When I was a primary student in the 1960s, ‘Remembrance Day’ – or Armistice Day as mother called it – was the opportunity to wear family medals to school. As my parents didn’t have any medals, I wore my grandfather’s. These were different from most other medals at school: they were older and they were from India.
‘Grandpop’, Fred Marsh, had joined the Northern Bengal Mounted Rifles (NBMR) a week after World War I was declared. This was a civil militia unit and most of the members were tea planters like the 23-year-old Fred. However, for the War, the NBMR was ‘embodied’ into the Indian Army.
I did not think of asking what he did during the War. The only story he mentioned when I was a child was that he had some responsibility for provisioning troops including Australians and Englishmen. There was some anxiety to ensure that troops would be provisioned with either Vegemite or Marmite depending on their nationality. Neither wanted the other’s ‘national dish’ which each agreed was unpalatable. Americans, of course, would eat neither.
Getting specific provisions was not easy, so Fred got what he could. An important factor in keeping all the troops happy was to remove any labels from the large tins in which such provisions arrived. This ensured that he could give the Aussies Vegemite and the Englishmen Marmite from the same container.
I liked this story because it suggested he wasn’t involved in any fighting and had a bit of enterprise and humour.
Recently I obtained a copy of memoirs written by a nephew of Fred’s, Bob Clark. Bob was born in Darjeeling to one of Fred’s sisters and the two developed a life-long friendship. His amazing book records three of Fred's NBMR experiences in World War I. I had never heard these stories before so I follow Bob's outline of them.
After Fred enlisted, he was trained as a cavalry officer at Jalpaiguri on the plains below Darjeeling. In February 1915 the still-single Fred spent his pre-embarkation leave with Bob’s family in Faridpur, now in Bangladesh but at that time in India’s East Bengal.
Bob’s father apparently took photographs of Fred in uniform, with five-year-old Bob by his side. Both stood strictly to attention with rifles by their side. At the end of his leave, Fred returned to Jalpaiguri expecting to be sent to a theatre of war. But on the final parade, he was told to report for 'special duties'. And then began an unusual military exercise.
The Panama Canal had been opened in August 1914, but problems had already developed. The Culebra Cut was silting up as the retaining walls were failing. It was decided to plant some water-loving growth as the best chance of holding the soil together. A species of bamboo which grew only in Sikkim – to the north of Darjeeling - was selected as the most suitable.
This bamboo flowered only once in every twenty-five years, but botanists at Kew Gardens, London, had records which suggested it should have flowered recently. The seed would be mature for collection at the time that a hastily organised expedition could arrive. Fred, because of his knowledge of the local languages and managing people, was selected to guide the botanists, three thousand metres above sea level, in Sikkim. As predicted, they found seeds ready for collecting and these were eventually planted on the banks of the Canal.
When that commission was completed, Fred was posted to a Forestry Unit on the borders of Sikkim logging timber for the insatiable requirements of the war machine. He remained there until early 1917 when as a trained cavalry officer he was called to join a unit hastily collected to put down an uprising which began in Malabar on India’s south-west coast. These tensions had been simmering for decades and were presumably heightened during the War as poor Muslim residents of Mophla looked to the head of the Ottoman Empire as their spiritual leader. (Things would come to a head soon after the War.)
The unit which Fred was involved with consisted of five hundred Bengalis. However, they were not trained soldiers, they were labourers from the Kolkata jute mills supervised by a handful of trained officers, presumably including other militiamen. The troops travelled across India by train and then marched out to find the enemy. They met the enraged throng advancing and armed with long spears ‘ten thousand strong’, in Bob’s account which also places the confrontation in Pune.
The Bengali troops had rifles, but they had no experience and little will to fight an angry army which outnumbered them. As the two forces faced each other, Fred considered that his last moments had probably come. The Army began to advance. Suddenly, without a shot fired, the horde turned and fled apparently in confusion.
There must be much more to the story of course, though attempts to find details have so far not been successful. Indeed, at present, it has proven impossible to locate Fred’s war service record. There is a good chance it exists in the Indian archives along with those of hundreds of other ‘embodied’ militia members. The only way to know for sure is to visit. Any reader comments are very much welcomed!
While we are now becoming more aware that significant numbers of Indian soldiers were supporting Britain’s War efforts across the world in both World Wars, there is a largely untold story of Europeans who made their home in India supporting its defence efforts.
Fred was discharged from the Army shortly afterwards and returned to tea planting. Following Bob’s story, this would be about mid-1917. The year was busy for Fred as he married the boss’s daughter, Evelyn Bald, in December. Because of the many men who had not returned from the War, he was appointed, well below the normal age, as manager of the Singla tea garden. Bob visited Fred and Evelyn there for Easter 1918.
But what of the Vegemite / Marmite controversy? Bob didn’t mention it.
There are a couple of good reasons for the silence. Firstly, Vegemite wasn’t invented until 1922 so it could not have been part of Fred’s World War I experience. Secondly, his memoir says nothing of World War II and at that time the two were living on different continents.
A couple of years before my grandfather died, I visited him with a friend who had a car… My friend raised World War II and asked my grandfather what he did in India. As I remember it, there was only one sentence on about an episode I had not heard before. The subject then changed.
‘Oh, we moved food supplies between India and Burma’, he said flatly.
Well, that fitted in with the Vegemite story. Later I wonder why he didn’t have any service medals for World War II. Unlike my parents, who neglected to get theirs, he would surely have made a point of getting his.
The answer to that question turns out to be simple. After World War I, the NBMR was reconstituted as a volunteer militia and Grandpop immediately joined up again. They continued their community service, occasional crowd control and regular annual training activities in Jalpaiguri until being disbanded in 1947. However, the militias did assist in the war effort even though they were not part of the Indian Army. The work of the Assam tea planters in the evacuation of Burma is reasonably well known, but the precise contribution of the NBMR remains unknown. The formal mechanism of engagement was through the Indian Tea Association and support would have been in the form of logistics and possibly repurposing tea garden labour for infrastructure projects.
Along with the photo of the two young soldiers, there is more to be discovered…
I follow your post whenever I find them. I research my POE family line and see that you are in my line of POE relatives. Thanks for all of your hard work.
ReplyDeleteCharles W. Poe
Hi Charles, Thanks for your comment. Tracking down the Poes is a never ending story! It would be interesting to see where we connect. Do you know who our common ancestor is please? Cheers - Leon
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