A French memorial to 3,000 Canadian forestry engineers from the First World War will help preserve the memory of members of the first and only black battalion in Canada’s history.
In September, the tiny town of Supt in eastern France near the Swiss border, will unveil a memorial in its cemetery that will bear the names of the 29 forestry engineers who were buried in that town and other nearby towns. Of the 29, 10 were black men who were part of the Canadian unit known as the 600-member No. 2 Construction Battalion, stationed near Supt.
The No. 2 Construction Battalion, raised in Nova Scotia, was a segregated non-combatant unit and the first and only all-black battalion in Canadian military history.
According to the CBC report, How a tiny French town is commemorating Canadian black battalion soldiers, “Many of the men who will be memorialized in Supt died of diseases or construction accidents, aggravated by lack of medical care. Access to the hospital and medicines was not given equally to black soldiers as it was to white soldiers.”
