Early Life

Arthur Roberts was born in Bristol in April 1897 to a West Indian father, David, and English mother, Laura. The family moved to Glasgow where he was brought up in the cramped tenements of the Anderston district just west of the city centre. We know little of his early life or family members. At night he slept in a hotel near to the family accommodation, returning home during the day for meals.

Arthur seems to have done well at school, staying on beyond the leaving age of 14. Certainly his war memoir conveys an intelligent, eloquent young man, well read and with broad interests, who was also a musician and artist.

On the Front Line

Five days later Arthur’s war changed. On the 14 June the German bombardment all but destroyed the trenches around him. Moving his way through the cratered lines he came across his first dead soldier, a sight, he later wrote –

that is practically photographed on my brain. At that sight, it was as if my ruminations had been cast from their exalted altitude of self-contentedness, to an abyss of nauseating realities…the poor corpse lay like a rag doll with all the stuffing knocked out of it, and just flung down as if in anger or haste.

Over the following four months Arthur was at the front line three more times, at Pilckem Ridge, Neuve-Église and finally Kemmel. His diary records the exhausting swings in emotion suffered by men in his situation. On 20 September he reports, ‘Business is slack around this quarter. It suits us fine’. The next day, after a harrowing night as a ration guide to forward positions, Arthur bluntly notes, ‘I nearly won a wooden cross on my back’.

On 1 November Arthur was granted a permanent role at base due to a prolonged injury to his foot.

Arthur’s Account

Arthur makes no reference to his colour in his writings of his wartime experience. He offers no sense of any mistreatment, any lack of respect, singling out or other prejudice on any level – whether as a matter of colour or other aspects of his character.

His account is not without its pointed comments, expressed in a wry humour about the officer class, injustice and the system. In one instance he comments on the hierarchy of rail transport:

There are two trains in, a coach train, and a truck train. Instinctively, Tommy gazes on the trucks […] the carriages are for his superiors. Perhaps the insinuation is rather marked, but if the rank and file received the cattle’s portion then the fact is obvious.

At the outset Roberts tells us that he intends to be frank and is writing a book of facts. But this is not a book about others. Throughout Arthur barely mentions anyone else by name, even members of his family. What others thought, how they acted and their impact on Arthur is missing from the diary and the longer narrative.

Though Arthur seems pleased to be one of the chaps, there is little sense of camaraderie or close friendships expressed in his writings. His leisure time, often at the cinema or a musical revue, seems to have been spent on his own. His concerns in his writing are around his own actions, emotions and personal journey. If Arthur did suffer prejudice it has been omitted from his account, but so too have many other aspects of his service that would also have affected him. We therefore cannot know the whole truth of his experience.