'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' [‎39r] (77/118)

amount of rain during August, had cooled things down considerably, so that
I hoped to get Jane and the children down from Quetta towards the end of
September instead of their having to wait another month. There had been
married couples in Mekran before, including, of course, the Gardiners, but
Christopher and Elizabeth were the first European children ever to live there,
and probably the last, as my eventual successor was an Indian.
The house was built on a large mound with the garden at the foot o^ it,
and we had a small swimming bath and a squash court. In a letter to my
sister Bill at the end of August I wrote ’’This place is probably far
more like the conventional picture you have of India than most places I have
been to so far. There are masses of palm trees (96 different varieties of
dates) and hyen a s and jackals with the odd cheetah in the background. Snakes
a few, but I hope not too many. There are bare hills in the distance and
rather rocky desert in the foreground beyond the datepalms but there are about
seven miles of the latter in a belt on either side of the river bed, so we
have some greenery, and actually quite a nice garden of our own down below
the house, alongside the river where we Srew most kinds of vegetables. The Rivei
like most Indian rivers, has no water in it except at floodtime and uhen it has
too much. This adds to life’s complications and had I come here a day later
I should probably have had to spend a week or so on the far bank before I
could get across. ?fow, only four weeks later, except for a trickle in the
middle it is dry as a bone and I hope will remain so for some time".
In September I went up to Quetta, partly on business to make arrangements
for dealing with the aftermath of the flood, and partly for pleasure. We spent
ten days with the Pettigrews, who were still at the Staff College, and in the
intervals of my official work, had quite a gay time, including dances at the
Club and the Staff College. Jane’s mother arrived on the 14th and on the 16th
we all set out for Panjgur, arriving late on the evening of the next day after
a rather exhausting journey, particularly on the second day when the ■>
as Jane remarked, was either inches deep in sand or strewn with large boulders
We celebrated Christopher's fourth birthday on the 19th September, and
managed a cake and candles, but of course with no other children there except
for one year old Elizabeth, it was not a very exciting party. The aya wen
down with malaria as soon as we arrived, so Jane was hard put to it looking
after the children and trying to unpack and arrange the house to her _
satisfaction all at the same time. Mosquitoes were still rife but at nig
we slept in mosquito-proof wire cages, set on concrete plinths m the garden,
so that we got the benefit of any breeze there was and were less restricted
than under an ordinary mosquito net.
I had hoped to take the family with me on my long tour to the coast
in October, the furthest point of which was to Jiwani, three hundred miles
away, in the extreme South West corner of Mekran, only a mi e s ° ?
Persian Border and right on the Sea coast.There was an and Amenc n
aerodrome there, whicS was also a staging post for British Overseas Airways,
and the plan was that Mrs. Hamilton should fly f ^ om . ^ a ^ h j amnese
thence to Deoli, where she was in charge of the family wing of the Japanese
Internment Camp. However, unfortunately, just before we were due uo leave