Light shades of sombre

Lt-Gen Baljit Singh (retd)

There are never any “good” wars. According to recorded history of World War I, India alone lost 78,187 men and another 67,000 were wounded. Yet, this dreadful carnage was wiped clean from mankind’s memory a mere 21 years later, as it started yet another world war which only ended with nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

When the news of the Great War reached India in August, 1914, the bulk of the Army were in and around the North West Frontier. In words of a subaltern of the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, “It seemed to most that we should be stuck where we were for the whole war....missing out on active service in Europe”. But forty-eight hours later they had orders to mobilise and get down to Karachi, within 15 days. In almost all cases this seemed “an impossible task.....our outpost were stretched over sixty miles and we had to march another eighty miles to railhead.... I was sent out with a bag of rupees to hire every donkey and camel I could find...... the loyalty and fighting spirit of the battalion was more than ever manifested by the way every sick man formed up and tried to persuade me, he was fit to go.”

The subaltern (John Smyth), later brigadier, has left an endearing account of Sepoy Harnam Singh in his book, The Only Enemy (by Brigadier Sir John, VC Smyth), first published in 1959. Harnam Singh was bedridden with malaria, but “three days later, towards the end of a particularly trying march, I looked around at the men and thought I saw Harnam Singh black with sweat...but swinging along jauntily......when we got into camp later I asked the Indian officer if I had seen aright..... ‘how has he possibly marched all this way’?” Smyth was amused to learn ‘Oh, opium — he’s non-opium eater and the effect of opium on him is therefore very great...we give him a little before the march and put him to bed as soon as it is over and then do the same next day.... Harnam Singh managed to get to Karachi......and went through a year of trench warfare in France’!” 

The 15th Ludhiana Sikhs were among the first Indian troops to disembark at Marseilles. That being their first venture outside India, they were bewildered as they marched for several days through an environment totally alien even to their imagination.  

There was little by the way of logistical support. And “The Sikh is a cleanly creature and gets under a pump at every opportunity no matter how cold the weather or the water. After the dusty march they took down their hair and beards and set about having a good wash. This absolutely brought the house down and there were delighted shrieks of “Voila les femmes Indiennes!” After a while this curiosity, good natured no doubt, became rather embarrassing and the battalion were glad to arrive at the live battle zone”.

The battalion had mobilised cotton uniforms and one blanket per head. “However, the men soon got an issue of one warm vest and one long-john.... They didn’t quite understand the underclothes at first and, on the day were issued, I came out of my tent just in time to prevent the Subedar Major “walking out” clad in a thick pink vest and pink long-john!”

On 24th October, 1914, the battalion was ordered to deploy in a “gap in the line.....we had a Scottish battalion on our right and some French on our left. It was, of course, very difficult for the Indian soldier at first to distinguish between French and Germans.....I quite appreciated this difficulty and borrowed a French soldier and a German prisoner and paraded them slowly around in front of each company. Nevertheless, I regret to say that the first people we shot in the Great War were, undoubtedly, French.” 

Shortly, the battalion was truly battle-blooded on 18 May, 1915, when Lt Smyth leading 10 volunteers in a near suicidal mission emerged with a VC and 10 I D S Ms (posthumous) for his comrades (including Harnam Singh of the opium episode) in the same mission. And two days later, the Czar conferred on Smyth the exceptional George Cross for “the most valorous deed” of the year. A few days later, “we had a message that an Indian maharaja (of Tikkari) was coming to spend a few days in our trenches. He rolled up in a smart uniform and beautifully polished boots with an orderly carrying his kit. He was given a dugout and retired to sleep. Early next morning, clad in a pair of blue silk pyjamas, he came and asked if he could have a place to snipe from. I gave him a little cul-de-sac where he would be in no one’s way, told him to be careful as the German trench was only forty yards from ours and then started off on my rounds and forgot about him.

“Shortly afterwards I heard some dull clangs followed by roars of rage from the German trench. I peeped over the top and saw that six of their steel loop-holes had been knocked out. This seemed rather queer as the .303 bullet generally used to ping off them. I suddenly thought of the maharaja and went along to see what he was at. There he was in his lovely pyjamas with a 500 express elephant rifle (strictly against every convention of war) chortling with joy and methodically knocking out every Boche loophole within range. I hated having to stop him but we had to go to ground in any case as the Boche put over an angry mortar concentration to register their disapproval.” 

Smyth was given a five days’ leave before the battalion embarked for Egypt. As he prepared to board a return train at Victoria station, he was accosted by the wives of two newly-weds of the 15th, who asked “if they could come along with me (Smyth). With the feckless assurance of youth I said ‘yes’”. Never mind the squabbles with the railways and dodging the military police in France “but I enjoyed the whole thing enormously until we got to Marseilles and I had to report to the CO... ‘Well boy’ he grunted ‘had a good leave?’ ‘Yes Sir...but I have a confession to make’... I got the biggest telling-off ... the CO, I knew, was susceptible to flattery ... I managed to blurt out “They thought you might be able to fix it for them, Sir” and I saw a gleam in his eyes and he said “But tell me this. Just how the bloody hell does a subaltern, even a subaltern of the 15th Sikh, manage to bring two women right across France in the middle of a World War?”

I had read this book in 1960 but could not discover who the maharaja of the silk pyjamas was. Then in the 1990s, a frequent visitor to our home from the Kapurthala royal family traced out that the unsung hero of that episode. It was Gopal Saran Singh of Tikkari. But where is Tikkari? Again by chance, in 2003 I acquired the latest Oxford School Atlas and lo and behold, Tikkari showed up, not far from Bodh Gaya! But why had the maharaja sought out the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs only, on the Western Front? His grandson Robin Tikkari has no clue.

According to Robin, Tikkari’s jagir was conferred on the family by Alivardi Khan, the Mughal Governor of Bengal, for loyal services rendered in battles against the East India Company. And that the gentleman in silk pyjamas was, at the time, an honorary ADC to Field Marshal Douglas Haig. In recognition of material help during the war, post-Armistice he was appointed an honorary Captain in the Indian Army at a ceremony in St James Palace, on 19 September, 1919. The family still has the parchment signed by the King.

A hundred years later, as we commemorate the memory of soldiers who fought the World War I, we should also salute their grit and valour against fearful odds, driven solely by their intangible commitment to “Honour, Oath of Fidelity and Loyalty to Comrades”.