You cannot have war heroes if you’ve never fought a war.
BY Olu Walrond
Every year around this time, a lot of people, especially those in high society, walk around with a red flower on their breast. When I was in primary school many decades ago, the teachers impressed on us the need for us to buy these flowers. The money would go to those men and some women who fought for us in the two world wars.
These war heroes, we were told, were sometimes living in dire circumstances. So as children, we bought her flowers and wore them with the same pride that people wear them today. Completely ignorant of the real story behind those flowers and the people on whose behalf we bought them. It was a completely robotic exercise, as it is today. None of us, like none of those today, had any idea that the truth was being hidden from us. In many countries, those who risked their lives by serving in wars are revered and honoured by the rest of society. They are certainly not people whom you would expect to be living in dilapidated houses, on whose behalf they would have to be an annual collection of pennies. But each year in Barbados, we are told and even shown, pictures of the poor conditions in which veterans live. How is this so? Well, it is so because you were never told that we have no war heroes.
The two world wars had little to nothing to do with the Caribbean. We have never been at war with anyone.
You cannot have war heroes if you’ve never fought a war. If your citizens volunteer to help another nation, then they become heroes of that nation. And naturally, they should be rewarded and honoured by the country that benefited from their service. And here begins the story that was never told. Our war heroes are really heroes of the United Kingdom. The responsibility for their post-war well-being was that of the United Kingdom. That is the country for which they gave their service. They should be able. Perhaps we should say they should have been able, since it is doubtful if any of them are still alive. They should have been able to live comfortably on their post-war pensions, arriving from the UK on a monthly basis. Nobody in Barbados should be made to feel they have a duty to support these veterans. They didn’t fight to make Barbados better. Whoever won the war, we would still have been colonies, exploited and dominated from outside.
So why did the UK fail in its duty to these men and women? Simply because the UK did not want them in their war, and they did their utmost to prevent them from enlisting. There is a chapter in my book, Westminsters Jewel The Barbados Story, that gives a detailed account of the repeated efforts by Caribbean people to enlist in the British Army, only to be rebuffed at every turn by the British.
These Caribbean colonials were sincere in their desire to support what they considered their mother country in her time of need. What they didn’t know was that the feeling of kinship was lacking on the other side. And in fact, the UK had a policy that only men of pure European descent were to be enlisted. Well, they finally bowed to the pressure and permitted black Caribbeans to enlist. But having done so, they confined them to menial tasks, ferrying ammunition and digging trenches. A few of them, like our own Errol Barrow and others from other islands, were able to serve in the Air Force. They were essentially a second class division of the Army, prevented from sharing health and recreational facilities with British soldiers.
The final insult came at the end of the First World War, when the soldiers were assembled in the southern Italian city of Taranto. The white soldiers were given a pay increase, but the Caribbean men got nothing. And on top of that, they were ordered to clean the toilets of the white soldiers. That was the final indignity. They rebelled and a violent confrontation ensued. Some of the men were later court martialled.
After clambering to fight for their mother country. The men of the Caribbean were denied participation in the victory parades and escorted home under armed guard.
This is the story that is lost in the sanitised Remembrance Day ceremony and the robotic Poppy appeal.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of The Bajan Observer.com