Dangerous Adventures: Using Oral History and Family Recollections to Reconstruct Male Kissi Soldiers’ Lived Experiences in the Second World War of the Burma Campaign of 1943-1945.

Abstract:

Background: Kissi soldiers from Sierra Leone served as part of the Allied Forces in the Burma Campaign of 1943–1945, yet their experiences remain marginal in mainstream military histories. Existing archival records provide limited insight into how these men interpreted danger, displacement, and survival in a foreign war. Methodology: This article uses an ethnographically informed historical reconstruction grounded in oral histories from the families of two deceased veterans and supported by archival records and secondary literature. Six narrative vignettes—fictionalized but historically grounded—are used to illuminate the cultural, sensory, and moral frameworks through which Kissi soldiers understood their wartime experiences. Findings: Analysis reveals that Kissi soldiers navigated the Burma Campaign through culturally grounded logics of ritual protection, ancestral presence, and ethical obligation. Their interpretations of danger, death, and environmental dislocation were shaped by cosmological frameworks carried from Upper Guinea. Racialised labour expectations placed disproportionate physical burdens on African troops, while personal objects and ritual practices served as emotional anchors. Post war reintegration was marked by silence, spiritual imbalance, and reliance on community based cleansing rites in the absence of institutional psychological support. Conclusion: By centring Kissi epistemologies, this article expands the cultural and comparative dimensions of Second World War history. It demonstrates that African soldiers were active interpreters of global conflict whose embodied, moral, and cosmological experiences deepen our understanding of trauma, resilience, and the long term implications of wartime service for men’s health in contemporary Sierra Leone.