The distance between Bombay and Peshawar is over thirteen hundred miles, and in 1929 the train journey took about three days and two nights to complete. It was a fascinating journey, though, and a wonderful way to see the country for the first time.
There were two main rail routes between Bombay and Delhi, the capital: one route, via Rutlam, was run by the Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) Railway; the other, via Baroda, by the Bombay, Baroda and Central Indian (BB & CI) Railway. From Delhi on to Peshawar it was the same train. On the Frontier Mail – all the trains had similar splendid names – I took the BB & CI route, along with three others of my group who were to be dropped off at different places en route; I was the only one going the whole way to Peshawar. We shared a four-berth compartment in a first-class carriage.
Indian trains of that era were drawn by huge locomotives, either coal- or wood-burning. Generally main-line trains were twelve or fourteen coaches long, with the third-class coaches immediately behind the engine, second-class behind them and the first-class coaches and restaurant car at the rear. The closer the engine the more the passengers suffered from smoke, smuts and cinders. And those old locomotives did spew cinders: one would find them in the bedding, the food, even in the drinking water.
The bulk of travellers used the third-class, which had no bunks, just rows of hard benches packed with humanity. Sometimes the overflow was such that people spilled out of the windows and stood on the running board or perched precariously on the roof of the lurching carriages. Whenever the train pulled in at a station there was always a frantic surge as people pushed forward, trying to enter the third-class coaches. Not that everyone paid; the Indian Railways did have ticket inspectors but in the scrum their job was well nigh impossible.
Second-class accommodation, chiefly patronized by middle-class Indians and Anglo-Indians, was a more spartan version of first-class, which consisted of two-berth and four-berth compartments with a separate compartment for the personal servants of first-class passengers. The sahib log (basically white people) and the more affluent Indians travelled first-class. However, no matter how affluent, an Indian would never dream of sharing a compartment already occupied by a sahib if he could possibly avoid it. Certain young Britishers were often very rude to anyone they considered a ‘wog’ (Westernized Oriental Gentleman), a term of opprobrium that was only too well understood by Indians. I think it was Evelyn Waugh who coined the phrase ‘The wogs begin at Calais’, and I regret to say that there were many Englishmen abroad who lived according to this tenet. This was true even of some who had been at Sandhurst, where we lived alongside Indian cadets and it had been obvious to even the most insular intelligence that, given a difference in race and certain religious taboos (generally in connection with food and the preparation thereof), they lived by the same standards and were just as much ‘gentlemen’ as we were. On the other hand, there were also certain orthodox Indians, particularly of the Hindu faith, who would consider themselves defiled if they lived even for an hour or two in the company of an unbeliever.
Our four-berther on the Frontier Mail consisted of two lower and two upper bunks; by day the latter were hooked up to the roof and we all sat on the lower bunks. Each compartment had its own small bathroom with a tiny handbasin and a shower stall, both fed from a steel tank located on the roof. The water temperature depended on the air temperature outside: in summer it was scalding hot, in winter it was icy, and there was no way of regulating the system. The toilet consisted of an open vent directly above the permanent way, (‘No, darling, you’ll have to wait. You simply can’t do it while we’re standing in the station!’)
In the 1920s there were no air-conditioned coaches on the trains. Two small electric fans churned the turgid air overhead but we didn’t even have the benefit of the refinement that was introduced in the ’30s. This was a large block of ice which one could order before starting one’s journey; it was placed in a container on the floor of the compartment and the fans were directed on to it to circulate cooler air. The ice blocks weighed eighty to a hundred pounds apiece but in the extreme heat they lasted only a few hours.
The carriage doors were heavy and could be locked from the inside. Three glazed windows on either side of the compartment were each covered with a framed wire gauze and a sliding wooden shutter. Theoretically all could be bolted shut but in fact they were very insecure; a smart bang on the outside caused the shutter, gauze and window each in turn to fall into its slot, enabling an intruder to enter the compartment. This was by no means uncommon, particularly at night when the occupants were asleep. Any noise the intruder made was covered by the constant rattle and clatter of the train. Professional thieves would wait in the darkness on station platforms and leap onto the running board as the train passed slowly through. As cunning as they were agile, they would stand on the running board until they were sure the occupants of a compartment were asleep, then open a window and quest with one hand for watch, wallet or handbag. Having made a haul they either climbed on to the roof or rode the buffers until the train slowed down at the next station when they would jump off and disappear into the night.
Most of them were petty thieves and comparatively harmless, but sometimes the trains were worked by real thugs, armed and prepared to do murder if necessary. In fact, one of my fellow cadets from Sandhurst was to lose his life in just such an incident.
At Sandhurst George Hext had acquired an unusual nickname. It was given to him on our very first parade when Sergeant-Major Manger was proceeding down the ranks, teaching us all to give our names in the correct manner. He halted in front of George and cast a sardonic glance at the monocle that George always wore in his right eye.
‘And what’s your name, sir?’
‘Hext, Staff.’
‘Ho, Mr Hext, sir, and what may I arsk is that in your right eye?’
‘It’s a monocle, Staff.’
‘Well, Mr Hext, sir, you’d only need one in the hother end and you’d be a bloody telescope, wouldn’t you, sir?’
And so George Hext was known thereafter as ‘the bloody telescope’.
Anyway, George came to India with the rest of us and, like me, joined a battalion in northern India. One day, two or three years later, he and another subaltern by the name of Saunders were travelling south to attend a course in Central India. The two men were sharing a compartment on the Frontier Mail, along with George’s dog, a bull terrier. It was their first night on the train, somewhere in the Punjab near Ambala. As usual, before going to sleep they locked and barred all doors and windows; but in the middle of the night a gang of thugs burst into the compartment, waking George and his companion.
Although unarmed, the two officers put up a spirited resistance and a fierce hand-to-hand fight ensued. But the thugs had knives. Saunders received serious wounds, George and his dog were stabbed to death. Saunders managed to pull the communication cord to slow the train, but it was too late: the thugs had fled.
There is a sad sequel to this story. When Saunders’s wounds were treated he insisted on proceeding to his destination though he swore that never again would he travel unarmed. He duly completed the course and before setting off on the return journey he acquired a .45 pistol. This time he travelled alone. Not far from the place where Saunders had been attacked on his way south, the train made an unscheduled stop. Just as the train was pulling out of the small station, there was a sudden crash and the window shutter fell down. The head and shoulders of a man were silhouetted against the receding lights. Saunders took aim and fired, the figure disappeared, and once again Saunders pulled the communication cord. It turned out that he had shot and killed the teenage son of the local Anglo-Indian station master.
At the court of enquiry it was revealed that the lad always ‘jumped’ trains in this way; brought up in the railways he never bought a ticket. As usual he had stepped up onto the running board and banged on the nearest window. He would have asked permission to enter, but on this occasion he was denied the chance.
Saunders finally faced a court martial on a charge of manslaughter. I was told that he was so shattered by these two tragedies that, at the age of twenty-three, his hair turned white almost overnight.
Fortunately, no such incident occurred on this train journey. To pass the time, my three companions and I played endless games of bridge, vingt-et-un and piquet, in between watching the countryside pass and speculating on our future. And, every four hours or so, we were able to disembark when the train stopped at a major station. We would climb out onto the platform and wend our way, through hundreds of milling peasants trying to board the train, towards the restaurant car at the rear.
There is something very appealing to me about dining aboard a train, even if the food is not of the best. In fact, the food served on Indian trains was really quite good: chiefly curry, of course, but we were new to the country and it seemed only right and proper that our initial culinary experiences should include this traditional dish. The meals tended to be long and leisurely as we could not return to our compartment until the train stopped at the next station. The waiter brought us round after round of chota pegs – literally a small peg (shot) of scotch, usually with ice and soda; this was the customary tipple of the sahib log in India.
And still the countryside slipped past. At first it all seemed the same, mile after mile of flat dusty brown plains with the occasional small hillock. By night the scene was dotted with endless tiny fires as families prepared their evening meal. I can still smell the aroma of burning cow dung to this day; it is strangely pleasant, quite unlike any other smell I have encountered. During the day we could see dozens of these cow dung patties drying out for use on the fire, either on the ground or on the walls of the mud huts. Decent sized trees are practically nonexistent over much of India, so dried cow dung is the only available fuel. Sometimes a new and enthusiastic civil servant would try to persuade the peasants to spread the dung on their fields, to improve the poor quality of the soil. But their attempts were in vain; cow dung was too precious as a fuel to be wasted like that.
Gradually, as the train headed ever north, the character of the countryside began to change and I saw more and more green fields where sugar cane, mustard and other crops were grown. This was the first sign that I was approaching the Punjab, for the fields were irrigated by man-made channels deriving their source from the great Punjabi rivers. The very name Punjab means ‘Land of the Five Rivers’: panch (five) and ab (water).
By the time we reached Rawalpindi I was alone in the compartment, my three friends having left the train at earlier stops. I gazed out of the windows more eagerly now, aware that I should later come to know this country on the most intimate terms, and as the train drew into the terminal at Peshawar Cantonment my excitement grew. This was the Frontier, land of the Khyber Pass, through which all the great invasions of India had come – Alexander the Great and the Moguls, to name but two.
Slowly the train came to a halt against the buffers, and waiting for me on the platform was Wahidullah Khan.