In my book Utterly Immoral I cover Robert Keable’s time in France as a chaplain with the South African Native Labour Contingent. The SANLC was one of the labour corps paid for by the British Government to provide support labour during the First World War. Volunteers from India, China, Egypt, southern Africa, and other parts of the British Empire travelled to France. The men Robert Keable accompanied were based in Le Havre where they unloaded the ships delivering the supplies needed by an army of just over two million (at its peak) serving in France and Flanders.

It has been difficult to find unbiased accounts of the SANLC. The South African Government’s propaganda machine worked hard at the time to ensure a positive light was shown on the setting up and running of the contingent. The truth was very different.

Robert Keable wrote a short history – The First Ten Thousand – but it was censured during the war, banned from publication and the manuscript has not survived. Some chapters did later appear in his book Standing By, and he wrote about his experience in different articles and letters, so I have been able to piece together his experience. However, there is only one account I have found from the viewpoint of a black labourer. This appears in the excellent book A Chief is a Chief by the People, the autobiography of Stimela Jason Jingoes, recorded and complied by John and Cassandra Perry, published in 1975.

Jingoes was born in Leribe in 1896. He was a bright student who did well at school and planned to be a schoolteacher, enrolling in the Morija training school after he left school. However, towards the end of his first year at the college he developed an eye disease which meant he could not sit the final exam, and which also prevented him re-joining the college the following February. Unable to find a teaching job he travelled to South Africa to work first in a mine and later as a travelling clothes salesman. In March 1917 he decided to join the SANLC as he was prepared, as he put it, to die for his country and his King.

Along with other recruits he travelled by train to Rosebank Show Grounds in Cape Town where the training was organised. Jingoes stated that from the start the white officers were rude to them although he did concede that a number of the other recruits were ‘dunderheads’, and the officers were not so rude to those who followed orders. The initial training was all about drilling, making sure the men could march together. After ten days of training, they were marched down to their troopship, the first to sail after the SS Mendi which had tragically been sunk with the loss of over 600 men.

It took 45 days to travel from the Cape to Liverpool. Jingoes commented on the fact that the last relative of his to travel by boat for so long was his great grandfather who had been captured as a boy living in Eswatini and shipped as a slave to America. (He later escaped and worked his passage back to Africa.) Jingoes, of course, was travelling as a proud volunteer not a slave.

From Liverpool he travelled by train south to Folkestone. He was amazed by the friendliness of the people, reporting that women met their train at every station to bring them tea and whatever food they could spare. Again, when they arrived in France they were met by men, women and girls laughing and shaking their hands.

But quickly they travelled to Dieppe, settled into their camp and began work unloading the ships of food, fodder, ammunition and other supplies. Although he does not really complain about his treatment Jingoes was almost court-martialled for complaining about the food (as I explain in my book).

By the time Jingoes arrived in France all the SANLC contingents were pushed back from the front line, but his camp was bombed when German planes unsuccessfully tried to damage Dieppe port. He also reported that the Germans dropped leaflets on their camp telling them that they hated black people for joining the European war and threatening to ‘smash them’ if they found them.

Towards the end of his time in France Jingoes and all the other Basotho men who had volunteered whilst in South Africa were moved to Le Havre to join the men who had come from Basutoland (now Lesotho). There he would have been in the camp where Robert Keable worked.

Jingoes returned to South Africa at the end of his one-year contract, arriving back in Cape Town in April 1918. Overall, he admitted he had liked his stay in France, and he regretted he had not stayed there, as it was his first experience of visiting a country without a colour bar. He had fond memories of a few of the white officers but was horrified by the racism of some others. One Colonel was supposed to have prevented labourers from climbing into his boat after the sinking of the SS Mendes. Beating their hands with the oar. Jingoes quoted this Colonel as saying to Jingoes and other, after some French ladies had arrived in Rouen docks to serve the men with tea:

When you people get to South Africa again, don’t start thinking that you are whites, just because this place spoiled you. You are black, and you will stay black, and there’s no room for you in heaven.

Jingoes' account of his time in France is a relatively positive one. He was grateful to the French and English who treated him so differently to the officers in his camp and for opening his eyes to a possible future where the colour bar could end.