Reviewed by R. A. Callahan

University of Delaware

Britain went to war in 1939 supported by a vast colonial empire. The African colonies were to prove particularly important, not only for their raw materials, but also for their manpower. Studies of British Africa at war, however, are comparatively few; Lawler’s book is a significant addition. Lawler focuses on the Gold Coast (Ghana) and its rather eventful war from 1940 to 1942. The Gold Coast Regiment was expanded exponentially to meet imperial needs, and Takoradi became the base of the trans-African air reinforcement route crucial to the war against Rommel. The Gold Coast was also on the uneasy frontier with Vichy’s African empire, making it a natural site for a Special Operations Executive (SOE) mission and the setting for a bitter two-year turf war between SOE and the starchy British army commander in West Africa, General Sir George Giffard. Lawler’s humorous account of this illuminates the problems the SOE faced in waging “ungentlemanly war.” In the end, the war changed the Gold Coast radically and became a milestone on the road to independence-not quite what any of the actors expected at the time. General and academic collections, upper-division undergraduate and above.

R. A. Callahan, University of Delaware