interviewed by Dr Peter Boyden BA PhD, FSA, 10 March 1993

 play audio file

I know that you come from what one could describe as an Indian family and that you had a grandfather and a great-uncle and the father who served in India, but that was not necessarily on the military side.

None of them on the military side. I had a great-uncle who was a soldier in India, but my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father were not soldiers, except my father served during the Great War, the First War.

You were born in 1917 in Scotland, and was your father still in India at that point?

No, my father was then, in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, in France.

Yeah. So you lived your early life in Scotland, did you?

Yes, I lived my early life in Scotland, went to school in Scotland after that in England and then went to Sandhurst in 1936.

How was it that you came to settle upon a military career?

I think I was a bit of a dullard at school. Possibly people thought that the army was the safest thing. My father, I think, really wanted me to be a soldier. And wanted me to go into the Indian Army.

So you couldn't think of any better alternative?

That's right. An easy way out.

You went to Sandhurst. Do you have any recollections of your time at Sandhurst?

I enjoyed it. I don't remember anything very exciting happening, but I enjoyed Sandhurst.

I mean, any sort of sporting achievements?

No, I got a half-blue at rugger, but that was all.

And you put it... Because we had to pass out at a certain standard, didn't you, in order to be...

That poor fellow who failed to pass out at... Some did, some were rejected. But I don't remember anybody who actually failed to get commissioned once they'd been selected.

Right. So you went from Sandhurst to...  in India, and looking at this piece of paper, you actually went out by air, didn't you?

I went out by air, yes.

Now that must have been fairly unusual, I just thought.

Well, that was due to a hiccup I had. I got a little involved with a girl, and I wanted to marry her, and my father was against it, and my father flew home, grabbed me by my left ear, and said, we're going to India tomorrow, and if you still want to marry this girl in three or four months, okay, but... come on out to India now, get on with being a soldier. So that's why I flew out. And that was a great trip, actually, because we flew, it was all done in hops, and it was done in, what was the aircraft? I can't remember what the aircraft were. Dakotas, I think. It can't have been Dakotas. But we flew from London to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Marseille. You did it in hops and had lunch on the ground, slept on the ground, I think four nights. It was a great trip.

So then you, having arrived in India, you were posted to the 1st Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment.

That's right, 62nd foot, yeah.

Now, where were they based?

Bangalore. 

So they were both doing sort of garrison duty.

They were doing garrison duty, that's right. I don't remember them doing anything other than conventional infantry training.

They made you welcome?

Yes, I enjoyed it. I thought of transferring to them, actually. But decided against it. They were a good battalion. I enjoyed that, yeah.

And you had some... Now, you had language training, didn't you?

That was one of the reasons for being... That was why I went there. I had a Munshi who came in and tried to teach you the language. I wasn't very good at it, I must tell you. I didn't pass my... I think the colloquial Urdu was what we had to pass. I never took the exam. Never. Ever.

Interesting, because in theory you were supposed to pass...

Oh, in theory. That's right. But luckily, the war came, you see. You were given, I think, two to three years to pass the exam. And the war came, so I'd never bother with the exam. In fact, there was one chap in my battalion when I eventually joined my Indian battalion called Visheshar Nauth Singh, who was an Indian. And he was a Sandhurst-commissioned Indian officer. He was second in command of the battalion when I joined. And he, although Indian, had been educated in England. And near they failed his Indian Urdu exam. I think it took him three years to pass.

Gosh. But that, I mean, your linguistic limitations didn't really have any adverse effects.

No, because once one got to the battalion, there were so few British officers there. You had to learn the language. You had to, because everybody else spoke it. All your soldiers spoke it.  And as I got into the war and was detached with my company from my battalion, I was there on my pale face. I was there on my British officer. So I spoke Urdu all the time.

Right. Now, while you, during the course of your time with the Wiltshire Regiment, you had to sort of start thinking about an Indian regiment to join, didn't you?

Because so says go here. My father wanted me to go to cavalry. The PAVO cavalry. I wasn't enamoured of cavalry. I had hardly ridden a horse. How I got to the Bombay Grenadiers, I don't really remember. I think I was just, because I hadn't selected anything, they just posted me.

Oh, I see. Right.

That battalion needed a subaltern officer, and I got it.

It almost happened by default.

That's right. I think so. 

So you joined the Grenadiers in April 39.

That's right, that's right. They were at Midnapore. Midnapore in Bengal.

And the battalion was commanded by Colonel Gracie, is it?

That's right. Malcolm Gracie. 

So, yeah, I mean, they sort of welcomed you, as it were.

Oh, yes, no problems, no. A happy lot.

So what, I mean, what was the Indian Battalion's attitude to a sort of newly joined subaltern?

Oh, they were very welcoming. There were a fewer of them, few British officers, and there were, I think, five of us, five or six of us. So you had to get on.  I got on perfectly well, although we'd be talking about Patrick Emerson. I think he was a bit unhappy for some reason. Should I have said that?

No, I'll grill Patrick. I mean, how did they sort of integrate you into the operation of the Battalion?  Was there a sort of senior and commissioned officer who sort of took charge of you?

No, because immediately I went there. I was given a company. As my recollection was, I became a company commander immediately. We had a Subedar, a senior Subedar in the company, who'd been in the army for 20-something years. It's rather like a senior wanted officer in the British army. And he looked after me.  But he looked after me in Urdu. I had to speak. The only people who might have spoken any English in the company were one or two of the company clerks, might speak a bit of English.

So you carried on with language training of some sort. Did you still have a munshi?

I suppose so. I'm sure they made me continue with language training,  until the war came along.

Yeah. So the regiment remained at Bangalore until...

No, the regiment was at Midnapore, until the outbreak of war. Until after the outbreak of war. The outbreak of war I remember well because in the adjutant's safe there was an envelope due to be opened in the event of the outbreak of war. And we all, five or six of us, went to the adjutant's office to open this envelope.  And it said, you remain in your present location until further the orders.

I like it. I like it. So, yeah, I mean, in those early months, the battalion went about a sort of ordinary...

We were there because that part of Bengal was meant to be dangerous in the point of view of terrorism.  That's what we were there for, anti-terrorist. No, but you never went out. We were always meant to go out in pairs, as officer to the near...  town, which is, I can't remember, 10 or 12 miles away. And we always carried 32 pistols in shoulder holsters, even in Mufti. Potentially unsettled. They'd murdered the district commissioner, I think, a year or so before we got there.

Now, in January 1940, you transferred to the third... 

Well, the 1st Battalion had moved to Madras in the early part of the war. And then they re-raised the 3rd Battalion, and that's when I transferred. January 4th.

So you got to Madras. Was that part of the sort of, what do you say, coast defence operations?

No, we were sent to Madras, and there...  We were motorized. We received vehicles in Madras, and that's when driver training started for that battalion. So I think we went down there for that. I suppose we were also part of coast defence. I don't remember any deployments, any training to that effect, though.

Anyway, so the...  The Indian soldiers took to the business of learning to drive.

They did, and they were remarkably good, because you must remember that some of them rode bicycles, most of them rode bullock carts. And they had to learn to drive, they had to learn to map read, of course they only got wireless sets, they had to learn to operate. And they did very, very well indeed. 

Now, Patrick got an anecdote about you and he on the chassis of a Ford truck or something, with you driving it and him sitting on the back holding it.

Well, the trucks we were issued with were 1919 Albions. They had acetylene headlamps, they had gravity-feed petrol tanks, magneto-ignition, and a bulb horn. And that's what we trained our drivers on.  So they were, although they were only 20 years old, I think we think of 1919 now as 100 years ago. And they were built so strongly that they'd last for another 20 years,

I'm sure. So then you transferred to the re-raised 3rd Battalion. I mean, did you volunteer for that, or were you volunteered?

I think I was probably volunteered. I don't remember. 

Now, you said you didn't actually go to Burma until September 43. Presumably there was quite a lot of training to do. I mean, were the officers presumably mostly being transferred from other units? But the men were raised from scratch from the villages, were they?

Well, no, each battalion, both battalions, the 1st and 2nd Battalion of the Grenadiers, had to send parties of men to help in the re-raising of the 3rd Battalion. And then we got drafts from the training centre at the Nasirabad. It all seemed to go very well. I don't remember any hiccups, really. And, of course, we were busy. We were driver training there as well because it, too, became a motor battalion.

Right. So you were basically, for those, what, best part of three years, were involved in... 

Just basic battalion training, driver training and infantry training.

Was there much opportunity for sporting activities?

No, I was never, we played hockey, shot. Having gone to a school where we ran a lot, I used to run, which was thought to be strange in that country.  But I used to like running. And I did that for a year or two, but not too long.

So where were some of the places that you were stationed? Or did you move around a lot? I suppose you did, actually.

Let me think where we went. We went everywhere. I know that talking with my father, who'd been in India since 1921 or something, and I went out there in 1938.  I saw much more of India in my 10 years than he did in almost a lifetime. I saw from Madras to the frontier to Bengal, a lot of places.

You sailed from Calcutta to Chittagong. Do you have any recollections of the sort of lead-up to that transfer? 

Well, I remember the general training we did at, I think it was Dhond, near Dhond. The thing I found exciting was that I went as a company isolated from my battalion. It was only my company that went. And that was exciting. It was a strong company. We were an enhanced company, about 250 men. A little...  workshops, anti-tank guns, Vickers guns, mortars. It was a good little command. We drove to Calcutta; we put the vehicles on this ship. That was a holiday in itself, I remember breakfast there was a five or six course breakfast on board this thing. And then to Chittagong.

You took all your equipment with you, so they were...

They were completely independent little command.

What was your specific role, then?

The regiment I was to support was the 25th Dragoons, which was a... It was a war-time-raised regiment, basically from the 3rd Carabiniers. And our task was... Our task was tank protection. 

From Chittagong to the Naf Peninsula, and we went into a hide there and waited for the armour. We went ahead of the armour. And the armour was brought by sea and actually landed on the beach at the Naf Peninsula.  At night, it was meant to be kept secret from the Japanese. And then we had prepared tank hard standings in the jungle, and they drove in and hid. And they hid there for, I suppose, a month or more. Until the first use, I think, was in January 1944.. 

Right, so you were sort of in a sense sitting there waiting for the...

We were sitting there waiting until they decided on how they were going to use armour. Because armour had failed until then. The use of armour had been a failure in Burma and in Malaya. So I think they were a bit canny about how they were going to use it. 

Yes, I've forgotten actually what they eventually decided to do, but they did ultimately prove to be very successful.

Well, the first thing they did was, I can't remember the battalions, but there was a Japanese defences north of Maungdaw in Burma, naturally on hills because everything was very hilly there. And armour was sent in to support infantry in the attack. And they stood off  500 yards from the Japanese positions in the low ground and hammered the Jap positions on the hills in support of infantry. And this was successful. And as they got more accustomed to it, they were able actually to support the infantry probably to within 10 yards from the Japanese position. It's wonderful, actually.

Now, you were engaged at the Admin Box, weren't you?

Yes.

Could you say a little bit about that?

Well, after that attack, the first attack when they used armour was on a hill called TORTOISE. And that was on the Maungdaw, the coast side of the Mayu Range, which was the mountain range down that part of Burma.  We were moved over the hill of the 25th Dragoons and myself to support 7th Infantry Division, which was on the other side of the Mayu Range. And we hadn't been there very long when reports came that the Japanese were moving around the flanks of 7th Infantry Division. And then I remember the morning of one day, I don't remember what day, we heard that 7th Infantry Div headquarters had been attacked and had vanished. And not long after that, Frank Messervy, who was the commander of 7th Infantry, walked in with some of his people to 25th Dragoons headquarters and said, please help me, I have lost my headquarters? And of course they could help him because they had lots of wireless, lots of radio.  We moved back into the Adam Box position. I lost a carrier. My carrier I lost, and I was a bit upset about that because it had about 10 demijohns of rum on board. And we formed the box then. Command and control was exercised through 25th Dragoons. With Frank Messervy, of course. 

So did you actually witness any sort of direct Japanese attack then?

Oh, yes, in the box, yes. We were well able to defend ourselves because I had, I can't remember, 24, I should think, brens in my company, four Vickers guns. Then we dismounted Brownings from the tanks and put them in a ground role.  So the machine gun support that we had was something tremendous. They attacked us twice, I think, at night, both times at night. And they never got within 50 yards of us. We killed many of them. The ground was open. I put standing patrols out in front so that at night we knew if they were coming.  And they never stood a chance against all this firepower that we had.

Were you re-supplied us all while you were in?

Yes, we were re-supplied by air. That was great. The excitement was tremendous when these Dakotas went over. And they dropped some by parachute. Some of them went adrift. We couldn't get them. Lots fell within the Admin Box area. And some were free dropped.  And I had a man burnt because I think it was aviation spirit for the tanks. The sun fell on a cookhouse fire, and this blew up, and one of my men were burnt. But it was wonderful to have these chaps fly over and supply us. I can't remember. I think we were three weeks in the box. And that was the only supply we had. 

Yes, because the Japanese had actually not got that much in the way of suppliers, had they?

I think they'd intended to live off the country and live off us. And they failed because we didn't pack in as had been the case before. People say that Kohima was the turning point of the Burmese campaign. I actually think Adam Box was the turning point. It was the first time that we'd stopped, stood. 

Yes, that would point me to be, by someone I interviewed the other day, in fact. That's right, yes. They thought, I think, three days' worth of food, hadn't they?

They're jolly little. I know that they were one or two... We never got a prisoner there, but the bodies were emaciated. That's right.

So after the Japanese fell back, which was basically...

That's right. They went away, yeah.

You, in a sense, sort of came out and... 

He went after them and went down. We took Buthidaung, which was a small town. Then it seemed to stop there, and we were relieved. One squadron of 25th Dragoons had stayed on the other side of the hills. They came up through the Mayu Range and joined us.  Was it 17th Division? I can't remember. The Division came down and relieved us. And then the armour were taken out. I think the thing bogged down a bit, and the armour was taken out, and I was sent back to India with my company.

Right, that was July 1944.  You went out by road.

I don't remember how we came out, but I'd look in this book at might tell me.

But then he went back again in October 44.

Yes. I went back and joined the battalion, because I'd been separated from my battalion.

But you went to a battalion in India, did you?

Let me think.  I don't remember where … in Burma. Because they were already there.

Yeah, but later on in 44, this was when you presumably involved in the capture of Mandalay, was it?

Well, we moved down through the Kabaw Valley. There was very little fighting. Then across to the Singu Bridgehead with 19 Indian Division, I was with then. We crossed the Irrawaddy at Singu with 19 Indian Division, formed a bridgehead there. That was a bit unpleasant because there was a lot of shelling. And we hadn't really suffered much shelling in my previous experience, but there was quite a lot of shelling at Singu.  Then we broke out of that bridgehead with 19th Indian Division. At that time, the regiment was 150 RAC, the York and Lancaster Regiment. And then down the left bank, the east bank of Irrawaddy to Mandalay. And there were sort of snippets of fighting all the way down.  And then at Mandalay, there was a bit of a pause because it was difficult to get over the wall. Mandalay had a huge wall all around it. And I remember lying outside one of the entrances to Mandalay and Pete Rees, who commanded 19th Indian Division, coming up and asking me,  how do you think we can get into this place? And I thought the only way would be scaling ladders. But in fact, the Japanese evacuated it. They went. So nobody had to, they tried to assault it, but the Japs let us in, actually.

They continued their withdrawal with you, in a sense, in pursuit, I suppose. 

Well, that's right. We spent a bit of time in Mandalay, a bit of a ceremony in Mandalay, a flag-raising ceremony. Pete Rees, the commander of 19th Indian Division, who took Mandalay, effectively, he was happy to go there and take it because he'd met his wife and married his wife in Mandalay however many years before, Rosalie Rees. I suppose probably 20 years before.  I think he was ADC to whoever looked after Mandalay, and he married that person's daughter. After Mandalay, I left 19th Indian Division and went with 20th Indian, still with the same armoured regiment, 150. And we continued on down through the oil fields, down the east bank of the Irrawaddy.  Occasionally killing a few Japs. We took, I think the largest bag of prisoners we got were INA prisoners, India National Army prisoners. And we took one day in a village, 700 and something of them, complete battalion. In the night before they surrendered, they'd started shouting, are you British or are you Indian? This was when we were...  harboured up. Are you British or Indian soldiers? And when we made clear we were Indian Army, they said we'd like to surrender. And I deployed Bren guns to cover a certain flat area and said, right, you'll parade on this area tomorrow morning at dawn. Stack your weapons and then you can come over.  And that's what they did. There were 700 and something of them. They'd field guns, they had machine guns, they had everything. It was a good surrender. We had the officers to breakfast. I don't know what happened to them after they were sent back. Some of them must have been tried, I suppose, in India later.

Yes, they were the officers, I mean, were they?

Well, the officers were Indian, and they wore rank badges just like we did.  But I suspect they were probably Havildars or...  viceroy commissioned officers who were given commissions by the Japanese.

Had they, in a sense, been sort of abandoned, if you like, by the Japanese?

I think once they realised the Japanese were retreating, the Japanese, they weren't, they weren't, they didn't want to fight. I'm convinced they didn't want to fight. It was an easy way out for them.  And I think we bumped about 20 Japs there and 700 and odd INA. So the Japanese couldn't make them fight.

No, no. That's interesting.

Oh, then we went on down the river, down the main road to Rangoon.  That was the end, really, of that.

So Rangoon had already fallen by the same year.

By the time we got there, Rangoon had gone, yes. Yes. The latter part, the latter sort of, I suppose, hundred miles of road, there was very little happened.

Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Now, I think at some point in all this, you won a Military Cross. 

I got two Military Crosses, but I don't know why. I got two Military Crosses and a Mention, but I think I got them because I had a good company. And they worked well for me. I didn't get Mention or Military Crosses because I did something extremely brave. I got them because we were efficient.  I think that's what it was.

Was the company in a sense, sort of hand-picked?

No, my company was the chaps I'd had from the time I went to the 3rd Battalion. I'd known them for years, three years, I suppose. And they knew me. We were, from 250, so we went down, I was down to about 26 men at one stage.  a number wrong from sickness. But I remember going to see Pete Rees and saying, I must have more men, I must be reinforced, because I was really about to platoon strong. No, they were just... We had good comradeship and discipline was friendly.  And it worked well.

So from Rangoon you went back to Madras in August 1945, then you were posted to the Grenadiers Training Centre. There was a bit of leave between…

I probably had, one who kept getting leave, but leave in India. I would go to my parents if I took me down in South India, because they were Secunderabad. So I would go there.

Yeah, so there's the fact that you hadn't had any home leave. It didn't really matter, did it?

No, I didn't get home leave until the war was over.

Right, so you were at the training...  The training battalion commander for about a year.

Was it as long as that?

November 45 to October 46.

Okay. That's probably right, yeah. The thing of interest that happened there, I think, was that at the end of the war, the war was officially over. The emperor had said, we're going to stop fighting, the Japanese emperor. And they were at a place called Deoli.  In the Rajputana Desert, there was a prisoner of war camp. That contained confirmed escapers, difficult prisoners from the German army, from the Italians, and a number of Japs. And I think most of the Japs actually were civilian internees. And there were, I think, something in the region of 1,500 of them, probably. They mutinied at this camp. They refused to allow the prison staff into the cages where they were confined. There were two specific cages for Japanese, with I suppose 700 or 800 in each. They'd tried to go in, and the camp staff had tried to go in and remove ringleaders, and the camp commandant had been hit on the head. Remember, this was stuck in my mind for a long time. It was struck on the head with a pound of butter which was in a tin in a sock. He asked for help, and I was sent with, I suppose, roughly two platoons of people down to sort this out. I took a Japanese interpreter and a magistrate, and I went down, and we tried to tell these Japanese that we wanted certain men, about eight or ten ring leaders we wanted out of this cage, and that they should surrender them. They didn't do this. So we sent police in, first of all, we had civil police, to try and arrest these men, and they were driven out. So I went in then with, I don't know, 20 or 30 men, having first of all had the magistrate read out the riot act and translated it into Japanese, a line of police in front of my 20 or 30 men and then ourselves. The police suddenly vanished as these Japanese erupted from huts, armed with sharpened mosquito, steel mosquito net poles, sharpened axes, knives, any weapons they could manufacture. And they came for us. And my soldiers were,  you must remember were half trained because they'd come from the training battalion and I regret to say they opened fire without orders. We fired about eight or ten rounds uh one of them one of the men who fired was my orderly he shot a woman who was I suppose three or four yards from me and she had come approached me ripping her dress down. Opening her dress all the way down the front, showing herself there and shouting at me, kill me, kill me. And down her right wrist, concealed by her dress, was a butcher's knife. So she was clever. She tried to get near enough to have a go at me. My orderly shot in the shoulder. Once the firing started and stopped, because it stopped within seconds, they gave in. We got the men.  That was followed by an investigation by the, I don't know what they call the supervising power, I suppose, which was Switzerland. And the suggestion was made by the Japanese that we use dum-dum bullets. But this was wrong. The wounds were big because the exit wounds were big because the range was literally yards, very, very short range. I don't remember, we killed three or four or five, and wounded, I suppose, another three or four or five. But it stopped the riot, it stopped the disobedience. That was Deoli.

Now, I was talking about sort of 45, 46. Well, there must have been some sort of...  perception of sort of impending change in the government of India. I mean, were men still being recruited and trained?

Oh, yes. Yes. And there seemed to be no change at all. There are no difficulty recruiting people.

Did you actually go on any recruiting?

No, I never went, no. But there'd been trouble in India.  Almost throughout the war, you know. Yes. I remember going out in Ahmednagar, where we were flag marching. This was probably in 1942. Flag marching was, there was the threat of trouble in the town. And so you marched through the town maybe with bayonets fixed and a band playing to encourage them not to riot. And I remember dressing up with a dhoti with my shirt outside my trousers and a Gandhi cap on and going with one of my soldiers to see what the feeling was in the bazaar. And I thought, well, we'll go to the local cinema. And we went to the local cinema and asked for two tickets. And when we got inside the cinema...  a man came up and said, it's all right, Sahib, we've got you two special chairs. I thought I was in disguise. So they've got two chairs, one for me and one for my soldier. So I wasn't so clever.

But the flag marching had some effect on that occasion?

I think, yes, it has effect. They're still doing it. They're still doing it. I know they're still doing it in India. 

Right. From the training battalion, you were attached to Secunderabad sub-area headquarters for three star.

Oh, that's right. That was really a fiddle to give me some time with my family and have parents, I think. That was really a holiday.

So you basically lived a time with them?

Yeah, actually.

And from then, you posted a second battalion with the first grenadiers?

No, a first battalion.

I beg your pardon.

Yeah, second in command, first battalion. 

January 47, which was the position you held until February 48.

That was just before partition, of course.

When you got back to the 1st Battalion, it was presumably carried quite a lot in the intervening, what, seven years since you left?

Well, they'd had a... I was really sad about the 1st Battalion. The 1st Battalion, which was the senior regular battalion, because the Grenadiers grew into, I don't remember, maybe 10 battalions or more.  And the 1st Battalion was the most senior, and yet it had seen no fighting throughout the war. It had gone to the Middle East. And they did very little. And I think they felt badly about it because the battalions had been raised during the war and had gone to Burma, about four of them had gone to Burma, had all the medals. They were all clinked when they marched, you see.  The first battalion didn't. I think they felt badly about this. Anyway, we went to then.

And where were they stationed?

Well, I think they were... I'm not sure. Were they at Modan then? I don't remember where they were. But when prior, just prior, oh, they were at Poona. At Poona.  And then just prior to partition itself, we were sent to the Punjab Boundary Force, which was again, what was that? That was 4th Indian Division. Still commanded, again commanded by Pete Rees. And that's right. And we were sent to Amritsar then.  As part of the Punjab Boundary Force, which was meant to keep the lid on trouble on either side of the border when partition happened. And we were deployed there before August the 15th. I was given the Gurdaspur district with, I suppose, something over a company of men. The Gurdaspur district was one which should actually have gone to Pakistan because the separation was meant to have been done on a percentage basis. Gurdaspur had 51% Muslim and 49% Hindu, and should therefore have gone to Pakistan, but it didn't. And there was a lot of trouble. Patiala State forces had all been given leave, I suspect, and they were...  cutting up Sikhs with their weapons. We had many murders. This is after partition. Every day there were bodies. And we were collecting refugees and putting them in camps, trying to prevent the killing. It was a very bad time. And we were then escorting refugees across the border into Pakistan. And any baddies we got, we would also escort them, or any Sikhs or Hindus that we thought had misbehaved, would take them across the border as well and then say walk back if you can.

So how did the soldiers in the battalion react?

Well, they were jolly good because they were all, in my company, my people, were all Hindu.  All of them, without exception. And they still did what they were told. If I told them to shoot at a Hindu crowd, they would do it. But their sympathies, of course, were the other way. Later on, it got rather more difficult. I think we went to Ludhiana after there.  And there was some bad killing. I remember going to one affair where a train had been stopped and we picked up over 90 raped women with their throats cut by the rail side. They had the villagers from the local village that I'm sure were involved. We had them collect the dead.  So they all seemed to be in a clump, you know, in an area about an acre, all with a clothing up round their waists and their throats cut.

So, you regarded that in a sense as sort of unsatisfactory part of your...

That was terrible, actually. Well the hole of that affair, that partition was really...  Awful. I remember going into a village because we knew there were people, women, hidden there and finding a woman in a cupboard with her back raw. She'd been raped on a mud floor so many times her back was raw. And this was terrible to see this sort of thing. And then I left because…, under a bit of a cloud. The law said that a Sikh...  could carry his kirpan, but nothing else. And I was driving in the bazaar one morning in my jeep with my driver and orderly and there was a Nihang Sikh. These are militant Sikhs. And he was carrying, as well as two kirpans, a battle axe, a real live medieval battle axe.  So I stopped my jeep and said to this man, I want your axe, you're not allowed to carry that. And he made as though to hit me with it. So I shot him. I shot him, the first round, hit him on the belt buckle, and did nothing except wind him a bit, so I had to shoot him again. And then took him to hospital, he died in hospital. But I was accused of murder by the local population who were there, of course.  Anyway, there was a pretty summary inquiry into that, and it was okay. But they thought it wise to get me away, and I was sent down with 20 men in a couple of vehicles, 10 Muslims and 10 Hindus as escort, because we had to drive through Sikh country, and especially through Patiala State, which was pretty militant then.  And I was driven down to Nazirabad, I suppose. So that was the end of my involvement with partition. It was a bad time.

You ultimately left for the UK in February 1948.  In the run-up to partition, officers had options, didn't they, as to whether they were going to pursue the British Army?

That's right. Yeah, that's right. I volunteered to transfer to the British Army, hoping to go to infantry, of course. But there were very limited vacancies in infantry. And it turned out that most of us were offered either Royal Artillery or R.A.S.C. or R.A.O.C.  And I was lucky, I suppose. I was lucky. I became a gunner. Very inefficient gunner, I might say.

Yes, I mean, did it in a sense seem funny to come back to UK? I mean, were your parents still in India?

Yes, parents were still there.  Well, I suppose the first thing that struck one was when I lost rank. I'd been a major for most of the war, a war substantive major, and came back to become a gunner as a captain. And the money was incredibly poor. When you consider one was a major on Indian Army rates of pay, to come back as a captain on British Army rates of pay was a bit of a come down.

Yeah, but what did the other gunner officers think of you, to put it bluntly?

Well, I think, they weren't too welcoming. I remember joining, when I first, I joined a heavy ack-ack regiment, not far from here actually, at Stiffkey here in Norfolk, where they were doing field firing. And I walked into the mess as a captain.  I had the wrong colour captain's badges on my shoulder, actually, because I should have had gunner colour on and I hadn't got them. And they weren't welcoming at all. Luckily, there was another ex-Indian Army chap there who helped me, looked after me. But they were, no, they weren't welcoming in that regiment at any rate. Later on, as I became more knowledgeable about the job, it was okay. 

Yes, because you had to, well, not exactly be trained out from scratch, but I mean, you had to sort of learn the ropes. So you actually had to, yes, in 49, you attached to the RA Depot. Oh, actually, it was on the conversion course, did you?

No, you were converted. It converted you. They gave you; I think it was a three-month course in gunnery. Which was, of course, useful. After I'd been to Staff College, my first posting after Staff College was a brigade major with a field AGRA, a TA field AGRA, which had three gun regiments in it. And when they went to camp, the first camp, I was told to make out a fire plan by my brigadier, to make out a fire plan for three gun regiments. And I didn't have a clue. Nobody had taught me how to make out a fire plan for an AGRA luckily there was a TA officer there in this headquarters with me and he sat down and showed me how to do it.

Yeah now you had in fact been to staff college at Quetta hadn't you. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well that was, a number. There were three British officers were sent to Quetta about the time I was there and a Canadian an Australian and an American. And I took my wife. It was comparatively easy, I think, to do your staff course in Pakistan, as I did, as compared with doing it in this country. I know, I was ticked off by the commandant, whose wife ran the local library, for taking out too many novels. But it was a good course.  It lasted almost a year. It wasn't very hard work. As far as I know, I must have passed it, so that's okay. I met one interesting chap there, who’s probably now forgotten, a chap called Grant-Taylor, who ran the Close Quarter Battle School for the Pakistan Army. He'd been a chap who'd trained G-men in America in the use of handguns.  And a police in Malaya, similarly. And he ran this rather SAS-type course in Quetta. And I went, during a break, I went and did his course. And he died in Quetta. And only last year, I saw in Dekho!, I think it was, yes, in Dekho!, which is the Burma Star magazine, an advertisement, somebody's writing his life.  and wanted anybody with any information, so I wrote to this chap. Grant-Taylor was quite a character.

What were they like to be back in Pakistan?

It was very good. They were just like us. Quite soon after we'd left, nothing seemed to have changed. The big change was I went back as a captain.  And people I'd known as subalterns were half and full colonels doing this course. And, in fact, thought I was the full colonel when they first met me, men I'd known, because I had three things on my shoulder, and they thought it was a crown and two pips. Well, it was three pips. After staff college...  That's when I came back to this country as a brigade major with a TA AGRA, which is an Army Group Royal Artillery. I suppose there, a couple of years, something like that.

Yes, 51, 53. Where were you based?

Nottingham.

Then from there, you went to 402 Regiment.

No, eight.  Let me see. Oh, to 48 Field, yes. Yeah. That's right. 48 Field.

Yeah, then in September 53, you went to BAOR.

Yes, 48 Field. When was Suez? 52, was it?  Was it?

56. Anyway, can you refer to anything about your time in BAOR?  I noticed you were there for about three years, from 53 to 56.

Well, I spent some time as a PA to the General Commanding Rhine District. Which was one of the jobs for the boys, I think. It wasn't very hard work. No, I enjoyed Germany. One sailed, it was good fun. We didn't do very much, as far as I recall. There's nothing exciting, nothing noteworthy.

Presumably quite a number of the men, though, were National Service men. Do you have any recollection? 

We did have national servicemen. That's absolutely right. And I remember that being a disappointment because you would get a man, a good man, train him for 18 months and he was effective, efficient and doing a good job and you'd have him for six months and off he went. Effective six months. So national service was a bad thing from our point of view, from a soldier's point of view.

Were there that many national servicemen who decided to make a career of the end? 

Not many, I don't remember. No, I don't think many. I think they were glad to go. I'm sure if you talk to them now, national servicemen, they all enjoyed it. Well, they seem to claim that they did.

They do. They say they did. But in fact, yes, I mean, from your point, when they were sort of actually up and running... That's right. That's right. I just thought that more than in fact did might have, you know, realized that it would be worth persevering, wouldn't it?

Some, of course, did. Yes, of course, some did. 

What about relationship with the local German population?

One didn't see much of them. That's the truth of it. I sailed, so we shared a yacht club with the Germans, and that was good. We got to know them. But the average soldier would hardly speak to a German, unless it was some woman he found, I suppose. But there wasn't much intermingling between German and British soldier…  or British officer for that matter.

The tank regiments tended to sort of lump about a load of German farmers' fields, didn't they?

It was bad.

As artillery. You presumably didn't have quite so much.

My son's in Germany now, and I think it's pretty much the same now. I don't think... Yeah.

What do you do? Then you came back to...  20 Field Regiment. Yes, that's back to... Yes, back to... There it is. But then 58, you're retired. And when is... SOS, is it? I don't know what that is.

Struck off strength. Yes, Colchester with 20th Field, yes. Right.  That's the end of my regular service.

Well, what date is that?

I was born in 17. I was 41 then.

Yeah. I mean, did you ask to go?

Oh, yes, I asked to go. They were doing much the same as they're doing now, offering terms, so-called golden handshakes.  And I volunteered for that. I got the feeling that as an ex-Indian army chap, my chances of getting command of a gun regiment were pretty slim. And I could have soldiered on, I suppose, until I was 55, doing funny jobs. But I decided I'd take the money and go. 

Well, then in 1968, you made a comeback.

Yes a comeback’s hardly the word. I had a bit of a hiatus in my life and lost any money I'd had. And so...  There was a chance to come back to the army in this administrative capacity with the TA. So I went and was interviewed for that. And thank God I got the job. I stayed there for 15 years.

Where was the squadron based?

The TA squadron in Doncaster.

You lived there. You went on sort of annual.

Yes, I did annual camp every year for 15 years.  Getting a bit weary at the end, though, because I was 65 when I left.

So that was a full-time job, yes.

That was a full-time job, yeah.

Yeah, and any reference? What about the men who were in the...

They were excellent men. I go back there quite regularly. Now, many of them miners, of course, in Doncaster.  First class chaps. I recruited a hell of a lot of them myself because I was there every day and two evenings a week. I should think I interviewed 80% of the intake that we took. And we had a large intake. The TA loses a large percentage of its men every year. You probably know that.  Many men joined the TA and last months only because they were disenchanted.

You had a pretty high wastage rate.

We had a high wastage. A typical TA wastage rate, which is compared with the regular army or any civilian firm, was very high actually. But then you acquire a hard core of the people who want to stay. 

Yeah. What was the actual role of the squadron?

The role of the squadron was... I suppose it was in reserve for the regular army. Come mobilisation, we were for Germany as load carriers.

Right. Yeah.  And you did, in fact, go and actually went, well, there was one in 1973, you were actually in Germany.

Well, we went to Germany often, actually.

Well, now I'm looking back at the list, yeah. How do you sort of find that?

We probably did every second or third year we went to Germany. And the men got to know the British area of Germany very well. They could drive all over it without maps. No, we got to know Germany very well.

But, you know, had it become necessary, you would have been a pretty competent operator.

Yes. They were very good drivers. Very efficient. That squadron was anyway, said he.

Yeah.  The only other thing I think I'd like to pick up on is your post-Indian Army regimental reunion type activity. Did you keep it?

No, I didn't keep in touch. In fact, I remained out of touch from leaving the Indian Army in 48 until about five years ago. And then I was written to because...  A chap who'd been in my battalion with me before the war. I was godfather to one of his children. And this boy wrote to someone in the Grenadiers saying, did they know where I was because my old friend had died and left a whisky. He wanted me to have a whiskey for him.  whether it was Pat Emerson or who, I don't know, wrote officers' pensions, and a letter was passed to me, and that's when I came back to the fold, as it were. And then since then I've been to, I suppose, three reunion lunches, and I've been out to India to see my old battalion.

Can you say a little bit about the visit to India? 

Well, it was really wonderful. My wife and I went in December. It was to celebrate the re-raising of the Third Battalion, which had been re-raised in the early days of the war. And we arrived at Delhi Airport at about half past three in the morning. And there was a lieutenant general.  A major general. And one or two others waiting for us. It was wonderful. And we were feted from the day we arrived until the day we left. We paid for nothing. We were transported from Delhi to Jaipur and back again. We were accommodated. We were fed. Drink was supplied in Jaipur, where my battalion, the old battalion was. We were put up in the forest bungalow with five or six servants. Realy looked after. It was wonderful.

Did you meet many men?

I met only, I met three officers. The major general retired who met me at Delhi Airport. It was actually, had been my company's second in command.  And I met an old boy from Bengal, who'd been my scout platoon commander. He got an MC. He was at this reunion. And I met two old soldiers only. Whether they died young or not, I don't know. But Jaipur, of course, was quite a long way from where we'd recruited these men. 

So interesting experience. Do you think you'll ever go back again?

I'd like to, actually. I'd like to. They're most welcoming. And what pleases me after having been away for 40 years, or more, 40 years since partitioned, jolly nearly. More than 40 years since partition. They still think well of us. They do. Very well of us. They talk of us, as their forefathers.

Yeah, that's good, isn't it?

The way they feel about it.

And sort of keeping the regimental tradition alive.

Exactly. The only thing that's different, I suppose, is the food one eats in the mess. But they still... All the silvers that I was shown, the visitor's book, they must be on volume number, whatever it is now, but they produced the very first visitor's book.  And there is my name on page one, the day the battalion was reformed in 1940-something. And there was my name and my sort of rather childish handwriting. That's produced for me. We've kept the silver. No, the regimental spirit's great and founded by us. Yes, it's that silver.  Very touching and very encouraging, isn't it? And they all speak English, and the officers do. So that was a help, because my language had left me. I felt embarrassed, actually, as I'd forgotten. We were there 10 days, I think, something like that. At the end of 10 days, it was coming back a bit. Yeah. But I needed a month, really. I'll go back. Right.

That's that. I'm going to leave now.