Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (2 page)

The war indeed over, my airborne brigade died stillborn, and within a week I received an order posting me to General Headquarters of the Army in India. By early October we were installed in a comfortable bungalow on the outskirts of New Delhi. It had thick stone walls, a wide verandah, half an acre of lawn, several shade trees, and some imposing castor oil bushes. Since India was still in the throes of war austerity we managed to run it with only seven full time servants, plus two or three part-time, and an orderly lent to me by the 9th Gurkhas, who were in Delhi Cantonments. From here I bicycled two miles to work every morning. In the cold weather I often bicycled home for lunch, but when the temperature reached the 90s I gave that up. I had a good job, with good pay, but decided that we — just — could not afford a car. This gave me an odd feeling, because in 1939, as a bachelor adjutant, I had also had a good job with good pay... and had decided that I — just — could not afford a car.

Eight cities of Delhi spread over the plain beside the river Jumna, the latest being Imperial New Delhi of Sir Edward Lutyens, finally completed in 1930. The others are scattered about it, ruins of stone and rubble among the dry fields and scrub desert. In the day of the new city's completion the then-Viceroy had shown the visiting Clemenceau its wonders, and at the end had asked the old Tiger what he thought of it. Clemenceau replied. 'Magnificent! It will certainly make the finest ruin of the lot.' And, because there was so little of the bustle and movement of modern life, New Delhi already gave the impression of being deserted and in decay. A few
tongas,
a few bicycles, a few taxis, passed up and down the wide roads. A few pedestrians walked under the trees planted at their verges. It was as if a handful of eccentrics had decided to live in a museum.

The principal buildings, of a pink sandstone, are big in size and mongrel in design, for the architect tried to weld together the Hindu and Muslim traditions, even as the Government tried to weld together the Hindu and Muslim peoples. He was also determined to fit in somehow those classic Greek formulae which the West regards as the only ones suitable for these monuments to man's importance. The results are unfortunate. To a man standing on the King's Way, a wide unpeopled avenue sweeping up from the Indian Arch of Victory, the buildings of the Secretariat outline the sky and the moving cloud background in a fine lift of Doric simplicity. Behind, above and to the sides a rash of turrets and domes and things like stone sun helmets pimple this firm line. I think it would have been better for us English to have bowed no whit to India and built like honest alien conquerors, as we had done in Calcutta a century before. There, the principal buildings of authority are great foursquare Georgian houses with high ceilings and thick walls. They look out on English lawns shaded by Indian trees and lit by English flowers. They have become a part of India as the new capital never will, for they are unselfconsciously at ease while New Delhi fairly creaks with the cerebration and uncertainties of the latter-day Empire which built it.

My work lay in one of the huge Secretariat buildings, where I was in charge of M.O.1 (Section One of the Directorate of Military Operations, General Staff). My responsibilities were actual operations of war, and the military aspects of foreign policy. G.H.Q. India had not held control of the war against the Japanese since South East Asia Command had been set up two years earlier, so the 'operations' part of my job meant in practice only action against the tribes of the North West Frontier, and the fundamentals of operational planning. At this period, when we were not fighting a war (even the Frontier was quiet) but trying to tidy up after one, the 'policy' side was more interesting. For example, the Government of India received a query from the British Government in London:
What are India's views on the future of the Burma-Siam railway, built by the Japanese during their occupation of those countries?
The External Affairs Department, which had received the query, sent a copy to every branch of the Government which might be remotely concerned, and asked for their comments. In the Defence Department this memo ended on my desk.

Since I was dealing with matters of the highest policy, nearly everything I wrote was seen by my immediate boss (the Director of Military Operations), then by one of the Deputy Chiefs of the General Staff, then by the Chief of the General Staff, then the Commander-in-Chief. On really universal matters, it went to the Viceroy. Being that close to the centre of authority as a mere lieutenant-colonel had two sides to it. Officers of my rank in other sections could do much on their own authority; I could do practically nothing. On the other hand, my ideas were sure of a hearing, and there were really no boundaries to my thinking, since M.O.1 could initiate anything.

It was hard work, learning as I went. Since graduating from the Staff College in 1942, I had spent my entire time with troops, either in command or as an operations officer in the field. The largest formation in which I had served was a division, which contained about 17,000 men. The India Command contained over a million, and I was dealing with policy, not men. The problems were of a different kind from anything I had faced before. In the case of the Burma-Siam railway, for instance, the British Foreign Office was shortly going to be negotiating with Siam, and needed to know India's interests. The railway, the infamous Death Railway, had been built by the labour of prisoners of war (mostly British and Australian) 20,000 of whom had died on it under Japanese whips and starvation. It now formed a link which could carry rice from South Burma to the China Sea without the long haul round the Malay Peninsula. But its building had not been a proper economic venture: was it fair to allow it to compete with Indian shipping, and perhaps throw India lascars out of work? The materials belonged to someone — but to whom? They were certainly badly needed for the rehabilitation of India's railways, severely strained by the war. All this was of some peripheral interest to M.O.1, but I could rely on the civil branches to bring up these points. My thinking narrowed down to this: would the continued existence of the railway help or detract from India's ability to defend herself in a future war; or didn't it matter a damn?

To answer this sort of question (on one sheet of paper, with a six-hour deadline) I sometimes had to find and study files going back nearly 150 years, for there was a continuity of policy, and most of my problems had occupied wiser heads than mine. I would dig up minutes composed by Warren Hastings, Dalhousie, Dufferin, Curzon, Roberts, or Kitchener, and memoranda written by Chief Secretaries and lieutenant-generals long dead and forgotten. I would try to grasp the fundamentals behind what they had written, and then think whether political or military progress had vitiated the old position. I tried to weigh the present and future postures of the great powers, and of India's neighbours. Then I drafted; and, if there was time, sent the draft round to one or two other sections, including, almost always, the Financial Adviser. Then I pruned. Then I rewrote. Then my paper was typed; and then it went to my boss, Roddy McLeod.

Roddy was a bald, burly, youngish brigadier of Royal Artillery, with a bulging forehead, a magnificently incisive intelligence, a markedly abrasive personality, and a total inability to suffer fools gladly, or even glumly. Many in the army had an equal inability to suffer Roddy, but drive and sheer brainpower such as his don't often come with automatic charm and silk steering. Having my papers gone over by Roddy was rather like being bombarded by a howitzer at five feet range.

What does this sentence mean?
He looks up at me. I have to agree, the sentence is woolly.
Make it clear... Redundant. You've said this already.
Another sentence to come out.
Are you sure of this figure? Where's the authority? The Chinese didn't have any prisoners working on the railway, did they? Then don't mention them. Don't muddy the issue... This is babu-ese. Write English, for Christ's sake.

I return to my office, and re-draft the paper. Words come to have exact meanings, and the putting together of them becomes an art and a science.

The Chief doesn't have time to work out your meaning. You've got to make it clear.

I use fewer and fewer adjectives and adverbs, and aim at drafting a paper without any at all. I try to choose verbs that are forceful without being flamboyant, and will do the work of extra words.

Don't ask the Viceroy questions, Jack. Tell him the military alternatives and the probable consequences of each, with a single clear recommendation.

I found time to launch out on my own. I had fought on the North West Frontier, off and on, for four years before the war. Since then enormous changes had taken place in weapons, communications, mobility. Could we not now improve the old Frontier system? We were spending a hundred million rupees a year on the army up there. Surely there were too many heavy-footed soldiers, not enough reliance on the air, on the Scouts (tribal light infantry)? I worked on a plan which could save eight or nine millions, police the Frontier better, and increase local responsibility. But it would mean a major change in Frontier policy a change in the
civil
policy, too, perhaps. Who was I, a mere soldier, to suggest such a thing?

Damn it, I was chief of M.O.1!

I drafted a paper... too long, twenty pages... cut it to ten... to four... Finally got it into two sheets of paper, double spaced.
Object. How to achieve it. Preparations necessary. Estimated costs and savings.

Roddy accepted it at once. Next day my proposal started for the heights, and I knew the heady excitement of seeing it cheered on all the way, though now of course it was no longer mine. Successively it was the plan of the Directorate of Military Operations, of the General Staff, and with the Chief's agreement, of the Army in India. The Experimental Frontier Brigade came into being... and my child flew the nest. As practically everyone else became involved, M.0.1 moved to other fields.

My job called for me to travel extensively, and if it hadn't I would have invented reasons to go anyway. I went to Burma once and Assam twice. On one of these latter journeys Lieutenant-General Tuker was on the plane. Knowing that I was in M.O. he came down the aisle and handed me a thickish folder. 'Read that,' he said. 'When you get back to Delhi, see that the Chief sees it, will you?'

'Yes, sir,' I said, wondering why he hadn't given it to the Chief himself.

The paper was a brilliantly worked out plan to give Burma and India independence but keep under British dominion a circle of Mongol peoples — the Mongol Shield, he named it — all round them, from Gilgit and Hunza in the north-west to the Shan States in the south-east. As an idea — welding together mountain-dwelling minorities who have always been hostile to and often victimized by the plainsmen below, who are of different religions and cultures — it was great. As a practical proposal it was a waste of time. It had no conceivable chance of fruition. Back in Delhi I gave it to the Chief, as ordered. Field-Marshal Lord Auchinleck; then General Auchinleck, and universally known as the Auk, glanced up at me — 'What's it like?'

'Er, interesting,' I said. 'But I don't think it has any practical application.'

'I haven't got to read it, then?'

'No, sir.'

But he did; for a week later he sent for me, gave the paper back, and said with a shake of his heavy head, 'Gertie Tuker is a very strange man.'

In November I accompanied the Chief into South Persia. The origins of this trip lay in the armistice terms that had ended the war. Under them all foreign powers had agreed to remove their troops from Persia by March 21, 1946. (Persia had been occupied by Russia and Britain, simultaneously, in August 1941, because the old Shah was helping the Nazis.) By late 1945 the Russians still had over two divisions in Azerbaijan, North West Persia, and apparently intended to keep them there indefinitely. The only other foreign troops in the country were the Indian Long Range Desert Squadron, stationed at Zahidan, in the extreme south-east of the country. If the Russians kept their 40,000 men in one end, should we not keep our 140 in the other, as a matter of principle? Cables began to fly between Delhi, London, and Washington. The Chief decided to go and have a look for himself and since he was going to take his DC3 there would be room for quite a large party. I found good reason (major policy matter, old boy!) to go with him. Also in the party were the Countess of Carlisle, who was queen bee of the Women's Auxiliary Corps (India), her aide Betty Collins (a lieutenant-colonel, like myself), and a few other staff officers.

Keeping well in the background, I watched with delight the evident nervous awe, in the presence of the Auk, of the various lesser generals we picked up en route. As we set off from Quetta on the last leg my spirits rose. For three hours we flew over a savagely exhilarating tangle of deserts and mountains, the Afghan plain to the north, the Indian Ocean far to the south. At Zahidan's bleak airstrip we were met by the local Persian general, and by Major Tim Waddilove, commanding our Squadron. Tim and I had been fellow students at the Staff College, and greeted each other warmly. Dinner was in a Nissen hut, the night bitter cold outside, the Persian stars as fierce as tiger's eyes. An American major had come from Teheran to meet us, having travelled two days in a truck loaded with vodka and caviare. After dinner we seemed to have the makings of a good regimental guest night, and I let myself go. With the American major I danced on a table top and sang 'Casey Jones'. Then I started on 'Who'll take the mail to Dead Man's Gulch?' a mass recitative with penalties for errors. The vodka loosened tongues, the mistakes came faster and faster and soon everyone except the Chief and a major-general from Quetta were helpless with laughter. The Chief was sitting back with a happy grin; the major-general's face was frozen in apprehension (I had called the Chief some outrageous names because he kept stumbling over the Dead Man's Gulch responses) as he waited for a thunderbolt to annihilate me. But I had no fear. I admired and liked the Auk, and I had no reason to be afraid of him. I was too junior for his opinion, whatever it may have been, to have a permanent effect on my career, whereas he could pension the major-general off with a word. That night I felt, too, that the Auk needed a respite from his enormous responsibility. His power encouraged sycophancy and his wisdom, quite apart from his four (soon to be five) stars, meant that he was always surrounded by a rather funereal respect. I thought he would enjoy the follies of young men in the old regimental way. So Waddy and I spared him nothing, except a few acts unsuitable for Ladies' Guest nights. After a couple of hours we collapsed into chairs. The Chief beckoned me and I staggered over to him.