Colonial troops or colonial army refers to various military units recruited from, or used as garrison troops in, colonial territories.
Call-up ad inviting citizens to enlist in French Colonial Forces, after colonies of North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia) had been reconquered by the Allies in World War II.
A Punjabi sepoy of the British Indian Army in 1910
Locally recruited riflemen of the French Colonial Army in Indochina, 1884
Force Publique soldiers in the Belgian Congo, late 1940s.
Auxiliaries are support personnel that assist the military or police but are organised differently from regular forces. Auxiliary may be military volunteers undertaking support functions or performing certain duties such as garrison troops, usually on a part-time basis. Unlike a military reserve force, an auxiliary force does not necessarily have the same degree of training or ranking structure as regular soldiers, and it may or may not be integrated into a fighting force. Some auxiliaries, however, are militias composed of former active duty military personnel and actually have better training and combat experience than their regular counterparts.
A military auxiliary radio system operator at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany in Albany, Georgia in 1983
A member of the Khyber Rifles c. 1948.
Two Ordnance Wrens in Liverpool reassemble a section of a pom-pom gun during World War II
Two local defence volunteers receiving instruction on either a Pattern 1914 or M1917 Enfield rifle
