When I (Rich Warms) was young, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer and lived in a town called Ouahigouya in the country then called Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in West Africa. I spent most of my time working in small villages, but l'd also wander around the town. Frequently on my wanderings, I'd be stopped by a grizzled-looking old man who would start yelling at me in German. Then in French (the language of government and education in Upper Volta), he'd inform me that he'd been a prisoner of the Germans in World War II. At first, I took him to be a crazy person and a drunk (he always stopped me near a bar). But, as I got to know him and other residents of the town better, I learned he had indeed been a German prisoner. That left me wondering how it was possible. After all, I didn't think he could have been visiting Europe when the war broke out. As I spoke to him and many others like him over the 15 years that followed, I learned a story that had been left out of my high school and college history lessons.

Europeans saw in their colonies not only opportunities for the extraction of mineral and agricultural wealth but also reservoirs of manpower. This was particularly true in Africa, which, since the 16 th century, had served Europeans as a source of labor. Both the British and the French saw the military potential of African labor, and both formed armies composed of colonized Africans. The British unit was known as the King's African Rifles, and the French unit was the Tirailleurs Sénégalais (Senegalese riflemen). The Tirailleurs Sénégalais was officially created in 1857. At that time, most of its soldiers were slaves, bought by the French for army service. Armed with French weaponry and led by French officers, their first task was the capture and control of colonies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The French completed their empire in Africa by the turn of the 20th century, but the Tirailleurs Sénégalais were not disbanded. Instead, powerful interests in France argued that Africans had an obligation to serve the French state and could revitalize its army. The first practical trial of this idea was in 1912 when the Tirailleurs Sénégalais was used to quell a rebellion in Morocco, but the real test came in World War I. More than 135,000 African troops, mostly drafted conscripts, served for the French in the trenches of Europe, and almost 30,000 of them died there (Page, 1987). Those who survived made their way back to Africa between 1918 and 1919. Like many other veterans of World War I, they had witnessed horrors incomprehensible to most of their countrymen. And like European and American soldiers suffering from "shell shock," members of this group were often considered deranged.

Though manpower needs lessened after World War I, France continued to draft African men into the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. Historian Myron Echenberg wrote that French conscription in West Africa was "indeed a tax in sweat and blood" (1991, p. 47). Between World Wars I and II, hundreds of thousands of Africans were conscripted into the army, and by 1939 , on the eve of World War II, about \(9 \%\) of the French army in France was composed of Africans. By the end of that war, France had recruited (most often drafted) more than 200,000 Africans; of these, as many as 25,000 perished. In addition, France's African possessions were also taxed heavily to provide food and raw materials for the war effort (Lawler, 1992)......

Questions

a. Although the Tirailleurs Sénégalais played an important role in World War II, most readers of this book probably haven't heard of them. Why do you think that is so?

b. Most West African veterans live in conditions that would be considered deep poverty in France. What obligations, if any, does France have to these men and their families?

c. Veterans of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais fought for the French, sometimes against other colonized people. How do you think they justified their participation in these colonial wars?