JOHN MASTERS
An Englishman whose family has lived in India for four generations, JOHN MASTERS was born in Calcutta and Observed the family tradition by srvting for fourteen years in the British Army, in the course of which he was awarded the DSO. In 1948 he moved to this country and made his first appearance in the Atlantic— he says. ” which encouraged me to persevere ” With his first novel. Nightrunners of Bengal, he took command of a large audience, and each new book thereafter has added to his popularity. This is the first of two installments from Bugles and a Tiger, which Viking will publish early in the new year. An autobiographical volume, it is the story of his early years in the Indian Army, and it gives the clue to the writer who was to be.
THE train rumbled on the iron bridge over the Ravi canal near Pathankol, India, and I started to collect my baggage. The last time I had traveled this route I had been coming to face the terrifying ceremony of being vetted, or approved by ordeal.
When an officer was seconded to the staff or the militia, or something else, or retired altogether from the service, his departure created a vacancy in his regiment. If the regiment had a good reputation, swarms of new officers like myself clamored to fill these vacancies. The Gurkhas had long ago taken the fancy of the British people and press. They and the Sikhs were the only Indian troops the general public in Britain had ever heard of, so Gurkha and Sikh regiments usually had three or four applicants for every vacancy. The regiments made their selections by the good but cruel method of vetting. They invited the candidates, in succession, to spend ten days’ leave with them as their guests.
On arrival each young man was placed in charge of the junior subaltern — lieutenants and second lieutenants are subalterns — who took him to military, sporting, and social occasions. Efforts were made to get the candidate drunk, because in vino there is veritas, and always his behavior was unobtrusively watched. When the regiment had seen all the applicants, a mess meeting was held, and the colonel asked every officer to give his selections. As a rule the opinions of the subalterns, who might expect to live closest and longest with the new boy, carried the most weight. The colonel, who bore sole responsibility, made the final decision. Sometimes he vetoed a young man approved by the subalterns. More rarely he insisted on taking someone they did not like. In nearly every such case events proved him wrong.
