One of Britain's first black soldiers' 'Great War' diaries unearthed in Scotland
Glasgow, May 19ANI: The World War I diaries of one of Britain's first black soldiers, Private Arthur William David Roberts, have been unearthed in Scotland nearly 100 years after they were written. Private Roberts had served with the King's Own Scottish Borderers KOSB, and had fought in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, in which thousands of Allied troops were killed. In his diaries, which were discovered in the loft of a house in Glasgow, Private Roberts reveals that despite being among just a handful of British-born black soldiers at a time when racism was rife, he was popular with his comrades and made no mention of prejudice on their part. He jokes that white mortar dust made him look like a white man, and describes coming face-to-face with death in the trenches. He also described one incident where he escaped unscathed when a German shell killed a dozen men around him. Now historians are trying to track down surviving family of Private Roberts as they put his memoirs on show to the public for the first time. "We want him to be remembered as Arthur Roberts, not as a black soldier, but it was unusual to have a black soldier in the regiment then," The Scotsman quoted Ian Martin, from the KOSB Museum in Berwick-upon-Tweed, as saying. "There were black regiments fighting in the First World War and they were subject to quite a lot of racial abuse and prejudice. But he is the only one I've come across in the KOSB. He is shown to be popular among other troops and well liked," he added. ANI
Posted by aniin on Friday May 20  reply


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