There's quite a tiff going on over in the Land of the Free that the Dunkirk movie doesn't have enough minorities or women in it.
‘Dunkirk’ review in USA Today warns ‘no lead actors of color’ in WWII-inspired film
At first I thought they were sucking up to the liberal lefties and trying to re-write our glorious history, but after a little bit of research I'm wondering if they might have a point.
To my surprise Indian troops were at Dunkirk as part of a mule logistics train.
The Royal Indian Army Service Corps » Dunkirk 1940 - The Before, The Reality, The Aftermath
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Unfortunately the story goes that they were captured by the Germans before escaping, but according to this story a few of them were saved by the father of Paddy Ashdown.
Ashdown tells how father stood by Indian troops
"Sir Paddy Ashdown revealed yesterday how his father was brought before a court martial for refusing to comply with an order to abandon Indian troops under his command during the Dunkirk retreat.
The order had been "idiotic and disgraceful", said Sir Paddy, who was a Royal Marine captain before he was leader of the Liberal Democrats. His father, who ended the war a colonel, was in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, based in the Punjab. In 1939 he took a platoon of Indian soldiers and their troop of mules as one of four mule trains to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.
During the BEF's 100-mile retreat in June 1940, the order went out from a senior British officer to set loose the mules and the Indians; the British officers were ordered to make their way to Dunkirk for evacuation, since officers were in short supply.
Sir Paddy's father, John, disobeyed, turning loose the mules but marching his platoon to Dunkirk without loss. There he secured a berth for them all on the last ship out before the jetty was bombed. Back in England, he was reunited with his wife, Lois, but court martialled for disobeying an order. The court martial was subsequently thrown out, according to Sir Paddy.
The Ministry of Defence, when first approached about the story by the Southall-based TV company Zee TV, said its archive department had after two days been unable to find any record of Indian troops at Dunkirk; it also reported it had lost the records of Indian Army court martials. Zee TV located a record of the Indian troops' presence in hours at the Imperial War Museum. The ministry then asserted that the command to cut loose the Indians and mules, made by a single officer, did not amount to an official order.
Sir Paddy said last night: "It may seem that the order was a racist one in the context of our time, but my father thought simply that these were his men, he was responsible for them, and he must bring them back. That was the beginning and the end of it."
I've never heard of any ethnic minority troops being at Dunkirk so I'm pleased to stand corrected, perhaps the movie should have included a few just to make a point that we didn't stand alone? If they were there they also deserve to have their story told.
Does anyone else know of any other parts of British history which weren't 'whiter than white'?
I've always found it rather interesting that if you go to Trafalgar Square and look at the picture at the bottom of the coloumn there's a black chap on the far left.
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~DC