Black Britain and the First World War: Service, Sacrifice and Home

More than one route into war

Black participation in the First World War cannot be reduced to a single regiment or journey. The National Army Museum distinguishes men who enlisted from Britain's established Black communities from volunteers who crossed the Atlantic from the Caribbean. Some joined existing British units; others served in the British West Indies Regiment. Recruitment was not consistently welcoming. The War Office rejected some early Caribbean volunteers and even threatened to send arrivals back. An imperial government could seek resources and loyalty from its colonies while resisting the military aspirations of some of their inhabitants. That contradiction belongs at the beginning of the story, rather than appearing as a qualification after a list of honours. ¹

Geography matters just as much. Service in Britain's forces did not mean that every soldier had previously lived in Britain or eventually settled here. The RAF Museum describes Caribbean and African contributions that extended across several theatres, together with supplies, money and aircraft provided by colonial territories. The same account records a racial restriction on officer commissions. Within that wider imperial war, Black British history includes residents leaving home to serve, people arriving for training, civilian work and families waiting for news. Keeping those different relationships visible allows the contribution to be understood without assigning everyone the same nationality, motivation or experience. ²

A footballer's career interrupted

Walter Tull's surviving records connect an Edwardian sporting life with the army. Born in Folkestone, he played for Clapton, Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town before joining the Middlesex Regiment. He served in France, received treatment for shell shock and returned to duty. His 1917 application for a temporary commission, preserved by The National Archives, belongs to a period when the army expected officers to be of European descent. Tull nevertheless completed officer training and served as a second lieutenant. He died on the Western Front in March 1918. His commission challenged a discriminatory system, but describing him as the first Black officer in every part of British military history would erase earlier and contemporary cases. ³

Tull's family has retained the papers, photographs and memorabilia that make his life more than an official service summary. The Walter Tull Archive explains its role as custodian of that family material and provides a route for researchers seeking access. It also records his recommendation for a Military Cross, which he did not receive. A recommendation and an award are different things, just as a later explanation for the decision requires evidence rather than assumption. The family's continuing stewardship is part of remembrance itself. Documents survive because someone keeps them, identifies the people in photographs and insists that a relative's life deserves an accurate account. ⁴

Two brothers and two kinds of rank

George Edward Kingsley Bemand was born in Jamaica and came to England with his mother and siblings in 1908. He attended Dulwich College, where he played cricket, and then studied engineering at University College London. After joining the university's officer training corps, he received a Royal Field Artillery commission in May 1915. Dulwich's memorial records his later work with an ammunition column and trench mortars, and his death when a shell struck his dugout on Boxing Day 1916. His career demonstrates that education and institutional connections could open a route into an officer's role even within an exclusionary military structure. It does not establish that the structure had become fair for everyone else. ⁵

His younger brother Harold served in the same regiment as a gunner. The college's separate account records his movement between trench mortar units, a period of illness and his death in June 1917 while carrying mortar ammunition to a newly captured trench. Remembering the brothers together changes the scale of the story. Different ranks and duties belonged to one family, and two service records describe losses within that family's life. Both sons died during the war. Their school preserved their names and service histories, allowing two separate military careers to be read together as part of the same family history. ⁶

Learning to fly

William Robinson Clarke paid for his own passage from Jamaica and joined the Royal Flying Corps in July 1915. He initially worked as an air mechanic and a driver before being accepted for pilot training in England. He gained his wings in April 1917 and joined No. 4 Squadron, flying RE8 aircraft over the Western Front. The RAF Museum preserves his account of being wounded during a reconnaissance flight that July. In a letter to his mother, he described photographing enemy territory, coming under attack and struggling to bring the aircraft back. He survived and later returned to Jamaica. The letter makes the pilot a narrator of his own experience, rather than only the subject of an official service record. ⁷

The Royal Aero Club Trust holds another kind of evidence: the record of Clarke's Aviator's Certificate, number 4837, issued in April 1917. His photograph and index card were subsequently used in an Imperial War Museum exhibition. A certificate records training and recognition, rather than a battle or a medal. It directs attention to the skills required before operational flying could begin. The combination of a qualification record and a personal letter is especially useful: one establishes professional progress, while the other communicates an individual's description of an event. Neither should be made to answer every question about his treatment by fellow servicemen. ⁸

Caribbean volunteers in Sussex and overseas

The British West Indies Regiment was created in 1915 and eventually raised eleven battalions. According to the National Army Museum, its service was shaped by the War Office's reluctance to deploy non-white troops against white European soldiers. Some battalions fought Ottoman forces in the Middle East, while others undertook labour, logistical and prisoner-guarding duties in Europe. These were not interchangeable experiences. Moving ammunition, maintaining routes and supplying formations sustained the fighting army, even when the work was treated as subordinate. The regiment's history also includes protest over racist duties and unequal pay at Taranto after the Armistice. Service did not prevent soldiers from challenging the conditions under which they were expected to work. ⁹

Seaford in Sussex was one of the places where Caribbean volunteers trained. An ITV report based on local historical research and a family visit describes contact between the soldiers and the town, including meetings involving members of the Ancient Order of Foresters. It also follows relatives to the graves of Dennis and Nelson Fevrier from St Lucia, who died in 1916. Their great-niece explained that the family had known they went to war but had only much later learned where they were buried. The story brings together military movement and a much longer family search. Death during wartime could occur in a British training area, far from the battlefield a later reader might expect. ¹⁰

The work that brought soldiers home

John Alcindor's experience exposes the cost of rejecting skills on racial grounds. A Trinidad-born doctor who qualified at Edinburgh, he offered his services to the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1914. The British Red Cross records that he was rejected because of his colonial origin. He instead volunteered with the Red Cross and treated wounded servicemen arriving at London railway stations. His contribution therefore belonged to the network carrying casualties from military operations back into medical care in Britain. A history confined to enlistment and combat would miss that work. So would an account which treated rejection as the end of his wartime story. ¹¹

His example helps make the boundary between front and home less absolute. A wounded serviceman did not cease to be part of the war when a train reached London. He still required assessment, transport and treatment. The people who supplied those services performed work with immediate consequences for recovery and survival. Recognising that contribution does not require pretending that all kinds of service were the same. It requires asking which activities an army and a population depended on, and noticing when the surviving record places a Black professional within them.

Sea routes, family photographs and survival

Marcus Bailey's life connects naval service with the maritime work on which Britain depended. Historian Stephen Bourne's account for Royal Museums Greenwich describes the Barbadian sailor aboard HMS Chester at the Battle of Jutland, when the ship suffered repeated hits. Bailey survived and continued working in the Merchant Navy after the war. His family allowed Bourne to reproduce a photograph of him in uniform, enabling a public history to draw on a privately preserved image. That is a different kind of contribution to the historical record from an official citation. It allows readers to see a working sailor whose career extended before and after the battle through which they may first encounter him. ¹²

A portrait in uniform should not make a person anonymous. It can prompt questions about the work behind a rank, the movements behind a service number and the relationships beyond the photograph's edge. At the same time, a picture cannot establish precisely what its subject experienced in a particular engagement. The strongest accounts combine images with service documentation and attributed family knowledge. They do not require every person to have been decorated or to have died in order to deserve attention. Survival, a return to employment and continued responsibility for relatives are also substantial parts of a wartime life.

Remembering the full working life

Unit war diaries provide one route into the everyday activity of military formations. The National Archives' centenary digitisation programme made large collections of these records accessible, including accounts of movements, duties and operations in France and Flanders. A unit diary is not automatically the personal diary of each man in the unit. It can establish where a formation was and what it did, but a soldier's individual experience may require other records. That distinction is particularly important when a familiar name is linked to a dramatic event. The presence of the regiment does not, by itself, prove the precise actions or feelings of every person serving with it. ¹³

These stories invite remembrance that is both broader and more exact. Black service included commissioned officers and other ranks, trained pilots, medical volunteers and sailors. Some people had grown up in Britain; others arrived as adults or travelled specifically to serve. Their work could be valued while their claims to equality were obstructed. Those contradictions should remain visible, rather than being resolved into a reassuring account of universal acceptance. Nor should recognition depend on proving that a community earned its right to belong through sacrifice. The people discussed here had lives and relationships before the war. Their contribution adds to our understanding of those lives; it is not the condition on which their place in history rests.

Sources and further reading

1. Hayley Rix, National Army Museum: Black Soldiers in the First World War.

2. RAF Museum: The First World War, 1914-1918.

3. The National Archives: Walter Tull, original documents and biographical context.

4. The Walter Tull Archive: Family archive and access information.

5. Dulwich College archive: George Edward Kingsley Bemand.

6. Dulwich College archive: Harold Leslie Bemand.

7. RAF Museum: Sergeant William Robinson Clarke, including his letter to his mother.

8. Royal Aero Club Trust: William Robinson Clarke research records.

9. National Army Museum: British West Indies Regiment.

10. ITV Meridian: The Sussex town that welcomed West Indian troops, interviews and local research.

11. British Red Cross: John Alcindor, First World War volunteer doctor.

12. Stephen Bourne, Royal Museums Greenwich: Black Poppies, Britain's Black Community and the Great War.

13. The National Archives / GOV.UK: First World War diaries go online.