No Insignificant Part: The Rhodesia Native Regiment and the East Africa Campaign of the First World War.

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

Presenting rare insights about a little-known aspect of World War One, this is the first history of the Rhodesia Native Regiment, the only primarily black African military unit raised by the British in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) to fight in World War I. Like their German opponents, the British recruited “native” troops in various regions of Southern Africa. Typical RNR volunteers were ex-miners or farm workers living in what are now Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, and Malawi. Their commanding officers were European, mostly British settlers or frontiersmen seconded from the British South Africa Police. Despite tropical heat, meagre food, and fatal diseases, the RNR fought well in a grueling two-year campaign against German and African forces led by the wily General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Stapleton’s research for this unique military history takes him through war diaries, personal reminiscences, previously unpublished manuscripts, and material from the Zimbabwean National Archives.  Regrettably, even though some of its members received British medals for bravery, the Rhodesia Native Regiment was quickly disbanded after the war and soon forgotten by the white colonial establishment. It was also ill-served by the current Zimbabwean government, whose anti-colonial policy led to the destruction of all local monuments to these valiant but unheralded Africans who died in white men’s wars.