‘The sands of time have choked these men and the women who followed them, and the erosion of the decades has often effaced their memorials. But they live on in their words, and, or so I hope, through my pen.’
Yet there were times when it was hard to like Atkins, perhaps when he had a head full of arrack and was intent on mischief in the bazaar, or perhaps when, after a hard-fought battle or bloody storm, he was looting what he could carry, smashing what he could not, and killing anyone who tried to stop him. I had not realised when I began just how difficult it would be to write about the Mutiny, which showed neither side at its best and often revealed the British at their most vengeful and embittered. Nor had I thought that I would resent the way that the openness of Georgian India, with its British gentlemen dressing in Mughal style and its easy recognition that love was no respecter of colour or creed, was elbowed aside by the sniffiness of Victorian India with its missionaries and memsahibs and its whispered asides about sable beauties and dark ladies. I cannot imagine how India could have been won and held without the memsahibs, those indomitable women who travelled the roads of India with their broods, in summer’s heat or pelting monsoon. But I do wish that they had not defined their own caste system quite so sharply in a land which already had castes enough.
Lastly, it is hard not to feel pride tinged with sorrow when I consider the whole imperial achievement. Pride because, when all is said and done, this was an empire honestly ruled, which laid foundations that still sustain the most populous democracy in the world. Sorrow because, just as the Indian climate scorches, rots and corrodes, so the visible traces of the men who stood sentry-go at Fort Jamrud, marched with grim desperation from one cholera camp to another, and scampered amongst the bullet-puffs in a busy skirmish-line have disappeared. This was the army of the Victorian print and the Kipling poem, gone as if it had never been. And that, I suppose, is the big idea I was so cautious about at the very beginning, and the link between the books of my trilogy. The sands of time have choked these men and the women who followed them, and the erosion of the decades has often effaced their memorials. But they live on in their words, and, or so I hope, through my pen.
Read on
Other Books by Richard Holmes.
Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front
Holmes’s immaculate history of the First World War puts the British soldier in the trenches centre-stage, compellingly telling the story of this epic and terrible war through the letters, diaries and memories of those who fought it.
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket
The bestselling history of the British soldier from 1700 to 1900, a period in which methods of warfare and the social make-up of the British army changed little, and in which the Empire was forged.
Wellington: The Iron Duke
The exhilarating story of Britain’s greatest ever soldier. The Duke of Wellington’s remarkable life and audacious campaigns are vividly recreated in this book.
The First World War in Photographs
An astonishing and moving collection of images from the archives of the Imperial War Museum.
The Western Front
Richard Holmes captures the scale and intensity of the Great War in this heartfelt and gripping account of the bloodiest days of the First World War.
War Walks: From Agincourt to Normandy
For centuries, battles have raged over the area of Belgium and northern France known as the ‘fatal avenue’. In War Walks Richard Holmes explores six of the region’s most intriguing battlefields, vividly recreating the atmosphere of their bloody history.
Acts of War
A gripping attempt to find the very nature of war. It takes us through the soldier’s experience in its entirety, including personal recollections of veterans of a dozen conflicts. This is a powerful portrait of what motivates the soldier and enables him to maintain the struggle in conditions of extreme degradation and danger.
Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors
A magisterial history of the British soldier. From battlefield to barrack-room, it is filled with anecdotes and stories of soldiers from the army of Charles II, through Empire and two World Wars to modern times.
If You Loved This,
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• Begums, Thugs and White Mughals
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• Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian
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• The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company
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• Plain Tales from the Raj
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• Thug: The True Story of India’s Murderous Religion
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• The Khyber Rifles: From British Raj to Al Qaeda
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• Generals
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About the Author
Richard Holmes was one of Britain’s most distinguished and eminent military historians and broadcasters. For many years Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University and the Royal Military College of Science, he was the author of many books including the best-selling and widely acclaimed Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket; Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front; Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genius; Wellington: The Iron Duke and most recently, Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors. His other books include The Western Front and Dusty Warriors. He was general editor of the Oxford Companion to Military History and taught military history at Sandhurst for many years. As well as his work as an academic and writer, Richard Holmes joined the Territorial Army in 1964, and served for over 35 years, retiring as a brigadier and Britain’s most senior reservist. He was also Colonel of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment from 1999 until 2007. Famous for his BBC series such as War Walks, In the Footsteps of Churchill and Wellington, Richard Holmes died suddenly in April 2011 from pneumonia. He had been suffering from non-Hodgkins’ Lymphoma.
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Praise
From the reviews of Sahib:
‘Richard Holmes, whose mastery of the British Army is unequalled, describes its Indian experience with affectionate realism and a wealth of anecdotes … [A] worthy memorial of one of the most extraordinary experiences in British history’
MAX HASTINGS, Sunday Telegraph
‘Impressive … There are some spectacular anecdotes and a colourful cast of characters … Exhaustively researched, remarkably informative … For anyone interested in the Raj this book is a must’
Observer
‘Marshalling his material like an experienced quartermaster, Richard Holmes makes bold forays over a battle-strewn landscape. His underlying curiosity about how such a numerically slight body of men managed to subdue this vast country is infectious … Holmes is adept at describing what it felt like to serve in India – from the teeming troop deck of an East Indiaman on the voyage out, through the smells of an Indian marketplace, to the experience of barracks and, of course, military engagements’
Sunday Times
‘Holmes is a passionate and richly entertaining champion of the rank and file’
Daily Telegraph
‘Insightful, colourful, relevant and pithy’
The Times
‘Holmes’s chief concern is to portray the life rather than the actions of the British soldier, and he does this well’
Guardian
�
�[Holmes is] a narrative historian almost without peer and a master at marshalling first-hand accounts … He opens with a magnificent set piece … Thirty-eight tightly-packed chapters follow, each crammed with incident and insight’
Spectator
‘Holmes has a sound knowledge of the terrain, he marches at a brisk pace, and he carries a good supply of meat and spirits in his knapsack … The fare he provides is as pungent as the curries on a regimental guest night … the great achievement of this book is to give us a soldier’s-eye view of life in India’
Literary Review
‘A wonderful memorial to Britain (and particularly its soldiers) in India … Anybody with a fondness for history and an interest in the story of the Empire will surely love this book’
The Field
‘A unique insight into the pleasures and pains of Indian service’
SAUL DAVID, BBC History Magazine
ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES
In order of publication
The English Civil War (with Brigadier Peter Young)
The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French
Soldiers (with John Keegan)
Firing Line
The Road to Sedan
Fatal Avenue
Riding the Retreat
War Walks
War Walks II
The Western Front
The Second World War in Photographs
The First World War in Photographs
Oxford Companion to Military History (general editor)
Battlefields of the Second World War
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket
Wellington: The Iron Duke
Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front
In the Footsteps of Churchill
Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War
Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genius
Shots from the Front: The British Soldier 1914–18
Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors
Copyright
HarperPress
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006
Copyright © Richard Holmes 2006
Richard Holmes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00737034-4
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