Dan Snow's History Hit - Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

May 28, 1940: Major Akbar Khan of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps marches at the head of 299 soldiers along the beach at Dunkirk - the only Indians in the BEF in France and the only ones at Dunkirk. These men of the Indian Army, carrying their disabled imam, find their way to the East Mole and embark for England in the dead of night. On reaching Dover, they borrowed brass trays and started playing Punjabi folk music, upon which even "many British spectators joined in the dance." Where had they come from and why were they in France? And what happened to them after that? Ghee Bowman reveals in full, for the first time, the story of these soldiers, from their arrival in France on December 26, 1939 to their return at war's end to an India on the verge of partition. It is one of the war's hidden stories that casts fresh light on Britain and its empire.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. If you listen to this on the day that it dropped, the 27th of May 2020, it's 80 years to the day since the famous 27th of May 1940 when Winston Churchill had it out with Lord Halifax in the War Cabinet in London. Three meetings of the War Cabinet that day, and in one of them Halifax threatened to resign if Churchill did not take seriously the potential offer of mediation from Mussolini. It looked like the British army was going to be captured in its virtual entirety on the continent. Calais had fallen yesterday. The Belgians were teetering on the edge of surrendering. They would surrender in just a few hours' time. It looked as if the whole of the BEF, the British Expeditionary Force, would be basically surrounded and captured on the beaches of northern France. An unprecedented, catastrophic defeat. Churchill and Halifax had an argument. Churchill said it would be better to go down fighting the Nazis than it would be to make a dishonourable peace. It was, several historians

have commented, as close to victory probably as Hitler would come during the Second World War. It was as close to a wobble as the British government had during the Second World War. 27 May 1940, what an anniversary. It was also right at the start of Operation Dynamo, which is the operation to evacuate said British army from the continent, expecting to get tens of thousands of people away. Instead, it ended up getting hundreds of thousands of people off those beaches that could then form the nucleus of a greatly expanded British army that alongside its allies would fight and win the Second World War in North thousands of people off those beaches that can then form the nucleus of a greatly expanded British army that alongside its allies would fight and win the Second World War in North Africa and Europe. To mark that occasion, we have got Guy Bowman on the podcast. He's talking about

an often overlooked unit of the British army in France, a unit of Indian soldiers, the only representatives actually of Britain's Indian army, that were in France and Belgium with a mule train. So they specialised in transporting supplies to and from the front line. And they were evacuated from Dunkirk. And so Guy Bowman has hunted down their story, researched their story, and found relatives, descendants and friends to tell their story fully for the first time. It's a fascinating podcast. We've got a documentary on Dunkirk at the moment on History Hit TV. It's like a Netflix fascinating podcast. We've got a documentary on Dunkirk at the moment on History Hit TV. It's like a Netflix for history. We've got hundreds of history documentaries and

hundreds and hundreds of podcasts on there. So if you want to sign up, please do. It's amazing to have you. It's a great way of supporting this podcast. I'm extremely grateful. Also means you get to come on the Zoom calls as well, which are happening once a week now. It's great to have subscribers on there. If you use the code POD1, P- the code pod1 pod1 you'll get a month for free and you can check out all the dunkirk stuff and then you get another month for just one pound euro dollar whatever currency you're in and you get access to the world's best history channel basically in the meantime everybody enjoy Guy Bowman Guy thank you very much for coming on the podcast on this big anniversary occasion.

Approximately how many Indian troops were in the BEF in France from 1939 to 1940? They played a huge role in 1914, didn't they? Was it a similar number of Indian troops in 1939 to 40? No, it was much fewer, much smaller group. There was about 1,700 and something. And they were all mule transport. They were part of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. And they were there with the BEF from the end of 1939. They were there. Why was it such a small number of troops? Do you know? At that stage, the BEF thought that they'd be okay on their own,

with obviously the enormous French army and the reason the Indian soldiers were needed was because the British Royal Army Service Corps had no animal transport they got rid of all the animal transport they were entirely reliant upon motor transport and trains and the motto was not a horse in the force but then they realized fairly early on they realized that they probably would need some animals. The last kind of mile to the front line, they were thinking in First World War terms, in mud or in snow or in conditions where they had to keep the noise down, they would need animal transport. And so they looked to the empire and the Indian army at that stage had over 30

animal transport companies, each of which was more than 300 men. So that expertise, that skill existed in India that didn't exist in the UK at that time. How did their war go? Obviously, prolonged period of doing not much, I imagine, before the great crisis of May 1940. So when they went to France, they were actually quite busy, in fact. I mean, it was a terrible winter. It's one of the worst winters of the 20th century. And at a time when automotive transport wasn't able to function properly, you know, mules could still go. So they were transporting stuff around a lot. And a lot of that was Royal Engineering materials. metal stanchions, stuff that would be useful in building that front line that Lord Gort had in his head and on paper as a plan, where the BEF were plugging that little gap in the French between the end of the Maginot line and the coast. They were busy building fortifications. How were they treated by the rest of the British army? If there wasn't that big an imperial

contingent around, did they stand out? Yes, for sure they stood out. Each company was separate. So there were two companies in the north, one company near Le Mans, but the fourth company contingent around did they stand out yes for sure they stood out each company was separate so there were two companies in the north one company near le mans but the fourth company stayed in the south of martin until in may it went up to join the 51st highland division front of the machinolite so they were working very closely with british soldiers and indeed with french civilians in many cases they were billeted in with frank civilians, running gymkhanas as a kind of public entertainment for the local villagers. So it's a lovely set of photos, shows the men riding on the back of mules and dancing and playing music. And this was Bhangra

dancing. So they were performing Bhangra in the north of France for these villagers. And there's an absolutely beautiful photo that's in the book, The Indian Contingent, a photo that shows a line of spectators, French civilians and children, and then the Indian soldiers in the front. And they're looking at something that is very amusing that's happening out of shot. So yeah, relations were really good, very positive. They were part of British Expeditionary Force. And there are quotes from British soldiers who remembered the Great War. They remembered the substantial Indian contribution in that war and the empire has come to the rescue again in 1939-1940. And then what happens to that unit when Hitler's invasion of the West begins in May 1940?

Well then it's big drama. Having read the War Service diary diary particularly the 25th company which had an indian major major akbar the 25th company were very much caught up in it so they're right next to an airfield just north of leal and there's lots of activity at the airfield an raf squadron comes in there are bombs there's shelling the british army goes into belgium and then comes back out of belgium not very long afterwards they're stuck there not really knowing what to do and then comes back out of Belgium not very long afterwards. They're stuck there, not really knowing what to do. And then soon the order to retreat to Dunkirk comes, and they set off and they're marching because they have large amounts of mules.

They had a few trucks, but basically they're marching with the mules, they're marching at night, they're marching through the forests. They're being bombed, they're being shelled, they've got German tanks very close to them at one stage. come to a town of Castle which of course is quite well known in history as a place during that retreat the carrier platoon of the Worcestershire regiment comes up just as they're departing and the Worcesters are very happy to be given a hot meal of chicken and bread by the cooks of the 25th company they're marching across country and eventually as they get right

up towards almost at Dunkirk they're ordered to abandon all their equipment and to abandon their mules. It's very counterintuitive. It's not something that they're very happy to do at all. They're really angry with that. Of course they have to follow you know what the officers are telling them. The 25th company reached the beach on the 28th of May. Do we know what happened to the mules? Because obviously logistics was running out. Did they shoot and eat the mules or were they just set free? What do we think happened?

We know that the 29th Company, which was in the west of France, they were taken off from Saint-Nazaire. We know that they gave their mules away to the local population. The mules in the north of France that I imagine, some of them may have been eaten by the french population i mean the french still eat horse meat but i imagine a large amount of them were taken up by the german army i mean the german army was very dependent on animal transport much as the idea of the blitzkrieg revolves around the grenadiers and the panzer divisions gadarians

division at this time is very known for racing to the sea. But nevertheless, a lot of the transport was still done by animals. So I think probably those mules with their British Army brand on their hindquarters were taken by the Germans and used quite possibly Operation Barbarossa a year later when they invaded the Soviet Union. None of the original mules came back to Britain with the soldiers. What a journey. Was there a heightened concern about what might happen to Asian troops if they fell into the hands of the Germans? Is that something that you've come across in your reading? They were very much a propaganda tool on both sides.

From the outset, their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hill, saw that they had a propaganda function. So when they unloaded Marseille on the 26th of December 1939 there was a film crew there recording their unloading and there was a photographer there and in fact that photographer was Len Putnam who was the father of David Putnam who did Chariots of Fire so there was always this idea that they were serving a dual function they were doing a practical thing carrying stuff around they were doing a propaganda thing and saying you know the, the empire is here to help. And the Germans were aware of that too, right from the start. The Germans were broadcasting to India and they were talking about these troops.

In due course, when one company were taken prisoner, the Germans made a lot of propaganda mileage out of that. So yeah, I mean, Hills himself said in one of his memos, if any of them did fall into German hands, it would be a gigantic propaganda opportunity. But I don't think they were worried that they would be ill treated. And in fact, it turned out that they were treated like any other Commonwealth prisoners would be treated, which, of course, was much better than Russian POWs were and completely on a different level from how Jewish citizens of Europe were treated. completely on a different level from how Jewish citizens of Europe were treated. Now tell me, so they arrive at the beach. How hectic is their journey off the beach and through the smashed port of Dunkirk onto waiting ships? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt,

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Well, it's very hectic. There's two accounts of it. The one is their official war service diary, which is reasonably detailed. And the other one is a memoir that was written later by Major Akbar, who was the senior most Indian officer in the Indian army at that stage. He'd been an officer since 1919, and he'd been in the army since before the Great War. And those two accounts don't always tally. So it's not always entirely sure quite what the true story is, but certainly they get to the beach. Everything's very unclear. You know, the commanding officer writes about seeing British Tommies walking around the beach in a

kind of lost way. And there's a kind of real sense of disappointment, really, that what has happened to this great army? Where is the cohesion, where is the discipline that we expect? The 25th Company there on the 28th of May, they stay together, even though some of their number are injured. And the commanding officer says to them, okay, wait there, I'm going to go off and get motorized transport and find out what we're supposed to do, find some orders. Eventually, they find out that they're supposed to go to the Eastern Mole, which is where the majority of the British army were evacuated from. But the commanding officer Wainwright can't get hold of any lorries, so they march along the beach with Akbar at their head. It's about two or three miles from where they were. Picture the scene, you know, those long sandy beaches of

Brele-Dun, Malol-e-Ban, down to Dunkirk itself. With all the lines of Tommies we've seen in the photos, snaking across the beach. The Luftwaffe weren't so busy that day. It was cloudy and there weren't so many attacks by the German Air Force. But just imagine these guys marching along the beach. No mules at this stage, just their great coats. I don't know whether they still had their turbans on at this stage or whether they had probably done the safe thing and put on their steel helmets. Marching on the beach in the afternoon,

they get to the mole and there they get broken up and it's very chaotic and they're not able to stay together. But they get onto boats at various times in the evening and into the middle of the night and they are evacuated in their entirety. And they arrive at Dover in the morning. And Akbar, in his memoir, he writes that they were at Dover station. They were given cups of tea and sandwiches. And of course, they took their ham out because they were all Muslims. And then they were so pleased to be safe that they went to the women who were providing the tea and they took their copper vessels and they took their tea trays and they took their teapots and they started to sing and they started to dance and even the civilians and some of the other soldiers around them joined in until the guard blew the whistle. So, you know, it was just an extraordinary experience, I think, for these guys from Punjab, from the northwest of

India, most of whom had never been outside India before. And there they are in this hell of those few days leading up to Dunkirk and then Dunkirk itself. And then they're taken off and they arrive in this haven of Dover. And so they celebrate, they play music and they sing. And I think I would probably do the same if I were in their shoes. You mentioned Punjab, I should have asked at the beginning, how were these men recruited? They're pre-war regulars. Are they volunteers? Well, I know the term volunteer is quite a loaded one when it comes to the Indian Army in the 1930s. What could you find out about that? who joined the army on the whole because they wanted to make money because it was family tradition. Almost all from the northern part of Punjab around Rao Pindi, Jhelum, Chakwal, places like that. And I went to visit and to meet some of their relatives a couple of years ago and

to get an idea of the country where they've come from. And it's a strong tradition there to join the army and agriculture is not massively profitable there so it was a way of bringing money into the house it was a way of getting is that honor and respect but the loyalty wasn't necessarily to the crown and to the british empire more to their comrades to their unit and so a sense of these are professional soldiers doing a professional job absolutely how did their experience of seeing the British Army collapse, you know, mentioning discipline, the retreat, did that change their attitude, do you think,

towards their imperial overlord, their mother country? Because the war was quite a mobilising, quite a politicising event for many soldiers in the Indian Army in the Second World War. It's not clear whether that made a big difference. Certainly, Hills was worried about it, and their other officers were worried about it. It sounds absolutely, as you say, that they're used to looking upon

their white British overlords as being infallible or certainly pretty good and pretty good in battle. And here they are being massively defeated. So I'm not sure about that. It's a good question, Dan. I think it must have affected them at some level. It must have made them think, yeah, hang on a second. Maybe they're not as good as they're cracked up to be. Also, some of the wider things that would have happened to them. Going into a cafe in France, for example, and a white man is serving you. A white man is bringing you cups of tea or a little glass of syrup or something. That's kind of the reverse of what they were used to in India. Similarly, when they come to Britain and spend a lot of time in Britain, that seeing poor people on the streets, seeing people looking haggard and depressed and bombed

out or physically wounded by the war must have been a very interesting levelling experience for them. The thought of, hang on a second, maybe these guys are not so much better than we are. Maybe there is a kind of equality there. And I'm sure they took that impression back with them to India when they returned to their homeland. They didn't return to the British to D-Day. They returned back to India to fight in the Indian Ocean Theatre, did they, in the later war years? Yes, exactly. They left Britain in the beginning of 1944. So at the time when the preparations for D-Day were very much going into top gear. But meanwhile, in India, the Japanese

army are knocking on the northeastern corner door, Bohemia, and the mule transport was very much needed. Although, of course, there were still also at that stage, large amounts of Indian animal transport companies in Italy as well. I mean, the Eighth Army and so on was a major Indian component right from the beginning. But yeah, these guys, the Force K6, the Indian contingent returned to India at the beginning of 1944, and a lot of them were used on the Burma front.

And do we know, this remarkable little unit, do we know whether any are still alive or are their descendants perhaps here in the UK or back in India or Pakistan. Is there a kind of an association or is their footprint slightly disappeared? There is no association and I dearly wish there was. It would have made my job as a researcher much easier. Their footprint is dispersed and spread around the world.

I wished and hoped and longed for meeting a veteran. I did actually hear the voice of one of their veterans, Jacob Meza, on the world. I wished and hoped and longed for meeting a veteran. I did actually hear the voice of one of their veterans, Jacob Meza, on the phone, but I didn't meet any veterans. But I met lots and lots of descendants, sons, daughters, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and so on. And they, in some cases, were able to give me a very good picture about these men and some of their experiences. And yes, some of them are living in the UK. So there's a chap in Woking who runs a taxi firm. And then this guy, Jakob Mirza, he has a lot of family in Nottingham. And then there are also the babies they left behind. There are at least eight children that they fathered while they were in the UK.

And I met one of those babies, who's now a wonderful gentleman in his 70s, who lives near Leicester. And his story is remarkable. And then when I was in Pakistan, I met descendants of quite a lot of them. So yeah, there are a lot of them around. And no, there's no association, but I wish there were. And then just lastly, for these oral histories

you've heard from family members, is there a dominant theme? Whether it's, was it a brutal experience, a pleasant one, an adventure? What do you think was going through the heads of these men in as much as you can make it out from talking to their descendants when they were on the beaches or on the boat going back to Britain? I think they had a good war, in inverted commas. I think the experience of those few days from the 10th of May 1940 until the time

when they arrived in Britain was extremely traumatic. But I think the experience in the UK was generally very pleasant. There was a few examples of racism and a lot of great stories of friendship and companionship. And I've heard that reflected through the stories that I've heard from relatives. There was one company who ended up as prisoners of war, and they spent, in many cases, nearly five years in POW camps. And that was a very different experience. And there were 58 of them who died and are left behind in graves in France and Britain and Germany, commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

And obviously, that experience was a very different experience. But I think the overriding impression I got through the research process was of friendship and companionship and kind of transnational encounter, making friends and meeting people from another part of the world on both sides that they hadn't anticipated meeting and that that was a positive experience on both sides that they hadn't anticipated meeting and and that that was a positive experience on both sides wonderful well thank you Guy Bowman the book is called the Indian contingent the forgotten Muslim soldiers of Dunkirk fantastic thank you so much indeed for sharing that story with us that's my pleasure I hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if you could just do me a favorites for free go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five-star

rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. you