'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎12v] (24/118)

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which seemed to be singularly unprepared for action, at Malta where the
Navy was in some force, and the further East we gos the more ships there
seemed to be. The Kaiser-i-Iiind was a coal-burning ship, so we had to
"coal” at Alexandria and again, I think, at Aden. At any rate we went
ashore at all those places, and passed an Italian troopship in the Suez
Canal.
Once back in Dharmsala one soon fell into the old routine, both of
work and play, and the usual social round. 3y this time, however, I had
begun to hanker for something rather less narrow than peacetime soldiering
in a small and isolated Regimental Station. Hugh Pettigrew had a brother,
Guy, in 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. , and Hugh had told me something of
what that Service did and the vari£d_ territories it covered, and so, after
much heart-searching, for I loved Gurkhas and the Regiment, I decided to
put in for the Political. Only about five regular officers from the Indian
Army and two from the Indian Civil Service were recruited each year, so my
chances of acceptance were fairly slim but it seemed worth trying, and my
C. 0. rather grudgingly agreed to recommend me. I was due to leave for the
Small Arms School at Pachmari, Central India, on the 30th December. The
course there would last about two months, and it was eventually arranged
that I should stop off in Delhi on the way back, to be interviewed by
various senior officers in the Foreign and Political Departments of the
Government of India, to see whether they would put me on their list of
accepted candidates.
The Battalion had been on operations in the Mohmand country in the
N.W.F.P. while I had been away, so the usual trek to Jullundur did not
take place that autumn.
Instead we did company and battalion training at Ranital, down in
tne Kangra Valley. While down there I heard that my spaniel Wendy, left
in Dnarmsala, whom I nad had ever since my Border Regiment days, had
developed paralysis of the hand quarters and died soon after. She had
lairay recently had a large litter, and she was a small dog, and to this
day I think it was just the strain of the puppies which had killed her.
However, someoody in Dharmsala jumped to the conclusion that she must have
had dumb rabies. As a result of this flap I, and a number of others, who 1 d
had close contact with Wendy, had to go dottih to Lahore for anti-rabic
treatment. ihis was a fourteen day course, and extremely painful. In
those days one’s tummy was prodded daily with an enormous syringe, the
size of a large knitting needle, 10 ccs at a time, and by the end of a
fortnight one could hardly stand upright. What made it the worse was
that this all took place during the last half of December '35 ? when Lahore
was an extremely gay place, with parties, races and dances galore. However,
despite na/ing to remain strictly T. T., I managed to enjoy myself, and was
most hospitably entertained by civil and military alike, and finally left
by tne night train for Rachmari on December 3'lst, with various changes
en route, arriving there on January 3rd ’ 36 .