Untold lives blog

“I have written to you many times but God alone knows why I don’t get your letters.  You say you write regularly.  Letters mean half meetings and they are a great consolation to us.”
- Written in Urdu by an Indian sepoy from Tunisia on 16 May 1943.

An Indian soldier guards a group of Italian prisoners near El Adem aerodrome, during the pursuit of Axis forces westwards after the relief of Tobruk -Image courtesy of Imperial War Museum © IWM (E 7180)

Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War.  Their experiences are little remembered today, neither in the UK where a Eurocentric memory of the war dominates, nor in South Asia, which privileges nationalist histories of independence from the British Empire.  And yet military censorship reports from the Second World War, archived at the British Library’s India Office Records and containing extracts from Indian soldiers’ letters home, bear witness to this counter-narrative.  What was it like fighting for the British at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary?

  
An Indian soldier guarding an Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refinery in Persia, 4 September 1941 - Image courtesy of Imperial War Museum Image courtesy of Imperial War Museum © IWM (E 5330)

Letters were written in Indian languages – Hindi, Gurmukhi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil – and often dictated to scribes by Indian sepoys who were illiterate.  They were then translated into English for the censor, who compiled selected quotations from the letters into a report testifying to the spirit or ‘morale’ of the soldiers.  Soldiers’ names have been anonymised in these reports, and so it is virtually impossible to trace the letters to their writers.  All that remains are evocative textual shards – a portal into the soldiers’ emotional world.

The letters forge a material and emotional connection between the home front and the battlefront.  In the sentence, “Letters mean half meetings and they are a great consolation to us” with which this post begins, the unknown Indian sepoy links the letter’s affective impact – its “consolation”, assuaging loneliness, homesickness and longing – to its inherent physicality – “half meetings”.  An intimate moment is captured between the home front and the battlefront, a negotiation between distance and proximity created by the act of letter writing.

Letter writing is foregrounded again in the only love letter among the censorship reports.  Written in Urdu by an Indian Lieutenant – part of the rising Indian officer class making inroads into the Indian Army – the extract is addressed to the soldier’s beloved during the Allied invasion of Italy: “Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war.  Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am. … You would feel that the whole world were shaking with an earthquake or probably the sky were falling over you…Yet in the midst of this commotion, I sit here, on my own kit-bag and scribble these few lines to my love for I do not really know when I will get the next opportunity to write to you.”

Here, writing itself becomes an source of solace amidst the frenetic sounds and activity of the war.  It also embodies presence.  With the image of the soldier sitting on his kit bag and scribbling, this wartime love letter becomes a remarkable testament to the forgotten experiences of the Indian soldier, and the articulation of his complex inner life, during the Second World War.

Diya Gupta
PhD researcher, Department of English, King’s College London

Further reading:
Middle East Military Censorship Reports: Fortnightly Summaries Covering Indian Troops, April-October 1943, IOR/L/PJ/12/655

‘We become crazy as lunatics’: Responding to the Bengal famine in Indian letters from the Second World War

The ‘Kashmir of Europe’ and other exoticisms: Indian soldiers’ tales of travel in the Second World War

Find out more in this short film

In 1937 the Government of Afghanistan purchased 24 aircraft from Italy.  Provision was made for an Italian Air Mission to be deputed to Kabul for the purpose of assembling and maintaining the aircraft, and for training Afghan personnel.  The Political (External) Department of the India Office maintained a file to keep track of the situation.

This development placed the Italians in direct competition with Britain and caused concern amongst British policy makers.  Hawker Aircraft Limited had recently negotiated the sale of eight Hind aircraft to the Afghan Air Force, and was similarly engaged with supplying its own instructors for the same purpose.

Hawker Hind - British official photographer: Imperial War Museum © IWM (ATP 8882B)

British policy favoured the maintenance of a stable, independent, and friendly Afghanistan as the best means of securing its Indian Empire.  Meanwhile, Afghan officials feared being outclassed in the event of war by a larger Iranian Air Force, but lacked the resources and expertise to compete with their neighbour.  British policy makers were therefore in favour of the development of a small but efficient air force in Afghanistan for internal security purposes, being both within Afghan means and no threat to India.  Their strategy for achieving this lay with encouraging the Afghans to develop their air force along the lines of the Royal Air Force using supplies from British sources.

The Afghan authorities had expressed an interest in purchasing British aircraft as far back as 1935.  However, the demands of Britain's own re-armament programme limited the number of aircraft which could be supplied to Afghanistan.  Restrictions over the credit which could be provided to Afghanistan by the Government of India provided a further limitation.  Thus the British were hardly in a position to object when the Afghans turned to the Italians to fulfil their requirements.

The British feared that the Italians would send out an imposing mission to Kabul in view of the larger number of aircraft being supplied, and considered sending out a senior British officer to bolster the British mission.  Such fears turned out to be unfounded, the maximum size of the Italian mission being seven personnel to Hawker’s four.

The result was a scene at Kabul’s aerodrome described as peculiar by William Kerr Fraser-Tytler, Britain's Minister at Kabul.  An Italian delegation was assembling and testing aircraft next to a similarly engaged British contingent, while two German mechanics were busy restoring Junkers aircraft supplied in previous years to serviceable condition.

1938 would however turn the situation entirely to Britain's advantage.  The Italian aircraft sold to the Afghans were powered by engines entirely unsuitable for use at high altitude, and were easily outperformed by Hawker’s Hinds which were much more suited to Afghan conditions.  The Italian supplied aircraft experienced difficulties taking off, and were not able to carry a full load.  As a result, crashes and forced landings were common, and the aircraft became unpopular with Afghan pilots.

Hawker Hind - Afghanistan Air Force. Image via Wikimedia (copyright Alan D R  Brown)

The Italian Mission was withdrawn in 1939, following the German instructors who had been withdrawn the previous year.  Thus Britain was left as the only nation maintaining an air mission at Kabul during the Second World War.  Fraser-Tytler was entirely happy with developments and claimed in a dispatch dated 10 May 1938 to the Foreign Office that ‘This practical demonstration of British superiority could not have been achieved had we been alone in the field’.

Britain had thus achieved an advantageous position in Afghanistan. However the outbreak of the Second World War, and subsequent restrictions on Britain’s ability to supply aircraft and equipment, meant this position could not be fully capitalised on.

Robert Astin
Content Specialist, Archivist
British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, Coll 5/48 ‘Afghanistan: Supply of military aircraft to the Afghan Government; Supply of maps etc. to the Afghan Govt.’ IOR/L/PS/12/2001
British Library, Coll 5/53 ‘Afghanistan: Employment of British nationals in various branches of the Afghan air services; Air instructors’ contracts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2006
British Library, Coll 5/53(2) ‘Afghanistan: Employment of British nationals in various branches of Afghan air services; Air instructors’ contracts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2007
British Library, Coll 5/55 ‘Afghanistan: Supply of Aircraft to Afghan Govt: Contract between Air Ministry & Hawker Aircraft Ltd’ IOR/L/PS/12/2009
British Library, Coll 5/55(2) ‘Afghanistan: Supply of aircraft to the Afghan Govt. Supply of spare parts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2010 IOR/L/PS/12/2010
British Library, Coll 5/55(2) ‘‘Afghanistan: Supply of aircraft to the Afghan Govnt. Supply of spare parts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2011
British Library, Coll 5/60(1) ‘Afghanistan: Purchase of aircraft from foreign sources (1) Italy (2) Germany’ IOR/L/PS/12/2020
 
 

Some recent cataloguing of India Office Records Marine Department volumes has uncovered a fascinating glimpse into the everyday life of junior naval officers on British warships during the Second World War.  The six journals were kept by the young officers as part of their training, and were regularly checked by their supervising officer and the captain of the ship they were assigned to.  The purpose of the journals was to train midshipmen in observation, expression and orderliness, and they were required to record their observations about all matters of interest of importance in the work that was carried out, on their stations, in their fleet, or in their ship, and illustrate them with plans and sketches.

IOR/L/MAR/C/915 Journal of  Ian Crawford Davenport, Scapa Flow 1943 

The journals detail the daily activities and duties of the midshipmen, the most junior rank of officer in the Royal Navy.  They also give descriptions of the working of their respective ships, and the assignments they carried out.  For most of the ships this involved escorting convoys of merchant ships across the dangerous shipping lanes, and protecting them from attacks by German ships and submarines.  HMS Duke of York was on one such mission near Norway bound for North Russia when it became engaged in battle with the German battleship Scharnhorst.  Midshipman Davenport gives a thrilling account in his journal of the naval engagement known as the battle of North Cape between the Scharnhorst and the Allied warships, which led to the sinking of the German warship on 26 December 1943. In his account, Davenport describes the action dinner they ate during the long battle as “very thick lentil soup and very greasy chops” adding that he did not feel very hungry. The Duke of York fired 80 broadsides at Scharnhorst, and Davenport noted the almost continuous ripple of fire down the ship from her guns.

HMS Duke of York at Scapa Flow in 1941 © IWM (A 6682)

The journal by Midshipman Coyne gives an account of the service of HMS Glasgow in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. At one point he describes the terrifying attack on the ship by enemy aircraft while it was stationed at Souda Bay, on the coast of Crete on 3 December 1940: “A few seconds later the ship was violently shaken, and long before I had disentangled two aerial wires from my hair, I realised that we had been torpedoed. Upon looking out to starboard to find the enemy I was not a little surprised to see the track of another torpedo approaching, and though during the minute or so that we waited for it to come I hoped it would pass astern, such was not our luck, and the ship was again shaken by the force of the explosion”. 

IOR/L/MAR/C/911 Journal of Michael Coyne, Liverpool 1940 

The Midshipmen were required to produce their journals at the examination for the rank of Lieutenant, and so it was important to make them as impressive as possible. Midshipman Davenport ends his journal on 6 August 1944 with the lines “On arriving in the Gunroom I found the rest of my group sweating away at their journals and turning out sketches in quick time. I think perhaps I had better do the same”.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/MAR/C Marine Miscellaneous
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: Arthur Geoffrey Terence Dane, HMS Revenge and HMS Buxton, 1940-1941 [IOR/L/MAR/C/910]
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: Michael Coyne, HMS Glasgow, 1940-1942 [IOR/L/MAR/C/911]
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: Alfred George Julian, HMS Repulse, 1941 [IOR/L/MAR/C/912]
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: John Helmdon St Clair Strange, HMS King George V, 1942-1943 [IOR/L/MAR/C/913]
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: Ezekiel Solomon Joshua, HMS Malaya, 1942-1943 [IOR/L/MAR/C/914]
Journal for the use of Midshipmen: Ian Crawford Davenport, HMS Malaya and HMS Duke of York, 1943-1944 [IOR/L/MAR/C/915] 
Battle of North Cape
 

The British Legion was founded on 15 May 1921 with a mission, in its own words, ‘to care for those who had suffered as a result of service in the Armed Forces during the [First World] war, whether through their own service or through that of a husband, father or son.’  The first Poppy Day was held on this day, ninety-five years ago, on 11 November 1921.

Detail of the British Legion’s letterhead in use in the 1930s.

Then, as now, poppies were made by war veterans, for sale to the general public in both Britain and across the British Empire (and later, the Commonwealth).  In its formative years, the Legion’s work was solely preoccupied with those that had served in the First World War.  Money raised by the sale of poppies was spent on a variety of programmes, including towards the relief of distress, the provision of employment and housing for ex-servicemen, tuberculosis treatment, pensions, and financial assistance toward the migration of ex-servicemen to Britain’s ‘dominions’.

 

Poppy Day supplies order form, 1934. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 17.

A number of files in the India Office Records, held at the British Library and presently being digitised as part of the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership, give a flavour of the British Legion’s global reach and fundraising efforts between the First and Second World Wars. The records show how the organisation tapped into Britain’s network of colonial administrators to extend their activities to the furthest flung corners of Britain’s empire, including to the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Legion designated administrators such as the Political Agent at Bahrain as Organisers, who were responsible for coordinating the mail order and sale of poppy merchandising in areas under their jurisdiction.

As an Organiser, the Bahrain Political Agent received regular correspondence from the British Legion throughout the 1930s, enclosing, amongst other things: gramophone records containing a personal appeal by the Legion’s then patron, the Prince of Wales; ‘talkie’ films featuring footage of the Cenotaph and war cemeteries in France; brochures; magazines; and mail order forms for leaflets, poppies, wreaths, badges, posters, and poppy ‘mascots’ for cars and motorcycles. The British Legion also sent forms to administrators requesting details of local towns and villages, and ‘any districts where a Poppy Day is not organised’, so that further British communities might be reached.

 
‘Poppy Day World Map’, 1947. IOR/R/15/2/1559, ff 78-79.

Correspondence between the British Legion and Britain’s Political Agent at Bahrain reveals that, prior to 1938, poppies were not sold on the islands, the Political Agent explaining that ‘their sale would not be appropriate in the circumstances in Bahrain.’ Collections were, however, raised amongst the islands’ expatriate community, which had grown in size significantly by the late 1930s, thanks to the large numbers of American and Indian employees working for the Bahrain Petroleum Company.

 
Haig Fund (British Legion) poppy wreaths for order, 1938. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 98.

The start of the Second World War in 1939 marked the point at which the British Legion began to raise funds for those affected by present, as well as historic conflicts. As its letterheads in the first years of the new war made clear, ‘war increases our responsibilities.’ The ‘time is rapidly approaching’ wrote the Legion’s secretary in March 1940, ‘when the claims from this new category of Ex-Service man will assume serious proportions'.

 
Extract from a British Legion letter, dated December 1939. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 132.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project

British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, London, ‘File 16/48 I Corr. re: Earl Haig’s Appeal Fund (Poppy Day)’ (IOR/R/15/2/1558)
British Library, London, ‘File 16/48 II Correspondence regarding Earl Haig’s appeal fund (poppy day )’ (IOR/R/15/2/1559)
British Library, London, ‘File No 20/7 Ceremonials and Honours. Armistice day’ (IOR/R/15/2/1672)
James Fox “Poppy Politics: Remembrance of Things Present” in Constantine Sandis (ed) Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice (Cambridge Open Book Publishers, 2014) Google Books

After the Japanese invasion of Thailand in 1941, just before the Thai Government declared war on Britain and the United States on 25 January 1942, 22 cases containing the archives of the British Legation in Bangkok were removed. A similar thing happened to the 84 boxes containing the archives of the British Embassy in China for the years 1931-1939, which went from Beijing to Nanjing and, in 1941, were also removed for safe custody during the war.

Japanese troops at Singapore 1942 Wikimedia Commons

Confidential documents were said to have been destroyed, and then the boxes containing the two archives were carefully sent to Singapore in 1941. 

IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 34

But this wasn’t a safe choice. Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and the two archives were shipped to India shortly afterwards. The archives remained in Calcutta until the end of the war and, after Indian Independence in 1947, they were sent to the Foreign Office Library in London, in 1948, as part of the process of transferring records to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British government.

 
IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 29 

The file IOR/L/PS/12/716, part of the India Office Records and digitised for the Qatar Foundation Partnership, contains the correspondence telling the story of these two archives. Arrangements for the shipping and costs of the transport and storage are described in the file.

The exact content of the cases wasn’t known at the time.
There is a letter from the Foreign Office Librarian in 1948, saying that the content of the boxes was unknown to him and, at the purpose of shipping back to Bangkok the files which were less than 20 years old and were therefore considered current, he should have opened the boxes, or shipped the entire archives back to Thailand instead.

 
IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 33

We can guess that these archives ended up staying in London. The archives of the HM Legation in Bangkok and of the HM Embassy in China should now be available for public consultation at The National Archives in Kew.

Valentina Mirabella
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Tweet @miravale

Qatar Digital Library

Jamie Cullum, jazz singer-songwriter, explored some of his favourite things at the British Library in yesterday’s Sky Arts programme Treasures of the British Library. Among them were some documents in the India Office Records that reveal some intriguing details about his ancestors and their lives in India and Burma.

Copies of records of baptisms, marriages and burials in India and Burma were sent to London from the time of the East India Company until the end of the empire in the mid-20th century. Those records are now easily searchable online via find my past.  They reveal details of a number of Jamie Cullum’s ancestors, including Hazel Trutwein. Hazel was baptised in Rangoon in 1927, where her father, Frederick Arthur Edmund Trutwein, was working for the government Telegraph Department.

Rangoon Public Offices from The British Burma Gazetteer (Rangoon, 1880) BL flickr 

It seems that Hazel and her family were still living in Burma at the time of the Second World War. A register of European, Anglo-Burman, Anglo-Indian and other non-Indian evacuees that has been preserved among the India Office Records shows that a Mr and Mrs FA Trutwein and six children had left Burma and were living in Lucknow, India.

  
IOR/M/8/57 TRUTWEIN Mr and Mrs F.A. and six children 149 East Kamayut, Rangoon Supervisor, Telegraphs (on leave) 61 Abbott Road, Lucknow

This rather dry official register does not convey the terrifying circumstances of the evacuees’ flight from Burma in the face of the Japanese invasion. Unfortunately, in the case of the Trutweins, it does not reveal which route they took to India. Thousands managed to escape by sea and plane, and as the Trutweins succeeded in getting six children safely to India, perhaps they were among these lucky ones, or maybe they were particularly tough and resourceful and survived far worse. In wartime conditions, the journey by sea or air must have been terrifying but some evacuees faced truly terrible experiences. Once Rangoon had fallen in January 1942, sea routes were closed, and when the Myitinka aerodrome was bombed out, struggling overland to India was the only option left for many. Indians, Anglo-Burmans, Anglo-Indians and British fled from Burma, often in such haste that they were ill-prepared to face the gruelling ordeal, and thousands died in the attempt.

From Geoffrey William Tyson, Forgotten Frontier 

Their experiences are vividly brought to life in some personal accounts contained in an India Office Records file and Geoffrey Tyson’s book, Forgotten Frontier, which tells the story of the Indian Tea Association’s valiant rescue of many of the refugees.

From Geoffrey William Tyson, Forgotten Frontier 

This is just one example of the way official-sounding files and publications can reveal fascinating details of personal histories and struggles for survival.

Penny Brook
Head of India Office Records & Private Papers

Further reading:
Geoffrey William Tyson, Forgotten Frontier  (Calcutta : W. H. Targett & Co., 1945)
IOR/M/8/57     Part 1: European, Anglo-Burman, Anglo-Indian and other non-Indian Evacuees
IOR/M/3/955   B270/40; War: evacuation of Indians and Europeans from Burma; accounts of escape and evacuation, 14 Jan 1942-12 Jun 1943

find my past
Explore Archives and Manuscripts

In February 1809, the Napoleonic Wars were raging in Europe. The Ottoman Empire and Britain had just concluded the Treaty of the Dardanelles, while in Spain a British army was forced from the shores of Northern Spain at the Battle of Coruna. Meanwhile, the French, British and Russians were also fighting for influence and control in the Persian Empire. The Russians and Persians fought a bitter war for control of the Caucasus, the French sought to threaten India with a Franco-Persian alliance, and Britain looked to prevent both while also drawing away attention and resources from Europe.

In order to do this, a letter was prepared by the British from George III to the Shah of Persia, Fath Ali Shah Qajar. This letter was delivered by the representative of the East India Company and British government  in Persia, Sir Harford Jones. Being an old hand in Persia, Jones appreciated that it wasn’t just the letter that was important, but also how it was presented. A record of the procession organised by Harford Jones is written in the East India Company’s records. It gives an impression of the importance that such pageantry held in the workings of diplomacy in Persia and elsewhere at this time.

“The Procession to the Palace began in the following manner: Officers belonging to the King of Persia. Led horses belonging to the Envoy [Harford Jones]. Native officer of Cavalry, sword drawn. Trumpeter. The Letter with HM Letter and Present. Guard of Native Cavalry, swords drawn. Persian Officers of the Envoy’s Household mismounted. The Envoy. Secretary and Gentlemen belonging to the mission. Guard of Native Cavalry…”

Add.Or.1241 The court of Fath Ali Shah with foreign ambassadors - from a reduced copy of the Nigaristan Palace mural. Images Online

It’s not always what you say, but the way you say it. The embassy of Harford Jones was not just impressive in terms of its personnel either, as it carried with it an array of expensive gifts from India and London. The procession was calculated to look impressive, being a display of wealth and military strength to assuage any doubts as to Britain’s ability to defend herself or her Empire in India. The situation in Persia was complicated by constant shifts in the interests of each power in Europe, with both the French and British wishing to bring Russia onto their side while knowing that any agreement with Russia would abrogate the chances of a treaty with Persia. Displays of power and prowess were therefore seen as a necessary ingredient in diplomacy with Persia.

Peter Good
PhD student University of Essex/British Library

Further reading:
IOR/G/29/37

Regular readers of this blog know that the India Office Records contain all kinds of documents on individuals both famous and unknown.  One fascinating file about ordinary people is the ‘Nominal roll of Japanese internees in the Internment Camp, Deoli (Ajmer), who are willing to have their names communicated to their government’.   Ajmer-Merwara was a province in British India, within the princely state of Rajputana in the north of the country.  

 
IOR/L/PJ/8/405  

The document is far more than a mere list of names.  It provides biographical details of more than 2000 individuals arranged in alphabetical order who were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when war was declared between the Japanese and British Empires.  While there are no photographs, the file records the name and nationality of the internee (almost all Japanese, but including some ‘Malayan’), the date and place of birth, occupation, date and place of arrest, and relationship and address of next of kin. The great majority were interned during December 1941 in Singapore and Malaya, although a few were picked up in Burma and in India itself. Gender is indicated by (M) or (F). 

IOR/L/PJ/8/405 

Dozens of the internees were fishermen, but there are housewives, students, barbers and tailors, as well as -

• a ‘dentist & haberdasher’ (Shoichi Noda, b. 1886)
• a ‘walking stick maker’ (Masaichi Tomita, b. 1897)
• two ‘golf-course keepers’ (Hirozo and Kazuo Ueda, b. 1896 and 1912 respectively),
• a ‘taxidermist’ (Shinnosuke Morikawa, b. 1885)
• a ‘pearl diver’ (Gerozo Kusumi, b. 1890)
• a ‘circus actor’ (Hisakichi Yamane, b. 1887)

Some individuals deemed harmless to the Raj and the Allied war effort are recommended or nominated for repatriation. The oldest person is probably broker Katsujiro Murashima, who was born on 26 August 1874 in Osakafu. Poignantly, several children are listed as having been born in the camp late in 1943.  A few entries are scored through in red to show that the individuals died while in captivity. 

There are details of five ‘Siamese’ nationals in the camp, one a monk. The file ends by listing three  husbands of British women who were arrested between July 1940 and June 1942 in London, plus a further five persons who were picked up in Britain’s East African colony of Kenya in December 1941.

The file reference is IOR/L/PJ/8/405, and it can be ordered for consultation in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room.

Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Services