“It is now two and a half hours since we should have got our orders, and I am beginning to fear that we shall not get them....
“I have just gone to the Club, and a wire has come in saying that the Brigade is not for it. Rotten luck....
“The Native Regiments here are in a sort of fever of excitement, and are longing to have a go at somebody....
“Skinner’s Horse are in Meerut with us now. They are an extraordinarily good and very sporting lot.[6]
“There has only been one day’s polo for the last month, as all the grounds are under water, and the rain never stopped long enough to let them dry....”
DRAFT OF MEN AND HORSES DETAILED FOR THE 8TH HUSSARS
SEPTEMBER 1914
THE BAND AT THE LAST CHURCH PARADE BEFORE LEAVING INDIA
NOVEMBER 1914
August 30.—“We are carrying on in the same way as if there were no war in the world.... It really is a bit too thick that here are we, the most efficient Cavalry in the world, stuck in this horrid country.... Not a hope of our going to war. We have just heard that they are mobilising three other Brigades, and that the Viceroy is coming with the Court to live at Meerut this cold weather. His escort is one British Cavalry and one British Infantry Regiment with a battery of horse guns. This means that we shall stay here and do escort to him the whole time that the war is on....”