Historian's Corner: Race, Recruitment and the Great War

 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.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/bhm-heroes/how-black-soldiers-helped-britain-in-first-world-war/

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/commonwealth-and-first-world-war

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/11/david-olusoga-black-soldiers-first-world-war-expendable

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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