When I look back on those winter days of 1914–15 I recall the names of
many of our great Indian soldiers, and it comes home vividly how much
they had done for our power in the East, and how they had gained the
confidence of the Indians. It was men like John Nicholson, Edwards,
Outram, Hodson, and Lord Roberts who had won the devotion of the men and
tempered the steel they used, and it was their example that in this
twentieth century had enabled England to call to her aid thousands of
loyal men from far across the seas, to fight her battles within a few
hours’ journey and within gun-sound of her own shores. It is an
extraordinary story, and one which we will do well to ponder. Here was a
great country with 48,000,000 of inhabitants, and yet it was found
necessary to summon a few thousands from Asia to defend our cause at our
own gates. I have heard it said that the Indian Corps was only sent to
France to give India a chance of taking her part in our Empire war;
maybe that was partly the idea of those who first originated it, but the
fact remains that the arrival of the Army Corps, just when it did come,
was the respite so sadly needed by the brave men who had wrought deeds
of almost superhuman devotion, but were then outnumbered and all but
overwhelmed by the German hordes.
Be that as it may, what has our country to say to the fact that whilst
our Indian soldiers were playing the part they did, millions in this
island were waiting on events? Lord Kitchener’s call had rung like a
trumpet through the land, but there had not yet been time for the New
Armies to be trained. Who then could be sent to stem the tide of steel
that was rolling in billows against the battered granite wall in
Flanders? There were none, save those few thousand British and those
loyal Indian soldiers just arrived from the East. There are always
critics enough to say that what was done might have been done better,
but these stay-at-home strategists and tacticians must answer the
question, why they were doing nothing themselves to help in the
trenches, and why did so many hundreds of thousands continue to do
nothing but talk, until they found themselves forced by conscription to
do their duty? And meantime who was helping (even though it was only in
small numbers) to defend their country for them? Helping with ungrudging
valour, and as recompense but a few hard-earned shillings a month.
When the tongues of controversy are lulled, and we can look back on
facts without bitterness, there will be but one verdict as to the fine
spirit and loyal devotion to duty displayed by the Indians in the hour
of England’s need.
It was my proud privilege to command these men, and it is my highest
reward that I had their confidence; I ask no other. It was palpable to
me after the formation of the New Armies that whatever might be the
outcome of our doings in France, my own days as Commander were assuredly
numbered. It would in my belief have been the case with any man in
command; that it fell to me was chiefly because I happened to be the
man.
It is of interest to note here that Lord Roberts, during his visit to
the Corps, had given me some very valuable advice, and promised that he
would bear me out in anything I did acting on that advice. I followed it
out, for it was the only way in which the best could be got from the
Indians. Alas! he did not live to help, when his help was sadly needed;
and though it eventually led to my being relieved of my command ten
months later on, I do not regret it for a moment, for it was my duty;
and in the consciousness of having done that lies a man’s greatest
reward. I will quote some of what he said from my diary of the same day.
He told me that it was absolutely necessary to remember that the Indians
must be used with discretion and not flung into battle indiscriminately.
He gave me his reasons fully, and told me it was my duty to keep those
in higher command reminded of this, and that even if it was an
unpleasant task, it still must be done. He added very positively that it
was only fair to the Army, to the Indians themselves, and, above all, to
the British battalions in the Brigades, who, he added, “will have to
bear a heavy burden in any case.”
No words of mine could possibly sum up so truthfully and exactly just
what was necessary, and to those who know the trials they endured, it
will be clear that these were the only conditions on which the Indian
soldiers could be asked to give of their best in Europe.
I write this four years after the event, and hence any spirit of
personal recrimination has, I hope, disappeared; but what can never
disappear is the sense of wrong done by the public to the men who served
under me, and served so well.
For, what were the facts? Whilst the British forces were daily improving
in man-power, we were going downhill; whilst the type of British
recruits was daily getting better and the best manhood of these islands
was gradually being drafted into their ranks, ours were deteriorating.
Whilst in England the whole country was watching and encouraging her men
to join up, India was kept in the dark regarding the doings of her
soldiers and we had to take whatever was sent us. The whole conditions
were different.
So long as we remained an Army Corps under the Commander-in-Chief, Sir
John French, he frequently saw the men and spoke to them in words of
warm praise, and even after the Armies were formed he still came more
than once and inspected the Brigades on parade; but as a part of the
First Army the rank and file never saw their Army Commander, except in
company with the Commander-in-Chief, and on more than one occasion the
Army Corps was omitted from any share in the credit it had earned in
hard-fought actions. Indians are very quick to grasp such facts, and
many of their British officers strongly resented but loyally accepted
the situation. As this story proceeds, it will be seen that what I have
stated above is the simple truth, and it will be readily understood that
under such conditions service in the field loses much of the glamour
which all soldiers associate with it, and which even the muddy trenches
of Flanders could not obliterate; and men naturally keen to do their
utmost become by degrees less zealous in the cause.
On 6th January I was informed that Lord Kitchener hoped to be able to
send us three fresh battalions from Egypt, but this he was unable to
carry out until much later. On 7th January Sir John French inspected two
of our Brigades; it was a stormy day with heavy rain, but the
Field-Marshal said a few words to each battalion, which I translated to
the men, and their pleasure was manifest. Lord French is a very eloquent
speaker to soldiers; he knows what to say and how to say it, and it is
easy to translate it into the language of the East.
It is a special pleasure to tell of the intense interest taken by Lord
Kitchener in the Indian Corps; from start to finish as Secretary of
State it is not too much to say that without his guiding hand and his
determination we could never have been kept going so long in France.
Nothing was too small for him personally to look into; nothing we wanted
and which he considered necessary was overlooked. His one great idea, as
far as the Indians were concerned, was that as he had initiated their
employment in Europe, so he would see it through. As I shall tell in
this book, at different times he brought his great personality into
play, and insisted on the Indian Corps being recognised and kept up.
Notwithstanding any opinions that may already have been or may in the
future be formed as to his keeping the reins of office in his own hands,
I maintain in our case, no other man could have conducted the business
as he did, and no other man could have more staunchly upheld the name of
India and its Army.
I had served under him as a Brigadier and a Divisional Commander during
the whole of his seven years as Commander-in-Chief in India, and twice
commanded frontier expeditions during that time, besides frequently
having been his guest; but I never realised until we came to France how
deep-rooted was his affection for our great Eastern possession, and how
wide was his sympathy with its people and Army. Many times during the
first year of the war I was sent for, and every possible aspect of our
employment was discussed by him, and it will probably surprise some as I
tell of the opinions he had formed, and his plans for employing the
Indian troops as an Army Corps. After the lamented death of our
Colonel-in-Chief, Lord Roberts, it became evident that Lord Kitchener
meant to take his place as our special friend.
During the rest we enjoyed after Givenchy I find many notes made by me,
some of which may prove of interest to those connected with the Indian
Army.
Campaigning as we were in a friendly country I was altogether against
allowing punishments to be inflicted on either British or Indians, which
might give a false impression to our Allies, or make it appear that
there was a difference in our methods of treating different classes of
our soldiers. Whatever may be thought of field punishment or of
flogging, I am convinced that to administer the former to Britishers,
and thus make them a mark of contempt to the Indians, is altogether
wrong. In the same way to flog Indians (which was permissible under the
Indian Articles of War) in France could only bring unmerited disgrace on
them as a race. There are of course crimes for which flogging is a very
suitable punishment, but this should, like a death sentence, be
inflicted only in very rare cases.
However, the law was laid down, and all a commander could do was to
mitigate sentences which he considered harsh. With this in view I very
early stopped field punishment being carried out in or near any public
place, and reserved all sentences of flogging, which could by law be
inflicted by junior commanders, for my own confirmation, and except for
most disgraceful conduct this punishment was in abeyance in the Corps in
France.
Some of the Indians, contrary to my expectations, developed a taste for
learning French. Their efforts frequently led to amusing incidents. On
one occasion I was passing an officer’s private servant, who was
ordinarily a strict Musalman, and would of course never eat meat that
had not been _hallaled_, _i.e._ killed in the orthodox style by having
its throat cut. I observed that his platter contained some beef, which
was not then part of the Indian ration, and asked him how he came by it.
“Oh, I bought it at a French butcher’s.” “But,” I said, “it has not been
_hallaled_; how can you eat it?” My friend, however, explained that he
had picked up some French, and that the “Miss Sahib” (young lady) in the
shop had told him it was, and proceeded to repeat the conversation. “I
went into the shop and said, ‘Beef, Miss,’ and she said, ‘Oui.’ I then
put my finger to my throat and ran it across to explain that it must be
_hallal_, and she at once said, ‘Oh, oui, oui,’ so you see it has been
properly killed.” That Indian was not for being too orthodox in a
foreign land, and that young lady had evidently learned something of
Oriental customs; but the story got about and less meat was purchased
from the stall after that.
At first the Indians found it very difficult to distinguish between
French and the German deserters, or prisoners captured. A story is told,
which I believe is absolutely true, of a German deserter who managed to
crawl through our front line, and finding himself among Indians, lay
hidden till dusk and then warily proceeded along a path towards our rear
in the hope of coming across a Britisher. He was afraid the Indians
would, according to what he had been taught by his own officers, soon
make mincemeat of him; however, his luck, as he explained, was all out,
and as he walked along he saw two Gurkhas coming from the opposite
direction. Bracing himself up for the tragedy he imagined was on the
point of being enacted, he approached with as much _sang froid_ as he
could muster, but to his surprise the two men, taking no notice whatever
of him, passed on. Our friend breathed once more and felt sure the next
man he met would be a Britisher; but no, his luck was still out, and he
beheld to his dismay a solitary Gurkha, by whose side hung the terrible
_kukry_, the weapon with which according to German ideas these lusty
inhabitants of Nepal were wont to carve up their victims, or decapitate
them with a single stroke.
Nothing could save the Hun now, and he advanced trembling from head to
foot, for surely the other two had only left him alive through being
engrossed in conversation and hence not having noticed him. He moved on
saying his last prayer, when the little Gurkha suddenly realising his
position pulled himself together and came to attention. The last hour of
the deserter had at last come; the hand of the man from Nepal went first
to his side; it must be the terrible _kukry_ he was about to draw, but
instead of ending the career of the German our Gurkha gave him a smart
salute. The deserter, wondering whether he was indeed face to face with
his brutal and ferocious foe or in a dream, breathed freely and went on
his way.
At last to his great relief appeared a British soldier, and he now
thought all was well. Imagine his final surprise when he was hailed
with, “What the something are you doing here?” and at the same time he
felt a bayonet point unpleasantly close to his hinder parts. He went
calmly to the guard-room; he had changed his mind about the bloodthirsty
Indians.
One more story of Indians and Germans. One night a British officer was
out scouting in front of his Corps in “No Man’s Land,” accompanied by
his Indian orderly. The pair had very stealthily approached the enemy
trench and were within a few yards of it, when a German, who had been
watching unknown of course to them, covered the officer with his rifle
and said, “You are a brave man and I do not wish to shoot you; go back.”
They went back; but this time it was the sepoy’s turn to wonder why he
had been told that the Boches were such fiends.
On the 14th January 1915 two of our Brigades, as I said before, again
took over trenches, and by the 24th the whole Corps was once more
holding a front which extended from a point west of Neuve Chapelle on
the north to the vicinity of Givenchy on the south, connecting there
with the First Army Corps.
At this time our strength was close on 21,000 rifles, 900 sabres, and
120 guns. During February I learned that it was the intention of Sir
John French at an early date to carry out a big operation in the
vicinity of Neuve Chapelle, and that it was to be the good fortune of
the Indian Corps to take a prominent part in it. The battle of Neuve
Chapelle is what resulted, and that I shall shortly describe. But before
doing so I will deal with certain matters which affected the Indian
Corps, and which may be of interest to my readers.
The enormous amount of correspondence which had to be carried on not
only gave me an insight into the complications which attended this
somewhat intricate command, but as I look back on it all I see more
plainly than I could at the time that my work as Indian Corps Commander
was doubled as compared with other Corps Generals. In this connection I
remember well the remark of one of them, who was paying me a visit, and
seeing the pile of letters already written and still to be answered, on
my table, said, “I would not change places with you for anything; you
appear to have one enemy in front and God knows how many behind you.” He
was not so far from the truth. Still I would not have changed places
with him, for although the writing work was onerous and generally kept
me up till all hours, it was very interesting; and one felt it was all
so new.
Amongst the officials with whom I had to carry on a correspondence, or
to whom I sent personal accounts of the Indians, were the Secretary of
State for War, Secretary of State for India, the Viceroy of India, and
the Military Secretary, India Office. These were high officials, but as
I recall the piles of other letters I received and answered, it
surprises me how many people took an interest in or wished to ascertain
a hundred things concerning the Indians in France. The command was a
military one, but the amount of semi-political work combined with it
could seldom before have fallen to the lot of a soldier in a
comparatively junior position in the field in Europe.
One of the points that up to this time had most disconcerted people in
India, both British and Indian, but chiefly the latter, was that they
received no news of their people. High officials in India, and some of
them in this country, constantly wrote urging me to let something be
known of the doings of the Corps, but those were the days of secrecy,
and recruiting in India was much hampered. It was not common sense to
imagine that India would rush to furnish the large number of recruits
necessary to maintain her contingents, unless the people were at least
told whether Sikh, Dogra, Gurkha or whoever it might be was in Europe or
in some other continent. You cannot describe troops from that country as
“Midland” or “Highland,” and thus give a clue; for the battalions were
largely composed of men of several nationalities and religions, formed
in companies or double companies, and without mentioning the number of
the unit no one could tell what a man belonged to. Yet it was looked on
as criminal to name a corps in any of our communications; whilst the
Germans knew exactly to a man what we had in France.
Should Indian troops again be employed in Europe, which I hope may never
be the case, the authorities concerned will have enough to go on, to
avoid the blunders made during the war in the matter of reinforcements,
drafts, and reserves. From the first weeks onwards these questions were
a puzzle.
Imagine a cold winter’s day in Flanders; a biting wind, perhaps snow
falling, and a hundred odd, unwilling and unfit reservists from the
tropics, standing shivering. The sound of the guns was more or less
incessant; overhead passed one or more aeroplanes; an occasional burst
from an anti-aircraft gun gave colour to the scene, and you have a
picture of more than one inspection of reservists I carried out. It was
unfair to the men themselves, still more to the Corps, and most unfair
to those who had to include them in their ranks and show a battle
strength of so many hundred men on paper.
Of course these remarks apply chiefly to reservists, and some other
drafts; there was the other side of the picture. Whole double companies
occasionally arrived from other battalions, splendid fighting material
and glad to be with us; and although this meant weakening the units they
came from, that was another story with which we could not concern
ourselves. As time wore on, India found it necessary to fill our gaps as
far as was possible from all classes and parts of the country. There
were at times in a single battalion men collected from nine to eleven
different units, and to those who know the Army, its composition and its
regimental system, it will be very evident how impossible it became to
keep battalions to a proper standard. Had this been the case with the
Indian ranks alone, the British and Indian officers could have worked
great changes, but these had themselves disappeared in large numbers and
been replaced by newcomers, some with a little and many without any
experience whatever of the classes they were posted to.
Towards the end of January a question was raised as to the reduction of
British officers in Indian battalions. I was surprised to receive a
letter through G.H.Q. asking if this could not be done. Considering our
losses in officers and the absolute necessity of keeping these up to at
least the number then fixed, viz. twelve combatants per unit, I found no
difficulty in proving that not only was no reduction possible, but if
efficiency was to be maintained an increase was necessary. I presume the
suggestion was only made owing to the great shortage that then existed
and the difficulty of finding replacements, but there was no question as
to the answer, more especially as I was well aware that a great number
of Indian Army officers were being employed on Staff duties in England
or with the New Armies then in course of formation.
During the winter months I received several letters from General Sir
Dighton Probyn. He of course took the greatest interest in the Indians,
and in one he said to me, “I wish I could reverse the figures of my age
and make myself twenty-eight instead of eighty-two. I would then beg of
you to take me as anything, trooper or mounted orderly,” and added that
the shirkers would have a miserable existence to the end of their days,
after the war.
During January and February 1915 hardly a day passed without my seeing
one or more units, or sometimes a whole Brigade. Often did I enter the
billets and barns, to be greeted by a chorus of cheers and shouts, and
the Indians would gather round and ask how the war was getting on. I
frequently took with me some of the presents received from friends in
England or India, and the varied class of these sometimes caused great
amusement. One kind lady had sent several coloured waistcoats for “the
dear Sikhs,” as she styled them. Amongst these ornate articles was one
made up of patches of every hue under the sun; it was an extraordinary
garment and was trimmed with gold lace. Seeing a party of Sikhs in front
of a barn, I stopped and asked them if they would like some presents
from England, and if so to come to the car and receive them. All but one
sulky-looking fellow came up and I asked why he did not come. They all
said, “Oh, he is a pessimist; he thinks the war will never end; of what
use is anything to him?” I at once took the coloured garment in my hand,
and went up to the man and in his own language asked him, as a favour,
to accept it at the hands of his General. The sepoy took it in a rather
surly manner and opened it, but even his torpor gave way when he saw the
gorgeous coat. All the others roared with laughter, in which he joined
heartily, and putting it on said, “General Sahib, you have altered my
ideas of the war, for this proves that people must still be full of
humour in England, and not as I have heard despondent. I will send it
home to my village, and attach a card to it: ‘Taken by me —— Singh in
single combat with the German Emperor and presented to me on a
full-dress parade by the Commander-in-Chief in France.’” They told me
afterwards that he had become an optimist and very keen all round.
Against 12th February I find in my diary: “General Robertson came to see
me and stayed an hour—he is a genius.” I do not think I was far wrong. I
only wish I had got to know him years before, for what I found was that
I was a stranger in my surroundings, and nothing more brought home to me
the position of the Indian soldiers. They too were strangers, and far
more of course than I could ever be, for even their language was a
different one. In those days the New Armies had not begun to arrive; the
old traditions still survived, and many of the _élite_ in the higher
ranks still looked on any innovation, such as the introduction into
their ranks of a bushman from Asia, as something which must perforce be
tolerated but not encouraged.