Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  The summer advanced. Drowsy bees hummed among the flowers outside the window. Frankie Weldon came to the seminar room in morning coat, spongebag trousers, and grey topper, and kept looking at his watch. No one seemed eager to prolong our useful discussion on the Opposed Crossing of a Major River. I closed the session early, after we had agreed that Frankie should share out among us the money we had saved him by imposing this delay on his visit to Ascot.

  I went to London, with wife, father and mother to receive my D.S.O. from George VI, King of Great Britain, etc, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India... but that last not for much longer. He looked pale as he stood throughout the long ordeal, the endless file of men and women jerking forward, up, past. My turn came and I knew my family were wearing the same look of tearful and idiotic pride that I saw in myself when Susan cowed a foxhound twice her size or Martin first went solo across our lawn. The King smiled at me, a real smile (but God, he was tired) and murmured, 'Congratulations.' An equerry handed him the medal and he slipped it over the loop which another equerry had already pinned on to my tunic in the anteroom.

  The partition of India was decided on, and agreed to by all parties — with glee by the Muslim League and with sorrow by the Congress. Soon the terms to be offered to British officers of the Indian services, when India and Pakistan became self-governing Dominions, were published; and that would be on August 15, this year of 1947, as Lord Mountbatten had speeded up the processes of disengagement. I studied the proposals very carefully, for in them lay the key to our future. As far as concerned me, they offered three choices. First, I could transfer from the Indian to the British service, in my present rank and seniority, but at British rates of pay (they were lower than ours). Second, I could do the same, but serve with one of the four regiments of Gurkhas being transferred to the British Army, for service in the Far East; this would retain my Indian Army rates of pay. Third, I could retire with a pension proportionate to my length of service, plus a 'loss of career' gratuity. The idea of this latter was to enable us to train for or finance some new career, in place of the one that we had been suddenly deprived of.

  I thought of the British Army. They would not welcome such as me, for they were already overfull of officers of my seniority. And how could Aldershot, Suez, Nairobi, and the rainswept Ruhr — the places where most of the British Army was stationed — replace the Himalayan home of my regiment in Bakloh? What could satisfy my longings for the wild, high jungles of upper Burma or the raw challenge of the North West Frontier? Nostalgia for Kulu, Spiti, and Kashmir dimmed my eyes. I forced myself back to the subject. The Gurkha collectively (there is, of course, no such person) had his faults, as I had mine; but he knew mine and I knew his. The British soldier, collectively (again, there is no such entity) had his virtues, and I had been proud to have many under my command — but we had not shared those long years. We were friends, but strangers, in spite of our common blood. And the British Army would not employ me much with troops in any case, for my greatest value to it would be as a staff officer. No, I could not contemplate the British Service with enthusiasm, and without enthusiasm the military life is a wasteland.

  The transferred Gurkhas, then? They were to be stationed in Malaya, of which I knew nothing except that it was hot and damp. To Barbara and me bliss is mountain water, snow above, and a wind from the peaks in the evening. Then, the children would soon be reaching an age when they would suffer in health and education if they were not sent back to England. But — and this was the two-centuries old dilemma of the Indian Service family — if Barbara went with them, our new-discovered domesticity would be ruined, whereas if we sent them off alone to live with grandmothers and aunts (as had happened to Kipling, Saki, George Orwell, and me, among several hundred thousand others) it was they who might be ruined.

  Then there was the matter of the particular regiments that had been chosen for transfer. The wire-pulling and influence-peddling which started before I left India, had continued ever since, in the War Office and Parliament. From Camberley I had written to General Slim, then Commandant of the Imperial Defence College, and an ex-Gurkha (6th and 7th), setting out a proposal that no regiments should be transferred as such. We should set up a new Gurkha Rifle Corps, with a single crest and entity, holding all the battle honours of the old regiments. We should fill it with Volunteers from the present regiments, or, if it seemed preferable, transfer whole battalions but give them new numbers in the new corps so that, say, the 1st Battalion, 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles would become the 6th Battalion, Gurkha Rifle Corps. The Corps should later expand to contain its own artillery, signals, engineer and supply units. We should train and educate many more Gurkhas to hold the King's Commission.

  This plan was administratively sounder than the old-fashioned one adopted, and would have made the Malaya Gurkhas acceptable to many officers and men who had no wish to become too closely associated with the peculiarities of, say, the 2nd Goorkhas (one of the regiments eventually transferred). Bill Slim wrote back sympathetically to my ideas, but the business was already beyond his reach, the transfers already under way.

  My regiment, the 4th, was not transferred, and I thought, if they don't want the 4th, they won't get me. To hell with them. I was bitter at the time, foolishly so. I should have thanked our stars that we were not chosen. The regiments that stayed with India have expanded and flourished, in their own Himalayas. The ones that went to the British Army served faithfully in Malaya, Hong Kong, and Borneo and as a reward are now about to be disbanded. Some would say that they have been sold down the river; but who would agree with such harsh language, except perhaps the rulers of the five hundred or so Indian States whose 'perpetual' treaties with Britain became as meaningful as so much confetti when Lord Mountbatten took the bridge of the Indian Empire and ran up his famous signal: England expects that every man this day will run like hell.

  I toyed with the idea of claiming my Indian citizenship. Since I was born in Calcutta I would be a citizen of the new Dominion by birth, and could simply demand to stay on, as an Indian instead of an Englishman. Many of the Anglo-Indians (of mixed race) were doing just that. How could they keep me out? I didn't think they could. After a time of cautious probing to see whether I really had cast in my lot with India, I would probably be fully accepted, even by the politicians. But... was I Indian? Could I cast in my lot with India? Kashmir beckoned; the rivers of Assam rolled by, smiling; the flame-of-the-forest stippled the forests of the Vindhya Hills; Hindustani and Gurkhali were comfortable in my mouth, and the Nagri script to my pen. I knew India. I was happy there. But... but... We talked hours, day after day, late into the night. Barbara said at last, 'Darling, the truth is you're not Indian, whatever your passport might say. I don't think either of us can make ourselves Indians. It's nothing to do with colour, it's a way of thinking, a self-recognition. Sooner or later the ugly dachshund has to make up his mind that he is not a dachshund at all but a great Dane.'

  I agreed glumly. I was not Indian. I was having great difficulty in seeing myself as English. So what was I?

  If the British Army, the British Gurkhas and the Indian Army were all out, only one course was left: retirement, an end to my whole military way of life. But this was the bleakest prospect of all. I was a commander and a staff officer, with no special skills that the civilian world seemed to recognize as such. I could co-ordinate the work of engineers, scientists, shippers, pilots, caterers, financiers — but, myself, I could not build a bridge, split an atom, load a ship, fly a plane, bulk-buy food, or run a bank. What could I actually do? Well, I could light a fire in the rain. And read a topographical map: I was probably the best map reader between Wolverhampton and East Grinstead. I could write appreciations...

  The word gave me an idea. An 'appreciation of the situation' is the way an army officer is trained to tackle every problem. First, he decides what precisely is his object. Then he considers all the factors affecting the attainment of the object. Then he draws up the various courses open to him, and to the
enemy, with their pros and cons. Finally he chooses one of the courses as the best possible, and works out his plan from it. My writing system was a sort of appreciation, and with reason. It worked. With practice, it worked fast. Surely I could apply this tool to our problems? Barbara and I would make a joint effort of it. It was a pity that Susan and Martin weren't old enough to join the syndicate: but their future would have to be included when we came to define our 'object'.

  But August came upon us and the Staff College went off en masse for its annual battlefield tour, when coherent thought was impossible. We were supposed to study the lessons from actual battles, on the ground, but as I was in charge of administering a group from headquarters in Paris, all I studied was the menus of a couple of excellent bistros in Montmartre, and where to get the best view of the models going and coming at Christian Dior in their astounding New Look clothes. On August 15 we returned to England. It was very hot, all sixty of us had hangovers, and the cross-channel steamer was crowded with civilian tourists. We sent wedges of officers into the jampacked bar to bring out drinks for all — any drinks. The civilians must have thought the war was back with them. I saw one school-mistressy young woman edging up behind Robin Rose-Price with the obvious intention of asking him who we were and what we were doing. At that moment, Robin — who was in the Welsh Guards and therefore technically did not recognize that there was anyone else present except other Guardees — said in a weary but penetrating voice, 'I feel like a used French letter.' Everyone within earshot jumped visibly: the young lady turned scarlet and backed off violently. Soon we were surrounded by a sanitary cordon several feet wide, and could drink in peace.

  I suddenly remembered the date: August 15th. Hari Badhwar, Dhargalkar, Hissam el Effendi and Mohammed Sadiq were in our group. I found them, and shouted 'Dominion Day!' They nodded.

  'Good luck to India! Good luck to Pakistan!' I cried. We raised our glasses. Others heard and soon we were all slapping each other's back and drinking toasts to the new nations. So, in the middle of the English Channel, I was cut adrift from my past.

  In Camberley Barbara and I settled down to our Life Appreciation. There is an old saying that, when making an appreciation, one should spend about half the total time available clarifying the object, to a point where one can define it in a single clear sentence. A few weeks earlier a civilian lecturer on scientific research had given us a classic example of an ill-thought-out object. In the 1930s both the army and the air force were concerned with the problem of detecting enemy aircraft at a greater distance than the existing searchlights and sound rangers could do. Each service gave the scientific establishment an object to be achieved. The army said they wanted searchlights and sound rangers that could pick up an aircraft at 30,000 feet and 20 miles instead of the then limit of 20,000 feet and 10 miles. In due course they got what they had asked for — better searchlights, better sound rangers.

  The air force defined their object more accurately: to detect and track aircraft from as great a distance as possible. They got radar.

  So it was about 'object' that Barbara and I talked first. What was our object in life? It is a hard question to answer, in a single sentence. We would all like everything — security, riches, fame, good education for the children, travel, a life useful to others; but experience — and not only in military affairs — teaches that he who goes after incompatible objects is likely to achieve none of them. You have to choose just one object, and take the rest merely as factors to be considered in achieving it. We rejected security first, even though it was important to both of us, particularly to me. No one in my family had worked without the security of a government pension to follow for about 150 years. The idea of launching my family into a rootless future, with no special protection, no adequate pension, and almost no savings, was quite appalling. But when we tried to tell ourselves that security was our object, we could not say it. So out it went.

  'The best possible education for the children?' Barbara suggested. This made more sense, for they were good children and would, we thought, deserve every opportunity we could give them. But, as the object? Suppose it meant my becoming a bank clerk, or going to Malaya, or handing them over to some State School for the Production of Geniuses? If it were our object, we'd have to do it. In fact the children's future would not depend on education as much as on other factors, especially our own happiness and the kind of environment we could surround them with. Throw that out then, as our object.

  To become rich? Well, that was most desirable. So many other things, ranging from security to adventure and good works, could be attained through money. Also, we had expensive tastes and a wide enough experience of the world to know that whatever we had, there was something better. But, as the object?... A long grey Rolls phaeton drives up. A distinguished-looking man gets out and I stroll to the front door to meet him. He pats Susan on the head and introduces himself: Lord Melchett, chairman of I.C.I. He does not beat about the bush. Word of my Mountain Warfare Exercise has reached Mond House. He would like me to start right away in his office, with succession to his post. 'Say 30,000 pounds a year to begin with, Colonel? I know it isn't much, but, as a start...'

  The vision faded. You worked hard to be rich. That I could do. But you didn't let up. Fifty weeks a year at least; on call day and night; watching stock markets, lunching with bankers, dining with merchants. For some ten years now I had been working seven days a week, usually more than twelve hours a day — but only for nine or ten months a year. Those long free months were vital to us. No, being rich could not be our object, because I was unwilling to pay the price.

  'You don't want to be famous, do you?' Barbara said, in the tone she had used a year earlier, when she had said, 'Well, you may become a general but I'm damned if I'm going to become a Mrs General.' Now I could answer at once, 'No', because I had thought about fame and glory when wondering what was going to happen to the Indian Army. Those remarks of Sam Lewis and the Auk, about my becoming Commander-in-Chief, had meant a lot to me. Generations of Masters had been galley slaves in India, dying unsung and unhonoured in lowly jobs and lonely places. They would rotate in their graves with delight merely to see the words Field-Marshal Sir John Masters in print, let alone all those cryptic and to them unattainable letters that would follow the name. But it had not taken much consideration then to realize that it was not the end that mattered but the road, and now I could see fame as a spur, perhaps; but as an object, shaping our every move — no.

  Did I have any great compulsion or drive which, by itself, would mean fulfilment? I could happily spend my travelling and exploring: but what of the home and education the children must have? I had enough ideas and experience to become a 'military expert' and thinker outside the army, like Liddell Hart. Perhaps, but my heart was in soldiering with Gurkha infantry, not in cerebrating. Politics? A Member of Parliament lectured our little dining club and afterwards invited me to go into politics. He was sure I would soon get a seat in Parliament, and quickly become a junior minister. Perhaps, again; but the only political party with which I felt the slightest sympathy was the Liberal Party, who were having a hard time keeping 6 seats out of 615. A Liberal politician was going to need some other means of support... which took me back to Square One.

  Four weeks passed, with many objects considered and rejected. We began cruising among the wreckage, picking up surviving ideas: Independence. Travelling rather than arriving. Public and private liberty. A family unit. Sense of space. Opportunity.

  Gradually we hammered them into a sentence, by God into an object.

  To live as a family unit in a place that offers space, liberty, and opportunity to all of us and, to me, independence in a work that I like.

  I wrote it down on a sheet of paper and put it away in a drawer. Later we would finish the Appreciation: the factors affecting the attainment of the object, the courses open to us, and so on. Then I typed out my formal request to be permitted to resign my commission, the resignation to take effect on December 31, 1948
, and to be preceded by the customary twelve months leave 'pending retirement'.

  I did not appreciate till years later how extraordinarily kind fate had been in forcing me to think out the purpose of my life. Like most people I had plunged into a career before I had the age or the experience to know what I wanted, before I could appreciate (whether in its military or ordinary meaning) what, on earth, I should do. I had no sense of vocation when I went into the army; indeed I had tried to become, at different times, a lawyer and a sailor.

  The weeks rolled unhurriedly towards graduation. We visited the R.A.F. in Germany, to study the effects of mass-bombing on industrial areas (expensive and inefficient, I thought). We descended on the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, and were lectured by an admiral whose ancestor had been one of Nelson's captains at the Nile. The old salt rolled in, reeking of seaweed and tar, reached the dais and turned to confront our mass of khaki uniforms and military moustaches, all standing as we waited for his order to be seated. 'Anchor!' the admiral bellowed.

  Lecturers visited us in a steady stream, but the only one who left a lasting impression on me was a youngish gentleman from the Foreign Office who gave us a most interesting, depressing and, as it turned out, penetrating interpretation of Russia's attitudes and policies. He said that the Russian leaders believed that capitalism was about to collapse. Russia would join various co-operative bodies, such as the United Nations, only in order to hasten that collapse by working to prevent agreement or co-operation. Their main fear was that the capitalist world, seeing the end of its system as inevitable, would launch a war to stave it off. More specifically, he said, Russia would never negotiate treaties to end the official state of war with various central European countries, until she had established Communist governments in them. The lever to achieve this was a clause in the armistices which permitted Russia to maintain troops in any country, and on her lines of communication to it, until a peace treaty had been negotiated with that country. The most useful ex-enemy country to Russia in this respect was the furthest west, Austria. For as long as Russia delayed making a peace treaty with Austria, she could keep troops in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria.