John Starling and Ivor Lee, No Labour, No Battle: Military Labour During the First World War, The History Press, 2009 (384pp, incl. 30pp of phtogrpahs; pbk, £19.99)

You might wonder why I am telling you about this book.  There have been endless commemorations about WWI, but except for David Olusoga's film, most people will remain ignorant not only about the war fought for five years in Africa, but also about the workers, the labourers, the ‘carriers'.  Even the very official British Labour Corps has not been recognised, never mind the many tens of thousands of workers from elsewhere, including the British Empire. So I was delighted to stumble across this very important book.

As the title indicates, without the workers the war could not have been fought, even in Western Europe. As Professor Richard Holmes states in his Foreword, "roads and railways had to be built and repaired, timber for everything from huts to duckboards had to be felled, sawed an fashioned, and salvage - from discarded rifles to redundant boots - had to be recovered and wherever possible refurbished...  [A]mmunition...food, fodder and water for men and animals; fuel for motor vehicles and aircraft...sandbags, wire pickets, water pumps...  'elephant iron' that made the roofed-over sections of trenches" had to be got to the front line and bodies had to be exhumed and buried - all by the labour corps. And of course, though naturally the book does not deal with this, without the miners producing the minerals, etc needed to manufacture weaponry, etc, and thus the workers in the factories, ‘no labour, no battle'. Then we must also add the merchant marine which transported the metals, the food, the ammunition, the workers manufacturing weapons, uniforms, baking the bread....

The task faced by the authors was vast, Professor Holmes advises that "Few records were kept at the time and the Official Histories rarely have more than the briefest mention of Labour units". (p.20) The authors note that "With no Home Service units keeping War Diaries, little is known about individual companies, but they found some information at two (there were 8) Labour Corps Centres, the Southern and the Scottish. (p.57). What we have is the result of obviously tireless research which often revealed totally inadequate data..

Section One is the ‘Home Service', and gives details of all that needed to be done in the UK - for example, the Dock Battalion set up in Liverpool in 1915 as the size of docks there had to be increased as Britain's East coast ports were virtually closed because of the U-boats.  The authors detail methods of recruitment, pay scales, varieties of work, life in the units, strikes, treatment of conscientious objectors and ‘Life in the units'. What proportion were Black Brits is not recorded.  By 1917 there were 100,000 in the British labour corps and 80,000 in France.

Section Two, ‘France and Flanders' outlines the work that needed to be done by the British and French, and then also Belgian labour corps.  Very quickly the numbers were insufficient and workers had to be imported. Troops from Bermuda arrived in June 1916; trained to fight but used as labourers. This was to be the fate also of the two battalions of the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), the Cape Coloured Corps, the Canadian 'Negroes', Indians and Egyptians. Labour corps from China and the South African Native Labour Corps arrived in 1916 and were segregated even from other labour corps. The officers were Europeans, often with no military experience whatsoever. Treatment was harsh, and there were strikes and mutinies. The total number of dead is not known.

Section 3 is ‘Other Theatres' - ie, Gallipoli, Salonika, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Italy, Turkey, North Russia and East Africa. Information as above. Of particular interest to us is the use of Egyptians and the Indian Mule Corps in Gallipoli. The authors note the appalling level of disorganisation re the labour corps in Mesopotamia; as this involved Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and Arab corps, I do wonder about long-term effects. (Indians, Mauritians, Egyptians, Fijians, the BWIR  and Chinese labour corps were also there.) In the campaign against German East Africa, the British used African troops as well as c. one million Africans in the labour corps. As there is no record of their numbers, one has to wonder whether they were ever paid. The authors note that the King's African Rifles Regulations were amended 1915 to "enable carriers and labourers to claim compensation in case of unclaimed pay, disablement or death" (p.194); but no search for data was ever carried out and the men/widows were ever paid. The authors emphasise that the numbers who died is not known; estimates vary between 23,000 and 95,000. Of course, the numbers could be much higher and many villagers might have died of hunger after the military passed through and gathered up all available food; and raped the women? (The war dragged on for five years.)

I do not understand why the wars fought to take over three other German colonies in Africa are not even mentioned by the authors.  While Togoland was taken in less than t wo weeks,  Cameroons look longer to conquer and must have needed labour corps. The war to take over German South-West Africa (today's Namibia) was fought by the British dominion of South Africa and undoubtedly used thousands of labour corps.

Section Four,  ‘British and Dominion Units', investigates the Royal Marine Labour Corps, the Middlesex Alien Companies and briefly the Bermuda Royal Garrison Artillery which did labouring work in Europe and was awarded one Military Cross and 3 Military Medals.  Then there is much on the Cape Coloured Labour Battalion, and the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC), also in Europe, also officered by Whites and ‘housed' in ‘segregated fenced compounds' (p.227).  The South African government forbade the award of any medals to Africans. Of the over 800 SANLC recruits being shipped to Europe in 1917 on the Mendi, 607 Africans died when the ship was accidentally rammed off the Isle of Wight. 31 of the ship's crew also died - how many of them were Africans, I ownder. Then there was the Seychelles Labour Battalion, about which there is little and conflicting information. The authors believe they were used in the East Africa campaign and that 341 of the c.800 men died.

The BWIR is reported very thoroughly. Formed in 1915 as military units, many of its regiments were used as labour corps, eg in France and Italy.  This naturally led to much resentment and to what is known as the ‘Mutiny at Taranto', when the men refused to clean latrines.  Some of the men had also encountered racism while hospitalised in Britain and France. (On this also see G. Howe, Race, War and Nationalism, Oxford, 2002. And please also note that the West India Regiments fought in the War.) There were about 15,000 men in the BWIR and c. 2,000 died. The BWIR won many awards, but the data does not distinguish between the White officers and the ‘coloured' men'.

The Section then deals with Canadian labour units, including the Construction Battalion formed of Black Nova Scotians and then of Blacks from all the provinces and even African Americans. They served in France. The Indian Labour Corps also served in France and Mesopotamia. Just how many men were involved is unclear -  certainly tens of thousands; and officered, as all the other corps, by inexperienced Whites. An estimated 1,500 died in France, mainly from illness.  While about 600 White Fijians served in the British military, it was not till 1917 that a labour corps was raised there. The authors report that they faced prejudice from both the French and the British authorities in France. Finally the section reports on the Mauritius Labour Battalion, on whom, yet again, there is insufficient information available.  About 1,370 men were recruited, but many became ill and many died. They served in Mesopotamia, and it is noted that ‘pensions were awarded in cases of death or disability'. (p.268) Just how unique was this, I keep wondering!

Section Five is ‘Foreign Labour Units'. It begins with the unknown number - c. 250,000 to 500,000 - men from Egypt; death numbers are, as ever, unknown.  They served in Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine France,  Mesopotamia,  and Solinka.  Then we learn of the Jewish Pals Battalion formed in 1916; the Zion Mule Corps  formed by refugees from Palestine; the Jewish Labour Corps, the Russian Labour Battalions and Companies, the Macedonian Labour Battalions, the 1^st Serbian Sentry Battalion and other European labour corps. And what surprised me the most, the hundreds of thousands of Chinese men contracted to work in Europe by both France and Britain. Their contracts (the President of China had agreed to this) were for three years, for 10 hour per day 6 days a week' pay rates were according to skills. Their lives and work and relationships with each other and the Europeans are fully described. The number of deaths is thought to be c.2,145.

Section Six: Research, provides much data to help researchers. There is also a helpful bibliography.

So this book opens a door which enables readers to attempt to re-assess World War I and the immense contributions to it by  ‘natives', as they were so often referred to, in the British Empire and Egypt, then recognised as being within ‘Britain's sphere of influence'.  So, not only ‘No Labour, No Battle', but ‘No Empire, No Victory'.