大象传媒

We went to India on a troop ship to Madras. I can remember being ill on the longs train journey from Madras to Ranchi in Bihar Province west of Calcutta, and a horrible experience it was. We arrived just before Christmas 1946, and we were in another fraught situation. The partition of India between Hindus and Muslims was proposed and riots and slaughter were occurring all over the place, but especially where the religious groups lived in juxtaposition to each other. Trains would be stopped by Hindus and all the Muslims killed, or the other way round. By now I had been promoted Captain and been made Adjutant of the regiment, which is the main organising job and is directly subject to the commanding officer. In Bihar I was made responsible for adapting the regiment of functioning as infantry so that we could be used to quell riots and control crowds.
I was fortunate, for we were never called into action. The partition and independence of India and Pakistan were proceeding apace and on 15 August 1947 the treaties were signed. My last military duty was to organise and command the firing of a 21 gun salute at the departure of the last British governor of Bihar- quite a historic event.

There was another farewell. Our regiment was made up of 3 batteries of about 250 men in each. One was Madrasi and mostly Christian; one was Punjabi and Muslim; the third was from Hyderabad State and mostly Hindu. They had got on well together fro many generations since the regiment was formed long before the Indian Mutiny. We celebrated all the different festivals and attended each other鈥檚 events. Now my job was to unscramble the lot; one battery to India, one to Pakistan and one the Hyderabad State which was still under the Nizam before eventually joining India. This was a sad ending of what I think had been a British contribution to a unified India.

The final event was personal. A fellow officer had got a place at Balliol College, and he suggested that I try to go there too. It was a long shot but I wrote from Ranchi. Balliol sent me an entrance exam paper of general essays. I did them in my tent with the help of the only books I had: 2 volumes of Shakespeare which I had 鈥渁cquired鈥� ( or looted) from the high school at Bandoeng which we had commandeered for accommodation; MacNeile Dixon鈥檚 鈥淓ssays in English Literature鈥�; and Field Marshall Wavell鈥檚 鈥淥thers Men鈥檚 Flowers鈥�, a soldier鈥檚 anthology of poems. Balliol accepted me and so I never took up my bursary at Glasgow University, and my whole life became different and wider. For example, I met Christine who would not have been found in Glasgow! Then a last dangerous journey. The trains from Ranchi to Bombay were still sometimes being attacked. The troop ship from Bombay to Southampton had a nasty outbreak of polio and we had some poignant burials at sea in the Gulf of Aden. Those of us who had university pace were brought home in time for Michaelmas Term 1947. And the Army kept its word

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