From our Swindon Correspondent:
From the BBC
Some troops were commemorated collectively or their names were recorded in registers, while their white counterparts had headstones.
A report by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission found the reason for this was “pervasive racism”.
In the Commons, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace expressed “deep regret”.
He told MPs there was “no doubt” prejudice had played a part in what happened after WW1.
OK, sure. People in the early 20th century were a lot more nationalistic and racist.
“If the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had set up a committee and discovered that 100,000 white British soldiers lay in mass graves – unmarked, uncommemorated – and the documentation proved that that had been deliberate, what would they do?” he said.
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I think you're wrong about this. Many schoolchildren, for example, ARE taken to visit the war graves in France and it seems wholly wrong that troops from other parts of the empire/commonwealth aren't commemorated in the same way as everyone else.
They haven't been that bothered about it for 100 years. Why start now?
The children wouldn't know and the people who should be commemorated aren't in a position to say so.
I was under the impression that Australia, for example, paid for the war graves for its troops. Presumably those parts of the old empire that didn't wish to do this don't have such elaborate memorials.
There very likely *are* 100,000 unknown white soldiers buried in mass graves from WW1. Has he never read any history?
We can follow current practice. Every few years, when there is construction in Belgium and Northern France, a mass grave is discovered - the corpses of soldiers who died in the trenches and whose precise location was not remembered when the official graves were built in the 1920s. Most of these corpses are unidentifiable by now. These people, whose corpses were not located at the time, are still commemorated by name in cemeteries and monuments such as the Menin Gate and Thiepval Arch. Their names are remembered and recorded. I bet Olusoga has got it wrong
I you Gate look at the names on the Menin gate you will see many from Indian, Pakistani etc. Regiments.
Of course none of these have graves because these are the people that nobody could find the remains of.
It is somewhat surprising that we went to the trouble of commemorating everyone who died with no known grave, but only a proportion of those who actually got a grave.