This article in the NEWS deserves to be read by anyone who has or had family who fought in World War 2 for the British Empire..
In about mid-2002, after a long fight by activists, the British government
announced a one-off payment of pounds10,000 to those surviving prisoners of
war who had fought for the “Crown” and who were captured by the Japanese and
incarcerated in their (reportedly) notoriously cruel prisoner-of-war camps
in the Far Eastern Theatre of World War II. In the case of those former PoWs
who had died, this gratuity was to be paid to their widows/widowers. The
letter announcing this payment, sent by the War Pensions Agency, Norcross,
Blackpool, went out to ex-servicemen’s organisations across the Commonwealth
(including the Pakistan Armed Services Board) asking them to draw up lists
of the eligible.
Some months later, as the Pakistani list was being painstakingly finalised,
the Pakistanis (and the Indians) received another communication from London,
this time a “clarification” stating that there had been a misunderstanding,
and that the gratuity was not meant for those who had served in the British
Indian Army (i.e., the natives), but was specifically and only for officers,
soldiers, airmen and sailors who had served in the “British,” Australian and
New Zealand Armed Forces, including British officers of the Indian Army.
The logic behind considering the British and Australian and New Zealand
Armed Forces as more “British” than the British Indian Army, Navy and Air
Force, escaped most of those involved in the exercise. I was one of the
former soldiers asked by our Armed Services Board to ascertain if there were
any surviving PoWs of the Japanese, in the ten or so villages situated near
mine and which I know well. I had found none, but this “clarification,”
U-turn actually, seemed completely illogical because the British Indian Army
was just that --“British,” officered by Britons, and some few Indians who
were by then allowed into the commissioned ranks.
To reinforce the point, regiments and corps of the British Indian Army
always had the appellation “Royal” attached to their names and titles: cap
badges and shoulder flashes of the artillery, announced “Royal Indian
Artillery,” the medical corps "Royal Indian Army Medical Corps, the air
force “Royal Indian Air force,” and so on. Indeed, the undeniable fact is
that the Indian Army was as “British” as any army serving the British Crown;
my own battalion was, among others, the “Prince of Wales’ Own.”
India was then part of the British Empire and the reigning monarch was King
Emperor (or Queen Empress) of India too. The part of northern India that is
now Pakistan, particularly the districts of Jhelum, Chakwal, Attock,
Rawalpindi and parts of Gujrat, were the main recruiting areas from which
the bulk of the soldiery came, with most young men joining the forces,
particularly the Army, as their fathers and grandfathers had done before
them. These young men fought for the Empire in every theatre of the war, and
were wounded or gave their lives in service to the Crown just like everybody
else. I accidentally came upon a British war cemetery while driving across
Italy some years ago and saw graves of soldiers from Pakistani villages that
I knew; I was particularly moved when I saw graves of soldiers from my own
regiment.
So the fact is that Indian Army and other Services officers and men
sacrificed as much for the British Empire as did their British colleagues. A
large part of the Pakistani Army is still made up of soldiers recruited from
those same areas from where came the soldiers who became prisoners of the
Japanese. The fact is that whilst there are no more than two thousand or so
of those veterans or their widows still living, their male progeny numbering
in the many, many thousands serves in the armed forces of Pakistan today.
Some months after the U-turn, 9/11 happened, and Pakistan was once again
called upon to be a frontline state for the Great Powers, its army being in
the very vanguard, its government besieged by religious bigots for being
anti-Islam.
And what is the bottom line? Consider what Britain is spending in Iraq as
America’s Tonto (most un-PC, I know, but illustrative), a measly 24- or 25
million pounds. Can you even begin to imagine the amount of goodwill that
would be generated in the Pakistani armed forces when young soldiers and
airmen and sailors see their grand- and great-grandfathers and -mothers
cared for and comfortable in their declining years, because of the gratuity?
The fact certainly is that if the debt owed to these aged and debilitated,
sick and very poor ex-servicemen or their widows was paid as promised,
Britain, and therefore the West, would be seen as good and solid friends by
the common people of this country. The mullah would not be so loud then. But
is anyone in the British government listening? Do they care at all for what
lay people, let me repeat myself, think of them when our leaders bow and
scrape to them endlessly for their very own purposes? Incidentally, has the
Pakistani government protested to the Brits about the U-turn? Have they
explained that this just makes the job of being the West’s pawns that much
more difficult? I’ll bet they haven’t, petrified as they are of the Sahib
Log.
For those who want to help, please call Gordon Hextall, chief executive of
the War Pensions Agency, and show your disgust, at: 00-44-800-169-2277
(readers in the UK can call toll free at: 0800-169-2277), or email him at:
[email protected]
The writer is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist