Author: Monty Palit
Publisher: Lancer Publishers
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 659
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170622751/8170622743
Description
VOLUME - I
This is neither a Foreword nor a Preface; nor would either have been neatly appropriate. One should not either foreword or promote one’s own reveries. These few paragraphs are just to ease members of my family-and possibly other readers-into the anecdotes that follow.
To safeguard the publisher from being saddled with heavy remaindering, I am going to finance the publication myself and distribute the result to unsuspecting friends and colleagues-emulating the tribe in England called Vanity Publishers, who readily undertake publication of memories or autobiographies, however unreadable, provided of course that the whole project-printing, publishing, publicity and purveyance-be undertaken at the author’s expense. In other words, money for old boots-and let the critics and the reviewers howl their guts out.
Whether or not my recorded memories will provide pleasure to readers, I cannot tell; but I can honestly say for myself that I have hugely enjoyed writing them. Reliving a past after four score years and more is an exercise is massive egoism (I can hear you comment). So be it. All I can say in my defence is that having has varied experiences in four score years and more is an exercise in massive egoism (I can hear you comment). So be it. All I can say in my defence is that having had varied experiences in four continents across four oceans, I wanted to record them before I pass on to the continent above-in the hope that there may be some among future generations bearing the family name who ay want to know what the Old Man thought, said and did in his lifetime.
VOLUME – II
Soon after I assumed command of 9th Gurkha Regimental Centre in 1951, my Subedar Major, Kaman Sing, said to me one day that he had heard from those who had served with me in 3/9 GR that I was a great tiger shikari. Some of the VCOs (as they were still called) had approached him to try and persuade me to take out a shikar party to shoot tiger. (Tigers were then still plentiful in the Doon Valley and in the jungles near Hardwar and Rishikesh).
In due course a permit arrived for a forest block between Rishikesh and Hardwar (Golathappa Block?) and we set off one winter morning in the Regimental Bus and a 15-cwt truck-on our first shoot. Besides Kaman Sing, Bir Bahadur and Bhim Bahadur there were three other senior people-notably the MT Havidar, Fateh Jung, whom I had trained to be the follow-up man in case we wounded an animal, using a double-barrel 12 bore gun loaded with ball and LG shot, I had also borrowed the IMA’s Shikar Club tracker for our shoot.
Contents
VOLUME -I
BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION
Childhood Years
With Gun and Rifle in Orissa
At School and College
Years at the IMA
Service on the North-West Frontier
Earlier War Postings
The Last Years of the War
After Independence
Soldier-Diplomat, 1948-50
VOLUME - II
Back with the Gorkhas
Brigade Command in Nefa
Back to Army Headquarters
A New Chief Takes Over
A General’s Command in Assam
From the Manas to Mulgrow
Commandant of Cadets
A Full Life as a Civilian