As the twentieth century dawned, the Indian army became united into a single force for the first time since the British had arrived in the sub-continent. This remarkable body of men was the largest volunteer army in history: it contained not a single conscript. The Indian army took an honorable part in defeating the German and Japanese armies - the finest military machines of modern times —as well as the armies of Italy and Turkey. It was frequently at war on the North-West Frontier of India when the rest of the world was at peace, and it both protected and promoted British and Indian interests in a dozen countries east of Suez.
The soldiers of the Indian army, both Indians and Gurkhas, were mercenaries. They served not so much for money as for the prestige attached in India to the mercenary profession, and for the honor of regiments to which families sent generation after generation of their sons. Hindu, Sikh and Moslem soldiers served side by side in the closest and most trusting comradeship. Coming from villages where a truck was a rarity and a tractor quite unknown, these soldiers were extremely proficient at warfare based on the horse, mule and camel, and yet they also took with remarkable speed to the mechanized warfare of the Second World War.
This absorbing account, which draws on firsthand accounts of many of the participants, is written with the special insight of one who himself served for more than a decade with the Indian army (Hodson’s Horse). Charles Chenevix Trench presents a fascinating picture of the Indian army in Europe during the First World War and with Allenby in Palestine (the last great cavalry campaign in history); deceiving the Bolshevik Secret Service in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution; enjoying the pleasures of peace - at least for some of the time-in the India of the 1920s and 1930s; and achieving great things in several theaters of war in the years that followed until the end of British rule and the beginning of Independence.
With 70 illustrations, including 20 maps and plans