Some of you may know that the National Army Museum (NAM) recently reorganised its Society of Friends and has produced a new magazine, Muster, for them.
The first issue takes the restoration of the Indian Army Memorial Room at Sandhurst as a key feature. Military history in Britain has not considered the actions of allied armies and nations as much as it might have and the involvement of, for want of a better expression, colonial forces even less so. Articles on the Indian Divisions in Italy, liaison with the CWGC, exhibits concerning the Ethiopian Campaign of 1868 and Phil McCarty's Book Review section all have much of interest.
My personal favourite was an article about the portrait of an unnamed private in the West India Regt dating from 1804. When I visited the West Indies in 2009 with the Treasurer and Membership Secretary we visited some of the sites relating to the campaigns in Antigua and St Lucia but finding information about units other than those in the Regular Army - and white soldiers only - was virtually impossible. I do recall from one work by an American historian (that I can now no longer trace) that the planters were distinctly uncomfortable at the sight of black NCOs escorting white British soldiers to be flogged. Let us hope that this sort of exhibit will encourage study of the 18th century campaigns in the West Indies which were of course strategically vital. As soon as the French and Spanish began to interfere in the suppression of the rebellion in the colonies in 1778 there was no hesitation in Whitehall, the Admiralty or Horse Guards as to where the point of main effort now needed to be.
Andy Grainger
