• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1938 0

making them at the men’s expense. Prices were rising, but wages were not and while employers on the one hand were urging the workforce to greater effort and ever-rising output, they were refusing, on the other, to meet even reasonable pay claims. Workers threatening to strike were vilified wholesale by the press, whipping up a frenzy of patriotic indignation. Few people stopped to consider the problems faced by the War Office or the culpability of manufacturers who, through greed or over-optimism and not least by reason of self-interest led by fear of competition, were probably most to blame. The workforce was a useful scapegoat and not many took the trouble to look at things from the workers’ point of view – least of all Sir John French. And least of all the gunners standing idly by their guns in Flanders while the Commander-in-Chief gathered up a supply of precious shells for his offensive.

He was gathering men too.

During their five-day stay at Ham the 3rd Londons had been mildly surprised to be inspected by General Willcocks and welcomed ‘to the Indian Army’ and to find that they were to form part of the Meerut Division. ‘Army’ was a forgivable conceit on the part of the general, who had good reason to be proud of his troops, but it was something of an exaggeration for it comprised a corps of two infantry divisions and one of cavalry. In addition to native Indian troops each infantry brigade contained one battalion of British Regulars (as it had done in India) and each was now to be augmented by a battalion of Territorials or Special Reservists.

If wintry Flanders came as a rude shock to the 3rd Londons fresh from the mild climate of Malta, it had been considerably worse for the Indians and most of them had been there for months. The Indian troops had played an active part and proved their worth in spite of the dreary conditions, the icy chill of the northern marshes, the water-logged trenches where, vaselined and oiled to the waist, the men on outpost duty had to stand for hours with barely a glimpse of the pallid disc that masqueraded as the sun in those alien northern skies. Many had fallen in action and some in the trench-raids at which the Indians were so expert; frostbite, influenza and pneumonia had all taken their toll and recently measles and mumps, encountered in Europe for the first time, had swept through the ranks. But the cold was the worst, and the Indians could hardly remember the sensation of being warm, still less the fierce heat of the Indian plains burning under the sun they called ‘the Bengal blanket’. The British public were sympathetic to the plight of the men plucked so cruelly out of their element. Tons of warm comforts had been sent and it was no unusual sight to see turbanned Indian troops hunched over tiny cooking fires, cocooned in a dozen or more khaki scarves and shawls plaited and knotted across khaki overcoats. Their khaki service dress was a far cry from the colourful silken glamour of the regimental uniforms that were the joy of the Indian Army, but the names of the regiments still rang like a litany that celebrated all the pomp and panoply of Empire – the Dogras, the Baluchis, Garhwalis, the Deccan Horse, the Secunderabad Cavalry, Pathans, Sikhs, Punjabis, the Jodhpur Lancers.

They came from every corner of the Indian sub-continent and represented every caste and creed, and this presented the military authorities with certain problems. At the base camps in Marseilles and later in Orleans and Rouen it required six separate kitchens to cater for the different dietary and religious needs and although the problem had been tackled in the field by issuing rations and allowing the Indians to cook them for themselves, this system brought other difficulties. One officer, walking past such a group cooking food on the roadside, was amazed to see them tip out the contents of their cooking pot as he passed. The ‘shadow of the infidel’ had fallen across their food and they would rather go hungry than eat it. Even the basic army rations were unacceptable to Indian troops. To the exasperation