The first shot of the Great War by a British serviceman on the Western Front was reportedly fired by Corporal Edward Thomas, a bandsman of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, in an engagement with German cavalrymen outside Mons, Belgium, at 7 am on 22 August 1914. There was, however, another contender many miles away on the African continent. When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, the British Gold Coast Authorities sent African troops into the small German colony of Togoland. Advancing on the Togoland capital, Lomé, from the British Gold Coast, a patrol of the Gold Coast Regiment encountered the German-led police force, a quasi-military unit, on 7 August 1914. When the Germans opened fire on the British patrol near a factory in Nuatja, the Gold Coast trooper Alhaji Grunshi returned fire, technically earning himself the distinction of being the first soldier in British service to fire a shot in the war.

Although this almost forgotten incident might seem a minor item of historical military trivia, it serves as a reminder that the Western Front was not the only theatre in a conflict that would encompass the planet and embrace most races. The First World War involved all the world's great powers, divided into two opposing alliances: the Allies (the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Italy) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire from October 1914). Of the 70 million military personnel mobilised by the end of the war, some 9 million combatants would lose their lives. As well as including the initially neutral United States of America, this global conflict would also draw in all the colonial possessions of those powers, involving most races on the planet, some against neighbours of the same ethnic and cultural group whose divided countries happened to be under the jurisdiction of their colonial masters’ enemy.

Before embarking upon any scrutiny of the role and experiences of British-born and domiciled black soldiers in the regular army, it is helpful to have an overview of the general background of the scale of the global conflict and of the part played by troops of the wider Black British Diaspora. It is perhaps appropriate that the mother continent of all black soldiers should be the place where the opening shot of the First World War was fired, by a black serviceman.