Free FULL MARKS FOR TRYING by BRIGID KEENAN Page B

to prove he wasn’t.
    Shortly after the Faridkot affair, Dad reported that a colleague, Brigadier Wheeler, had resigned. ‘He said he could not be a party to the policy of wholesale murder of Muslims by India . . . General Pete Rees (the commander of the PBF) asked me what my feelings were and I said: “As long as I could help relieve the suffering of these unfortunates I would stay and do my best . . .” ’ By now, though, Dad too had abandoned any idea of staying on in India or Pakistan and was planning to leave himself: ‘The PBF experience has made practically every single British officer cancel any option he may have made to serve on . . .’
    The Punjab Boundary Force only existed for about a month – during which time, Dad wrote, a BBC reporter visited the region and, having seen what the force was required to do and the area they had to cover, commented that General Rees should have had at his disposal five times the number of troops he’d been allocated.  At midnight on 31 August, the PBF, which had worked neutrally on both sides of the border, was disbanded, and instead India and Pakistan assumed responsibility for the security of their own refugees.
    Dad continued his work more or less seamlessly, as he had told General Rees he would, but now under the authority of the Indian Governor of East Punjab. Every day the situation worsened as the whole region suffered unprecedented rainfall: rivers burst their banks, roads were swept away, refugee camps inundated. ‘I could not sleep last night thinking of the plight of
lacks
(hundreds of thousands) of refugees out in the open without fires to cook food, flooded out . . . God have mercy on them: they are suffering terribly. We have 80,000 here in Jullundur and babies etc, the old etc.’
    On 22 September three new train massacres took place – two of Muslim passengers, one of non-Muslims – and 300 women and children were abducted from one of the Muslim trains. Dad wrote severely to Mum, who was desperate to be with him and had obviously made the suggestion she should bring us all up, ‘For all our sakes don’t be foolish . . . my earnest advice to you is STAY PUT. It is just asking for trouble, five women and girls travelling together by rail, unescorted. However much I’d love you to be here I’d rather you delayed your arrival . . .’
    Like many others, Dad worried that all India and Pakistan would explode when the refugees from both sides finally reached their destinations and told their appalling stories. ‘Has U.G. got a gun/revolver?’ he asked in the same letter. ‘Tell him, without the servants noticing it, to keep it safe and handy . . .’
    Mum listened to the advice not to travel; she did not move us and, mercifully, all India did not blow up as people had feared, and two months later, towards the end of the year, by which time most of the millions of refugees had either reached their new homelands or been murdered or abducted, Dad was no longer needed in East Punjab and rejoined us all in Kotagiri.
    By now his decision not to stay on with the Indian Army (or with the Pakistan Army which had also approached him) was definite. We were going home, but first Dad had one last posting, as Poona Sub-Area Commander. I don’t know why he took this on – perhaps it was a question of having to serve out notice?
    Our farewell to the Nilgiri Hills was, to me, the most thrilling adventure ever: an elephant ride through the jungle at night. Tessa was considered too young to go, so she was sent off to stay with her friend Poochie. (After that, whenever you questioned some extraordinary and unlikely claim made by Tessa – e.g., ‘
When
did you ride on a hippopotamus?’ – she would say smugly, ‘I did it at Poochie’s house.’)
    I was included on the safari, though, and was scared stiff but