Joshua Sur­tees

"Just cut it open and pour it in­to a glass!" my oth­er half says with­er­ing­ly, watch­ing me stand­ing with a car­ton of straw­ber­ry Ribena in my hand. She bought the Ribena car­ton in a hur­ry from a cor­ner shop and failed to no­tice at the point of pur­chase that the straw had be­come de­tached.

De­ject­ed, I stare down at the ves­tiges of melt­ed wax that once fas­tened the ab­sent straw and its plas­tic film sheath­ing to the card­board box.

"Pour­ing it out takes away the whole ro­mance of Ribena," I mum­ble. It's at times like this, straw-less, that my in­ner child comes out.

Al­so, I know that when I see the un­nat­ur­al colour of the "straw­ber­ry" flavoured drink it will alarm me. Ear­li­er in the week, eat­ing a take­away cur­ry (the An­glo-In­di­an kind, rather than the In­do-Tri­ni kind), she had re­marked up­on see­ing the yel­low-stained bas­mati rice cush­ion­ing the lamb chunks, pota­toes and veg­etable cur­ry sauce of our biryani, "Imag­ine what your in­sides look­ing like if the rice look­ing like that."

I snip the cor­ner of the car­ton and pour. I think about the his­to­ry of this seem­ing­ly mod­ern cor­dial juice drink. It was in fact first man­u­fac­tured dur­ing World War II and dis­trib­uted as a na­tion­al prod­uct by the British gov­ern­ment dur­ing ra­tioning.

The orig­i­nal flavour, black­cur­rant, was in­tend­ed as a vi­t­a­min C sup­ple­ment for fruit-de­prived chil­dren, af­ter or­anges be­came scarce as the Nazi U-boats skulked the depths of the At­lantic shoot­ing down Al­lied gun­ships and sub­marines and mak­ing it all but im­pos­si­ble for car­go ves­sels to safe­ly cross the ocean.

Blighty's mal­nour­ished chil­dren, at risk of scurvy, were saved when the food sci­en­tists at a hor­ti­cul­tur­al cen­tre in rur­al Som­er­set re­alised that black­cur­rants were one of the rich­est home-grown sources of vi­t­a­min C.

The berries were made in­to a thick con­cen­trat­ed syrup, then di­lut­ed and brand­ed Ribena af­ter Ribes ni­grum, the Latin botan­i­cal name for black­cur­rants.

Lat­er, bought for hun­dreds of mil­lions by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ant Glaxo-Smith Cline and now owned by a Japan­ese com­pa­ny that bought it for over a bil­lion pounds, Ribena's healthy cre­den­tials al­so be­came di­lut­ed, and then dis­proven en­tire­ly.

Far-fetched claims that it was kind to teeth and con­tained no sug­ar had to be re­moved from pack­ag­ing af­ter a rul­ing by the Ad­ver­tis­ing Stan­dards Agency.

As I sipped this un­healthy lega­cy of British wartime food sci­ence and thought about the oth­er mar­vels of ra­tioning–beef drip­ping on toast, SPAM in a tin, and the stodgy wartime Na­tion­al Loaf–I re­alised that with all the elec­tion mad­ness on this side of the pond at the be­gin­ning of this month, the 70th An­niver­sary of VE Day (Vic­to­ry in Eu­rope Day when the Nazis were de­feat­ed in 1945) had been al­most for­got­ten.

The news agen­da paid lit­tle at­ten­tion to the war vet­er­ans around the Ceno­taph on Lon­don's White­hall as David Cameron's shock­ing vic­to­ry dom­i­nat­ed the na­tion­al at­ten­tion on May 8.

Sev­er­al hun­dred an­gry young pro­test­ers ap­proached Down­ing Street to vent their frus­tra­tion at his re-elec­tion but were beat­en back by po­lice of­fi­cers. The fol­low­ing day the Dai­ly Mail car­ried pic­tures of the graf­fi­ti they had scrawled on the Women's War Memo­r­i­al which read: "F--- To­ry Scum."

For the Caribbean sol­diers who served and died for Britain in two world wars, it took a long time for their ser­vices to be of­fi­cial­ly memo­ri­alised.

In 2002, the Queen un­veiled the Com­mon­wealth Memo­r­i­al Gates on Con­sti­tu­tion Hill in Hyde Park–the moth­er­land's tardy trib­ute to the young men and women from the Caribbean, Africa and the In­di­an sub­con­ti­nent who gave their lives in World War Two.

As for the Caribbean and African (note: the two are al­ways grouped to­geth­er in Eng­land) ser­vice­men and women who fought in World War One, it took un­til last year, the 100th an­niver­sary of the Great War, for a memo­r­i­al to be erect­ed in Win­drush Square in Brix­ton.

The black British news­pa­per, The Voice, was the on­ly na­tion­al pa­per to re­port the event.

Last week, the BBC screened a won­der­ful doc­u­men­tary called Fight­ing For King and Em­pire: Britain's Caribbean He­roes fea­tur­ing touch­ing in­ter­views with vet­er­ans.

When war broke out, these young Caribbeans who had been raised in their schools as proud British sub­jects found that de­spite their ea­ger­ness to vol­un­teer there was a colour bar on them sign­ing up. Sol­diers had to be of "pure Eu­ro­pean stock."

Once the ban on "coloured" vol­un­teers was lift­ed, there were still ef­forts to seg­re­gate the troops and Caribbeans were at first de­nied over­seas du­ties.

Large­ly in­vis­i­ble, their sto­ries were an over­looked foot­note in his­to­ry for decades.

With one of the British Em­pire's largest oil re­finer­ies, Trinidad fu­elled the naval re­sis­tance to Hitler's U-boats when the Caribbean Sea be­came a war zone.

In 1941, the Mighty De­stroy­er record­ed a ca­lyp­so called Adolf Hitler, which made him Ca­lyp­so King. He died in 1944 with­out see­ing Hitler's down­fall.

To­day, the British Army still has Trinida­di­ans and some with ca­lyp­so cre­den­tials. Shel­don Skeete, the reign­ing UK Ca­lyp­so Monarch, is in the RAF, fix­ing fight­er planes at the base in Brize Nor­ton, Ox­ford­shire.

His win­ning en­try in 2013, Send Them Afghanistan, was a tongue-in-cheek sug­ges­tion for thieves and mur­der­ers and crooked politi­cians.

In 2007, Mau­ril­lia Simp­son from San Fer­nan­do was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured when the British Army base in Bas­ra was shelled.

Like many Caribbean fight­ers, she is still await­ing ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion for her sac­ri­fices.