A long line of men in fatigues waits to board the Vera Cruz. On the bridge overlooking the scene, mothers, wives, fathers and brothers bid farewell to the young conscripts leaving for Angola or Guinea-Bissau. Thousands of Portuguese families have immortalized this scene in black and white in their photo albums. In total, around 800,000 Portuguese were sent from 1961 to 1974 to fight guerrillas in Portugal's African colonies.
A colossal figure when we know that the country only had 8.6 million inhabitants. Nearly one in ten Portuguese was thus forced to participate in these costly wars which gradually became unpopular. This mobilization, equivalent in proportion to that of the Americans for the war in Vietnam, caused more than 10,000 victims.
