As soon as I had found myself a quarter at Flashman’s Hotel I reported to Army Headquarters. To enable me to draw pay and allowances, I found that I was attached to the General Staff Branch in an appointment similar to the one I had held in Delhi, but it was purely a paper job. At a staff meeting presided over by the Commander-in-Chief, the Chief of the General Staff and the Director of Military Training, I was formally designated Commandant of the embryo Pakistan Military Academy.
I was told that I should plan for an Academy with a battalion consisting of four companies and a curriculum to be spread over two years. It was emphasized that the half-trained cadets coming from the Indian Military Academy must be finished off and commissioned post-haste; these, of course, were Muslim cadets who had opted for Pakistan. The IMA had been in existence since the mid-thirties when Indian gentlemen, desirous of pursuing a military career, were no longer sent to Sandhurst for training but to the IMA at Dehra Dun instead; this was part of the programme to ‘Indianize’ the Indian Army. During my time at Sandhurst there had been several Indian cadets but they all came from wealthy families, able to pay the rather heavy fees. Dehra Dun offered a comparatively expense-free course, and therefore was able to attract Indian boys from a much wider field. This also was the intention at the PMA, where the cadets would receive modest pay and allowances during training. In fact, any young man with the necessary physique who had a matriculation certificate and was able to pass the interview was adjudged acceptable.
Beyond these basic requirements, however, all was yet to be decided. Because of the hasty creation of this new state of Pakistan, no one had had much time to work out the details of the country’s infrastructure, whether at government level or in the military. Everything had to be created anew and in a hurry. It was a massive task, therefore, that faced those of us involved in the decision-making process – sometimes daunting too. But it was a wonderful challenge and the atmosphere was one of determined excitement.
Initially I found myself given a free rein to make what order I could out of the confusion: to find a suitable location for the new Academy, to find the money and the staff as well, and to supervise the decisions relating to the curriculum. None of this was very straightforward, particularly as I had to work through the usual channels of the new Pakistan Army. In fact, my first problem brought me up against all sorts of obstacles: how to finance the Academy.
I began by estimating what staff, premises and equipment would be required, and working out a budget to cover these costs as well as the actual running costs of the place. This in itself was no easy task but finally I had produced the necessary budget. Now I had to persuade the Army to approve my budget and furnish the finance. It was to prove a most exhausting and time-consuming process.
Eventually I had to appear before the Adjutant-General to argue my case. A newly promoted officer, the Pakistani Adjutant-General was extremely pompous and difficult to deal with; he also seemed vague about what was required of him and hesitant about making decisions. The new Army’s pay and accounts department proved parsimonious beyond belief and there were times when I was made to feel I was asking for the moon, when all I wanted was the very basic funding their new Academy required.
These early brushes with senior officers of the Army did not make me ‘best beloved’, but I was determined to forge ahead as fast as possible. At last I had their approval of my budget. Now it was time to tackle the next problem: where should the new Academy be located?
I already had a place in mind. Back in the thirties, when I had married for the first time, my wife and I sometimes rented a house in Abbottabad for the summer. Lying in a valley 4000 feet above sea level, surrounded by the foothills of the Himalayas between northern Pakistan and Kashmir, Abbottabad had its own military cantonment and was not considered a true hill station like Kashmir, Murree or Simla. But summer temperatures were reasonable and the rents were cheap. Besides, Abbottabad had a fair polo ground and the local garrison played polo all year round. I used to send my polo ponies up there at the beginning of the hot weather; my wife, the servants and the ponies stayed for about six months and I usually managed to get two months’ leave in July and August when I could join them.
I had thus come to know the area well. For many years Abbottabad cantonment had been the base depot for two regiments of Gurkhas, the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles and the 6th Gurkha Rifles, as well as the 13th Frontier Force Rifles, a regiment of mountain artillery and a brigade headquarters. Five miles away there had been another cantonment at Kakul, which in the thirties had been home to the Indian Army School of Artillery and more recently, during the Second World War, a training school for young officers of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC). The area therefore had all the logistical back-up of a well-established military station – supply depots, engineer services, etc. Moreover, it was only eighty miles from Rawalpindi by road; there was also a rail link from Rawalpindi, though it terminated at Havelian, ten miles short of Abbottabad. Thus the area was within fairly easy reach of Pakistan Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Kakul, as I remembered it, had been small but modern. The houses were built of brick and stone with all modern conveniences: running water, electricity and flush toilets – light years ahead of most military stations in the thirties! During the war the RIASC had expanded even faster than other branches of the Indian Army, and I knew their training facilities had expanded accordingly. I checked with AHQ to see whether Kakul was now occupied. To my delight they told me it wasn’t – so I decided to go up there and confirm my feeling that this would be the perfect location for the new Academy.
I drove up the Grand Trunk Road and into the foothills until the road debouched into the broad valley where Abbottabad lay. All around the valley stood the beautiful hills, rising towards the east where the majestic Himalayas wore white ermine capes and conversed with the sky. What a superb backdrop for the Academy! The valley itself was good farming country, green and lush, and the local tribesmen, the Shinwaris, were comparatively law-abiding – compared that is, with the trans-border tribes to the north-west.
Arriving in Abbottabad, I found everyone in the usual state of upheaval caused by Partition. The Gurkhas were leaving – 5RGR destined for the new Indian Army, 6GR to become part of the British Army – and the 12th Frontier Force Regiment was taking their place. But the training school at Kakul was, as I had been assured, empty.
The former facilities of the RIASC were all I had been led to expect. The staff quarters and large staff mess were in tip-top shape. New buildings housed four permanent student messes and single quarters for about four hundred students, married officers’ hutments, a large lecture hall plus smaller study halls, two cinemas and much else besides. There were a few shortcomings, but these I felt were outweighed by all the advantages. This was the ideal place for the Academy.
I returned to Rawalpindi and wrote a report recommending that Kakul be the chosen site. I discussed it personally with the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Gracey, as well as with the Chief of the General Staff and the Director of Military Training, all of whom were British regular army officers on loan to Pakistan. Kakul’s training school was duly chosen to be the site for the Pakistan Military Academy.
There now followed hundreds of meetings at AHQ in Rawalpindi as we began to get down to such matters as staff, courses and equipment. Again I found myself clashing with the gentlemen of the military accounts department over my equipment indents, as well as with several awkward customers who had been newly promoted and wanted to flex their authoritative muscles. However, most Pakistani officers, I am glad to say, realized that the founding of the PMA took priority over all new training establishments except the Staff College at Quetta, and gave me their full support and co-operation.
One man whose support I could always count on was in the Ministry of Defence, and thus one of my ultimate bosses, Iskander Mirza. We had known each other at AHQ in India and were on very good terms. Following several unnecessary delays on the question of staff, I decided to ask Iskander for his help. I wanted his authority to pick any officer I needed, over the head of the Military Secretary at AHQ whose job was to arrange the posting and allocation of all officers throughout the Pakistan Army.
But first, at an interview with Iskander, I explained that I wanted a regimental sergeant-major from the Brigade of Guards in London, plus six Guards drill sergeants. Iskander agreed, and said he would get the Pakistan Government to contact the British. But England, too, was in a state of upheaval after the war, and my requirements could not be met in full. Thanks to Iskander, however, I did get one invaluable man Regimental Sergeant-Major V. C. Duffield MBE of the 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards.
Mr Duffield had never served in the East before and knew nothing of Islam or the country in which he was to serve, as I discovered when he and his wife arrived in Pakistan. I did my best to acquaint him with my experience of nearly twenty years in India, describing the current situation in the subcontinent and trying to explain what I thought Pakistan expected of us. An intelligent and receptive man, he quickly saw what an exciting prospect it was for an Englishman to take part in the building of this country’s future. Although he and Mrs Duffield had practically no social life in the Academy, and the minimum of creature comforts to which they must have been accustomed, they settled down very quickly and Mr Duffield soon won the respect of all he met. A super drill instructor, he became a legend at Kakul for the high standards of drill, discipline and turn-out he required of the cadets – standards that the Pakistan Army still enjoys.
The other drill staff who came from England were not of the same quality: only two were Guardsmen, while the others came from regiments of the line and did not meet the standards I wanted. Some had personal problems and, after all, had been posted willy-nilly into a foreign country which was still suffering its own birth pangs. Ultimately I sent them all home, and told the indispensable Mr Duffield to build a Pakistani drill staff. This he did with great success, despite his nonexistent Urdu. Much of a drill sergeant’s armoury is his ability to castigate his victims verbally; Mr Duffield’s demeanour and vocabulary were superb and, after an astonishingly short time, I was amazed to hear his team of Pakistani drill staff using the very same admonitions in Urdu coupled with identical gestures!
As for the other staff, Iskander Mirza was as good as his word; thanks to him and the Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was also Minister of Defence, any officer I asked for was made available and I had soon collected an excellent military staff. All were young – yesterday my colonels were captains and my majors were lieutenants – but most had seen active service in the Second World War. Anything they lacked in experience they made up in unbounded enthusiasm. I could not have found a better or more loyal team.
My first Deputy Commandant and Cadet Battalion Commander was Colonel M. A. Latif Khan, of the Baluch Regiment, who had fought with great gallantry in Burma and had been awarded the Military Cross. When his name was first proposed I had some doubts; it was hinted that his sympathies were anti-British. However, as soon as I met Latif I took an immediate liking to him. At our first interview I discovered that he was intensely nationalistic – in fact, after he left my staff his ambitions would get him into serious trouble. But I asked him point-blank if he was indeed anti-British; if so he would obviously be unsuitable as my deputy. He was very honest and explained that his prejudice was not against the British nation as a whole but one man in particular. It all boiled down to a tactless senior British officer treading on a young and sensitive Latif’s toes. He told me frankly that he had made enquiries about me – and that in his opinion the Government could not have selected a more suitable person than myself to found the Academy! Needless to say, we struck up a lasting friendship.
Another officer I was fortunate enough to obtain for the Academy, in the capactiy of a company commander, was Latif’s brother-in-law, Major Abid Bilgrami. These two young men were married to charming and sophisticated sisters from the noble house of Bhopal – all were refugees from India. The ladies were to play a valuable role in organizing the social life at Kakul. One of the first things that had been decided in our meetings at AHQ had been the length of the course and, in general terms, what subjects would be taught. I obtained the latest curricula from my alma mater, Sandhurst, from West Point in the USA, Duntroon (the Australian Academy) and the Academy in Canada. Roughly speaking, the syllabus was divided into two-thirds academic subjects, one-third military training. We worked day and night, sketching out the syllabus for each subject and writing précis after précis. Suddenly I realized we had reached a stage when the material requirements of many of these subjects were lacking. The military end was fine and growing day by day, but where were the textbooks and lab equipment?
One day I was sitting in my hotel room in Rawalpindi reading the Civil and Military Gazette; published in Lahore, this was the most influential newspaper of the Punjab – at the turn of the century its editor was none other than Rudyard Kipling. The leading article caught my eye: it was on the subject of education. The writer was bemoaning the fact that Pakistan had few seats of learning and the best of the colleges, in Lahore and Rawalpindi, were being vandalized and looted by hooligans from the bazaar. He went on to say that all the best Muslim universities were now across the border in India – Osmania, Islamia and Lucknow – but practically all of their leading teachers had emigrated to Pakistan, destitute and without work; no one had any use for them, it seemed.
This article was doubly interesting, for not only did we lack equipment but also instructors to teach the arts, humanities and science. In short, apart from my military staff, I needed academic staff. The Adjutant-General’s branch had suggested I call upon the services of the Army Education Corps and I did in fact take on one excellent lieutenant-colonel as Director of Studies, four majors and a number of captains. But I needed many more, and the rest of the AEC’s people were in my opinion incapable of teaching the subjects we required. Their main job in peacetime was teaching the common soldier to read and write Urdu in Roman (that is, English) script as opposed to the shikasta form; they also taught English to some advanced students, but that was about the limit of their usefulness.
I dropped my paper and headed for the office of the senior civilian administrator, the Commissioner of Rawalpindi. I told him of my plight. I needed textbooks and various sorts of equipment desperately; AHQ had no funds to buy what I wanted – and yet in colleges in Lahore and Rawalpindi these precious assets were being looted and smashed by goondas, gangs of organized rioters. The police had their hands full and could not spare the men to stop the rioting. It might be years before Pakistan began producing her own educational material, and certainly before she had the foreign exchange with which to purchase it abroad. But I needed it now, I said. Might I collect a few soldiers and undertake a spot of organized looting myself?
To say the Commissioner was taken aback is an understatement. He was no newly promoted Deputy, but quite a senior member of the old Indian civil service and was accustomed to legal and civil niceties. However, he took my point and finally sent for the Superintendent of Police. We had a short conference and agreed on a time and place for me to launch my looting raid. Next I went to see the Commanding Officer of the Frontier Force Rifles, to borrow the services of his men, and to the local supply officer in Abbottabad who loaned me several three-ton trucks. On the appointed day we duly descended upon the colleges of Rawalpindi and systematically looted all we could cart away. It was exactly what we needed to start our first courses – indeed, I believe that some of our spoils from that day are still in use at the academy.
But I wasn’t finished yet. Having acquired my materials, I now needed more staff to instruct my cadets. I went to see the Commander-in-Chief in Rawalpindi – the Adjutant-General, I felt, would probably find my scheme too hard to swallow – and showed him the editorial in the Civil and Military Gazette that had motivated me. What I proposed was that we should advertise for civilian professors and lecturers to join the academy – the very people who had fled from India and now found themselves without a job. General Gracey, who had been one of my teachers when I was a cadet, looked at me as though I had gone mad.
‘My dear Bingle,’ he said, using my army nickname, ‘How on earth do you expect to absorb a bunch of civilians of that calibre into a military establishment? And how do you expect to pay them?’
I was ready for this and had previously drafted a paper suggesting how my scheme might be carried out. I thought we could form a civilian cadre of instructors especially for the academy. I proposed they be given Military rank for pay and allowances but in a special cadre for service only in the Academy. They would not wear uniform, of course, but civilian clothes with academic gowns on top, which might make it easier for them to accept employment in a military environment; it would also emphasize their status and learning and could only have a good effect on their students. As for pay, the military finance people would very likely prove resistant to the proposal that they should foot the bill for this civilian cadre; they would certainly spend weeks if not months in committee meetings. But we could not afford to wait so long. I wanted the Chief to go over their heads. He agreed, and put in a call to the Ministry of Defence in Karachi immediately. Again, Iskander Mirza came through, and I got the necessary permission.
I placed my advertisement that same day. We were swamped with applications from displaced and out-of-work academics. Most had several degrees; one gentlemen had doctorates in philosophy from Edinburgh, Bonn and Leiden universities. What a galaxy of talent – and all of them so eager for a job!
It was towards the end of 1947 that we got the final go-ahead to set up shop in Kakul. We now had the location, the beginnings of a curriculum and the staff. Our academic prospects looked excellent. But there was still plenty to be done before the first course at the Pakistan Military Academy could begin in January, 1948.