0:00:23 > 0:00:26We think we know the First World War -
0:00:26 > 0:00:30the trenches, the barbed wire, the shell holes...
0:00:30 > 0:00:32the machine guns, the gas,
0:00:32 > 0:00:34the high explosives...
0:00:34 > 0:00:37the mud and the blood of Flanders Fields.
0:00:37 > 0:00:40HEAVY ARTILLERY FIRE
0:00:50 > 0:00:54But the first shot fired by a soldier of the British Army
0:00:54 > 0:00:58was fired by an African, here in Africa,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00three days after war was declared.
0:01:02 > 0:01:05That soldier's name was Alhaji Grunshi.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07He'd been born in the British colony of the Gold Coast,
0:01:07 > 0:01:09modern day Ghana,
0:01:09 > 0:01:12and in 1914 he was a regimental sergeant major
0:01:12 > 0:01:15in the British West African Frontier Force.
0:01:15 > 0:01:20In 1914 they were attacking the Germans in their colony of Togoland.
0:01:20 > 0:01:23Now, from the moment Grunshi fired that first shot,
0:01:23 > 0:01:26the Great War became the World's War.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39More than 4 million non-European, non-White soldiers
0:01:39 > 0:01:43and auxiliaries were sucked into the World's War.
0:01:43 > 0:01:451.5 million from British India,
0:01:45 > 0:01:48more than 2 million from the French colonies
0:01:48 > 0:01:50in Africa and Indochina,
0:01:50 > 0:01:53400,000 African-Americans,
0:01:53 > 0:01:56100,000 Chinese labourers.
0:01:56 > 0:01:59They came as professional soldiers, conscripts,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02volunteers and mercenaries,
0:02:02 > 0:02:05but all had to grapple not just with a new and terrible kind
0:02:05 > 0:02:08of warfare, but with the fears and prejudices
0:02:08 > 0:02:12that swirled around the questions of race in the 20th century.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21Now, history has rightly remembered the millions of Europeans
0:02:21 > 0:02:24who died on the Western Front and elsewhere.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27But fighting alongside them were millions of others,
0:02:27 > 0:02:31men from every continent, of every race and every religion -
0:02:31 > 0:02:34the human capital of the European empires.
0:02:34 > 0:02:36It was their war too, and this is their story.
0:03:12 > 0:03:15In the first week of August, 1914,
0:03:15 > 0:03:18the empires of Europe went to war.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22Six weeks later, the first contingent of 30,000 troops
0:03:22 > 0:03:26from British India began to disembark here,
0:03:26 > 0:03:28at the French port of Marseille.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34It's probably impossible now, a century later,
0:03:34 > 0:03:38to even imagine the level of disorientation they must have felt.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42These were men from villages in rural India,
0:03:42 > 0:03:44they'd never left their homeland before,
0:03:44 > 0:03:46and many of them will have known very, very little
0:03:46 > 0:03:48about the outside world.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51To make matters much worse, when they left India
0:03:51 > 0:03:53they hadn't even been told where they were going.
0:03:53 > 0:03:55It was only in the last days of their journey
0:03:55 > 0:03:57that they were told the truth -
0:03:57 > 0:03:59that they were coming here to France, to fight.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16The spectators who flocked to see the Indians
0:04:16 > 0:04:20as they marched from the port had little idea of the sheer complexity
0:04:20 > 0:04:23of the army they were cheering on.
0:04:23 > 0:04:26Alongside units from the regular British Army,
0:04:26 > 0:04:30it was made up of men from a dozen different ethnic groups,
0:04:30 > 0:04:31led by White British officers
0:04:31 > 0:04:35who had made their army careers in British India.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38Below them in the chain of command were Indian officers
0:04:38 > 0:04:40who had risen through the ranks.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44It was an army designed to guard the Raj,
0:04:44 > 0:04:47and the decision to bring it to fight in Europe's war
0:04:47 > 0:04:51was regarded at the time as a "hazardous experiment."
0:04:51 > 0:04:54But in the crisis of 1914,
0:04:54 > 0:04:58a good year before Kitchener's mass armies entered battle,
0:04:58 > 0:05:02Britain needed all the professional soldiers it could lay its hands on.
0:05:03 > 0:05:07And so they marched out of town to their base camp,
0:05:07 > 0:05:11and for a few short weeks, Marseille's fashionable racecourse
0:05:11 > 0:05:13became a little India.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26This is an incredible picture of the Lahore division
0:05:26 > 0:05:31of the Indian Army in Marseille on this racecourse
0:05:31 > 0:05:35in September or early October 1914,
0:05:35 > 0:05:39and it is a panorama of all the different peoples
0:05:39 > 0:05:42that made up the British Indian Army.
0:05:51 > 0:05:53In the corner, there are huge
0:05:53 > 0:05:56brass Indian cooking pots.
0:05:56 > 0:05:57Very Indian pots - the sort of pots
0:05:57 > 0:05:58you'd see anywhere
0:05:58 > 0:06:00in a market in India today.
0:06:00 > 0:06:01Beside them are sacks,
0:06:01 > 0:06:03maybe of flour for cooking chapatis
0:06:03 > 0:06:06or maybe rice, beside the Indian cooking pots.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11Down here you can see some goats,
0:06:11 > 0:06:12which I'm afraid look like
0:06:12 > 0:06:15they're being slaughtered, according to the rules of Halal.
0:06:15 > 0:06:18This was an army that expected to eat Indian food
0:06:18 > 0:06:21no matter where it was on duty in the world,
0:06:21 > 0:06:22and the British were very good
0:06:22 > 0:06:24at realising that they got
0:06:24 > 0:06:25the best out of their men
0:06:25 > 0:06:28when they were sensitive to their needs - cultural,
0:06:28 > 0:06:29religious and dietary.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36On the old racecourse itself,
0:06:36 > 0:06:38we've got the British officer on his horse.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40It's a tiny little detail
0:06:40 > 0:06:41in a big photograph.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43This could be me projecting it onto him,
0:06:43 > 0:06:47but there's something about his bearing that is haughty,
0:06:47 > 0:06:50which is arrogant, it's confident.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53This is a man who is a soldier within the Indian Army
0:06:53 > 0:06:57who feels that he knows the men he's commanding,
0:06:57 > 0:06:59that he understands their cultures, that he's in charge.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02He's very much an authority figure within this frame.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10The authority of the India Corps' British officers
0:07:10 > 0:07:13drew much of its self-confidence from a racial theory
0:07:13 > 0:07:17that was rooted in the Imperial experience of British India.
0:07:18 > 0:07:21It took its cue from the Indian caste system
0:07:21 > 0:07:25and was known as the theory of the "Martial Races",
0:07:25 > 0:07:28a distillation of the received wisdom of the Raj
0:07:28 > 0:07:30concerning the inherent qualities
0:07:30 > 0:07:34of the sepoys, subadars and risaldars -
0:07:34 > 0:07:37the privates, sergeants and captains of the India Corps.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43This is a copy of The India Corps in France.
0:07:43 > 0:07:46It was written during the war by two White British officers
0:07:46 > 0:07:48who served with the India Corps.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52The most interesting part is right at the end, the appendix.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56This was the work of JWB Merewether, who was a lieutenant-colonel
0:07:56 > 0:07:59and he was a real advocate of the Martial Races theory.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04And he writes that, "the majority of the population of India
0:08:04 > 0:08:10"are people without physical courage and unfit for any military service."
0:08:10 > 0:08:15With a stroke he dismisses 90% of the population of India.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18But he then goes on to describe the various abilities,
0:08:18 > 0:08:21the strengths and weaknesses of the martial peoples,
0:08:21 > 0:08:24the men who have been recruited into the British Indian Army.
0:08:24 > 0:08:29He begins with the Sikhs, who are to him the perfect martial people.
0:08:29 > 0:08:33"The Sikhs are tall men of strong physique and stately bearing",
0:08:33 > 0:08:34he tells us.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36"The chief trait of the Sikhs
0:08:36 > 0:08:39"is a love of military adventure and a desire to make money."
0:08:40 > 0:08:45Merewether was also a fan of the Jats, who come from the Punjab.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48He considers them to be "a thoroughbred race."
0:08:48 > 0:08:51He says, "in appearance they are large-limbed and handsome
0:08:51 > 0:08:53"and they are unusually remarkable for their toughness
0:08:53 > 0:08:57"and their capacity to endure the greatest fatigue and privation."
0:08:58 > 0:09:02Next are the Pathans who are a people from the tribal regions
0:09:02 > 0:09:04of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08"The Pathan is a handsome man," Merewether tells us,
0:09:08 > 0:09:10"as a rule built in an athletic mould.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14"His easy but swaggering gait speaks of an active life in the mountains.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18"This makes him an ideal raider or skirmisher full of dash, but..."
0:09:18 > 0:09:19and this is the important part,
0:09:19 > 0:09:22"..but is often wanting in cohesion and the power
0:09:22 > 0:09:25"of steady resistance unless..." critically,
0:09:25 > 0:09:27"..he is led by British officers."
0:09:27 > 0:09:31Finally there's the Gurkhas, the most famous of all of the units
0:09:31 > 0:09:33of the old British Indian Army.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36"There is much about the Gurkha which especially appeals
0:09:36 > 0:09:38"to the British soldier.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41"His friendliness, cheeriness and adaptability
0:09:41 > 0:09:45"make him easier to get on with than any of the other Indian groups.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48"His native weapon is the kukri, a long, carved knife
0:09:48 > 0:09:51"with a keen cutting edge and a heavy back.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54"With this," Merewether says, "he can cut down trees or a man
0:09:54 > 0:09:56"as easily as he can sharpen a pencil."
0:09:56 > 0:09:59Every group is given its vices and virtues,
0:09:59 > 0:10:02it's determined how reliable they are.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06This is a micro-dissection of the British Army of India.
0:10:14 > 0:10:19By mid-October 1914, the India Corps were in northern France and Belgium,
0:10:19 > 0:10:23about to get their first taste of battle.
0:10:23 > 0:10:27The war had developed into a frantic race to the sea,
0:10:27 > 0:10:30as the Germans pushed towards the Channel ports
0:10:30 > 0:10:34and the French, British and Belgians fell back before them.
0:10:35 > 0:10:37Everything was in flux.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40There were cavalry battles in the wheat-fields,
0:10:40 > 0:10:42refugees at the crossroads,
0:10:42 > 0:10:45and hastily improvised barricades
0:10:45 > 0:10:47in the towns and villages.
0:10:47 > 0:10:49Still in their tropical uniforms,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52the India Corps units were thrown into battle
0:10:52 > 0:10:55with orders to hold the line at all costs.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59At the Belgian city of Ypres, they played a crucial part
0:10:59 > 0:11:02in the first of five battles that would be waged there.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08After Ypres, the German advance ground to a halt.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12The armies dug in and a new and terrible kind of warfare
0:11:12 > 0:11:14came to Europe...
0:11:14 > 0:11:15trench warfare.
0:11:19 > 0:11:23The India Corps were among the first to experience the grim realities
0:11:23 > 0:11:26of industrialised trench warfare -
0:11:26 > 0:11:29ruled by the machine gun, barbed wire,
0:11:29 > 0:11:32high explosives and gas.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49And alongside the murderous new weapons
0:11:49 > 0:11:54was the sheer misery of life in the trenches
0:11:54 > 0:11:58as the autumn of 1914 turned into the first winter of the war.
0:12:07 > 0:12:10The winter of 1914 was one of the coldest
0:12:10 > 0:12:13that's ever been recorded in northern Europe.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16There's a photograph of a group of Indian soldiers
0:12:16 > 0:12:18in the trenches in the winter of '14.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21They're huddled together, wrapped in blankets.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24They look more like vagrants than soldiers.
0:12:24 > 0:12:27The photograph was taken by the Daily Mirror,
0:12:27 > 0:12:29the same newspaper that had taken photographs of the Indians
0:12:29 > 0:12:33as they'd arrived in Marseille just a few months earlier.
0:12:33 > 0:12:35By now they were a different army.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38They became veterans, old soldiers in their 20s,
0:12:38 > 0:12:42of a new sort of warfare that had never been seen before in the world.
0:12:50 > 0:12:53We know a little about what they were going through
0:12:53 > 0:12:57thanks to a remarkable cache of official documents.
0:12:57 > 0:13:00The Reports of the Censor of the Indian Mails,
0:13:00 > 0:13:02held at the British Library.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06The Censor's office was established in late 1914
0:13:06 > 0:13:10to vet letters received and sent by the Indian troops in France.
0:13:13 > 0:13:15The Chief Censor, Captain Evelyn Howell,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19was an old India hand, someone who fancied he knew the difference
0:13:19 > 0:13:22between a Jat and a Pathan.
0:13:22 > 0:13:26Every week, he and the small team under his command
0:13:26 > 0:13:29would sample some of the 20,000 letters
0:13:29 > 0:13:31that passed between the troops in the front line,
0:13:31 > 0:13:33those hospitalised in England,
0:13:33 > 0:13:36and family and friends back home,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39selecting and making excerpts of the most interesting ones.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45"Men are dying like maggots.
0:13:45 > 0:13:48"No-one can count them, not in thousands
0:13:48 > 0:13:51"but in hundreds and thousands of thousands.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53"None can count them."
0:13:55 > 0:13:58'Santanu Das has made a close study of the letters.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02'For him they are not only a unique historical source
0:14:02 > 0:14:05'but also a kind of unacknowledged war poetry.'
0:14:06 > 0:14:10In the letters we have some of the first shock of encounter
0:14:10 > 0:14:13with Western industrial warfare.
0:14:15 > 0:14:17And for example I vividly remember
0:14:17 > 0:14:19some of the images
0:14:19 > 0:14:24that the soldiers employ to describe their experience.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28One sepoy writes, "The shells are pouring
0:14:28 > 0:14:30"like rain in monsoon."
0:14:32 > 0:14:35"The enemy's guns roasted our regiments
0:14:35 > 0:14:36"even as grain is parched.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41"Corpses lay at every step
0:14:41 > 0:14:43"and the blood ran in little rivers."
0:14:44 > 0:14:48So these are men from poor rural villages in the Punjab,
0:14:48 > 0:14:52and so that's why we get phrases like "the corn is being ground"?
0:14:52 > 0:14:55Absolutely, "The corn is being ground", or for example
0:14:55 > 0:15:02"as bulls and buffalos lie in the month of Bhadon so are our bodies."
0:15:02 > 0:15:06So these are people, these are peasant warriors,
0:15:06 > 0:15:08because they have largely been drawn,
0:15:08 > 0:15:10or in the first months of the war,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13exclusively drawn, from the Martial Races,
0:15:13 > 0:15:16or what the British termed as the Martial Races,
0:15:16 > 0:15:18and they are the peasant warriors.
0:15:18 > 0:15:23And they fall back on these agrarian metaphors and similes
0:15:23 > 0:15:26in order to express their innermost feelings.
0:15:29 > 0:15:31"Here it rains always.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35"Sometimes the noise of the rain is 'bang'
0:15:35 > 0:15:39"and sometimes it is the noise of wind.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43"The rain that sounds like wind is always falling,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45"but the banging rain comes only now and then.
0:15:47 > 0:15:51"And the corpses cover the country like sheaves of harvested corn."
0:15:52 > 0:15:56It's very important for us to listen to the letters
0:15:56 > 0:15:58rather than just read the letters.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02When we listen to them, perhaps we can hear the echoes
0:16:02 > 0:16:04of the sepoy heart.
0:16:07 > 0:16:11The censor was also interested in the sepoy's heart,
0:16:11 > 0:16:13but not for literary reasons.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18Captain Howell wanted to know how the theory of the Martial Races
0:16:18 > 0:16:21was standing up under the stress of battle.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24The lyrical language used by some of the soldiers
0:16:24 > 0:16:26gave him cause for concern.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32"Many of the men show a tendency to break into poetry,
0:16:32 > 0:16:36"which I am inclined to regard as a rather ominous sign
0:16:36 > 0:16:37"of mental disquietude."
0:16:39 > 0:16:41So we have an army that's been recruited
0:16:41 > 0:16:43according to the Martial Races theory
0:16:43 > 0:16:45and we still see that theory in action
0:16:45 > 0:16:48in the monitoring of their letters -
0:16:48 > 0:16:51that certain groups, certain races will behave in certain ways
0:16:51 > 0:16:53according to this great theory.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57Yes, absolutely. It's like a big structure with which
0:16:57 > 0:17:00the British, kind of, colonial army can work with.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04"It is instructive to note the different behaviour
0:17:04 > 0:17:08"of men of different races under pressure of despair.
0:17:08 > 0:17:12"The Sikh either grows sulky or tries to malinger.
0:17:12 > 0:17:16"The Muhammadan of the Punjab wails and prays.
0:17:16 > 0:17:21"The Pathan also believes in the efficacy of prayer,
0:17:21 > 0:17:24"but being a man of quicker wit than either of the others
0:17:24 > 0:17:28"in some cases seems definitely to have taken means to help himself."
0:17:30 > 0:17:33What is interesting is that often some of the sepoys themselves
0:17:33 > 0:17:36have internalised these constructions,
0:17:36 > 0:17:39so that they try pandering to that notion.
0:17:39 > 0:17:41for example the Sikhs,
0:17:41 > 0:17:44they often think of themselves as lions
0:17:44 > 0:17:47because that is how they have been constructed.
0:17:47 > 0:17:49Because it's rather flattering.
0:17:49 > 0:17:50Yes, it is.
0:17:50 > 0:17:52Another power comes along and tells you that you are lions,
0:17:52 > 0:17:54you are warrior peoples.
0:17:54 > 0:17:58Absolutely, that's why I think the Imperial rule in India
0:17:58 > 0:18:00was so very successful,
0:18:00 > 0:18:04because it was a combination of flattery
0:18:04 > 0:18:06and almost a sort of seduction -
0:18:06 > 0:18:10that you are so brave, so go into battle and fight.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18In the early Spring of 1915, for most Indian troops,
0:18:18 > 0:18:21the fighting was centred here, in Northern France.
0:18:27 > 0:18:30Neuve Chapelle looks ordinary enough today,
0:18:30 > 0:18:33but the landmarks of a battle that claimed thousands of lives
0:18:33 > 0:18:35can still be seen.
0:18:35 > 0:18:39A dense area of woodland called the Bois du Biez,
0:18:39 > 0:18:42where the Germans were dug in, in unknown numbers...
0:18:43 > 0:18:46..and the Layes Brook, a narrow, but deep canal
0:18:46 > 0:18:48that bisected the battlefield
0:18:48 > 0:18:50and which was to become a killing zone.
0:19:05 > 0:19:07Here of course we have the memorial to the Indians missing
0:19:07 > 0:19:11on the Western Front at Neuve Chapelle.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14There are round about 4,700 names of the missing here.
0:19:17 > 0:19:20Military historian Geoff Bridger has made a close study
0:19:20 > 0:19:21of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle,
0:19:21 > 0:19:23which took place here over three days
0:19:23 > 0:19:27from the 10th to the 12th of March, 1915.
0:19:29 > 0:19:34So, in March 1915, why was there a battle here?
0:19:34 > 0:19:37We were trying to establish that we were indeed a capable army,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40capable of defeating the Germans.
0:19:40 > 0:19:45The purpose was to get our lads away from the wet trenches.
0:19:45 > 0:19:47They had been static for the winter.
0:19:47 > 0:19:50From about the end of November, 1914, right the way through
0:19:50 > 0:19:52to the end of February 1915,
0:19:52 > 0:19:55there hadn't been a great deal of fighting.
0:19:55 > 0:19:57The men were wet, cold and miserable,
0:19:57 > 0:20:00and it was intended to prove their fighting spirit,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03push the Germans back and hopefully more than push them back,
0:20:03 > 0:20:04break through.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07The ultimate aim was to get through to Lille.
0:20:07 > 0:20:09If we could have got through to Lille,
0:20:09 > 0:20:12which was a vital pivotal transport station,
0:20:12 > 0:20:15we would have gone a long way to, sort of, shortening the war.
0:20:18 > 0:20:19So this is the battlefield?
0:20:19 > 0:20:21This is the official history battlefield
0:20:21 > 0:20:25showing the situation on the first day, 10th of March, 1915.
0:20:25 > 0:20:26And these are the German lines?
0:20:26 > 0:20:30The German lines are in green and the British lines are in red.
0:20:30 > 0:20:33The British lines are running along here,
0:20:33 > 0:20:35the Indian lines are running along here.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39The objective, essentially, is to push through the German lines,
0:20:39 > 0:20:40which were forming a salient.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43So the idea was to straighten the line and to curl off
0:20:43 > 0:20:46to the right-hand side towards the Bois du Biez.
0:20:46 > 0:20:51So this is the greatest attack that the Indians launch
0:20:51 > 0:20:53in the First World War on the Western Front.
0:20:53 > 0:20:56How significant was their role in the battle of Neuve Chapelle?
0:20:56 > 0:20:57Very significant indeed.
0:20:57 > 0:20:59They were excellent fighting soldiers,
0:20:59 > 0:21:01especially in hand-to-hand combat.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04The long-range rifle of the British forces wasn't that useful,
0:21:04 > 0:21:07you needed to get into hand-to-hand fighting using improvised weapons -
0:21:07 > 0:21:09clubs, knives - whatever was to hand -
0:21:09 > 0:21:11and of course, the kukri was an ideal weapon.
0:21:11 > 0:21:12This is the weapon of the Gurkhas?
0:21:12 > 0:21:14It's the weapon of choice of the Gurkhas.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17That and other things were used in the trenches,
0:21:17 > 0:21:18to the terror of the Germans opposite.
0:21:18 > 0:21:21They really thought that the Gurkhas were going to slice their ears off
0:21:21 > 0:21:24as a body tally and they were extremely frightened of them.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27So it was a good plan with a good objective,
0:21:27 > 0:21:29it made strategic and tactical sense?
0:21:29 > 0:21:33It was an excellent plan and it should have succeeded.
0:21:42 > 0:21:44The first day is a considerable success.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48The bulge, the village was taken, which was the first objective.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53Unfortunately, because of confusion and primarily lack of communication,
0:21:53 > 0:21:57the second and third days were not such a success at all.
0:21:57 > 0:21:59In fact, the second day was a day of confusion
0:21:59 > 0:22:02and the third day pretty much a day of disaster.
0:22:06 > 0:22:08By the end of the first day,
0:22:08 > 0:22:09Indian and British troops
0:22:09 > 0:22:11had reached the edge of the Bois du Biez.
0:22:11 > 0:22:14The woods appeared to be empty of Germans,
0:22:14 > 0:22:16but without conformation of this,
0:22:16 > 0:22:19the attackers were ordered to fall back to the Layes Brook
0:22:19 > 0:22:21and dig in for the night.
0:22:24 > 0:22:26And what happens overnight?
0:22:26 > 0:22:28Overnight they are staying where they are,
0:22:28 > 0:22:31but the Germans are not idle.
0:22:31 > 0:22:32During the course of the night,
0:22:32 > 0:22:34they brought up massive reinforcements.
0:22:34 > 0:22:37They had units further back here, they bought them up,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39they passed through the wood.
0:22:39 > 0:22:40They occupied the wood at night-time,
0:22:40 > 0:22:42so that we couldn't see what was happening.
0:22:42 > 0:22:44Then, during the course of the night,
0:22:44 > 0:22:47they moved out from in front of the Bois du Biez
0:22:47 > 0:22:49and dug a trench right in front of it.
0:22:49 > 0:22:51That trench was then heavily occupied
0:22:51 > 0:22:53and once more was able to cut straight into the lines
0:22:53 > 0:22:55of the Indian soldiers.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16But the real disaster for the India Corps at Neuve Chapelle
0:23:16 > 0:23:18is not that initial successes are reversed,
0:23:18 > 0:23:20it's the loss of officers.
0:23:20 > 0:23:21Indeed so.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24The First 39th, for example, lost all their White officers
0:23:24 > 0:23:26in that initial attack.
0:23:26 > 0:23:28Any reinforcements that were brought in,
0:23:28 > 0:23:29they were not familiar with the units,
0:23:29 > 0:23:32they didn't speak the language, for a start.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34The Indian Army was a unit and once it was depleted,
0:23:34 > 0:23:37I'm afraid those depletions could not be made up
0:23:37 > 0:23:40during the course of the war, and indeed they never were.
0:23:45 > 0:23:47DRUMS STRIKE UP
0:24:00 > 0:24:03By the autumn of 1915, the "hazardous experiment"
0:24:03 > 0:24:06of bringing Indian troops to fight for Britain in Europe
0:24:06 > 0:24:08had paid off,
0:24:08 > 0:24:12at least as far the generals and the top brass were concerned.
0:24:12 > 0:24:17At Ypres they had held the line at a moment of dire peril.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20At Neuve Chapelle they'd shown that the German trench line
0:24:20 > 0:24:21could be broken.
0:24:21 > 0:24:25Most importantly of all, they helped to buy the time
0:24:25 > 0:24:29needed to recruit and train Lord Kitchener's New Army.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33A century on, it's a record worthy of remembrance.
0:24:36 > 0:24:38So your grandfather was among some of the first troops,
0:24:38 > 0:24:41the Indian troops to fight on the Western Front?
0:24:41 > 0:24:42- Yes.- And this is...?
0:24:42 > 0:24:45- The Sitara medal.- The Sitara medal.
0:24:45 > 0:24:50And on the back it has his name, Bur Singh.
0:24:50 > 0:24:55He was a sepoy, he was number 400... 4,874.
0:24:55 > 0:24:56Yes.
0:24:56 > 0:24:58And his regiment is the 59 Rifles.
0:24:58 > 0:25:0059 Rifles.
0:25:00 > 0:25:02Wilde's Rifles.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05So your grandfather was among the soldiers
0:25:05 > 0:25:09who stopped the German advance in 1914, saved the British Army,
0:25:09 > 0:25:10maybe saved Britain.
0:25:10 > 0:25:11And this is his...?
0:25:11 > 0:25:15- Pension book.- His pension book. So this is your grandfather?
0:25:15 > 0:25:16- Yes.- Wow.
0:25:18 > 0:25:21And this is his service record with his pension,
0:25:21 > 0:25:22how much he gets in his pension.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25Five rupees, not a lot of money.
0:25:26 > 0:25:31And he's fighting with the turban, always. He refused the helmet.
0:25:33 > 0:25:34The British government tell,
0:25:34 > 0:25:37"You take the helmet for your safety."
0:25:37 > 0:25:39He say, "My safety is in the turban."
0:25:39 > 0:25:42He don't remove turban.
0:25:42 > 0:25:44You must be very proud of him.
0:25:44 > 0:25:46Yes.
0:25:46 > 0:25:49THEY PLAY "LAST POST"
0:25:54 > 0:25:57A year on the Western Front almost broke the India Corps.
0:25:58 > 0:26:03By the winter of 1915, nearly 35,000 officers and men
0:26:03 > 0:26:07were listed as dead, wounded or missing.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10Around the same number that had disembarked at Marseille
0:26:10 > 0:26:12just a year earlier.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17Along with the human cost came the destruction
0:26:17 > 0:26:19of something less tangible -
0:26:19 > 0:26:25the Corps' delicate web of cultural, religious and linguistic diversity,
0:26:25 > 0:26:27which had been held together by relationships
0:26:27 > 0:26:30between White officers and their men.
0:26:32 > 0:26:33The Censor of the Indian Mails
0:26:33 > 0:26:37had been warning for months that the Corps was reaching breaking point.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39Finally, the decision was made
0:26:39 > 0:26:43to pull out all but the cavalry units from Europe
0:26:43 > 0:26:45and redeploy them in the Middle East.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50One last photograph,
0:26:50 > 0:26:55taken just days before the India Corps left northern France.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59When we look at these faces, war weary and battle-hardened,
0:26:59 > 0:27:04we see a group of individuals who've been to hell and back.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07But for the Imperial system that sent them there,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10they were never seen as much more than useful "types."
0:27:28 > 0:27:34The Western Front was 450 miles of misery and suffering,
0:27:34 > 0:27:38stretching from the Channel to the Swiss Alps.
0:27:38 > 0:27:40Britain and her Imperial forces
0:27:40 > 0:27:42never held more than a quarter of it.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46Most of the rest was fought over by the French and the Germans,
0:27:46 > 0:27:49a bitter struggle that left deep scars,
0:27:49 > 0:27:51still visible a century later.
0:27:54 > 0:27:57To understand the ferocity of that struggle,
0:27:57 > 0:27:59come to Vauquois in Argonne.
0:27:59 > 0:28:03This crater-pocked valley was once a hill-top village.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12The French call this "un village disparu" -
0:28:12 > 0:28:13a disappeared village.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15It's not difficult to see why.
0:28:22 > 0:28:24It was in killing fields like Vauquois
0:28:24 > 0:28:28that the French were confronted with an uncomfortable truth,
0:28:28 > 0:28:30one which they'd been struggling with ever since
0:28:30 > 0:28:35a united, powerful Germany had risen on their eastern borders -
0:28:35 > 0:28:40the disturbing realisation that if it came again to war with Germany,
0:28:40 > 0:28:41they would be outnumbered.
0:28:45 > 0:28:49By the end of 1914, France had lost a third of a million men.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52More Frenchman died in that first year of the war than any other,
0:28:52 > 0:28:56even though there was only fighting for five months.
0:28:56 > 0:29:00The Western Front became a meat grinder that consumed men,
0:29:00 > 0:29:04and for the French this awoke a deep national paranoia,
0:29:04 > 0:29:07a fear that had haunted her politicians and her generals
0:29:07 > 0:29:11for a generation - that the country could simply run out of men.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16France, with a population of 40 million,
0:29:16 > 0:29:20seemed destined to lose when pitted against Germany, with 67 million.
0:29:22 > 0:29:24But France had something Germany did not -
0:29:24 > 0:29:27access to an overseas empire.
0:29:38 > 0:29:40She may have been a republic at home,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44but on the world stage, France counted as an empire,
0:29:44 > 0:29:45and in a Paris suburb,
0:29:45 > 0:29:48Le Jardin Colonial bears witness
0:29:48 > 0:29:51to the material wealth that once flowed into France
0:29:51 > 0:29:54from her former colonies in Indochina,
0:29:54 > 0:29:57the Caribbean, North and West Africa.
0:29:58 > 0:30:00When war came, France, just like Britain,
0:30:00 > 0:30:04drew on her imperial holdings for something that had become far
0:30:04 > 0:30:08more valuable than material wealth - manpower.
0:30:30 > 0:30:34France had called on her colonial troops before.
0:30:34 > 0:30:38In the 1870s, in the war against Prussia, North Africans spahis -
0:30:38 > 0:30:39Berber and Arab cavalrymen -
0:30:39 > 0:30:42had been brought over to fight in Europe.
0:30:42 > 0:30:46But in the crisis of 1914, for the first time,
0:30:46 > 0:30:48France decided to bring over infantrymen
0:30:48 > 0:30:51from sub-Saharan West Africa.
0:30:52 > 0:30:56Recruited in colonies like Mali, Mauritania and Niger,
0:30:56 > 0:31:01they were known collectively as the Tirailleurs Senegalais - riflemen -
0:31:01 > 0:31:05named after France's largest West African colony, Senegal.
0:31:11 > 0:31:13At the Albert Kahn Museum in Paris,
0:31:13 > 0:31:17there's a unique collection of colour photographs of the
0:31:17 > 0:31:21Tirailleurs Senegalais - soldiers who, like the troops from British
0:31:21 > 0:31:26India, were recruited according to elaborate theories of race.
0:31:26 > 0:31:29This is a photograph that, quite incredibly,
0:31:29 > 0:31:32we actually know the name of this soldier.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35His name was Amadou Sar, and one of the reasons that
0:31:35 > 0:31:39he in particular is here on the Western Front is because his people,
0:31:39 > 0:31:43the Wolof tribe of West Africa, were one of those peoples that
0:31:43 > 0:31:44the French colonial theorists had
0:31:44 > 0:31:49decided were a naturally warrior people - a "race guerriere".
0:31:49 > 0:31:53And this theory directly influenced not just who's recruited,
0:31:53 > 0:31:55but how they're used on the Western Front,
0:31:55 > 0:31:57whether they're put into a labour battalion,
0:31:57 > 0:32:00whether they're a support division or whether, like the Wolofs,
0:32:00 > 0:32:03they're seen as shock troops, troops who should lead an assault.
0:32:03 > 0:32:04It's not just a textbook theory.
0:32:04 > 0:32:08Work's been done to look at the casualty rates among soldiers
0:32:08 > 0:32:12who came from the warrior races and we know that Wolofs,
0:32:12 > 0:32:16men from his community, were about three times more likely to
0:32:16 > 0:32:20die in combat than White soldiers fighting in the same campaigns.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24And when I look at this young guy, Amadou Sar,
0:32:24 > 0:32:26he looks like half my relatives from Africa,
0:32:26 > 0:32:28he looks like people in my family.
0:32:28 > 0:32:34That brings it home, this idea that somebody came to his country
0:32:34 > 0:32:38with an expertise, supposedly, in the nature of his peoples,
0:32:38 > 0:32:40the characteristics of his tribes,
0:32:40 > 0:32:44and made decisions that determined whether he would live or die,
0:32:44 > 0:32:48whether he would fight or be left in Africa.
0:32:48 > 0:32:50And I've read a lot, most of my life, about racial theories,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53about colonialism, and when I look into his eyes,
0:32:53 > 0:32:56I can't help seeing him as a victim of just the craziness
0:32:56 > 0:33:00of the ideas that surrounded race in the 20th century.
0:33:08 > 0:33:12The Kahn collection contains other clues about what can happen
0:33:12 > 0:33:15when the madness of war is overlain
0:33:15 > 0:33:17with the craziness of racial prejudice.
0:33:18 > 0:33:21Oh, this is incredible.
0:33:21 > 0:33:27This is two French West African soldiers in their full uniforms,
0:33:27 > 0:33:32they're combat soldiers, with the Adrian helmets and the
0:33:32 > 0:33:34coupe-coupe, which was a kind of machete
0:33:34 > 0:33:36that the West African soldiers used,
0:33:36 > 0:33:38and it became an obsession of German propaganda.
0:33:38 > 0:33:42This idea the idea that this was a barbaric weapon
0:33:42 > 0:33:45used by uncivilised, savage soldiers in Europe, which is ludicrous
0:33:45 > 0:33:49in a war where there was poison gas and flame-throwers and U-boats.
0:33:49 > 0:33:53But it's really important to understand that
0:33:53 > 0:33:56when the French decided to bring men like this
0:33:56 > 0:33:58into the Western Front to fight for them,
0:33:58 > 0:34:01they were breaking all of the rules of Empire.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05The first rule is that White life was sacrosanct.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08Everywhere in the Empire, but especially in Africa,
0:34:08 > 0:34:10when there was violence against white people, it was met with
0:34:10 > 0:34:14the most extreme responses, the most extreme violence.
0:34:14 > 0:34:16But in the middle of a war of national survival,
0:34:16 > 0:34:19which is what the First World War became,
0:34:19 > 0:34:21the French have to abandon that taboo.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24And to bring black Africans,
0:34:24 > 0:34:28Africans from below the Sahara, into Europe and order them,
0:34:28 > 0:34:30ORDER them to kill white men,
0:34:30 > 0:34:34is an abandonment of everything that Empires were built upon.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45The French general, Charles Mangin, was one the most vocal champions
0:34:45 > 0:34:49of recruitment from France's African colonies.
0:34:49 > 0:34:54He was as tough as they come and the impression made by his portrait
0:34:54 > 0:34:58is confirmed by the nickname given to him by the troops -
0:34:58 > 0:35:00the Cannibal.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03Mangin hated Germans.
0:35:03 > 0:35:07As a child, he'd been driven from his family home when the provinces
0:35:07 > 0:35:11of Alsace and Lorraine were annexed during the Franco-Prussian War.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16He was raised in the spirit of revanchism - revenge -
0:35:16 > 0:35:18against the hated Boches
0:35:18 > 0:35:22and with a burning desire for the re-conquest of the lost provinces.
0:35:25 > 0:35:27He joined the army and made a name for himself
0:35:27 > 0:35:29policing France's Empire,
0:35:29 > 0:35:34leading native troops against tribal uprisings and suppressing them,
0:35:34 > 0:35:38as the Mangin family album reveals, with ruthless brutality.
0:35:40 > 0:35:44This initiation into the harshness of colonial rule led to the
0:35:44 > 0:35:47formation of one of his core beliefs.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50France, as Mangin's statue proclaims,
0:35:50 > 0:35:53"Is a nation of 100 million."
0:35:53 > 0:35:57He believed that France's 60 million colonial subjects
0:35:57 > 0:36:00could be part of the French Republic
0:36:00 > 0:36:03if they were prepared to fight and die for it.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10In 1910, Charles Mangin published this book,
0:36:10 > 0:36:12La Force Noire - the Black Army.
0:36:12 > 0:36:14It's basically a manifesto,
0:36:14 > 0:36:18calling for the mass recruitment of Africans into the French Army.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25Part of his argument was the familiar one about numbers.
0:36:25 > 0:36:27But Mangin went further,
0:36:27 > 0:36:30citing experiments by French surgeons who claimed to have
0:36:30 > 0:36:35successfully operated on Black Africans without anaesthetics.
0:36:35 > 0:36:38Mangin argued that the so-called "warrior races"
0:36:38 > 0:36:41were inured to the impact of modern warfare,
0:36:41 > 0:36:44thanks to what he called their "primitive" nature
0:36:44 > 0:36:47and "underdeveloped" nervous systems.
0:36:48 > 0:36:51Mangin got the chance to take his argument
0:36:51 > 0:36:54a stage further at Verdun in 1916.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07Of all the human meat-grinders of the First World War,
0:37:07 > 0:37:11the Battle of Verdun was surely the most pitiless.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15Over a ten-month period, from February to December, 1916,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18half a million men were wounded,
0:37:18 > 0:37:21a quarter of a million killed.
0:37:21 > 0:37:24There are more than 15,000 French soldiers buried in this
0:37:24 > 0:37:27section alone, including French Muslims,
0:37:27 > 0:37:30their gravestones facing towards Mecca.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34At least we know their names.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37In the ossuary tower that looms on the skyline are the remains
0:37:37 > 0:37:41of 150,000 unknown soldiers,
0:37:41 > 0:37:45their identities erased by the Armageddon that was Verdun.
0:37:47 > 0:37:52Attrition on this horrific scale was precisely what German commanders
0:37:52 > 0:37:56had in mind when they unleashed their offensive early in 1916.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02A memorial at the city gates recalls a long list of sieges,
0:38:02 > 0:38:06sacks and liberations reaching back 1,500 years.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11These are the battle honours of a citadel that was of as much
0:38:11 > 0:38:15symbolic as strategic importance to France.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19By attacking it, the Germans knew they would provoke a furious
0:38:19 > 0:38:22counter-attack, and this would be a chance,
0:38:22 > 0:38:24in the words of the German commander Falkenhayn,
0:38:24 > 0:38:26to "bleed France dry".
0:38:46 > 0:38:50The town of Verdun is about ten miles in that direction
0:38:50 > 0:38:54and in 1916 it was defended by a ring of fortresses,
0:38:54 > 0:38:57and the most important, the centrepiece of the whole system,
0:38:57 > 0:38:59was this place - Fort Douaumont.
0:38:59 > 0:39:01The fort's underneath my feet.
0:39:01 > 0:39:06It's encased under thousands and thousands of tons of concrete,
0:39:06 > 0:39:09and its defences included these.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13These are retractable steel gun emplacements.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16It makes this fort look more like a battleship than a fortress.
0:39:16 > 0:39:19They rise up out of the ground and fire in all directions.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22There are machine gun emplacements, observation posts,
0:39:22 > 0:39:25and underneath here there's a barracks full of soldiers.
0:39:25 > 0:39:27And in 1916, in the battle of Verdun,
0:39:27 > 0:39:30this place took on the same sort of symbolic importance
0:39:30 > 0:39:32as the town itself.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47The Battle began disastrously and farcically for the French.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49A German soldier scavenging for food
0:39:49 > 0:39:52somehow penetrated Douaumont's defences
0:39:52 > 0:39:55and found a way into the Fort itself,
0:39:55 > 0:39:57where he was quickly joined by his comrades.
0:39:59 > 0:40:00With barely a shot fired,
0:40:00 > 0:40:04the keystone of Verdun's defences became an enemy stronghold.
0:40:05 > 0:40:07Humiliated and shocked,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10the French unleashed a torrent of shells at the fort.
0:40:10 > 0:40:12But by the autumn, it was clear
0:40:12 > 0:40:16that only a full-scale frontal assault would drive the Germans out.
0:40:18 > 0:40:22General Nivelle was in overall charge of the Fort's recapture,
0:40:22 > 0:40:26but his second in command was Charles Mangin,
0:40:26 > 0:40:30and the Cannibal made sure that when units were selected for the assault,
0:40:30 > 0:40:33elements of La Force Noire were among them.
0:40:35 > 0:40:38EXPLOSIONS
0:40:45 > 0:40:51On the 24th of October, 1916, French forces emerged from thick fog.
0:40:51 > 0:40:54And after a few hours of fierce hand-to-hand fighting
0:40:54 > 0:40:56in the echoing tunnels of the fort,
0:40:56 > 0:40:59they retook Douaumont.
0:41:05 > 0:41:08When the Senegalese soldiers who had taken part in the
0:41:08 > 0:41:11recapture of Fort Douaumont marched off this battlefield,
0:41:11 > 0:41:14they were ordered by their White officers not to wash
0:41:14 > 0:41:18the mud off their uniforms so that the people of Verdun and the
0:41:18 > 0:41:21people of the French villages behind the lines would know that THEY
0:41:21 > 0:41:24were the Africans who had taken Douaumont back from the Germans.
0:41:28 > 0:41:30BIRD SQUAWKS
0:41:30 > 0:41:33And the message got through.
0:41:33 > 0:41:35The cover of a popular Sunday magazine
0:41:35 > 0:41:39was soon telling its readers that "One black is worth two Boches".
0:41:42 > 0:41:46But running alongside the gung-ho patriotism were less
0:41:46 > 0:41:51palatable themes - the innate savagery of the colonial soldiers,
0:41:51 > 0:41:54their lack of civilisation, their "otherness".
0:41:59 > 0:42:03Today, a contemporary statue that honours the Black heroes of
0:42:03 > 0:42:05Douaumont stresses their humanity
0:42:05 > 0:42:07as well as their courage,
0:42:07 > 0:42:09but at the time they were seen
0:42:09 > 0:42:10rather differently.
0:42:12 > 0:42:15Throughout the war, everything to do with the colonial soldiers -
0:42:15 > 0:42:18from the way they were recruited to the way they were
0:42:18 > 0:42:19deployed on the battlefields -
0:42:19 > 0:42:22was influenced and shaped by ideas of race.
0:42:22 > 0:42:26But at the same time, the French liked to believe that their nation
0:42:26 > 0:42:29was colour-blind, that in France it was culture
0:42:29 > 0:42:32and not skin colour that really mattered.
0:42:32 > 0:42:36France, in effect, became trapped between the racial ideas
0:42:36 > 0:42:38she used to justify ruling over
0:42:38 > 0:42:40millions of people in her colonial Empire
0:42:40 > 0:42:42and the ideals of the French Republic,
0:42:42 > 0:42:46the revolutionary ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53In the midst of battle, there was little time to tease out
0:42:53 > 0:42:56these contradictions, but away from the battlefields,
0:42:56 > 0:42:59on the home front, they were harder to ignore.
0:43:00 > 0:43:02During the war, Frejus,
0:43:02 > 0:43:05a small fishing port on the Mediterranean coast,
0:43:05 > 0:43:10was an army town, surrounded by military bases, depots and barracks.
0:43:10 > 0:43:13And prominent among the soldiers stationed here
0:43:13 > 0:43:17during the winter months were the Tirailleurs Senegalais,
0:43:17 > 0:43:19as historian Alison Fell explains.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25Frejus was a very small town in the First World War,
0:43:25 > 0:43:27about 8,000 people, and there was about 40,000
0:43:27 > 0:43:32French-African soldiers who spent the winters here.
0:43:32 > 0:43:34And so this small town on the Cote D'Azur
0:43:34 > 0:43:36suddenly has an army camp,
0:43:36 > 0:43:40four, five times the size of it, with men from Africa?
0:43:40 > 0:43:43Absolutely. It must have been absolutely transformed
0:43:43 > 0:43:45and the vast majority of the population
0:43:45 > 0:43:47would never have seen a Black man before.
0:44:01 > 0:44:04So, Alison, what stereotypes about Africans
0:44:04 > 0:44:07and African soldiers were common at the time in France?
0:44:07 > 0:44:09Before the First World War,
0:44:09 > 0:44:13the common stereotypes were of savage, cannibalistic, highly sexed,
0:44:13 > 0:44:16certainly for African men.
0:44:16 > 0:44:19And there was a lot of nervousness about the presence
0:44:19 > 0:44:23of Black African troops on French soil in the First World War,
0:44:23 > 0:44:25which is one of the reasons why
0:44:25 > 0:44:27there is an initiative from the top to propagate
0:44:27 > 0:44:29the image of the African soldier
0:44:29 > 0:44:31as a loyal simpleton soldier,
0:44:31 > 0:44:34a "bon enfant", in order to try and allay those fears.
0:44:49 > 0:44:51One of the main ways that they propagated this image
0:44:51 > 0:44:54was through an advert for a drink called Banania.
0:44:54 > 0:44:57It's a very famous advertisement with a grinning Tirailleur
0:44:57 > 0:45:02and the slogan is "y'abon", which was the slogan that was most
0:45:02 > 0:45:05associated with the Tirailleurs Senegalais.
0:45:05 > 0:45:07And that's part of the language,
0:45:07 > 0:45:09the simple version of pidgin French,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12that the Tirailleurs were taught by the French army?
0:45:12 > 0:45:15Absolutely. The French army realised that the officers couldn't
0:45:15 > 0:45:17communicate with the African troops.
0:45:17 > 0:45:20And also, because they spoke a variety of different languages,
0:45:20 > 0:45:22they couldn't communicate with each other,
0:45:22 > 0:45:25so they were taught a form of pidgin French.
0:45:25 > 0:45:29So y'abon in standard French would be "c'est bon", so "it's good".
0:45:29 > 0:45:32- So it's like baby talk? - It's like baby talk, absolutely.
0:45:32 > 0:45:36And they were taught a very, very limited set of set phrases,
0:45:36 > 0:45:39so it also really limited their ability to express themselves
0:45:39 > 0:45:41beyond the most basic daily needs.
0:45:46 > 0:45:47But in Frejus,
0:45:47 > 0:45:51the prejudices of the French army came up against someone who saw
0:45:51 > 0:45:53things a little differently.
0:45:53 > 0:45:56Lucie Cousturier was a Paris-based painter
0:45:56 > 0:45:59who had moved to Frejus to escape the war.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03When African soldiers came to her house,
0:46:03 > 0:46:05looking for odd jobs and scrounging for cigarettes,
0:46:05 > 0:46:08she struck up what was, for the times,
0:46:08 > 0:46:10an unlikely friendship with them.
0:46:12 > 0:46:14She's kind of quite fascinated, I think,
0:46:14 > 0:46:18like many of the French civilians, to meet Africans for the first time.
0:46:18 > 0:46:21She invites them in, and then she starts,
0:46:21 > 0:46:23she asks then the French army if she can teach them,
0:46:23 > 0:46:25and it develops from there.
0:46:25 > 0:46:26And then she, from that point,
0:46:26 > 0:46:29she starts to offer regular French lessons.
0:46:29 > 0:46:33She taught them French, she taught them writing and reading,
0:46:33 > 0:46:34and it was through her
0:46:34 > 0:46:37work with them in a way that some of these stereotypes then were
0:46:37 > 0:46:40unmasked as the racist assumptions that they were.
0:46:41 > 0:46:46"If I had been swayed by the opinion, commonly held,
0:46:46 > 0:46:51"that the intelligence of Negros develops only until the age of 13,
0:46:51 > 0:46:55"and decreases after that, I would never have set out
0:46:55 > 0:46:58"to teach a 28-year-old to read and write,
0:46:58 > 0:47:02"and one who had practised for seven years
0:47:02 > 0:47:04"the muddled jargon of the Tirailleur."
0:47:05 > 0:47:08She's put her finger on the hypocrisy of the French
0:47:08 > 0:47:10deployment of African soldiers,
0:47:10 > 0:47:14that it's done in the name of republicanism, equality, fraternity,
0:47:14 > 0:47:17a colour-blind nation, but that's not really what's happening.
0:47:17 > 0:47:20Absolutely. And there were a lot of objections within the French army,
0:47:20 > 0:47:24that...treatment of the Tirailleurs Senegalais
0:47:24 > 0:47:30that they considered too soft would spoil them for military action.
0:47:30 > 0:47:35So they wanted the Tirailleurs to be savage on the battlefield,
0:47:35 > 0:47:37but to be infantilised, to be children,
0:47:37 > 0:47:40when they're off duty, when they're in towns like Frejus?
0:47:40 > 0:47:43Absolutely. They said that they might need to implement
0:47:43 > 0:47:46a policy of what they called "re-Senegalisation",
0:47:46 > 0:47:49which was the idea that they would take all these kind of soft,
0:47:49 > 0:47:51civilising influences away from them
0:47:51 > 0:47:55and they would become the fighters again that they needed to be.
0:47:59 > 0:48:03And France would always need fighters until the last German
0:48:03 > 0:48:07had been driven from the last trench that scarred French territory.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12From 1917 onwards, recruitment of the Tirailleurs Senegalais
0:48:12 > 0:48:15grew in scale and intensity.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20After the war, a mosque in the West African style was
0:48:20 > 0:48:26built in Frejus in memory of those who had rallied to the Tricolore.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29But the circumstances of their recruitment
0:48:29 > 0:48:31should also be remembered.
0:48:38 > 0:48:42French recruitment in Africa in the First World War fell far
0:48:42 > 0:48:45short of the country's republican ideals.
0:48:45 > 0:48:48Recruitment in West Africa was outsourced to agents,
0:48:48 > 0:48:52to intermediaries, to men who worked to a quota system
0:48:52 > 0:48:53and were paid by results.
0:48:53 > 0:48:57Now what this meant in practice was that men were forced,
0:48:57 > 0:49:00coerced into the French army, and they tended to be
0:49:00 > 0:49:03from the most powerless sections of their communities -
0:49:03 > 0:49:07the poor, orphans, boys who had no-one to protect them.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10But it also seems certain that some of the men
0:49:10 > 0:49:14forced into the French army were, in effect, slaves.
0:49:14 > 0:49:17There's stories of men being forced to the collection stations
0:49:17 > 0:49:20bound in chains, and we know that the African agents
0:49:20 > 0:49:23carried out raids to seize men from their villages
0:49:23 > 0:49:26and take them to the collecting stations.
0:49:26 > 0:49:29Those raids were horribly similar to the raids of the slave trade,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32a trade that took place in the same parts of Africa
0:49:32 > 0:49:34in earlier centuries.
0:49:34 > 0:49:38Now, to me, it's really difficult to think of a more bitter,
0:49:38 > 0:49:40more uncomfortable irony than that -
0:49:40 > 0:49:44that men were taken from their homes, bound in chains,
0:49:44 > 0:49:48and sent to Europe to fight for liberty and civilisation.
0:49:57 > 0:49:59"Liberty" and "civilisation"
0:49:59 > 0:50:01were words often on the lips of
0:50:01 > 0:50:04Europe's politicians as the meat-grinder
0:50:04 > 0:50:07of the war continued to turn.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10And it wasn't just the British and the French who swore by them.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13The Germans also believed that these values
0:50:13 > 0:50:16were what the fighting was all about.
0:50:16 > 0:50:19To her enemies, Germany was clearly the aggressor,
0:50:19 > 0:50:24her armies a Teutonic horde with the blood of "poor little Belgium"
0:50:24 > 0:50:27on their bayonets and the rubble of Liege under their boots.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31But, of course, things looked different
0:50:31 > 0:50:33from the other side of the front line.
0:50:33 > 0:50:37From Berlin, the aggressors were the mighty Empires who
0:50:37 > 0:50:40threatened Germany with encirclement -
0:50:40 > 0:50:41France and Britain to the West
0:50:41 > 0:50:44and the juggernaut of Russia to the East.
0:50:45 > 0:50:48Worse still, Germany was cut off from her own
0:50:48 > 0:50:51imperial holdings by naval blockade
0:50:51 > 0:50:54and could not do what Britain and France had done -
0:50:54 > 0:50:57bring colonial manpower to fight on Europe's soil.
0:51:00 > 0:51:01To the German public,
0:51:01 > 0:51:04carefully primed by the German propaganda machine,
0:51:04 > 0:51:09this was nothing less than a betrayal of civilisation itself -
0:51:09 > 0:51:14the modern, hygienic warfare of the white man reduced to mere
0:51:14 > 0:51:17savagery by a West African wielding a machete.
0:51:20 > 0:51:23That sense of anger, outrage
0:51:23 > 0:51:25and betrayal can still be felt,
0:51:25 > 0:51:30in all its rawness, in German satirical magazines from the period.
0:51:34 > 0:51:37HE SIGHS
0:51:37 > 0:51:41John Bull, today, in the satirical German magazine Kladderadatsch.
0:51:44 > 0:51:46This is John Bull,
0:51:46 > 0:51:50but he's been distorted into an exaggerated, racialised,
0:51:50 > 0:51:53stereotypical, prejudiced view of an African.
0:51:53 > 0:51:57It's just a horrible image.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00So he has the Union Jack tie, as John Bull wore, his pipe,
0:52:00 > 0:52:03his top hat, but he has a ring through his nose.
0:52:03 > 0:52:08And it's the sort of racialised, hateful image that we
0:52:08 > 0:52:11associate with the American deep South.
0:52:11 > 0:52:13I really didn't expect to be shocked -
0:52:13 > 0:52:17I don't think I'm an easily shockable person -
0:52:17 > 0:52:19but this is a really shocking image.
0:52:19 > 0:52:23You can still feel the hate that inspired them.
0:52:35 > 0:52:40So, "In the name of civilisation, France is employing savages."
0:52:43 > 0:52:46All of the cliches,
0:52:46 > 0:52:50all of the stereotypes of Africans are represented here.
0:52:50 > 0:52:52There's the hint of cannibalism,
0:52:52 > 0:52:54and of the mutilation of the dead.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57There's wildness, savagery,
0:52:57 > 0:52:59and the French White officer is leading
0:52:59 > 0:53:03this army of supposedly sub-human savages into war,
0:53:03 > 0:53:06pushing them on, pointing them on.
0:53:06 > 0:53:09It's a raw nerve, it's a live issue,
0:53:09 > 0:53:12this sense of victimhood, that all of these people,
0:53:12 > 0:53:15these lesser peoples, are being turned on Germany
0:53:15 > 0:53:19in a way that's unfair and uncivilised and unacceptable.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24The brutality of these caricatures is a stark
0:53:24 > 0:53:29reminder of a simple truth about the experiences of the soldiers
0:53:29 > 0:53:32of Empire who were sucked into the World's War.
0:53:33 > 0:53:35Not only did they have the conflict and
0:53:35 > 0:53:38all its manifest horrors to deal with,
0:53:38 > 0:53:41they also had the heavy load of ignorance,
0:53:41 > 0:53:44prejudice and racism to carry on their shoulders.
0:53:44 > 0:53:49And these experiences were, for the most part, unrecorded.
0:53:50 > 0:53:53We have their names, far too many names,
0:53:53 > 0:53:57but precious little else, apart from the occasional fragment
0:53:57 > 0:54:03preserved by chance - a letter in a censor's report,
0:54:03 > 0:54:07a photograph taken behind the front line,
0:54:07 > 0:54:09a medal and a proud family memory.
0:54:15 > 0:54:20But there is one place where, in the most unexpected way,
0:54:20 > 0:54:24you suddenly get heart-stoppingly close to an individual,
0:54:24 > 0:54:28and it's as if the forgotten ghosts of the World's War
0:54:28 > 0:54:30are suddenly standing there before you.
0:55:00 > 0:55:03That's beautiful.
0:55:03 > 0:55:04A voice from another world.
0:55:16 > 0:55:19- You can hear when he makes mistakes. You can hear his stumbles.- Yes.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35The man, whose voice has been so miraculously preserved
0:55:35 > 0:55:38in the Humboldt University Sound Archive, here in Berlin,
0:55:38 > 0:55:42is Mall Singh, a soldier with the British India Corps.
0:55:42 > 0:55:46He was brought over to France in 1914 to fight for the British
0:55:46 > 0:55:51and then taken prisoner by the Germans on the Western Front.
0:55:51 > 0:55:54According to the punctilious notes taken at the time,
0:55:54 > 0:55:58we know that on the 11th December, 1916,
0:55:58 > 0:56:01at four o'clock Mall Singh, aged 24,
0:56:01 > 0:56:04from the village of Ranasukhi in the Punjab,
0:56:04 > 0:56:07was ordered to stand in front of a horn microphone
0:56:07 > 0:56:10and recite his plaintive poem,
0:56:10 > 0:56:13which was then recorded directly onto a shellac disc.
0:56:15 > 0:56:19For us, the recording brings to life a poignant story of a
0:56:19 > 0:56:23man transported across continents and oceans to fight
0:56:23 > 0:56:27and to be made prisoner in someone else's war,
0:56:27 > 0:56:30but the ethnographers and linguists who made the recording
0:56:30 > 0:56:32had no interest in that.
0:56:32 > 0:56:35All they wanted was a sample of his Punjabi
0:56:35 > 0:56:38dialect to further their research
0:56:38 > 0:56:41and cataloguing of racial and linguistic types.
0:56:43 > 0:56:45But it's only thanks to their tunnel vision that,
0:56:45 > 0:56:50a century later, the ghosts of Mall Singh and hundreds of his comrades
0:56:50 > 0:56:55materialise in the sound archive and precious fragments
0:56:55 > 0:56:57of their experiences can be recovered.
0:57:19 > 0:57:23Here, in a cemetery near Berlin, are the headstones of more
0:57:23 > 0:57:28than 200 Indian prisoners of war who died in captivity -
0:57:28 > 0:57:30Mall Singh is not among them.
0:57:30 > 0:57:37Maybe he made it back to India to eat butter and drink milk once more.
0:57:37 > 0:57:40Maybe he was transferred to another camp, where his death,
0:57:40 > 0:57:43like the deaths of many others, went unrecorded.
0:57:47 > 0:57:50He survives today as a snatch of crackly sound,
0:57:50 > 0:57:53recorded for reasons that would have been obscure to him
0:57:53 > 0:57:58and preserved for reasons that now probably seem obscure to us -
0:57:58 > 0:58:01progress, science,
0:58:01 > 0:58:03culture, civilisation.
0:58:09 > 0:58:12In remembrance services every year,
0:58:12 > 0:58:15we make a promise to the dead of the World's War.
0:58:15 > 0:58:18ALL: We will remember them.
0:58:18 > 0:58:21Living up to that promise seems even more necessary
0:58:21 > 0:58:25when so much and so many have been forgotten.
0:58:28 > 0:58:33INDISTINCT, CRACKLY RECORDINGS