Company of heroes 2: the british forces
Janha works in his workshop in Brikama īut Janha’s wishes counted for little. He also joined his family in yearly seasonal migrations “upcountry” to their ancestral village of Bwiam, where he harvested groundnuts to be sold in Bathurst with the profits ploughed back into the family’s jewellery business. He was born the son of a jeweller in Bathurst and had become his father’s silversmith apprentice. When British army recruiters called for volunteers to sign up, Ebou Janha had little interest in war or the martial culture of his ancestors. While some soldiers chose to fight, such as the men from Balangar – a village steeped in martial tradition where 35 friends signed up to fight on the same day in 1941 – many others were forced to. His memory flickers into action as he recalls how, in 1941 when he was 22 years old, he was captured by village elders and sent off to fight against an enemy he had never heard of before.ĭuring World War II, the recruitment of Gambian soldiers was often enforced via a quota system with the 36 local chiefs pressured to supply Britain with 48 servicemen each every month – a number that increased to 75 in March 1943.īritish officials also conducted round-ups of unemployed men in the capital, Bathurst (now Banjul), to enlist them into military service. Speaking in the small white-walled workshop he built in the 1950s when The Gambia was still a British colony, Janha manages five or so Wolof words at a time while his daughter, 55-year-old Mamtutti, translates.
Brikama, The Gambia – On an early November morning, 102-year-old Ebou Janha rests a pair of pliers next to his jeweller’s anvil and collects his breath before demonstrating how he gunned down Japanese soldiers for the British Empire, 77 years ago.