Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines at Lungi International Airport, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2000
Courtesy: DCC (Army

We hope that you have found this exhibition both interesting and informative, and that it has enabled you to see how Britain’s ethnic minority population and their forebears have played, and continue to play, a vital role in our Armed Forces and civilian workforce. To some of you, the images and information at the exhibition may have come as a surprise, others might have known only part of the story, but whatever the case, we hope that you will have gained something from it.

Sir John Keegan, Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph and a noted military historian, perhaps best sums up this contribution when he wrote about the Commonwealth contribution to winning the Second World War:

‘Today, for all their regrets for lost comrades and often for having had to take human life, they are proud to have done their duty. Thank goodness they did. If they had not made our war their war also, victory might not have come in 1945’.

The Jubilee Appeal for Commonwealth Veterans will run throughout 2002 its purpose is to raise £5 million to help those from the Commonwealth who served the Crown and are now in need.