12/27/2023 0 Comments Mutiny tattoo mcdonaldAs did the discovery that white soldiers were being given a pay rise while black soldiers were not.īy 6 December 1918 they had had enough: the men of the 9th Battalion revolted and attacked their Black officers. They had to load and unload ships, do labour fatigues 2Īnd perform demeaning tasks like building and cleaning toilets for white soldiers, which all caused much resentment. As a result of severe labour shortages at Taranto, the West Indians had to carry out arduous physical tasks. They were subsequently joined by the three battalions from Egypt and the men from Mesopotamia. MutinyĪfter Armistice Day, on 11 November 1918, the eight BWIR battalions in France and Italy were concentrated at Taranto in Italy to prepare for demobilisation 1 One Trinidadian soldier in Egypt wrote to a friend saying that: "We are treated neither as Christians nor as British citizens, but as West Indian ‘n***ers" without anybody to be interested in nor look after us”. There is evidence that there were also armed skirmishes with German troops in France. It was active in a number of areas including playing a vital role in active combat against the Turkish army in Palestine, Jordan and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) and in France, Italy and Egypt where the men served mainly in auxiliary roles. Midday's reprieve brings much-needed restĭuring the war, 15,600 men in the regiment's 12 battalions served with the Allied forces, with two thirds of the volunteers coming from Jamaica and the rest from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, British Honduras (now Belize), Grenada, British Guiana (now Guyana), the Leeward Islands, St Lucia and St Vincent.īWIR troops being inspected in Jamaica. This poem by one of the troops, The Black Soldier's Lament, showed the bitterness with which this was experienced: We had to shave the hair there because the lice grow there. George Blackman, a Barbadian member of the fourth division, when recounting conditions to a journalist rolled up his sleeve to show his armpit: "it was cold. Most of them went to war without guns.Ĭonditions were appalling. The commanding officers were all white, and no black officer could occupy a position higher than sergeant.Īrriving in the war zone, they found that the fighting was to be done by white soldiers, and that West Indians were to be assigned the dirty and dangerous work of loading ammunition, laying telephone wires and digging trenches. This should not be confused with the West India Regiment, founded in 1795, which was normally stationed in the British colonies in the Caribbean themselves.īWIR Troops stacking shells. In 1915, the British West Indies Regiment was formed by grouping together the Caribbean volunteers. Very many had to return home no longer fit to serve as soldiers, with no compensation or benefits. Their initial journey to England was perilous, with hundreds of soldiers suffering from severe frostbite when their ships were diverted via Halifax in Canada. Initially, the Secretary Of State for War Lord Kitchener believed that Black British soldiers should not be allowed to join the forces, but King George V's intervention - combined with the need for men - made it possible. They were encouraged to do so by activists like Marcus Garvey, on the basis that if they showed their loyalty to the King they would show they have the right to be treated as equals. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, thousands of Caribbeans volunteered to join the British army.
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