BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY: THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS OF WORLD WAR ONE AND TWO:

More than four million Black men and women from Britain Colonies Volunteered for service during the first and second world wars. Thousand died and many were wounded or spent years as POWs, yet throughout the rest of the century their sacrifices was largely ignored. But the Racism in the Trenches when they arrived at the front line can be told at first hand by a Black West Indian Soldier called George Blackman who at the time would have done anything for the mother country in 1914. In a flush of youth and patriotism, he told the Recruiting Officer he was 18years old, when in actual fact he was only 17years old.and joined the British West Indian Regiment.

Lord Kitchener said, with the Black Race he could whip the world. Blackman recalls " We sang songs, "Run Kaiser William run for you life boy". But Lord Kitchener attitude in private was very different, only white soldiers to do the fighting, Darkies soldiers to stay at the rear to load and unload ammunition, lay telephone wire and cables and dig trenches. The white soldiers called us Darkies, the causal racism at the time and the German Prisoners spat in their hand pretending to wash their face, saying we were only painted Black.