Soldiers of the King, Laborers in the Field: British Caribbean Troops and the Great War

Britain's entry into the Great War triggered a flood of patriotic activism in the Caribbean, as men from the Bahamas to Berbice volunteered to fight for “King and Country.” During the war, nearly 16,000 men—hailing from every British Caribbean colony as well as the migrant zones of Panama—enlisted in the newly-formed British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). Although men from the West Indies had fought under the Union Jack since the late eighteenth century, the massive enlistment campaigns during the Great War garnered a remarkably diverse cadre of recruits: agricultural workers, skilled artisans, rural smallholders, educated urban professionals, and patriotic civil servants flocked to the military in unprecedented numbers. Spurred by promises of battlefield glory, imperial brotherhood, and steady wages, new recruits sailed across the Atlantic to join millions of fellow colonial soldiers from Australia, Africa, New Zealand, Canada, and India.

Although BWIR recruits expected to battle German soldiers on the Western front, most soldiers actually spent the war years toiling as manual laborers in France, Egypt, East Africa, Palestine, or Italy. Describing themselves as “King George's Steam Engine,” BWIR soldiers transported artillery, worked as stevedores, laid railroad tracks, and built roads, while protesting dire working conditions and racist treatment. This paper draws on an array of sources—including war diaries, letters, photographs, War Office reports, soldiers' testimony, and newspaper accounts—to examine the laboring experiences of BWIR soldiers between 1916-1918. It considers how the men of the BWIR negotiated their confusing status as both soldiers and “native labourers” while also grappling with disease, death, and declining morale. In addition, the paper suggests that internal debates about race, masculinity, and military fitness led the War Office to deploy most BWIR troops as workers, despite initial assurances that the recruits would be paid and trained as soldiers.