8 myths of Black service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force—and the actual realities they faced  In the fall of 1915, Lieutenant-Colonel Walter H. Allen, the white commander of the 106th Overseas Battalion (Nova Scotia Rifles), met with a Black Baptist minister, Reverend William White, and made a promise he couldn’t keep. “I told him if he would get in touch with the coloured men throughout Nova Scotia, and raise enough for a platoon, I would take this platoon into my Regiment,” Allen wrote to military authorities in Halifax. White said he’d get busy, but by the time Allen followed up on Dec. 14, 1915, the commander had received only a half-dozen or so names. Meanwhile, word had come down from Ottawa that there were to be no racial distinctions on enlistments. “As soon as this becam...