Carrier Corps
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The Carrier Corps was a military organisation created in Kenya in World War I to provide military labour to support the campaign against the German Military forces in East Africa commanded by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.
Whereas von Lettow armed and trained African Askaris to create an effective guerrilla force, the British attempted to deploy Indian Army troops under General Smuts. Not only were they unused to the terrain, the need to feed a large body of foreign soldiers exacerbated the logistical problems of supplying troops in the interior with no rail or road lines of communication. To deliver one kilogram of rice to the interior it could take 50 kilograms of rice at the coast—most of it being consumed en route to feed all the porters needed to carry it inland.
The British Administration formed a military labour organisation, the Carrier Corps, which ultimately recruited or conscripted over 400,000 African men for porterage and other support tasks.
The effect on many of the East African tribal population of being mobilised and enduring considerable suffering for a remote and largely irrelevant foreign cause had significant effects in the long term, both highlighting the fallibility of the European presence in Africa (as armed askaris readily killed white men), and raising the political awareness of Africans.
The organisation of the carrier corps was a remarkable feat of improvisation by a small number of officials of the East African Protectorate's administration, under a District Commissioner Lt Col Oscar Ferris Watkins. Watkins and his officials faced a constant struggle against the British military's excessive demands upon the Carriers and for native manpower.
The Carrier Corps is commemorated on the War Memorial in Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi and the Karaikor district of Nairobi, site of their base, is a corruption of the name.
[edit] Bibliography
'The Carrier Corps' - Military Labour in the East African Campaign 1914-18. Geoffrey Hodges Greenwood Press NY 1986
