The Indian Corps on the Western Front: A Handbook and Battlefield Guide - Softcover

Doherty, Simon; Donovan, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1905968094 ISBN 13: 9781905968091

Verlag: Tom Donovan Editions, 2014

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Críticas:

Until fairly recently, in the words of a writer more clever than I, the historiography of World War I in France and Belgium has been All White on the Western Front . The contribution, service and presence of colonial peoples of colour in this pivotal front have been all but ignored. Even when it has been dealt with, scholars of the cultural turn , with their rather cavalier and dismissive attitude towards careful, archival, empirical history, have hitherto dominated; which means that, for the military historian and enthusiast, the non-white factor on the western front has remained a terra incognita. This volume, taken together with George Morton-Jack s, The Indian Army on the Western Front, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Gordon Corrigan s Sepoys in the Trenches, (Tonbridge Wells: Spellmount, 1999), counteracts the neglect, at least for the roughly 89,000 Indian combatant soldiers who deployed in France and Belgium in 1914-1915, as part of the Indian Expeditionary Force A, otherwise known as the Indian Corps in France. A further 60,000 Indians on the western front performed support and non-combatant functions. Total Indian Corps casualties on the western front came to 33,116 men (p. 46). It is not generally known that, in late-1914 and early 1915, the Indian Corps was the only fully-trained and deployable strategic reserve available to the British, while their own new armies and the contingents from the various white dominions , such as the Canadian, were being trained on the Salisbury Plain. Indeed, the claim that Indian troops indispensably saved the British line on the Ypres salient against the desperate German assaults, collectively known as the Kindermord bei Ypern the German equivalent of the British first day of the Somme has more than a bit of validity, as Morton-Jack has ably shown.(Morton-Jack, pp. 148-53) The volume under review is impressive. It has been designed and written for the enthusiastic educated layperson, which means that it can be understood by academics as well. It is also sturdy, empirical history, in that its authors seek to explain and clearly elucidate, rather than to academically obfuscate. The first eight chapters (pp. 1-58) offer a solid primer on the colonial Indian Army. We have chapters on the Indian Army s structure and organization, its readiness for war overseas in 1914, its route to the western front, and finally, an overall survey of the Indian Army s performance there. The authors deal frankly and even-handedly with problems faced by the Indian Army, such as the supply of British higher officers, and reinforcement, which was an ongoing headache (pp. 31-2). Besides offering interesting insights into the sea journey the corps took from India to France and a summary of changes to the Indian Corps order of battle (pp. 35-9; 55), the authors, after careful consideration of the available evidence including a secret report investigating possible cases of self-inflicted wounds among Indian soldiery, which found only nine cases out of a thousand conclude that the allegations of low morale, and the greater incidence of self-harm and desertion levelled at the Indians by the British top brass and by earlier scholars, such as Greenhut and Gardner, are indeed overblown. As far as I can see, there is only one minor error: Kitchener s tenure as CinC of the Indian Army ended in 1909, not 1912 (p. 13). Chapters 9 to 18 are devoted to the actions in which the Corps participated. Each chapter consists of a narrative of the battle, and a guide to that particular battlefield. Detailed, full-color scale maps complement these chapters. In addition, there are frequent side-bars, about such things as Indian Corps winners of the Victoria Cross, such as Khudadad Khan (p. 61), Darwán Sing Negi (pp. 84-5), and two British officers, John --Chandar s. Sundaram PhD (McGill)

Reseña del editor:

The Indian Corps on the Western Front: A Handbook and Battlefield Guide contains in one convenient volume a description of the Indian Army in 1914 and the component parts that made up the Corps that landed in Marseilles from September 1914 onwards. The Indians came to a country and a war totally beyond their experience and training. Thown into battle on arrival, sometimes with no time at all to acclimatize to their surroundings, their reaction to the strain of war and their battlefield performance has been challenged by some historians. Recent scholarship refutes these allegations and the conclusion is that the Indians performed well in France and Flanders, especially given the heavy losses they suffered in both officers and men and the difficulties of reinforcing them over Lines-of-Communication reaching back to India. The Indian Corps, comprising two divisions, Lahore and Meerut, remained on the Western Front for a year, participating in ten major battles or operations as well as the constant trying routine of trench warfare. This was particularly grim during the first winter, 1914-15, when trenches were rudimentary and the supply of specialist weapons and other instruments of trench warfare was extremely limited. Following the history and guides are chapters on cemeteries and memorials in France and Belgium, the Indian hospitals established in England during 1914-15 and particularly convalescence in Brighton, where 12,000 Indian soldiers were treated and seventy-four died. The final guide is to locations in Brighton, the hospital buildings and the two post-war memorials. As well as a complete history of the Indian Corps, covering its background and operational experience, this book contains detailed battlefield tour guides of all the main operations, with easy-to-follow instructions and specially commissioned maps. These are in colour coded sections to differentiate them from the historical narrative.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Tom Donovan Editions
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1905968094
• ISBN 13: 9781905968091
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 194