'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' [‎11r] (21/118)

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snci lands a ctu t ns bot'torn witii no sunvivons
The previous year I had had a similar experience or. the Kashmir
road going down irom Murree to the Jhelum River'crossing. On that
™:“ We w r ere T dri li nS 1 merrily al0ns With a fi - h-cted foot drop on
in front of tr The dr y ^ ° Ur WheelS bowlin S do '« the road
in iron,, of us. xhe driver managed to draw into the uphill side of the
road and we found that the rear near wheel was missing! the main wLT
r m S et y a Sh T ed 0ff - We mana S ed to recover the M ont
a^d -o sit by tne roao until a lorry came along half-an-hour later before
we could scrounge a nut which fitted. In those days in India cars were
i w an far between and by tne time they descended to the stage of being
.axis or mred cars they were more or less tied together with bits of °
string«
On that leave apart from the usual social activities in and around
Srinagar I nad a very good week's trout fishing on the Palgham Aru.
Proi. Ryder and I camped out on the river bank up the Palgham Valley about
•• ThS riVSr WaS f-t flowing and the Ashing
difficult.. 1 omy caught eighteen out of my week's permitted ration of
twenty-four. Actually my biggest catch was my shikari (Kashmiri equivalent
00 a ghillie) whom I caught by the beard in a backward cast, luckiW !ith
no damage at all to his face. ’
he also went up to Gulmarg, about 8,000ft. and played some golf
.here. It was a great place for ski-ing in the winter but I was njver
able to go there then.
Life in Dharmsala. that year followed the usual pattern, early
parades, individual training, office work, soccer and basket ball (Retzmak
rules; with the ^troops, and tennis, squash and shooting up the hill, with
one s crooner omcers. We had, however, one additional pastime in that
we, or rather Bill , Gahan laid down a nine hole golf course round the
parade ground, which gave us all great pleasure though it w a s ex 0 ensive
on balls, cecause if you sliced one down the "khud" you never recovered it.
Early in June 193^ there was great excitement when a telegram
arrived just after early morning parade informing us that our Mess Syndicate
in^wnich there were eight of us, mostly bachelors, had drawn a horse in the~’
oaxcuioa^Derby) Sweepstake. The horse was Baron Munchaussen, which came
in xast I think, but nevertheless we shared about £400 between us, and my
£30 helped to pay for my leave in Kashmir. Some of our more recently
married officers had been persuaded by their wives not to waste their
money on sweepstake tickets, so they were a trifle miffed at our sood
iortune. °
In those days there was no electricity in Dharmsala and no
r i oven of the kerosin oil kind. Consequently we depended on
trie Mess Ice Box to keep things cool. This w a s an outsize insulated box
nun Ji he summer we employed two men full-time to climb up from
0 , 000^1 to tne perpetual snow line at about 13 , 000 ft. to bring"down