All of war’s victims should be remembered

Sir, – Recently we honoured Scots troops, in particular those who fell during World War One.

However, we ought to also salute the memory of those from a black and minority ethnic background who gave their lives in what was, after all, a truly world war.

France recruited troops from her African and Indo-Chinese colonies to swell the ranks of her domestic troops slaughtered on the fields of northern Europe.

Meanwhile, “The Harlem Hellfighters” – black US troops – fought with divisions of the French army because their white fellow countrymen refused to serve alongside them.

Britain famously called on troops from her extensive Empire.

Indian troops shivered in the mud and squalor of the trenches in Europe and African Caribbean troops served in Palestine (and in Europe too).

What we forget is that the Great War was not fought in Europe and Gallipoli alone but all over Africa.

In fact the first shot fired during the war was fired by Sergeant Major Alhaji Grunshi of the Gold Coast Regiment when British and French troops invaded German Togoland.

These soldiers from five continents fought and died in a war which started because an obscure Austrian archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo – something which was of little interest or concern to the lands from which their colonial masters recruited them. Alexandra MacRae. 8 Jubilee Park, Letham,

Forfar.

Picture: PA. Iman Asim Hafiz and the Rev Duncan MacPherson attend Scotland’s first multi-faith remembrance service for British Indian Army soldiers at Kingussie Cemetery in Badenoch.