Celebrating 50 Years in publishing - 1970 - 2020
“On 20th October 1933, a small stone monument was unveiled in Waima, a village in eastern Sierra Leone. It commemorated the British losses in a brief but bloody skirmish with French troops which had taken place there nearly forty years earlier. The combined casualties reached nearly thirty killed and as many more wounded. Among the names recorded on the simple stone column, which still stands, are those of Privates Carter, Grant, Marsden, Pickering, Skilner, Small, White and Wilkinson, and a Drummer Browne. These were all buried close to the site of the monument on Christmas Eve, 1893. Within less than six months, their graves had been obliterated and the ground dug up for cultivation. By the time the memorial was erected, their remains had disappeared for ever. Apart from the manner of their deaths and the desecration of their remains, the one thing these nine had in common was that they were all Jamaicans”
Extract from The Empty Sleeve: The Story of the West India Regiments of the British Army by Brian Dyde
