India
My grandfather, William Laughton, joined the Territorial Army in Orkney and
took part in drills until war was declared in 1914 and he was mobilised.
My grandfather’s first posting was to the Holm Battery near his home, which
was at Breckan. There he was mainly employed as a blacksmith and engineer and
it was his job to maintain the only boat at the Battery, not a very up-to-
date model, powered by a car engine. He was required to go along on every
trip in case it broke down. These trips ranged from removing brass fittings
from the block ships in Scapa Flow, to transporting men home to the South
Isles of Orkney.
My grandparents married in 1915 and a year later his regiment was considered
to be fully trained and received their first overseas posting, about as far
away from Orkney as they could go, to the North West Frontier of India where
the British Army was fighting the Afghan rebels. They were shipped from
London to Bombay, calling at Durban in South Africa on the way. The journey
took six weeks in all as they had to take several detours to avoid enemy
shipping. There was no space on board to exercise and when they arrived and
had to quick march to their first camp they suffered from severe muscle
strain. In India their training continued with special guerrilla warfare
techniques. Only after that were they sent to the fight the Afghans in the
Kyber Pass area near Rawalpindi.
The climate was very hot and dry, sometimes reaching 127º in the shade and
the supply of water was always scarce and rationed. At one time the enemy cut
off their supply for three days and as a result my grandfather’s tongue was
so swollen that he could not speak. Eventually they were given some tea and
it tasted wonderful!
Many of the soldiers caught a bad flu while they were in India and were
hospitalised. My grandfather was one of them and he was in a ward where those
around him were dying off quickly. He decided that if he stayed there he too
would die, so he crept out of the window in the middle of the night dressed
only in pyjamas and a dressing gown. He was very weak on his legs but managed
to walk until first light when he met some bullock wagons. He hitched a lift
on one of the wagons but the men on the wagons could not speak English so
asking for the nearest British troops was no good. They took him to the next
town where he found someone who could speak English and he was directed to a
tented camp where he found the British. While he waited there to re-join his
regiment he heard a voice in the next tent speaking with an Orkney accent.
This turned out to be a Fotheringhame man from the North Isles and the two of
them spent a while reminiscing about Orkney until my grandfather left to
return to his own Regiment.
He was in India a total of 18 months and spent most of that time sleeping in
tents or in the open with only a blanket laid on the ground. His rifle was
never away from his grasp and he even slept with it tied to his body to
prevent it being stolen by the Afghans on night raids. His main fear while he
was in India was contracting cholera which was a killer. Luckily he was
spared that.
He saw many fascinating things in India. The natives performed magic tricks
in the streets, although he never witnessed the famous Indian rope trick. He
did see a trick where a man was tied inside a basket while another covered it
with a blanket and thrust swords through it. When the basket was opened the
man had disappeared.
After the war ended it took another year for my grandfather to be de-mobbed
and return to Orkney,
Title |
India
|
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Subject |
Laughton, William
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Notes |
Thes details were relayed to my family personally by my grandfather, William Laughton, and are faithfully transcribed here, being part of his life story, which included surviving the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but that's another story.
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Item date |
1916
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Creation place |
India
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Item source | |
Item medium | |
Content | |
Cataloguer |
Everett Sharp
|
Filename |
GWA_3965_India.txt
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Copyright |
The Great War Archive, University of Oxford / Primary Contributor
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Digital repository | |
Contributor name |
Norma Campbell
|
Collection
Citation
“India,” The Great War Archive, University of Oxford / Primary Contributor via First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed April 19, 2024, http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/item/5696.
Permitted Use
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