War Post

Indian Cavalry Transport, September 1916, on the Albert-Amiens Road, France. Via the Wilfred-Owen Digital Archive and the Imperial War Museum.

The stories of soldiers returning home from Iraq to divorces, separations, depression, and PTSD are not unique to the current conflict, perhaps, only the latest version in the narrative of the soldier-husband going off to fight, writing to his wife, and returning home only to find that it all has changed. Hold up the experience of going to and returning from Iraq now to other wars of the last few hundred years - the "summer soldier," Civil War Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs, and Indian men fighting in France and Iraq for the British army.  Where do their stories converge and contrast? Iraq veteran/writer John Crawford, whom I just mentioned below, told an interviewer in Stop Smiling about his return home:

"Your relationships go to shit, nobody has a job, nobody’s going to school, so you’re just getting trashed every night…
…You’re talking to someone you know real well, but you’re a total stranger. You’re not having any of the same experiences. You’re not watching any of the same TV or listening to the same music. She’s talking about a traffic jam, and you’re talking about a firefight."

Historian David Omissi’s other fine book on the Indian Army during the Great War, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army 1860-1940, presents pieces of Indian soldier narrative not far off from the now-familiar agonies of American men returning from Iraq. The following is an excerpt on Indian soldier morale both in France and Mesopotamia.

More and more letters from men in the trenches betrayed ‘undeniable evidence of depression,’ while those written by the wounded from British hospital were often hopeless in tone. ‘Many of the men show a tendency to break into poetry,’ remarked the censor, ‘which I am inclined to regard as a sign of mental disquietude. Of 220 letters from injured soldiers examined by the censor in January 1915, only fifteen displayed what he termed ‘an admirable spirit.’ Twenty-eight had been written by despairing men who clearly regarded themselves as dead already; many of the remainder gave a ‘melancholy impression of fatalistic resignation.’ Morale picked up a little in the summer of 1915, but another general collapse was clearly imminent in the autumn as the weather cooed and victory seemd as distant as ever. Rather than expose the troops to a second morale-battering winter on the Western Front, the authorities sent the two infantry divisions to Mesopotamia where the fighting was arguably less fierce and its outcome less vital…

…Bad news from India compounded the worries of the men. They learned of the plague which afflicted the Punjab in the spring of 1915. Men grew anxious for the well-being of their families when they heard, second hand, that ‘the rain has spoiled the crops, and in the Doab the dacoits have ruined the place.’ One soldier’s wife told him bluntly, ‘I have been starving for lack of food.’ Long separations strained marriages, and by July 1915 many letters were filled with conjugal reproaches. One man was warned, ‘your honour is in danger. If you are a Pathan, and have any pride, look to you wife.’ Betrothals were broken off, and some wives, despairing that their men would ever return, took new husbands. ‘When our thoughts turn to our homes our hearts become soft like wax,’ wrote one Muslim trooper.

David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860-1940 (London, 1994), 115-116.

SGT Steve Pink filming in front of a Humvee (SenArt Films / Scranton/Lacy Films)

Before their deployment to Iraq in late 2004, a few National Guardsmen were given digital video cameras by a small film studio. Their collected footage is The War Tapes, a documentary that won at the Tribeca Film Festival and that is currently showing in New York City, with a set of premieres around the country today. Recording their experience of war by handheld DV camera, from a base tent or from the seat of a Humvee, these soldiers are another example of the extending narrative of war, from print letters, to blogs, to footage shot by the soldiers.

Watch the full trailer here. Film clips are avaiable on the official website, but I’ve chosen to link to one clip—Hot Side of Beef—which depicts soldiers burning a dead cow on a the side of the road, a precaution against a possible roadside bomb.

P.S.
Richard Prouty on One-Way Street rightly contrasts the War Tapes cow-burning clip with Ginga Singh’s 1916 letter from Iraq: being forced to eat horses and mules during the Ottoman army’s five-month siege of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force at Kut-al-Amara, south of Baghdad. That siege ended in the surrender and harsh captivity of thousands of British-Indian soldiers. Here’s the letter, as posted last week.

Gunga Singh (Sikh) to Dafadar Jaswant Singh (attached to 6th Cavalry, France)

16th Cavalry Depot
Lucknow
21st April 1916

The 7th Brigade is surrounded in Mesopotamia. Attempts have been made to rescue them, but without success. There was a fight on 6th March and heavy losses to us in he attempt to relieve them. Some men of ours are in the besieged force, twenty in number. They have eaten their horses and mules. They have a quarter of a pound of flour each per diem. We are hopeful of being sent to join the relieving force. [Letter passed]

David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 178. 

The Indian soldiers’ experience in World War I Mesopotamia forms half of the base of this site; American soldiers now in Iraq are the other half. Capturing narratives of those soldiers is the goal of this research. So far, against the sparsity of Indian letters, the personal record of American soldiers is that much more extensive and, in degrees, accessible. Indian mail was subject to censorship by British officials, or worse, to harsh combat and captivity in Kut, Baghdad, Mosul. Even if he survived the campaign, it wasn’t as though a soldier returned to the Punjab where a book deal was waiting.

In contrast, then, American letters, emails, blogs, and books standout for their instant permanence. The New Yorker devotes a recent issue to soldier letters (having already profiled a soldier-poet), while the National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming trains soldiers to be writers, blog posts from Iraq supplement intermittent letters, and bookstores stack and sell amped-up soldier memoirs.

Not that all of this forces a public imagination. Even with all the modern information and narrative, this war is often ignored or briefly forgotten day-to-day with front page dispatches from Baghdad a regular, consistent sight. What allows for this separation between war information and an articulated public attention to it? Is it the commonly thought of numbness to a glut of war coverage? Or, something more? Journalists file daily print and video reports, but the new fact is that soldiers are writing. Part of my question is who is reading them; the other part is the effect of reading narratives of war.  

On Thursday, I wondered where the voices to the major events of Britain’s Mesopotamian campaign were, acknowledging the value of David Omissi’s collection of letters against the stacks of history books that detail and dissect the war via the Government of India, London, and the memoirs of British generals and high officers on the ground.

Here are more excepts from Omissi’s book, three that give at least some voice to the thousands of Indian soldiers besieged at Kut along with commanding General Townshend, soldiers who then became Ottoman prisoners of war. Their experience as prisoners is vague. Again, British accounts exist of captivity after Kut, but their authors are mostly officers who received far better treatment than the ranks of the Poona Division (the 6th Indian Division). Over half of the soldier who surrendered at Kut died in captivity afterwards, some in prisons in Baghdad, Mosul, and elsewhere, and others in the desert between those cities, casualties of grueling marches. General Townshend, meanwhile, was sent to live in comfortable "captivity" near Constantinople. He was knighted by George V in 1917 while still a prisoner, for his service at Kut.

Gunga Singh (Sikh) to Dafadar Jaswant Singh (attached to 6th Cavalry, France)

16th Cavalry Depot
Lucknow
21st April 1916

The 7th Brigade is surrounded in Mesopotamia. Attempts have been made to rescue them, but without success. There was a fight on 6th March and heavy losses to us in he attempt to relieve them. Some men of ours are in the besieged force, twenty in number. They have eaten their horses and mules. They have a quarter of a pound of flour each per diem. We are hopeful of being sent to join the relieving force. [Letter passed]

David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 178.

Risaldar-Major Kalandar Khan Bahadur to Risaldar Khurshed Ali Khan (Hindustani Muslim, 20th Deccan Horse, France)

7th Lancers
Poona Division (6th Indian Division)
Bombay, 5th Mary 1916

It is with great regreat that I tell you that our besieged for in Kut-al-Amara (of which our squadron formed a part) surrendered on 28th April after a five months’ siege, owing to want of provisions. They fought to the last with the greatest gallantry. There were 9,000 of them. It was a great grief to all that relief could not reach them and that all our efforts were in vain. The greatest regret of all is that our squadron with all the Sirdars are prisoners. Risaldar [Ressaidar?] Ajaib Singh and Jemadar Manna Singh were with them, as they were in hospital with wounds and the hospital was taken. [Letter passed]

Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 181.

Karm Singh (Sikh) to Kalyan Singh (Jhelum District, Punjab)
Machine Gun Section
Sialkot Cavalry Brigade
France, 8th June, 1916

It is a matter of very great regret that our brother Chet Singh has been taken prisoner at Kut-al-Amara. Other men from Dhudial [Jhelum District, Punjab] who were with him have also been captured. Well, we should no grieve; nothing is to be gained by grieving. At the end of the war, they will return home alive. [In fact, many of them did not.] All those brave fellows did their duty faithfully to the very end. They deserve the highest praise. This event was written in their fate, and no one could have prevented it.

Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 194-195.

More from David Omissi’s fine collection of Indian soldiers’ letters.

Ressaidar Hushyar Singh (Sikh, 34) to Jemadar Harband Singh (9th Hodson’s Horse, France, 24)
16th Cavalry, Mesopotamia, 30 January 1916

We have got a fine opportunity of fighting. No doubt you are right in thinking that you too are fighting; but you are having a very different time from us, for you have everything you can want while the country here is absolutely uninhabited and desolate. Never mind: when we are winning we are equally indifferent to comfort and inconvenience. [Letter passed]

- David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914-1918 (London: 1999), 144.

Abdul Rauf Khan to Lance Dafadar Abdul Jabar Khan (Hindustani Muslim, 6th Cavalry, France)
21st Combined Field Ambulance, Mesopotamia, 7th March 1916

You know very well that I am not in India. I am here with Force D. You must know very well where Force D is [Mesopotamia]. Since coming here I have met many men who were formerly in France. From them we have heard all about France. In truth you must be very comfortable there, since the ‘public’ there are so civilized, and money, too, is plentiful. The particular part of the world where I am is a strange place. The seasons here are quite different from what you experience anywhere else. We have already had experience of the cold and wet. Now the heat is threatening us from afar. It rains very heavily and the entire surface of the land becomes a quagmire in which the slush is knee deep. When I used to march in this slush, I used to remember God! Since I left India I have not seen a metalled road. Except for date trees which one sees here and there along the course of the river, there is not another tree to swear by. We drink river water. Wells cannot be dug here. Except for the barren, naked plain, there is nothing to see. The soil certainly is fertile, but the ‘public’ here are so thoughtless and careless that they do not make any attempt to till it. The lice infest one’s clothes to such an extent that our hope [of release from them] is in God alone. The summer is coming on gradually. It is stated here that the mosquitoes are enormous, and I have been afraid of them from the beginning.

- Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 160-161.

Adbul Najid Khan (Muslim) to Suliman Khan (3rd Skinner’s Horse, France)
Rohtak, Punjab, 18th March 1916

I had a letter received today from my brother Sadikall Khan from Basrah, three days ago. He says he is constantly ill, and that every few days his health changes. He says also that the heat is unbearable and that the country [Mesopotamia] is the very opposite of France; that he is neither fit to fight nor ill enough to return to India; that, except for dates and the heat, nothing is to be found. Where, he asks, is that France, and those courteous people; where those fine open roads; where all those nice things? In short, this country, he says, is the entire opposite of France. [Letter passed]

- Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, 165.

    The current New Yorker features a cover of entrenched soldiers, one reading by flashlight, and inside 12 pages of soldiers’ letters anchor their "Life During Wartime" issue. A selection from "Dispatches from Iraq: Soldiers’ Stories" can be heard on The New Yorker’s website; if audio tracks of war letters are of interest, more can be heard at the Gilder Lehrman Institute—letters from the American Revolution to the current war.

   From this New Yorker: in 2003, Captain Donna Kahout wrote to members of her Colorado church about fighting on religious land:

   One clear day, I looked down at the rich greens of the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates and pondered over the fact that these were the Tigris and Euphrates that I’d learned about in chruch and school my whole life. Genesis describes the Garden of Eden standing at the headwater of four rivers, two of which are the Tigris and Euphrates. That places the Garden just north of Basa, within sight of where I flew almost daily.

   Abraham, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, the whole displaced Israelite nation, and perhaps even Adam and Eve all trod the ground I was looking down on daily. And I was living in the same desert where the Israelities wandered. We complain about being there for three months—it’s so barren, flat, windy, hot, sandy, and dry—it’s no wonder the Israelites complained during the forty years that they followed God around the Sinai Peninsula between their exodus from Egypt and their entrance into the Promised Land, near Jerusalem.

Indian medical orderlies attending to wounded soldiers on stretchers outside a dressing station, Mesopotamia, 1914-1918.

    While current soldiers remark at a combat zone with Biblical connection, some of the Indian soldiers in Iraq in the 1910s, trodding the same ground, refused to fight against the local population for their own religious reasons. A 1916 letter from a Punjabi Muslim named Fateh Ullah to his friend, Fateh Ahmed, who was stationed in France, relates a friend’s refusal to fight in Mesopotamia:

    We have learnt from Nasir Khan’s letter that his brother Raja Khan has been sentenced by court martial to fourteen years’ imprisonment. This has caused us much grief. The details which he gives are that when the 15th Lancers reach Basra they were ordered to fight against the Turks. They, however, declined to take up arms against their brother Muslims and asked to be sent to some other theatre of war. A court martial was convened and 400 men were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

- David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War (London, 1999), p. 199.