With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

The relations between the Indians and the French civilian population are extremely friendly. The French peasants in these parts have a saying that British troops give the most trouble in billets, the French are less exacting, while the Indians cause the least inconvenience of all. Their wants are few, their demands modest—water, a place where they may build their fires and range their pots, a roof beneath which they may sleep, a little straw for a bed.

They are infinitely obliging. They share their food with their hosts, and play with their children. I have seldom seen a prettier sight than a glimpse I had one day of some Sikhs belonging to a squadron quartered in a school, romping with the children in the playground. Experience has shown that the Indians pick up French far more quickly than the average British soldier. I have been amused to come upon a row of native soldiers sitting on a bench in the sunshine outside an estaminet, engaged in a dignified exchange of ideas with the peasants.

The friendly relations existing between the Indians and the French are best seen at the gymkhanas which the Indian cavalry give from time to time. A broad field is chosen, a course is staked off, and in this space the cavalry disport themselves for two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon, with races, tent-pegging, trick-riding, and sports of all kinds, to the enormous delight of the peasantry. Posters placarded in the neighbouring villages a day or two before bring all the villagers flocking to the scene on foot, on cycles, in old-fashioned hooded carts, drawn by such sorry specimens of horse-flesh as the French Army has discarded.

I went to a Tamasha, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the ropes. There were old peasants in the local costume of black smocks and peaked caps, curés in shovel-hats and soutanes, French troops in a bewildering variety of uniforms—pale blue Hussars, Chasseurs d’Afrique in flowing red cloaks, Moroccan Goumiers in swelling white burnouses, Zouaves in red and blue monkey-jackets; French interpreters in khaki, with the golden palm-leaf tabs and khaki-covered képis; Indian sowars (native troopers) with tall puggarees and long smock tunics with chain shoulder-straps and round silver buttons, Gurkhas with their slouch hats, Indian Army officers with unfamiliar collar badges on their biscuit-coloured khaki uniforms.

It was a fine Tamasha. There was marvellously skilful tent-pegging, with a rush of horses, a thunder of hoofs, clouds of dust, and that exhilarating swoop upwards of the lance with peg neatly transpierced as the rider whirls past. There was a most exciting Victoria Cross race with drums beating, pistols going off, much shouting and beating of hands—one race for the Indian troops and another for the British troops brigaded with them. I was quite touched to hear the uproarious and whole-hearted applause wherewith the British soldiers greeted the winner of the Indians’ race. There was a foot-race for the village children, to the huge delight of the Indians, who ran along the course encouraging the youngsters and setting those who fell on their feet again.

Alfieri phot.
Indian Cavalry in a French village. Note bandoliers round horses’ necks.

But the display of trick-riding was the clou of the show, and elicited in particular the outspoken admiration of the French cavalry officers—who know something about riding. Handkerchiefs were laid in a row on the ground. Presently, in a swirl of blinding dust four horsemen came thundering along, and, as they reached the handkerchiefs, each man flung himself, head downwards, backwards from the saddle, and snatched, or sought to snatch, his appointed cloth, then raised himself in the saddle again.

There were men who rode the length of the course head downwards, others who rode with their faces to the horse’s tail, fired revolvers at the men riding behind them, whereupon the men fell, ostensibly dead, from the saddle, and were dragged along, head downwards, their heads almost touching the ground.

What amused me about the show was to see that the performers were every whit as interested and excited in the performance as the crowd. Every horseman was on his mettle to show off his horse and his horsemanship. Some of the riders indulged in touches of superb swagger. When at the end of the trick-riding the horsemen stopped dead in the middle of a rush, and, suddenly wheeling their horses, brought up short at the saluting-point to the note of a bugle, those stalwart figures, swelling with pride, sitting their panting, foam-flecked horses, presented as magnificent a spectacle as I have seen in this war.