The Indian cavalry were tolerable -- one had, of course, heard of the Bengal Lancers, Skinner's Horse, Probym's Horse and the Guides, when it came to polo, some of them could even teach the 9th Lancers a thing or two. The Gurkhas, too, were invested with a certain glamour: their soldiers were small, grinning Mongolian men, who struck terror in their enemies with curved knives called kukris. The Sikhs, too, sounded mildly interesting because it seemed that they had some strange religion which forbade them to cut their hair or shave their faces. But the British officers of the rest, Baluchis, Punjabis, Pathans, Rajputs, Dogras, Mahrattas, Garhwalis, were lumped together under the heading of 'black infantry' people to be regarded with tolerant pity. --The Vanished Army by Tim Carew Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 126 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1972 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com