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60th Anniversary of World War II The Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation Culled from Think In Time – Essays and Encounters of the Last quarter of the 20th Century By Peter Opara
Making time to watch national evening news these days is a mighty task. In fact, I cannot recall when last I watched the evening news on CBS, my favorite station. It is so bad that I did not watch the last and final newscast by my favorite newsman, “America’s Anchorman”, Dan Rather.
I commenced this piece as afore to note that though there was worldwide celebration recently, last week in fact, to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the 2nd World War, I watched not a segment of the pomp or pageantry that attended the celebration.
Current leaders of the nations whose armies constituted the allied forces in the war years congregated in Moscow for a celebration of the end of a devastating war that impacted far reaches of the world.
Moscow, the capital of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic that lost the most men, millions, it was reported, during that war; Moscow, where Adolph Hitler’s German forces, tens of thousands of them met their waterloo in combat with nature - frigid weather; Moscow, the foremost city of what was an unlikely partner, USSR, in a combat against evil that Hitler represented, hosted the 60th anniversary of the end of carnage and destruction of the 2nd World War.
Lillya, a lovely Muscovite colleague of mine, some how could not understand why her city, Moscow, was chosen for the anniversary celebration. Why? She wondered, as we chatted about Russians and their political word of choice – “Democratiya” - Democracy.
Lillya readily dismissed my suggestion and correctly so, that the war ended in Moscow. A political communication by allied forces, I suggested. Well, because, she countered, Russian army successfully placed Russian flag on the Reichstag in Berlin, Germany. That I did not know.
Lillya went on amidst her wonderment, and rattled off some of the seminal events in her country during that war, in a way that made me wonder if she was of teenage age then.
Lillya, just like yours truly, was not born then, but with the benefit of Russian education, in which history occupy a premier place in the curriculum, and the fact, perhaps, that Russians had lived that war, Lillya, unlike me, could comfortably chat about a war that impacted the entire world, and I could only listen.
Lillya’s interesting narrative of events of that war that she had only learnt in history classes over the years in her country, reminded me that Africans, my people, also fought in the 2nd World War.
Lillya indeed caused me to remember that I had written an essay five years ago that formed part of my book – Thinking In Time - in celebration of Africans of my father’s youth that sojourned to far away land, to fight to rid the world of one of the aggressive negative “isms” of the time - Nazism.
The essay –Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation – set in the tone of Tom Brokaw’s book - The Greatest Generation – for me was a celebration of our African fathers, uncles, cousins or brothers that fought in the 2nd World War, to help make the world a better place.
The courage and bravery of these men deserved attention, I thought, in a book that I wrote in celebration of the joy of witnessing and benefiting through my own father, from the stuff these men were made.
The Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation consists of the best of men, the types that are not made any more.
Certainly, a better and more detailed job can be done about these men, and that was my hope…a bigger project on the lives of these men, across the continent of Africa…just my hope.
The Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation –
Forgotten by their countries, forgotten by the world; men of such bravery, gallantry and integrity, as men of Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”.
I knew some of these men; some were cousins – Nigerians. There were Ghanaians among these men - there were Cameroonians, Ugandans, Kenyans, Algerians, Egyptians – men from across the African continent.
These men never got the attention and care they deserved in their old age because of who they were and where they came from. These men, African originals fought alongside American and European men of Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” in Asia and North Africa to rid the world of Fascism and Nazism.
I had a cousin (may his soul rest in peace) who wore in cold harmattan mornings, in Nigeria, the thickest, longest coat there was. Anyone who saw a movie of the allied forces in their winter apparel in the 2nd World War would recognize the type of coat to which I refer. This cousin of mine was in Burma; he was just not there, he fought there in the 2nd World War. I never asked how he traveled to Burma in those ancient days, but he was there.
I knew another man from a neighboring town who also fought in the 2nd World War in Asia. He fought to free the West, the world from Nazism, Fascism, Totalitarianism and all other negative – isms.
This man, then in his fifties when I saw him in 1969, was a bundle of energy. When you saw him pacing along the road, you had not an iota of doubt that he had been and still was a soldier.
Little me then, this man took a liking to me and always came by to tell me stories of the past. It was during the Biafra/Nigeria war and we were stationed in his town – Azara Egbelu, near Owerri. The man told how fearless, mean and cunning the Japanese were; how the Japanese could hide on a tree and not be detected.
The man knew General Charles De Gaulle, he told me, and he pronounced the French Hero’s name with utmost clarity and distinction.
The Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation, they fought for freedom and security during 2nd World War, unleashing economic prosperity in the West, but they have lived and died, many of them, mired in poverty, insecurity and deprivation.
Such cannot be any of the West’s concern.
In 1984, it was reported in a Nigerian journal that the government of Nigeria, dispatched 10 Million Pounds Sterling to Britain to pay the pension of retired British colonial administrators.
The irony inherent in such payment, which I believe continues to this day, could be a subject for a book.
The retired British administrators were in Nigeria safe and sound, managing British mercantile and political interests while these dying and abandoned Nigerians – Forgotten Africa’s Greatest Generation – fought and toiled to liberate Britain from the pangs of the Fuehrer.
Peter Opara
May 24, 2005
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