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At 5 a.m. on the 21st of Feb 1917 the liner SS Mendi carrying hundreds of South African black troops (whom the majority were of the Pondo tribe from the Eastern Cape of South Africa) was slipping across the English Channel ,bound for Le Havre ,and carrying no lights. Another darkened vessel a British Liner SS Darro crashed into her and the Mendi began to sink rapidly.(The SS Darro did not stop to render assistance.) Every man as he came up from below went straight to his appointed place and then stood quietly awaiting orders. The scene that followed was one of the most extraordinary and heroic of that most terrible of wars.
A Clergyman addressed the men:'Be quiet and calm, my countrymen, for what is taking place is exactly what you came to do -you are going to die...Brothers, we will drill the death drill. I, say that you are my brothers. Pondo, Zulu,Swazi,Basuto.We die like brothers. Let me hear your war cries...'
On the tilting, darkened and freezing decks, the black soldiers stripped and naked, against the noise of the wind, crashing seas and cracking plates of the doomed ship, began stamping with their bare feet the death drill, celebrating their onrushing death with their war songs. It was a scene that white survivors never forgot. The ship sank in twenty minutes. These brave men sacrificed their lives for the British War Effort and deserve to be remembered and their families compensated by the British Government. In South Africa , the Prime Minister, a Boer war general, Louis Botha , moved a motion of sympathy for the bereaved and spontaneously, the entire white Parliament rose to its feet in respect for the drowned warriors; the only occasion which such a tribute to black example ever was paid there.
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MENDI
Royal mail Steamer
Position: latitude:50 27' 28"N longitude:01 19' 54"W, Depth 40m, Isle of Wight.
Sunk: Hit by Steamer Darro
Diving: Large boilers visible and ammunitions.
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