Indian Summer

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

  By the middle of 1944 Mountbatten had moved his headquarters from Delhi to the beautiful Botanic Gardens at Kandy in Ceylon, which was 2000 miles from the front line.47 This distance was probably no bad thing. Mountbatten was, it must be admitted, a hopeless strategist. It was left to commanders of proven competence – notably William Slim and the 14th Army – to win the battles. Mountbatten spent a lot of time sitting in Kandy devising complex and manpower-heavy operations against the Japanese, which were cancelled by the Chiefs of Staff whenever he finished putting them together.48

  Meanwhile, outside India, something alarming was happening. Subhas Chandra Bose had fallen in with the Nazis. The political vacuum created by Quit India had not only benefited the Muslim League; it had allowed the Indian National Army (INA), Bose’s militia, to get a foothold. In Germany, Bose met Hitler, Mussolini and high officials from the Japanese governments, and, to the disgust of Nazi eugenicists, involved himself with a German woman.49 He was indulged with the creation of an Indian Legion in the German Army, though the reputation it soon carved out for itself as brutal and ill-disciplined did him no credit.50

  In the summer of 1943, Bose emerged from the foam off the coast of Singapore, a fascist Aphrodite spewed up from the deep, with a Japanese submarine serving as his scallop shell. The Germans had put him in a U-boat at Hamburg three months previously, and he had swapped ships off the coast of Madagascar. He was taken to Tokyo, and given command of the formerly British Indian soldiers that had been captured in Singapore. More than half of them had refused to fight for the Japanese, and were put in camps where thousands perished. But Bose managed to persuade 10,000 more among the survivors to join the turncoats, and was able to add 20,000 recruits from Malaya.51 In October 1943 he declared a provisional government of Free India, and made himself Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He set up his government’s headquarters in the Andaman Islands, a tropical archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, and declared war on the United States and Britain. In January 1944 he moved his base to Rangoon in Japanese-occupied Burma, and marched on India with 7000 of his men.

  While Bose geared up for an attack on Assam, the Allied commanders did their best to keep Mountbatten out of their way. ‘Dickie has been interfering in your battle again,’ General Browning told General Christison, who had been commanding the defence at Arakan. ‘I’ve told him he must not and he is going to come and apologize to you. Don’t be nice to him, he’s so keen he’ll only do it again!’52 In the hope of finding someone who would be nice to him, Mountbatten went to visit his deputy, the American General Joseph Stilwell, on the Chinese front. Stilwell, known as ‘Vinegar Joe’ for his acid tongue, was not a fan of the British – ‘the bastardly hypocrites do their best to cut our throats on all occasions. The pig fuckers’ – but had been unusually affable towards Mountbatten. Close contact soon caused him to revert to his natural state. ‘The Glamour Boy is just that,’ he decided. ‘Enormous staff, endless walla-walla, but damned little fighting.’53

  Returning from his visit to Stilwell’s front on 7 March 1944, Mountbatten finally received his war injury. He drove his jeep over a bamboo stump and it flicked up into his face, hitting him in the left eye. Even the threat of blindness could not diminish his enthusiasm for action. Five days later, he was ignoring doctors, tearing off bandages and heading back to bother the real commanders.54 The battle of Imphal was beginning, with the large British garrison besieged by a smaller but effective force of Japanese. The Japanese were reinforced by the INA, which reached Imphal by May. The British garrison held them off until the monsoon rains came, literally dampening the efforts of Bose’s men. The siege collapsed into retreat by 22 June, and the ragged remains of the INA, depleted by desertion and suicide, surrendered in Rangoon in May 1945.

  Bose himself escaped from Saigon on the last Japanese plane out of that city, but would not live out the year. In August 1945 he died when his plane crashed in Formosa. Conspiracy theories abounded that Bose had survived, and was raising a new army in China, Tibet or the USSR; these were believed in high enough circles that even Gandhi professed them for a while, though he later recanted.55 The story of Bose’s survival continues to have its adherents. In 1978, the elderly Lord Mountbatten would receive a letter of the most baroque character from the Indian High Commissioner to London. He accused Mountbatten of helping Nehru to cover up Bose’s escape to the Soviet Union, ‘perhaps because the British did not want to pick up a quarrel with their erstwhile ally and Nehru did not want to have a rival.’56

  Whatever happened to Bose, the INA was finished as a political or military force. Despite his disgust at Bose’s totalitarian leanings, Nehru was moved by the passion of his soldiers. The trial of INA officers at the Red Fort in December 1945 would persuade him to swallow his long-held principle that, because he did not recognize the British regime, he could not participate in its legal system. He donned the wig and gown of a British barrister for the last time in his life to defend them.

  Mountbatten’s greatest asset, besides his own charm, was his wife. Back in Europe, Edwina had been asked by General Eisenhower to work for the Red Cross in field hospitals. Edwina’s hospital visiting technique, later to garner so much approval in India, was developed in Europe during 1944. She always carried make-up, a comb, a clothes brush and a shoe-shine pad so she looked her best, always inspected hygiene and organizational facilities with a keen eye for nursing procedure, and always spoke to every single patient in the hospital.

  Later that year, her husband invited her to lead the recovery effort in South East Asia. On 9 January 1945, she arrived in Karachi and immediately embarked on a tour of the local hospitals. She met up with her husband shortly afterwards in Delhi. Woman magazine wrote a gushing profile of her a few years later, in which it was claimed that she said in Delhi: ‘Keep one of my afternoons free. Dickie and I want to go and hold hands in the bungalow where he proposed to me.’57 The source for the comment was a friend of hers, who wrote to Edwina to apologize. She was unbothered: ‘the sentence in question sounded deliciously romantic to the readers of “Woman”, and I believe they lap it up!!’58 Delicious though it may have been, the story was not completely unfeasible. On this occasion, Dickie and Edwina enjoyed an affectionate reunion, which Dickie was confident enough to describe as ‘our new-found relationship’.59

  When Dickie had left for SEAC, Edwina’s affair with Bunny Phillips had been so serious that he had toyed with the idea of divorce – not on grounds of personal affront, but because he did not want to stand in their way. Instead he found Bunny a job in SEAC, and the marriage held. The arrangement was unusual but, according to the Mountbattens’ daughter Pamela, it worked: ‘Because my mother was happy with Bunny, it made her much easier in the home as well.’60 Their affair had lasted nearly a decade when, in the summer of 1944, Bunny uneasily announced that he was going to marry another woman. Edwina was devastated. Dickie wrote his wife an extraordinarily charitable letter of sympathy.

  I must tell you again how deeply and sincerely I feel for you at this moment when, however unselfish you may be about A. [Bunny]’s engagement, the fact that it is bound to alter the relationship – though I feel convinced not the friendship – which has existed between you, is bound to upset you emotionally and make you feel unhappy.

  You have however still got the love and genuine affection of two chaps – A. and me – and the support of all your many friends …

  A. always knew that I had accepted the fact that after the war you were at liberty to get married and I could not let either of you get the impression that anything I had ever done had stood in the way.61

  Edwina was moved. ‘As well as helping so tremendously at what must be a difficult time in my life,’ she wrote, ‘it has made me realise more than ever before how deeply devoted I am to you and what very real and true affection as well as immense admiration I have for you.’62 When she came out to the east, she sparkled with new enthusiasm – and transferred much of i
t to her adoring husband before she left again in April. Getting Edwina’s attention was never easy, but, whenever Dickie managed it, he glowed in the light of her approval. The two would sit at breakfast and compare their total numbers of British hands shaken, or hospital patients comforted.63

  Mountbatten was in London when news of the Japanese surrender came through. He returned to Singapore for the surrender ceremony with the left-wing journalist and MP Tom Driberg. On their way, they visited Burma, where Driberg was able to witness both Mountbattens in action. In Rangoon, they attended a dinner party with the resistance leader, Aung San – to whom Mountbatten was supposed to present a ceremonial dagger as a token of the Allies’ gratitude. Mountbatten had already noted of Aung San and his Burma National Army that ‘I am completely on their side’, a view which had taken some of the shine off him as far as Churchill was concerned. ‘I hope Mountbatten is not going to meddle in Burmese politics,’ he had noted severely, as the campaign for an independent Burma gathered pace.64 The imperial loyalists who organized the evening were obviously more Churchill than Mountbatten, and had churlishly seated Aung San at a lower table at the far end of the room, omitting his name from the list of toasts. Mountbatten flatly refused to speak unless Aung San was invited to do so, too. The hosts gave in, and, according to Driberg, ‘Aung San’s was the speech of the evening.’65

  As the Mountbattens and Driberg drove on towards Singapore, they stopped at the prisoner-of-war camps that still housed many British soldiers. At each camp, the performance was the same. Dickie and Edwina would leap on to a truck, and he would order the men to break ranks and cluster around. He would speak for approximately ten minutes, combining general world news with an update on how long it might be until the former POWs could be taken home. Edwina on her own was every bit as impressive, if not more so. She had organized a council to bring together the Red Cross and other welfare organizations, and visited even those camps in the most perilous parts of the interior. ‘Conditions indescribable’, she wrote in her diary, but her spirits remained high.66 One officer remembered Edwina visiting his POW camp in a remote part of Thailand. She sprung, unexpectedly, from a convoy of army jeeps, and was swarmed by a crowd of curious POWs. ‘I know I am the first white woman you have seen for years,’ she joked, ‘but remember I have got a husband knocking about here somewhere.’ She visited the field hospital, taking the name and address of each invalid. Many of their mothers later received personal letters from Edwina, saying that she had seen their sons and found them well. Before she left, Edwina passed on the news that 20,000 Japanese soldiers at the nearby headquarters had accepted the surrender. ‘She left the camp to roars from the men,’ remembered the officer admiringly.67

  ‘To me she was the famous playgirl of the twenties and thirties, and some people said she’s only coming out here to pursue an affair,’ remembered Lieutenant Colonel Paul Crook. But, when he watched her tour Singapore camps, making lists of needs and sourcing them the next day from SEAC, Crook was won over. He was impressed with her fearlessness in visiting dangerous areas, which were off limits to much of the military – let alone to military wives. ‘The bravery of it all was quite remarkable,’ he added.68 One American general put it more baldly: ‘She is so smart she scares me.’69

  Though he was fond of Dickie, Driberg was not blind to the man’s faults. In Penang, it was discovered that the batman had packed Mountbatten’s set of full-sized decorations rather than the miniatures that are correctly worn with evening dress. Dickie threw a tantrum. After several frantic telephone calls between aides-de-camp, the miniatures were found back at South East Asia Command. Luckily, ‘There was just time before the dinner for an RAF aircraft to fly them from Kandy to Penang.’70

  On 12 September, Mountbatten accepted the Japanese surrender in Singapore. Afterwards, Driberg and Edwina went on to Saigon. A couple of weeks before, the last Emperor of Indochina had abdicated in favour of nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had been declared. Very early in the morning of 23 September, French forces, supported by British Gurkhas, stormed buildings occupied by the Viet Minh, whom they suspected of planning an insurrection. This strike did not begin the First Indochina War, but those on the spot could tell that a build-up was underway. Driberg had contacts which he believed could get him in with Ho, and offered his services as a mediator. Mountbatten relayed this to London, and the Foreign Office sent back its authorization – but, before it arrived, Driberg had to leave.71 The situation in Indochina was part of a far greater picture. From the ashes of a worldwide war, a new world was rising.

  Among the highest ranks of the British Empire, few were ready for the shift into a post-colonial era. One man, however, was. ‘It is horrifying’, Mountbatten had written in his diary shortly before the end of the war in the east, ‘to think that the American and Indian press evidently still regard us as merely Imperial monsters, little better than Fascists or Nazis.’72 When Attlee vacillated and Churchill blustered over setting a date for Burmese self-government, it was Mountbatten who tried to persuade them to set a firm timetable for the handover.73 It was Mountbatten, too, who had opened negotiations with Aung San; it was Mountbatten who had wanted to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh; it was Mountbatten who had persuaded the Dutch to negotiate with Sukarno in Indonesia. In all of these matters, he was led by his wife. Referring to Indonesia, he admitted: ‘Nobody gave me an idea of the strength of the nationalist movements. Edwina was the first person to give me an inkling of what was going on.’74 From then on, said Driberg, ‘she showed an instant strong sympathy with any Asian nationalist who was being oppressed by some American-backed right-wing regime.’75

  It cannot be pretended that Mountbatten was a brilliant sailor, nor even that he was a competent one. It cannot be pretended that he was a brilliant commander-in-chief. And it is certainly true that he could be hasty, negligent, and easily distracted by trivialities. Nonetheless, he was the man of the coming age. Perhaps uniquely among the high ranks of the British armed forces, he was liberal, personally charming, and apparently favoured Asian nationalism over Western imperialism. He may have been a bit of a joke in Whitehall. But, only fifteen months after the end of the war, Dickie Mountbatten would be called upon to act as the saviour of his country.

  CHAPTER 9

  NOW OR NEVER

  WITH THE WAR WON, WINSTON CHURCHILL CALLED A GENERAL election. The race pitted Churchill, victorious and iconic, against the flat and efficient Clement Attlee. Despite his friendship with Churchill, Dickie Mountbatten shared the political colours of his wife. During the campaign, he answered the door at Broadlands to a Tory canvasser. ‘I don’t have a vote because I’m a peer,’ he told her. ‘If I did, I’d vote Labour. You can try going round the back. I think my butler’s a Conservative.’1

  To the surprise of almost everyone, and most of all Churchill, there was a Labour landslide, and Attlee became Prime Minister. In his speech opening the new parliament, Attlee had the King announce that his government planned ‘the early realization of full self-government in India’.2 The contention that India should be given back to the Indians did not sit well with Churchill and the opposition, but they had little room for manoeuvre. The war had ended, and Britain was broke. The gap in the balance of payments at the end of the war had widened to £2.1 billion (then $8 billion), roughly the cost of administering the Empire for two years. Keynes had told Attlee frankly that he was facing a ‘financial Dunkirk’, and the only option was to seek aid of around $5 billion from the United States.3 The funds available to repair wartime devastation would hardly benefit Britain: they were diverted to the nations which had hosted land battles, such as France, Holland and Belgium.4 The Treasury was all but empty, and the debts of Empire lay in the middle of it like an open drain. An economic aspiration had started the British Empire. An economic reality would end it.

  There was a practical urgency to the desire to dump the Empire, which had shown up most clearly during the Bengal Famine of 1943. During t
he war, the British had shipped grain and railway stocks out of India, weakening its domestic food supply network. At the beginning of 1943, Churchill ordered a cut of 60 per cent in sailings to the subcontinent, saying that the Indian people and the Allied forces there ‘must live on their stocks’.5 But Bengal had been lashed by a massive cyclone in October 1942, and in the wake of that by three tidal waves.6 The rice harvest had been relatively poor during 1942 and 1943, prompting panic-buying in the market, stockpiling by producers, and a massive increase in the price of foodgrains that coincided unhappily with a fall in real-term agricultural wages.7

  Around six million people were affected by the subsequent famine, and between one and two million of them died.8 Hospitals filled up with wretched and emaciated peasants, suffering from dysentery, anaemia, cholera and smallpox; patients came in sweating from malarial fevers, and breaking out in the hard papules of scabies.9 Almost all of the dead were poor people in rural areas, excepting those few in the cities who contracted disease from the wandering sufferers. In the cool bungalows and elegant mansions of Calcutta, rich Europeans and Indians alike supped on plenty. Supplies were available, just at a price that the poor could not afford. Shameful fortunes were reaped from misery and hunger.10

  The famine was the direct result of the failure of the Bengal government and, indeed, the government of India as a whole, to regulate the market – thus allowing the price of rice to rise out of the reach of rural agricultural workers. When the governments realized their mistake, they compounded it by handing the market over to ‘unrestricted free trade’ in March 1943.11 The blame for the famine cannot entirely be laid upon the British, for the government of Bengal was run by elected Indians;12 but the gross inhumanity shown by that government was matched in London. During the crisis, the army veteran Lord Wavell took over as Viceroy. He repeatedly telegrammed Churchill, telling him that millions of people were dying in India and that extra food was needed. In reply, ‘Winston sent me a peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn’t died yet!’13 Churchill refused to release the government’s readily available food stocks, on the grounds that British people might need them at some point. Despite enormous pressure from Wavell in Delhi and the India Secretary, Leo Amery, in London, Churchill and the Bengal government persisted in a policy whose effect was a sort of genocide by capitalism. The government of India, in a panic, lied and pretended that the food stocks were on the way.14 The damning official report concluded that the famine had been avoidable, and its management had been a catastrophe.