Comrades In Arms - A War Book For India

Text extracted from opening pages of book: COMRADES IN ARMS iaittdlan Soldier defending a wounded British Comrade PREFACE I have read with great pleasure Comrades in Arms and am very pleased to contribute to it a few lines by way of preface. The deeds of the Indian Army, both in past campaigns and in the present great struggle, are too well-known to need eulogy from me. The, record which may be read in the pages that follow is one of glory and self-sacrifice, and present and future soldiers will find in it a source of pride. * - The soldiers of India have in many a hard-fought fight stood shoulder to shoulder with their brother soldiers of other parts of the Empire hence the title Comrades in Arms is most apposite. May the history of their deeds, so vividly depicted by the authors of this little Work, encourage others of the Empire to emulate their endurance and valour. C. C. MONRO, General, Commander-in-Chief in India* CONTENTS PAGE I. A History of the Indian Army I II. A Short History of the First Three Years of the War 49 III. The Adventures of the British Navy in the Great War 100 IV. The Romance of the Air 131 V. Armies and their Commanders 146 VI. The Work of the Red Cross in the War ... 154 VII. Gallant Deeds of Indian Soldiers 166 AUTHORS JOHN TRAVERS. MR. EDMUND CANDLER ( Eye-Witness, Mesopotamia). COLONEL W. P. DRURY, Royal Marines. MAJOR-GENERAL SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, K. C. B., K. C. M. G., D. S. O., C. S. I., G. O. C., Lines of Com munication, Mesopotamia. THE HON. SIR ARTHUR STANLEY, G. B. E., C. B., M. P., Chairman of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John; and J, S. KENNEDY BAXTER. I A HISTORY OF THE INDIAN ARMY For many years tocome the youth of all countries will listen to tales of the Great War and will study its history. Boys who leave school and college and return home to village or city will make a serious mistake if they think that they have the acts of the Great War behind them, safely shut up in the pages of their text-books. Histories give us but a written account of past events, while all around us in our daily lives we see their results and meet their consequences. Indian boys who go to Peshawar, Quetta, Poona, LucknoW, or any large cantonment have the pride and pleasure of seeing Indian regiments, and when they see them it is a misfortune for them to be ignorant of the history of the Indian Army. That army was not born in a day, and it is nearly two hundred years since the time when its first sepoys were enrolled in Madras. The momentous hour when those few recruits became the soldiers of the Honourable East India Company was the result of many eventful years in which most of the great Powers of Europe made adventurous voyages to the coast of India. It is necessary to see clearly how the decision that Eng lishmen should enlist Indians in their forces was arrived at, for from that point the present Indian Army has gradually been developed. It must be remembered that the decision was a mutual one: the East India Company wished to enlist Indians, and the recruits wished to serve them as soldiers. The history of an army is not a history of politics. An army has no politics. It has adventures, it has heroes; but those who would learn from its deeds and traditions all that it can 2 COMRADES IN ARMS teach them of men and great events must not look only for thrilling stories of excitement and battle.Organization, hard daily drudgery, patience, obedience, comparative poverty in peace and hardship ih war, form the life of an Army. Picture the vast land of India in 1526. That year the great Mogul Emperor Babar conquered Delhi, but he was by no means the first formidable visitor. Thirty years before he overran the North a man from Portugal, named Vasco da Gama, made a long voyage and landed on the Malabar Coast. To this very day the little territory called Goa belongs to Portugal. At that period many Europeans sought adventure and wealth by sea, and Holland, having