...

Ken provided a wonderful example of efficiency. On time, four troops of Foxes (including one from each of A and B Squadrons) had moved 140 miles to Murree. Having, in the meantime, fired their machine-guns for the first time and arranged the necessary administrative support. We were attached to 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment, and three days later were in action when 11 Troop dispersed a crowd of 200 rioters by seriously wounding two Moslems with carefully aimed shots. These were the only deadly shots fired by the 7th in the torrid summer to come. It was a campaign in which the tank troops (whose Stuarts chronically overheated) showed their presence in the towns and the more reliable Foxes patrolled vast rural areas, as we endeavoured to keep the peace by 'showing the flag' and seizing illegal weapons.

I kept no record of the hundreds of miles driven by 12 Troop along dusty tracks to reach inaccessible villages between Jhelum and Sarghoda. Nor a diary of the long-range radio messages sent mainly in Morse code by sky wave over the 19 Set; or a list of the tyres worn out by excessive running as the heat increased to 120 degrees in the shade. Spares were chronically in short supply and crew fatigue showing by the time we were relieved. Normally a patrol, comprising two Foxes and a 3 ton truck, lasted three days. Sometimes, with two troops under command, I was located forty or fifty miles from Squadron HQ. Only once did I encounter a large crowd and then it was only a prayer meeting - or so blank-faced elders claimed. But the experience of working alone was, in the years to come, to prove invaluable when on detachment: and sometimes distressing to superior officers who took umbrage whenever I instinctively forgot to consult.

Shortly before the relief of C in mid-April, with 11 and 12 Troops, I was sent to support a surprise, large scale night arms raid on a cluster of villages. As usual there was a tussle with the infantry who wanted us more for our superior radio communications than our fire power and mobility. And, as so often happens, nothing was found. So we returned to Sialkot where, three days later, I collapsed with a bad dose of malaria. Very likely my life was saved by a splendid Indian doctor who had learnt all about that disease when on the notorious Siam Burma railroad. Questions were asked about adequate anti-mosquito precautions taken, along with an implied threat of disciplinary action. But Reggie Wood would have none of that! And the pleasant bonus was four weeks convalescence leave with Joan and the other families at Dalhousie, 6,000 feet up in the Himalayan foothills, as the summer and political temperatures stoked up on the plains.

Dalhousie, with its superb views of the mountains, where one could ride, play games and live well in an equable climate was idyllic. By then Joan was expecting our first child and I was in no hurry to go back. But when reporting to Sialkot at the beginning of June it was in the realisation that our days in India were numbered. The Viceroy was on the eve of announcing Partition. The Governor of the Punjab anticipated serious trouble. With 23 Brigade, A Squadron was sent to Lahore and B to Amritsar. While C came under command of the famous 4th Indian Division, commanded by the dynamic Major-General Pete Rees, at Jullunder.

Jullunder, which stood on the single carriage way Grand Trunk road linking Delhi with the North West frontier, was populated more by Hindus and Sikhs than Moslems. On patrols we sensed a simmering tension far worse than that previously noticed around Jhelum. Here sullen Sikhs (legally equipped with their traditional kirpans [swords]) made their belligerent presence felt among the other religious and racial groups, who defended themselves with an assortment of (illegal) home-made spears, clubs and usable hockey sticks. For six weeks Ken Fidler drove us hard. On one memorable patrol I covered 350 miles down the Grand Trunk road in two days, dashing from village to village in appalling heat which played havoc with tyres. The men stood up to it wonderfully well, however. Prickly heat was our only medical complaint, heat exhaustion avoided by wearing light, unconstricting clothing and taking plenty of salt.

My task now was made much easier by having the recently promoted Norman Chesher as troop sergeant. His war experience in Europe was beneficial, his administrative skill a boon and his sense of humour priceless. Fourteen years later our partnership would culminate splendidly when he became my Squadron sergeant major (SSM) in an exacting, independent peacetime role in Germany.

In India, however, we were faced by a situation running wild. On one patrol we entered a village with all the houses on one side of the main street gutted and abandoned by its Moslems; and on the other side Hindus pleading ignorance of what had happened. The police were nowhere in sight. Attempts to report by radio failed. So there was nothing for it but to leave these unhappy people to their fate and move on to the next hot spot. A few miles down the road I found a company of Gurkhas under an officer called Birdie Smith (who many years later I got to know well). But he was powerless too and thus the situation deteriorated.

The monsoon was imminent and soon the dirt tracks would be made difficult by heavy rain. Our men were tired; the Foxes were breaking down more frequently; and the number of incidents (notably in Lahore and Amritsar) by gun, bomb, spear or sword increasing. One morning my bearer nearly lost his head to a sword waving Sikh on his way to work. Yet many like he among the professional servants of the Raj, could not believe their sahibs would leave them to a terrifying future as everybody anxiously awaited an announcement by a Boundary Commission of the new frontier and the date of its implementation.

The day it happened in mid-July I was told to take up position on a bridge on the Grand Trunk road which, on 15 August, would become the boundary between India and Pakistan. Normally at night there would have been only a few motor vehicles passing, flanked by convoys of bullock carts and camels taking advantage of the cooler temperature to move along either side of the central macadam strip (which they were forbidden to use). That night it was different. Motor vehicles, sometimes nose to tail, were passing in each direction and there were more animal convoys than usual.

We were witnesses to a mass-migration of the frightened, more affluent people seeking safety from the holocaust to come. Moving from east to west were the Moslems, and from west to east the Hindus - with the ambivalent Sikhs in their midst, unsure what to do but mostly sheltering among the Hindus. From the coming storm, however, we were saved. On 22 July, we handed in our vehicles at Lahore before concentrating at Sialkot with the families, who had been escorted there from Dalhousie. On the way Joan had witnessed a murder, so I was glad she was safely out of harms way. I admit to a certain ambivalence of conscience in those violent, heartrending days. On the one hand touched by dread of what was to come, but with more sympathy for our hindu bearer (who dwelt with his new wife in the midst of the predominantly Moslem community of Sialkot) than for the ferocious Hindus and Sikhs who slaughtered their enemies in a situation running out of control.

We entrained for Bombay on 1 August. Friends in the Indian Army who remained behind told us later that there were fifty murders in Sialkot that night, a figure doubled and redoubled as authority evaporated and as massacre by the hundreds of thousands left bodies in such abundance that scavenging dogs and vultures could no longer cope. With hindsight the decision to withdraw with such haste stands as an appalling miscalculation by Mountbatten, Nehru and Jinnah - one taken against the vehement advice of the Governor of the Punjab who visualised clearly what would happen.

But at least lessons were learned. During the decades ahead Britain took far greater care of the rights and security of conflicting races when arranging the hand-over of power in her retreat from Empire. It is worth reflecting that, fifty years later, our country's responsibility for the well being of the people of Ulster is no less essential than it was to the racial and religiously divided peoples of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Turning Points: Table of Content

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