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• W330443806 abstract "Soldiers, Airmen, Spies, and Whisperers: The Gold Coast in World War II. By Nancy Ellen Lawler. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. Pp. xxiii, 286 illustrations, maps, notes, index, bibliography. $49.95. This book tells the story of Corporal Quarshie's war. A Gold Coast policeman and intelligence operative on the border with Cote d'Ivoire, R. Quarshie was a shrewd, tireless information gatherer and prolific report writer. Nancy Lawler recounts his story, and many others, in this idiosyncratic but compelling and well-researched work. Lawler has a solid reputation as a historian of Africa and Africans in World War II, based on her earlier Soldiers of Misfortune.1 The current work naturally invites comparison with her study of the Tirailleurs Senegalais, but the two studies are not mirror images. Soldiers of Misfortune presented voluminous detail about the Ivoiriens who went to war, following them beyond West Africa into the various combat zones where they served. Data from hundreds of field interviews with veterans provided a clear view of the 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror typical of soldiers' wartime experiences. The Ivoirien research serves her well in this project, as her familiarity with Akan cultures and the geography of the forest zone eases the transition from francophone to anglophone setting. Soldiers, Airmen, Spies, and Whisperers also has a valuable interview component, but the main evidence comes from British and Ghanaian archives. We learn important facts about ordinary soldiers and civilians, but Lawler is after bigger game here, focusing on British strategy and policy options through the lens of their major West African colony. Both French and British African territories were crucial to wartime strategies following the shocking collapse of France in the face of Germany's onslaught in spring 1940. For two years Vichy France struggled to preserve its empire against Adolf Hitler's covetous designs, which included demands to return former German colonies as well as to use Afrique Francaise as a springboard to attack the British Empire. Britain's challenge was equally arduous but more complex. The British needed the Empire as a source of raw materials for the war effort, but they also sought to use colonies as bases to destabilize the Vichy regime within Africa. This latter goal conflicted with the larger aim of preserving the British Empire during and after the war. Would attempts to undermine French control in Africa place British West Africa at risk of retaliatory invasion? The resulting dilemma provoked repeated clashes between the various colonial administrations, regular army units and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the clandestine branch of the Army charged with espionage, propaganda-the spies and whisperers-and covert missions around the globe.2 The author describes these and other high policy issues as they played out in the Gold Coast, often with a nice turn of phrase and wry humor that is the prerogative of hindsight. Her account of the West African Reinforcement Route is notably strong. This vital air-supply line (also called the Takoradi Ferry) from the Gold Coast through Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan helped keep the Eighth Army fighting against Rommel's Afrika Korps in Egypt and Cyrenaica, supplying badly needed aircraft as well as other vital materiel. In this way the Gold Coast's strategic location contributed even more to eventual Allied victory than the territory's manpower or economic production. Lawler details these and other aspects of the Gold Coast participation in the war effort, but the narrative comes alive still further with her account of the January 1942 migration of the Gyamanhene across the frontier into British territory, along with his senior chiefs and nearly 1,000 of his people. …" @default.
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