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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [95r] (189/336)
The record is made up of 1 volume (168 folios). It was created in 1982?. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
This transcription is created automatically. It may contain errors.
93
brownish fluid with bits of stock floating in it which one of the old women
had poured out of a vessel that had been standing amid the eni ers of the fire.
I had it thrown away and then had the vessel washed and filled with clean
water and waited for it to boil. My ideas of cleanliness seemed to my audi
ence to be both irritating and ridiculous. When at last the water was ready,
I set to work on the wounds. It was an unpleasant and difficult task but at
the end of an hour they were reasonably clean and I applied an antiseptic
lotion I had brought with me from Aden and bound them up as best I could.
The lad and I were both exhausted by the time I had finished and I made no
attempt to clean the rest of his body. That was not immediately necessary
and could wait until another day. I looked around and noticed for the first
time that the hovel was crowded with people who had squeezed into the room to
enjoy the entertainment. I lost my temper and drove them out and then per
suaded the boy's elder brother to prepare a shelter for him on the roof of the
building in the fresh air. The family worked willingly and in a short time
we had a comfortable sheltered place arranged and I had him carried gently up
and settled on some old blankets. I gave hir some clean cloth with which to
cover himself instead of his own greasy rags and promised to send him some
i, in t . . I
I had only been in my room a few minutes when a messenger arrived to ask if I
would go and see a man who had been shot through the leg six months previously
and had been bedridden ever since. I had had enough of dirt and wounds for
one day but I could not refuse and followed the messenger down a narrow street
of the town to a half-finished stone tower in the second storey of which, in
semi-darkness, I found a middle-aged man lying on a country-made wood and rope
bed with a dreadfully swollen leg. It seemed that when he had been shot
through the leg just above the knee in some tribal fight, the Royal Air
Force had offered to fly him to Aden for treatment in the hospital but he had
refused and had been carried to his present resting place by his relatives.
Some local person had put a rough splint on the leg, made of two peices of
wood bound round with coarse string. He had kept this contraption on for two
months and when it was taken off the leg-; began to swell until it had reached
the condition in which it was in when I saw him. I had the cloth over the
upper part of the thigh removed and examined the wound. I found he had
healed cleanly both where the bullet had entered the thigh and also where it
had come out after breaking the bone. The fracture itself had mended although
there was considerable distortion and I could feel a hard mass where the bone
About this item
- Content
This volume is a set of typewritten memoirs by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, a retired officer of the British Indian Army and the Indian Political Service The branch of the British Government of India with responsibility for managing political relations between British-ruled India and its surrounding states, and by extension the Gulf, during the period 1937-47. . Hickinbotham held various positions in India and in the Middle East, and these memoirs recount stories from his time in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Quetta, Persia [Iran], Aden, Audhali, Bahrain and North Waziristan.
The memoirs were most likely completed in 1982-83; they cover the period 1927-1982, although most of the chapters relate to events from the 1930s and 1940s.
Hickinbotham writes not only about his official duties but also about various trips taken during periods of leave. Below is a list of the chapters, with a short summary of each:
- 'No Medals This Time' (ff 3-6) – details of an incident in Kuwait involving a dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. that caught fire off the foreshore at Shuwaik [Ash Shuwaykh]
- 'The Silver Coin' (ff 7-10) – thoughts on the use of the Maria Theresa thaler in Arabia
- 'The Golden Dagger' (ff 11-36) – an account of Hickinbotham's unofficial visit to Riyadh to meet Ibn Saud [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] in May 1942
- 'The Brass Pencase' (ff 37-53) – memories of a journey undertaken from Quetta to Europe via north Persia in 1927, travelling in a Fiat Tourer with Colonel T Nisbet (also referred to as the 'purple emperor'), on what Hickinbotham claims to have been the first trip taken by car from India to the Mediterranean
- 'The Bronze Boy' (ff 54-72) – reminiscences of weekends spent in 'Little Aden' (a rocky peninsula seven miles west of Aden), in 1938, and a later visit, in December 1961
- 'The Silver Letter Case' (ff 73-118) – details of a ten-day trip on the Audhali plateau in the summer of 1938, and a return visit, in December 1960 (the chapter ends with remarks on the situation in Yemen generally from the late sixties to the time of writing, i.e. 1982)
- 'The Agate Ring' (ff 119-144) – memories of travelling in Oman during the summer of 1940 and how this compared with Hickinbotham's last visit to the country in 1980
- 'The Pearl Tie Pin' (ff 145-151) – thoughts and anecdotes on the pearl trade in Bahrain
- 'A Point of View' (ff 152-157) – a story told to Hickinbotham, possibly fictional, of a pearl trader in the Gulf who lost his fortune and livelihood, and eventually his sanity
- 'Snakes Alive!!' (ff 158-161) – an account of a near-fatal encounter with a krite [krait] in Waziristan
- 'The Queen's Visit' (ff 162-168) – memories of the Queen's visit to the Aden Protectorate in 1954, where Hickinbotham was serving as Governor.
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (168 folios)
- Arrangement
The volume contains an index of chapter headings on folio 2, which includes some handwritten corrections and annotations.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: the foliation sequence (used for referencing) commences at the first folio with 1, and terminates at the last folio with 168; these numbers are written in pencil, are circled, and are located in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. side of each folio. An additional mixed foliation/pagination sequence is also present in parallel between ff 3-168.
Condition: The original plastic comb binding ring has been replaced with a wider one to facilitate flat opening of the volume. Polyester film covers have been added to protect the first and last folios.
- Written in
- English in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [95r] (189/336), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F226/13, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100094411638.0x0000be> [accessed 19 June 2026]
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Copyright: How to use this content
- Reference
- Mss Eur F226/13
- Title
- '"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE'
- Pages
- 1r:168v
- Author
- Hickinbotham, Sir Tom
- Usage terms
- The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.