/07/historian-finds-clues-to-grave-of-britains-first-black-army-officer
So, Walter unlike his brother, but like so many others irrespective of race, is denied a marked grave due to his comrades being unable to retrieve his body from the battlefield. He is though commemorated by this monument at the Sixfields Stadium in Northampton.
Indeed, the Tull family as a whole are fascinating, if marked with tragedy and difficulty too, and a reminder that black immigration to Britain began long before the post WW2 Windrush generation. The Tulls’ grandparents were both slaves in Barbados. The article below is well worth reading if you want to learn a little more about their family history.
http://www.doverwarmemorialproject.org.uk/Information/Articles/Heroes/Tull.pdf
Walter Tull
in Tottenham kit
Yet there is a less positive aspect to the story and indeed
the wider issue of the commemoration, let alone the treatment of servicemen of non-European
descent. Walter Tull was one of a tiny handful of non-White officers in the
British armed forces. Indeed, Army regulations at the time specified that only
men of ‘pure European descent’ could be officers. In a colonial society and
mentality, the concept of black men commanding white men, was seen as a step
too far. Walter appears to have got around that ban due to senior officers
recommending him for promotion. This was after his bravery and valour on the
Italian Front, leading his troops daring night raid, when he led 26 men across
a swirling river and brought them all back unharmed. He was mentioned in
dispatches for “gallantry and coolness under fire”. There is some speculation
as to why he was not awarded the Military Cross for his gallant actions and
that possibly colour played a role. Whatever the truth, we can be pretty
confident that had Walter’s body been retrieved and identified, he would have
been properly honoured like his brother with a proper CWGC headstone.
That sadly though was not the case for all Black servicemen,
most notably those who served in East Africa. A story came to light recently of
how thousands of African soldiers were denied that equality of remembrance by
which “everyone regardless of their rank or position in civil life shall be
treated with equality”. It appeared to be more a policy for the Western Front
rather than in other theatres of war such as Africa, and to apply in the latter
only to White officers and NCOs or those
of European descent. Persistent research in the CWGC archives by Prof Michèle
Barrett has thrown up what might be called some ‘inconvenient truths’ to query this
comforting image of complete equality in remembrance. Churchill doesn’t come
out of it too well either. Simply put, while officers and NCOs of ‘British
stock’ are individually commemorated in CWGC cemeteries in Kenya, thousands of
Africans who served in the Carrier Corps are not. No graves, no plaques and not
even a memorial. The full story can be found here,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/03/how-britain-dishonoured-first-world-war-african-dead
So what are we to conclude from this whistle-stop and
necessarily selective account of Black soldiers in the Great War and how they
are commemorated? It is inevitably a story of two halves, some Black soldiers
were/are properly recognised and commemorated. Exceptions were made and
promotions awarded, there were certainly some in the services who saw beyond
skin colour and stereotypes. Yet elsewhere, generalisations about race
dominated. More widely, it was believed that black soldiers from the Empire,
both Africa and the West Indies, would lack sufficient discipline to maintain
order when under enemy attack. Different perceptions and stereotypes about
‘fighting spirit’ existed about other non-White colonial forces such as the
Sikh regiments which were seen as far more ‘capable’ of fighting in the
frontline, though fears abounded about their ability to survive the harshness
of the European climate especially in winter, but that is another article by
itself. Interestingly too, as David Olusoga’s article at the end notes, the
French and held markedly different views about the fighting capabilities of
Africans, albeit still predicated on race. As a general rule therefore, Black
and West Indian were denied front line fighting roles at least in Europe.
Instead, their regiments such as the British West Indies Regiment, served
either in Africa fighting what would have then been termed ‘their own kind’, or
else as non-combatant labourers, clearing forests and digging trenches where
they were paid less and largely lived apart from their White counterparts. One
would look somewhat in vain to see a radical shift in racial attitudes emerging
out of the carnage of the war. Simply put, there were not enough Black soldiers
fighting and serving alongside ordinary British battalions in integrated units,
to break down misconceptions. But if the role of the Great War in marking the
beginning of the end of the British Empire and the colonial ideas it reflected
and reinforced, is acknowledged, then indirectly at least, black soldiers did
not die in vain. We must also remember that Germany and Austria were certainly
no less racist by the standards of today, than Britain or France. It is
impossible I would suggest, to conceive of a better outcome for non-White
peoples living in European colonies, had victory gone to the Central Powers. If
the treatment of its European minorities by the Austrian Empire, and German
actions in its own colonies is anything to go by – read about the Herero and
Nama genocide in Namibia between 1884 and 1915, then German South West Africa
here, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57279008 then an Allied victory was certainly
preferable on balance.
If you want to explore the themes in this article further why not read these articles:
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/commonwealth-and-first-world-war
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/black-servicemen-unsung-heroes-of-the-first-world-war/
https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/mutiny/
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