Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey Read Online Free PDF

command them. If British officers were to be eased out of the Indian Army, that would be impossible. Yet the income from these men's pay and pensions (there were ten Gurkha regiments, each of two battalions) was vital to Nepal's economy. Would the future Government of India want to keep Gurkhas? Congress leaders had often branded them as mercenaries hired solely to suppress Indian freedom. Would the British Government transfer some of the regiments to the British Army, employing them perhaps in Singapore and Hong Kong? The Colonels of several regiments, headed by Gertie Tuker of the 2nd, were, I knew, already intriguing with Members of the British Parliament to ensure that their regiments should be chosen for this transfer. Should I try to do some intriguing on behalf of my regiment, the 4th? And if so, in which direction? Was it really in the interests of a Gurkha regiment, as opposed to that of its British officers, to become an appendage of the British Service? Whitehall knew nothing of Gurkhas, and could only teach them bad habits and unnatural attitudes.
    I took a prearranged leave and went up to Ranikhet to assist at the birth of our baby. But doctors are fallible and babies have very little real notion of military punctuality. I spent ten days there while Barbara called her baby all kinds of unkind names and made every effort to deliver herself of it, but without success. Before I returned to Delhi we talked about our future. When my stint in Delhi was finished we had been looking forward to a job in the high mountains. I desperately wanted to work with men again, instead of with paper. One appointment I coveted above all, and Barbara had enthusiastically agreed: commandant of the Gilgit Scouts. But now when I talked of Gilgit she put her hand on my arm and said, 'Jack, I think you should try to get to England.' At first I fought against the idea, but the more I considered the facts the more clearly I saw that she was right. Big decisions were obviously about to be made, and they would be made in England, for Parliament and the India Office would remain supreme until India and Pakistan became Dominions, which was due to happen some time in 1948, two years hence. In England I would be in close touch with events and with people who could advise me. I decided to get a posting there if I could.
    There were only two appointments in England for officers of the Indian Army, both of them fortunately of the right rank. One was at the War Office, the other as the Indian Army instructor at the Staff College, Camberley. Officers' postings and reports were in the hands of a general called the Military Secretary, who was responsible directly to the Chief. I had never approached M.S. in my life, for anything. I regarded myself as a professional, ready and able to do whatever was given me to do. I never volunteered and I never refused. But the time had come to assert myself, and I thanked God for the backlog of favourable reports that had accumulated in my file during the war, and for the rows of ribbons on my chest: plenty of other officers wanted to get to England. Then I went to the Military Secretary and asked to be given the Camberley job as soon as it fell vacant. Next day the general sent for me and told me the job was mine, starting in October.
    He added with a smile, 'On the basis of your record, you could have had anything you wanted.'
    Fine, I thought, thanking him as I went out, but what I wanted was the old life, leading to command of a battalion of my own regiment, mixed with spells with the Gilgit Scouts here and tours on the staff there. But all that was being taken firmly and finally out of my reach, to be as irrevocably lost as my first youth. I must find a new longing, a new love.
    Martin was born while I was in London on a flying trip to take some Top-Secret-Super-Hush-Hush-Eyes-of-God-Only documents from the Auk to Lord Montgomery, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Four days later I was in a bus winding