Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

On 12 August 1914, hundreds of thousands of French soldiers in uniforms of blue jackets and red trousers surged across the German border. To their north, in Belgium, German cuirassiers launched a thunderous cavalry attack on the little town of Haelen. Three thousand miles away, little noticed or commented upon at the time, a small British force headed through the African bush towards Lomé, the capital of the German colony of Togoland. That day, far from the battlefields of France and Belgium, Lance Corporal Alhaji Grunshi of the British West African Frontier Force became the first soldier in British service to fire a shot in the land war. Ten days later Edward Thomas, of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, became the first white British soldier to fire his rifle in anger in Europe. The First World War began in Africa and it was to end there on 14 November 1918, when the last German units surrendered, three days after the armistice in Europe.