 Gambian soldiers fought in World War I, and in the 1920s Edward Francis Small led the push for emancipation, founding the Bathurst Trade Union and the Rate Payers' Association.During World War II, the Gambia Company was raised to a regiment, and notably fought in the Burma Campaign in the latter years of the war.Franklin D. Roosevelt's visit to the Gambia in 1943 was the first visit by a sitting US President to the African continent.