Honouring Kenya’s forgotten World War soldiers

One day, about 85 years ago, Mutoko Ingati left his home in southern Kenya and was never seen again.

Mr Ingati, 30, had disappeared without any explanation – for years his family tried desperately to track him down, following chain after chain that would eventually run dry.

As the decades passed, Mr. Ingati’s memories faded. He had no children and many of those close to him died. But almost eight decades later, his name reappears in British military records.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which works to commemorate those who died in the two world wars, contacted Mr Ingati’s nephew, Benjamin Mutuku, after digging through ancient documents.

He learned that on the day his uncle left his village, Siamatani, he traveled about 180 kilometers (110 miles) west to Nairobi – the seat of the British colonial government that then controlled the country.

There, he enlisted as a soldier with the East African Scouts, a British Army battalion that fought in World War II. The United Kingdom conscripted millions of men from its empire to fight in each of the 20th century’s global conflicts in theaters around the world.

Mr. Ingati answered the call for recruits — when it wasn’t exactly clear — and then on June 13, 1943, he was killed in action, according to records discovered by CWGC. It is not known where or how he died.

Like thousands of Kenyans who fought in the British Army, he died without notifying his family and was buried in a location unknown to this day.

Decades later, as the UK marks Remembrance Sunday to honor those who contributed to the war effort, the sacrifices of many Kenyan soldiers, like Mr Ingati, remain unrecognised.

The world knows little about their service and they have never before been commemorated in the same way as their white counterparts.

After all these years, Mr. Motoko was happy to know where his uncle disappeared to and when he died. Although born after Mr. Ingati left the village, Mr. Mutuku feels a strong connection to his uncle, from whom he gets his name.

“I used to ask my father, ‘Where is the person I was named after?’” Motoko, now 67 years old, tells the BBC:

Although he welcomes the new information, Mr. Motoko is angry that his uncle’s body is somewhere in the world, and has not been buried in Syamatani.

His family belongs to the Akamba ethnic group, who believe that his burial near the family home is very important.

“I never had the opportunity to see the grave where my uncle was buried,” Motoko says. “I was very much hoping to see that.”

CWGC is trying to find out where Mr Ingati died and the location of his body, along with details of other forgotten Kenyan soldiers.

Research is also being conducted to obtain details about the East Africans who fought and died during the First World War.

With the help of the Kenya Defense Forces, the CWGC recently unearthed a trove of rare colonial military records in Kenya dating back to that conflict. As a result, researchers were able to recover the names and stories of more than 3,000 soldiers who served at that time.

The records, believed to have been destroyed decades ago, relate to the King’s African Rifles. The regiment was composed of soldiers from East Africa, and fought against German forces in the region, in what is now Tanzania, in World War I, and Japanese forces in what is now Myanmar, in World War II.

George Hay, a historian at the CWGC, told the BBC: “These are not just dusty files, they are personal stories. For many African families, this may be the first time they have learned of a relative’s wartime service.”

For example, there is George Williams, a decorated staff sergeant with the Royal African Rifles. Described as being 5 ft 8 in (170 cm) tall with a scar on the right side of his chin, Williams received numerous medals for bravery and was recognized as a first-class shot. He died at the age of 44 in Mozambique Only four months before the war ended.

There are also records of Abdullahi Fadlallah, a Ugandan soldier who joined the King’s African Rifles in 1913, aged just 16. He was killed just 13 months later, while attacking an enemy position in Tanzania.

The records show how the wars “touched every fabric of Kenya,” says Patrick Abungu, a historian at the CWGC’s Kenya office.

“Because the story says they went and never came back. And now we are answering these questions: where did they go and where [their bodies] “It could be,” he adds.

The historian wants to answer these questions for thousands of families across Kenya, including his own.

for him His great-uncle, Ogoye Ogunde, was drafted into the British Army during World War I and never returned to his homeland.

He told the BBC: “It is very painful to lose a loved one and not know where he is.”

“No matter how many years pass, people will always look at the gate and hope that one day he will walk in.”

Mr Abongo and the CWGC hope to build memorials to commemorate the thousands of soldiers identified through newly discovered documents.

The organization also wants the records to help enrich school curricula in Kenya, so that new generations can understand the huge, yet overlooked, role Africans played in the world wars.

“The only way any of this matters is if it doesn’t come from people like me saying: ‘This is your history,'” says CWGC’s Hay.

“It’s about people saying: ‘This is our history’ – and using the materials we work with.”

The CWGC will continue to retrieve details of Kenyan personnel who served in the British Forces so that every fallen soldier is commemorated.

“There is no final date,” says Abungo. “I mean this could last a thousand years.”

“The ongoing process is to make sure that these thousands of people who are gone and never come back…we preserve their memories so that we don’t forget them.”