For obvious and depressing reasons, there has been a crop of books and films recently about African child soldiers. Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a boy soldier sucked into the Sierre Leone civil war in the 1990s. Uzodinma Iweala’s novel, Beasts of No Nation, depicts the brutalisation of a boy conscripted in an unnamed African country. The military corruption of a child also figures in the film Blood Diamond. What is unusual about Burma Boy is not that its protagonist is an African child soldier, but that he is fighting voluntarily in the second world war.

Recalling a largely unknown slice of history, the novel pays tribute to the experience of black African soldiers in Burma. Its memorable hero, Ali Banana (initially, as his name suggests, a clownish character), comes from a village in northern Nigeria. Apprenticed to a blacksmith, who horsewhips him, he hears that “King Joji, monarch of Ingila, is fighting a war in a land called Boma”. Following older friends, he impulsively enlists. Not yet 14, he falsifies his age, is trained in northeastern India and joins a special force, the Chindits, that operates in Burma, deep behind Japanese lines.

In the gripping narrative that follows – by turns pathetic, comic and exciting – Biyi Bandele (who was born in Nigeria, and whose father was a veteran of the Burma campaign) deftly mixes fact with fiction. The Chindits were organised by Orde Wingate, the maverick major general whose flair and courage are vividly captured, as is his self-righteous piety. The focus, though, is on the 3rd West African brigade, and particularly eight Nigerians. After a gruelling mountain march and a successful ambush of their Japanese pursuers, they hunker down in “White City”, a stronghold named after the London racetrack and for its canopy of discarded parachutes impaled on giant trees. Here they hold out for weeks against Mitsubishi bombers tanks, mortars and suicide squads.

The trajectory of Burma Boy is familiar from other war narratives. It is partly a coming-of-age story. Its hero moves from being naively talky through shocked bewilderment to emotional transcendence; unchangingly smooth-cheeked, he matures internally. Familiar, too, are the recruiting clerks who connive at underage enlistment, the sergeant who acts as a role model and the tensions and reconciliations of the soldiers sustaining themselves by superstition and joshing camaraderie. That the novel remains fresh is largely due to Bandele’s pungent prose, which intersperses explosive action with African anecdotes and idioms. Although racial tension is only lightly touched on, the author’s sharp awareness of ethnic identity is what makes the book original and moving. Highlighting the heroism and absurdity of war, it also illuminates a forgotten byway of African experience.

Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele
Cape £12.99 pp216

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