Lance Corporal Job Maseko died without a penny to his name.

He once was a gallant South African hero who braved the chaos of World War II even after he was caught and became a prisoner of war. Although he didn’t go unnoticed and was awarded the Military Medal, his family and supporters believe that he should have been given the highest military award of the British honors system, and that’s what they are pushing for. Moreover, they do not want his name and contributions to be lost in the many pages of history.

A Prisoner of War

Before serving in the war, Job Maseko was a miner working in Springs, South Africa. When the war broke out, he was among the roughly 80,000 black South Africans who underwent basic training before being sent to North Africa as part of the Native Military Corps (NMC.) The NMC was a non-combatant force attached to white South African units as laborers, the purpose of which was to maximize the white service members in combat instead of fulfilling non-combatant roles and duties. As for Job Maseko, he was tasked to be a stretcher-bearer in North Africa, whose task was to help transport wounded soldiers away from the battlefield with hails of bullets.

Job Maseko, painting by Alfred Neville Lewis (1895 – 1972)

Members of the NMC were not given firearms, but they were allowed to carry traditional weapons as guards or in a medical role. In June 1942, Maseko’s commander surrendered with his men to the Germans in Tobruk, where they became prisoners of war. The Germans segregated the white and black servicemen: the whites were sent to the European camps while the black servicemen were used as laborers. There, Maseko was assigned to work on the docks unloading and offloading his German cargo ships.