How the Chinese Labour Corps was painted out of World War I – their sacrifice and ill-treatment recalled in new book The Forgotten
- Bilingual book traces the history of the Chinese Labour Corps, 140,000 men who toiled on the Western front in France during the Great War
- They were the last to leave after the war ended, and their contribution to the war effort was largely concealed by the Allies
Allied forces tried hard to conceal the help provided by more than 140,000 men whose efforts helped defeat the enemy during World War I.
Painted out of the picture, the men of the Chinese Labour Corps are a largely forgotten army whose vital role is the focus of a new book by Australian historian and documentary producer Will Davies.
“I spent a bit of a time wandering the Western Front and I used to see these graves, often in the corner – on the edge along the wall, away from the Allied graves,” says Davies, author of The Forgotten, which was released last month by Wilkinson Publishing.
These men worked until 1920 in the British areas and until 1922 in French areas, and the CLC men were the very last British forces to leave France
Davies’ first sighting of the Chinese graves was in Noyelles-sur-Mer in France in 2012. “These Chinese graves were the same size, the same shape. I’d always wondered who these guys were,” he says.
Targeted at students and new Chinese migrants to Australia, The Forgotten is a bilingual account in English and Chinese.
