Though largely forgotten, soldiers of African descent have served in the British Army for centuries. It has been shown that there is even evidence that black soldiers had a role in recruiting others of their race into the armed forces during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The fact that their story has all but disappeared from the public consciousness would seem to have had other additional causes than prejudice, such as the way they are recorded, each playing a part in their role being quietly forgotten. Countries such as the United States have long shown a heightened awareness of race in their census and other areas of public administration, which has prevented black servicemen becoming ‘lost in the paperwork’ over the course of their history to the same extent as British servicemen, although many African American historians would agree that prevalent racism has certainly kept the role of black US soldiers out of the spotlight. The history of slavery had shaped the treatment of America's black population and the documentation of a person's race or colour was still an issue at the time of the Passing Laws after the First World War. This heightened awareness of race meant that black soldiers were at least officially recorded in the United States, their names remaining visible in documents to be rediscovered by historians.

The racial prejudice shown towards black servicemen in the United Kingdom of the early twentieth century was shaped by different circumstances, in spite of Britain's earlier role in the slave trade. The black population was proportionally much smaller and official documents in Britain were not adapted to record ethnicity, despite the British Empire having a huge black population in Africa and the Caribbean. Native Britons were assumed to be white, whilst black people were often assumed to be from the far-flung colonies of the Empire, resulting in Black British servicemen assuming an archival invisibility and confusion with soldiers from Africa and the Caribbean.