IT probably has come as no surprise to many people that Bermuda's War Veterans Association has found itself embroiled in controversy in recent days. The association was publicly accused of having misled donors and following a policy which saw it only giving aid to an exclusive group of war veterans, supposedly only those who served in overseas war zones during the two great conflicts of the 20th century.

This has long been a bone of contention among those Bermudians who served in the armed forces during World War II but remained based in Bermuda.

Since most of these troops were in fact black Bermudians, it has long been suspected that such a policy was race-based in its intent (although I must point out that many white Bermudians also served in what amounted to Bermuda's Home Guard during World War II and thus were also denied financial aid, what one would have thought would have been the main mission of a veterans association).

It has also been said that those soldiers who served in Bermuda's de facto Home Guard during World War 2 were even forbidden to march in Bermuda's annual November 11 Remembrance Day Parade. This claim, if true, would be the ultimate in insult and dishonour to those veterans who, while did not serve on the battlefield, nevertheless were protecting the home front here in Bermuda during the 1939-45 global conflict. And, don't forget, with Nazi submarine wolf packs operating just off our shores and some of the great German battleships prowling the Atlantic, the prospect that our troops might have been called on to fire shots in anger and to put their own lives at risk protecting their island home wasn't a remote or abstract possibility.

It is a great irony that these revelations have come to the public's attention just after the Progressive Labour Party Government has righted a longstanding wrong and has increased the pensions of such Bermuda-based military veterans; a move that has come too late for many who have long since passed away but nevertheless is welcomed and appreciated by those who are still alive.

There is another great irony, also, in that the Royal British Legion, a Commonwealth charity based in London which gives aid to war veterans and ex-servicemen and apparently has overall rights to the Poppy (the flower that is the symbol of the war dead of all conflicts and which had its beginning in the aftermath of World War I), would take up the cause of those veterans who they feel were denied their rightful access to charitable aid by the BWVA.

The irony lies in the fact that not too long ago in Britain one of its oldest military brigades had to take the British government to court over the issue of equal pension payments.

The military unit I am talking about is made up of the famed Gurkhas, the fierce Nepalese fighting men whose martial prowess is lenedary.

The Gurkhas first became a part of the British military in 1816 when the then British East Indian company, weary of trying to subdue these warlike tribesmen, offered to accept them in the British Army. Coming from a relatively small area of Nepal, at first the King of Nepal did not allow them to serve outside of the Far East. But in World War I and II the king granted a special dispensation which allowed them to serve away from Asia in both conflicts.

In World War II some 40 battalions fought in all theatres in that conflict and won ten Victoria Crosses. The Gurkhas have always been a highly-regarded component in the British military and were so valued for their combat skill and courage that when India gained its Independence, the British insisted that they maintain the right to continue to recruit them for their military. London entered into an agreement with newly Independent India that allowed them to keep three regiments out of the ten that were in existence at Independence.

To enter the British Army became something of a tradition among these Nepalese hillmen. Often a son would follow his father in service to the British Army and their pay was on par with the British servicemen, except in the area of military pensions ( the British authorities baulked at the idea of paying ex-Gurkha servicemen on the same level as a British serviceman; a great dishonour given the generations of service these famed soldiers had given the British). The Gurkhas have continued to make themselves a force to literally be reckoned with in conflicts that go right up to the Falklands War, when the British used the fearsome combat reputation of its Gurkha units to frighten the Argentineans occupying those disputed South Atlantic islands.

One can just imagine the thoughts of the Argentinean soldier sent to the Falklands (which they call the Malvinas) when they considered the prospect of having their heads separated from the rest of his body, the fate of many a Japanese soldier in World War II when they faced a Kukri-wielding Gurkha. The Kukri is the flat-bladed, distinctly curved knife these fighting men use to tremendous effect on the battlefield.

As I mentioned earlier, the Gurkha veterans recently had to take the British to court over the issue of equal pension rights. They were represented by international human rights lawyer Cherie Booth (pictured), the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and no stranger to Bermuda's shores. As a result of Ms Booth's work on their behalf, the British Ministry of Defence must now offer Gurkhas precisely the same conditions of service, including pay and pension rights, as all other British soldiers. At the outset of her legal battle of the Gurkhas' behalf in 2003, Ms Booth said: "This case concerns what we say is systematic and institutionalised less favourable treatment of Gurkha soldiers in comparison with other members of the British armed forces on the grounds of their race and nationality. "We say it is part of the culture of the British Army in which, on the one hand, Gurkhas are acknowledged to be brave fighters who have provided loyal service to the Crown for nearly 200 years ... and even today serve in Kuwait. But on the other hand, they are treated as different and inferior in relation to other parts of the British Army on terms and conditions of service."

Returning to Bermuda I have always held an ambivalent feeling over the World War I and II conflicts, not altogether accepting the notion that they were struggles for the freedom of non-white peoples. How could that have been when most of the non-white world, in Africa, Asia and in the Caribbean, were under the yoke of British and European colonialism? When most of us living within America, Bermuda and in other parts of the African Diaspora suffered under the yoke of racial segregation. As we went off to fight in the white man's wars weere told that we were fighting for freedom while at the same time we were denied the same in the lands we were born in.

Colonial India gave Britain a million men to fight in all services and on all the battlefields in which Britain was engaged throughout World War II. Yet the father of India's independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, remained under British detention for the duration of that war. In response for the demand for Indian independence in the aftermath of World War II, Sir Winston Churchill was reputed to have said, "I did not become Prime Minister to reside over the dissolution of the British Empire."

The Allies, the democratic countries who confronted Nazi and Japanese tyranny, in the aftermath of World War II sought to reimpose colonial rule in their former Asian colonies which, in many cases, they had been thrown out of by the Japanese. Little is said about the role of the British in post-war Vietnam when it was supposed to disarm the defeated Japanese. But instead they rearmed defeated the Japanese military units to use against their former Vietnamese allies to hold the line until the French arrived to regain control of their colony. When the colonial wars took place in the 1940s and '50s, the Dutch tried to regain their East Asia colonies such as Indonesia but suffered the same ultimate fate as the French in Indo-China: local nationalist forces fought for their sovereign Independence and freedom. The non-white people who fought in the white man's wars had seen that their colonial masters were not supermen on the battlefields of Europe and Asia and returned to their homelands to fight for their own national Independence. Both World War I and II were in some ways no different from the Napoleonic wars in the 19th century when the Great Powers of the day fought one another for geopolitical dominance. Such abstract notions as the freedom of mankind and democracy were decidely secondary considerations. These are the thoughts that go through my mind as Bermuda's veterans gain their long overdue compensation and the truth of past injustices reveals itself.