Soldiers are often able to put down the sword and take up a pen; from Julius Caesar to John Hackett. When we were in Wales recently I was introduced to a new-to-me soldier turned wordsmith: John Masters.
He was a successful novelist writing about the Indian Army, in which he served, but more satisfying I think will be his three volumes of memoirs. It’s autobiography but it reads like fiction:
“At five o’clock on February 24th, 1935, snow was falling in thick flurries. The snow blew gustily across the middle air so that I could not always see the men and horses and mules and guns tramping into the hollow eight hundred feet below. Nor could they see me. Now if the Pathan tribesmen of this part ot the North-West Frontier of India decided to attack our little hill-top, their running knifemen could be in among us and out again before I could get a message down to the howitzers and machine-guns that stood ready to support me.”
Stirring stuff that reminds me of North West Frontier, a 1959 film that I first saw at Castle Park. It is a super genre film (people on train under attack) with a starry cast: Kenneth More, Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom, and Wilfrid Hyde-White, who as usual plays himself superbly. If it’s a genre you like (I do) try Night Train to Munich that is remarkably similar to The Lady Vanishes.
So I have high hopes of John Masters’ three volumes: Bugles and a Tiger, The Road Past Mandalay and Pilgrim Son. His Dedication in Bugles is touching. It is from the Foreword to A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language by RL Turner.
” … my thoughts return to you who were my comrades, the stubborn and indomitable peasants of Nepal. Once more I hear the laughter with which you greeted every hardship. Once more I see you in your bivouacs or about your camp fires, on forced march or in the trenches, now shivering with wet and cold, now scorched by a pitiless and burning sun. Uncomplaining you endure hunger and thirst and wounds; and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and wrath of battle. Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous … “
I am terrifically pleased you have found John Masters. The “Savage” series is remarkable for Romantic derring-do to match Kipling or Buchan but also for its being about generations of heroes who are on the spectrum, though their peculiarity is never discussed in those terms. The WW1 adventure is especially rewarding, perhaps in telling a little known story of “native” cavalry regiments in Flanders. You’re right, the autobiography stuff is also very fine.
Masters such an interesting bloke—only young man up before a Sandhurst vetting board calmly answered when asked what his father did replied “…He’s a swineherd in Scotland.”
Masters and Orde Wingate seemingly loathed each others battle plans for Burma and Masters closed down Wingate’s defensive boxes and chindit (jock)columns; but Masters made the best of his command and greatly contributed to final victory. He was a relatively young man when he started to write and could he write.
Caught sight of him once at the old Denver Colorado airport (he lived part of the year in New Mexico and Wyoming). Very much the Gurkha brigadier with just that touch of readiness to command that marks a good leader.