'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' [‎13r] (25/118)

_ ,, I enjoyed .achmari, apart from the rather prolonged after effects
of the rabies treatment, and met a lot of old friends there, some of whom
I / + .J aS J S ! an ^ Sandhurst or on the boat coming out in 1932. News came
oi the death ox George V on January 21st and it seemed like the end of an
era. ^ P u ^ °n black armbands and there was a memorial service on
January 2oth. //ork continued as usual. I heard from Prof. Ryder, who
said, that Dharmsala was not very exciting. He was solemnly saying "Good
evening to himself m Mess every night, when at that time he was the
only person dining in. However, as he was due to go home on long leave
two months later he was quite hapoy.
... ,, ena of zhe c °urse I went and had my interviews in Delhi
with the Political.Secretary, Sir Bertram Glancy, and various other
senior Politicals in the Secretariat there. Things seemed to go fairly
well and I got the impression that I would be accented, but might have
to wait for a year or more as I was not yet 24 and" they usually did not
take people in until they were 26 .
From Delhi I went to Amritsar to join Jock Forrest as second in
command of our detachment in Fort Govindgarh and stayed there until the
beginning of April when the company returned to Dharmsala. Amritsar was
interesting and I made a point of visiting Jallianwala Bagh, the site of
the so-called massacre, and all the area round about. I think that the
filmJ’Gandhi" gave a most misleading impression of what actually happened
and ^here was no indication at all of the events which led up to the
tragedy.
In 1936 we had just one company of about 150 men in the Fort.
Fortunately, we were never faced with a situation similar to that of the
13tn April 1919? but had such an event taken place, I have no doubt we
should have had to deal with it in much the same way, though I hope only
after due warning, and with greater fire control. Only those who"have
actually had to face vast mobs of 10,000 or more with a tiny force are
really in a position to judge what must be done in such cases.
By the time we got back to Dharmsala the 1st Bn. had returned from its
Frontier Tour so with both Battalions present the place seemed quite
crowded. Apart from work and the usual games there was rather more than
the normal social activity with two lots of Battalion wives competing.
I took my promotion exam (for Captain) in the autumn, and passed it,
which was just as well as one of the conditions for being accepted into
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. was that one must pass one’s promotion
exams within one year of being appointed, and I cannot conceive how one
could have done this once one had been seconded from the Army.
Early in October 193 6 the C. 0. received a telegram from New
Delhi to say that I had been selected for appointment to the Political
Department of the Government of India with effect from the 1 st October
1936, and was to be posted as Under Secretary to the Hon'ble the Agent