The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) (46 page)

Having seen and talked to White and to Merrick I felt that I had done as much as could be done for the moment to buy time in which to concentrate on my job without too often casting a glance in the direction of a local threat to our security. In any case the arrival of my third battalion, the (—th) Ranpurs, gave me plenty to do. Originally I had been promised a battalion of Sikhs, but one of my old regiment was, needless to say, an even greater boost to my morale! Bringing one company of the Ranpurs into the Mayapore barracks (and so relieving the Berkshires of some of their station guard duties) I sent their remaining companies and the battalion headquarters into the area of Marpuri, northwest of Mayapore, an area I had already selected as the best of two likely sites chosen by my brigade staff. Now that my command was complete I could really get down to work!

The Berkshires were settling down well. The move from Banyaganj into the cantonment had certainly done the trick. The old barracks near the artillery mess were spacious and cool, and the men enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of being able to avail themselves within reason of the ministrations of the native servants attached to the barracks, many of whom were the sons of men who had looked after an earlier generation of Tommies. They were now also closer on hand to the home entertainments so readily laid on by our ladies. It was, incidentally, many years since there had actually been a gunner regiment stationed in Mayapore, but the artillery mess had been famous in its day and naturally the name had stuck. In recent years Mayapore had been the home of an NCOs’ school and the cool weather station of the Pankots. Since the war began it had turned itself virtually into a brigade staging point. Unfortunately, from the point of view of my brigade staff, the colonel-commandant of the NCOs’ school who had also acted as Station Commander was on sick leave upon my arrival—a leave that turned out to be permanent because the school was transferred to the Punjab—so I inherited on paper at least the Station Commander’s role. The Station Staff Officer (whom I managed to retain) had to do most of the work that would normally have rested on the Station Commander’s shoulders, but he was an old ranker and a hard and dedicated worker.

I had elected to live in the artillery mess itself rather than move into the accommodation that was available to me, not only because my poor
Meg was unable to join me and establish a household, which she had done so often before, in so many different parts of India, but because I felt I wanted to be on constant call and in a position to keep my staff on its toes. The rooms I occupied in the mess in the old guest suite which overlooked the maidan, were spacious but simple. There in the little sitting room that I had turned into a private office, I could find a retreat from the press of routine to think out the best solutions to the many problems that confronted me. But it was in this room, towards the end of June, when the rains had just begun, that Tubby Carter rang me with the news that Alan was reported a prisoner-of-war. Somehow one had always gone on hoping that he would reach India safely with one of the parties of our troops and civilians who had struggled back against great odds and in conditions of great privation to be restored to those who most sorely missed them. I asked Tubby if he would break the news to Meg. And here Tubby proved himself once again a good and true friend who, although my senior in rank, was always ready to use his seniority for the welfare of an old comrade-in-arms. He ordered me to Rawalpindi so that I could break the news to her myself. In less than thirty-two hours of Tubby’s telephone call I was at Meg’s bedside.

Neither Meg nor I had any illusions about what it meant to be a captive of the Japanese, but we found solace in the knowledge that Alan was alive and—if we knew our son—probably kicking. Speaking of him to her, I felt the relief it was to do so knowing that at least it was in order to think of him in the present rather than the past tense. That evening Tubby came to the nursing home with a bottle of champagne. In ordinary circumstances it might have seemed wrong to drink champagne at a time when our son was probably suffering hardship, but Tubby put things into perspective by raising his glass and inviting us to drink to Alan’s safe return. I was proud of Meg when she raised her glass too and said simply, “To Alan,” and smiled as if he were there in the room and the occasion of the toast a happy one. In the few long weeks that we had been separated she seemed to have gone down hill alarmingly. She had lost more weight and her eyes no longer sparkled. I realized suddenly that Tubby had not ordered me back to Rawalpindi only to break the news of Alan’s capture to her but so that I could face up to the graver news that eventually I would have to bear.

When we had said goodnight to Meg, Tubby took me in to Colonel “Billy” Aitken’s office and left me there. Billy said, “I’m afraid there’s no doubt. Meg’s got cancer.” We had known Billy for years. In civilian
life he could have risen to the top of his profession and become a rich man, but as he had so often said, he preferred to give his time to looking after those of his countrymen—and women—who lived ordinary lives doing often dull and unrewarding jobs abroad, than to prescribing sugarpills for “fashionable” but hysterical women in Harley Street. I asked him, “How long?” For a moment we looked at each other. He guessed I would prefer to know the truth. He said, “Perhaps six months. Perhaps three. Perhaps less. We shall operate, but the end will be the same.” He left me alone for a bit, for which I was grateful. I found it hard to believe that in just a few minutes I had to adjust myself to accept that darling Meg was to be taken from me by a fate even crueler than that which had taken Alan. Alan at least had had the satisfaction of getting in a blow or two. I think I realized as I sat there alone in Billy Aitken’s office that I should never see Alan again either.

Billy and Tubby came back together and took me to Billy’s quarters. Tubby asked me whether I wanted to relinquish my command and come back to ’Pindi. He hinted that there was a job going that was mine for the asking and would carry a major-general’s hat. I asked him not to press me for an answer until I had had time to think it over. A room had been reserved for me at the club. They drove me back there and I made an effort to sleep so that I could wake up and make my decision in a clearer state of mind. In the morning I asked Billy the most important thing, which I had forgotten to ask the previous evening: whether Meg knew how ill she was. He said he had not told her but he was sure she was in no doubt. I said, “Billy,
don’t
tell her.” He knew then what my decision was, to go back to my brigade and to go back as soon as possible, so that neither Meg nor I would have to pretend for longer than we could manage. I knew this was my duty. I knew, too, that this was what Meg would want for us both. One cannot adopt a way of life without accepting every one of its responsibilities. It was hard to accept them at this moment, but I was sustained in the belief that Meg would understand and find strength herself in my decision. In spite of this, our parting was far from easy. I thought afterwards on the plane to Calcutta on which Tubby had wangled me a seat that it would have been easier if she had asked me not to go back to Mayapore. There seemed to be between us a terrible burden of things we had never said to each other. Before I left, Tubby assured me that he would send for me to be with Meg at the end, but this did not prove to be possible. I shall not write
her name again. Good-bye dear Meg, cherished wife and mother of my children. God willing, we shall be reunited in a happier place.

I had laid it down that at the commencement of the wet monsoon our training should continue so far as possible without interruption. I had managed through constant pressure in the appropriate quarters to get the last company of the Pankots in Banyaganj out of tents into huts before the rains began. The Ranpurs in Marpuri were less fortunate, but if they tended to be damp in one respect the same could not be said of their spirits!

In July our field training began to get under way and I was heartened by the keenness with which all ranks responded to the challenge of getting out onto the ground, even when the “enemy” was only imaginary. My Brigade Major, young Ewart Mackay, proved his weight in gold. A regular, his enthusiasm was infectious. It spread throughout the Brigade Headquarters staff. Cheerful, efficient and an all-round sportsman ( he shone particularly at tennis), he was also a dedicated soldier and could be a stern disciplinarian. Later in the war he commanded with valour and distinction the 2nd Muzzafirabad Guides, his old regiment. His pretty wife, Christine (the elder daughter of General “Sporran” Robertson), was with him at Mayapore and fulfilled the role of hostess with charm and grace. Christine and Ewart gave me “open house” at the delightful bungalow they occupied in Fort Road, and it was Christine who organized the little dinner parties which, in other circumstances, would have been another and still dearer woman’s task to arrange.

Heartened as I was on the two occasions in July when we took the brigade “out” to test its mobility and degree of cohesion, I was still unable to lose sight of the role it played as a local force for order. In taking it out the fact was not lost on me that the resulting display of military strength (more impressive to those not in the know than to those who were!) could not but make an impression on the population who were being increasingly subjected to Congress anti-war propaganda. One of the most despicable aspects of that propaganda was the tale put about that in the retreat from Burma and Malaya the authorities had shown indifference to the welfare of Indian troops and the native population. To anyone such as myself who knew the affection the English officer felt for his sepoys and native NCOs, the imaginary picture painted by Congress of Indian soldiers left behind without leaders to be captured or killed, or of groups of leaderless native troops and panicky
villagers being pushed off roads, railways and ferries to give priority to “fleeing whites” was laughable.

It was in the middle of July that my divisional (and area) commander told me that local civil authorities had received secret orders from provincial governors to combat in every possible way the poison of the insidious and lying propaganda of the Indian National Congress. This was the occasion when I sought yet a further discussion with the Deputy Commissioner.

From my point of view White was very much the unknown quantity. I was confident in the police and sure of the loyalty of our own Indian troops. Every man of the Berkshires had been trained in the drill of duties in aid of the civil power, and at the first sign of disturbances patrols and riot squads were ready to go into action. Although these young English boys (many of them civilians themselves little more than a year ago, and with only a very sketchy idea of the problems of administering Imperial possessions abroad) found the drill of “duties in aid” rather farcical, not to say puzzling when they recalled those of their countrymen who had already laid down their lives to protect India from both Nazi and Japanese tyranny, they very quickly adjusted themselves to accepting the role they might have to play as one more job to be done. When I gave this battalion of “modern” young English lads an address on the subject of military aid to the civil authorities I began by quoting those immortal lines of the soldier’s poet Rudyard Kipling:

    
—it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’

    
‘Tommy, fall be’ind,’

    
But it’s ‘Please to walk in front, sir,’ when

    
there’s trouble in the wind—

and I suppose a psychologist would say that I couldn’t have chosen a better way of putting the situation to them!

One could say that the basic thinking behind the military drill for suppression of civil disturbance is as simple as this: that failing the retreat of the crowd in the face of an armed might even greater than that of the police, the life of one ringleader, forfeited, equals the saving of many other lives. There have been times in our history when this simple equation has not looked, on the ground, as simple as it looks in the textbooks. I am thinking here, of course, of the
cause célèbre
of General Dyer in Amritsar in 1919, who found himself in a position not unlike that which I myself had to anticipate in 1942.

In 1919, as in 1942, the country was seething with unrest, and all the signs indicated open rebellion on a scale equal to that of the Mutiny of 1857. Ordered to Amritsar, Dyer came to a conclusion which the historians—fortified by the hindsight historians are fortunate enough to be able to bring to their aid—have described as fatal; the conclusion that in Amritsar there was to be found the very centre of an imminent armed revolt that could well lead to the destruction of our people and our property and the end of our Imperial rule. Learning that a crowd intended to forgather at a certain hour in a large but enclosed plot of ground called the Jallianwallah Bagh, Dyer prohibited the meeting by written and verbal proclamation in accordance with the rules laid down. This proclamation was defied and his warnings ignored. He took personal command of the troops he sent to disperse it. His on the spot orders to disperse also having been defied he then ordered the troops to fire. The Jallianwallah Bagh, from a military point of view, was a death trap, and many civilians died, including women and children.

Ever since the Dyer affair, which was seized upon by “reformers” as a stick to beat us with, the army had naturally become supersensitive to the issues involved, and we were now in the unhappy position of finding ourselves in what practically amounted to a straitjacket.

In the first place, unless the civil authority had collapsed or was otherwise nonoperational—when it would be a question of proclaiming martial law—the military was powerless to intervene unless called upon, in writing, by the civil power, usually the senior civilian in the area. Such a request for aid was, in a sense, really only a call to stand by.

For example:

To: O. C. Troops

I have come to the conclusion that the Civil Authorities are unable to control the situation and that the assistance of the Military has become necessary. I accordingly request such assistance.