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The first of John Master's evocative memoirs about life in the Gurkhas in India on the cusp of WWII John Masters was a soldier before he became a bestselling novelist. He went to Sandhurst in 1933 at the age of eighteen and was commissioned into the 4th Gurkha Rifles in time to take part in some of the last campaigns on the turbulent north-west frontier of India. John Masters joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission, and his depiction of garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier has never been surpassed. BUGLES AND A TIGER is a matchless evocation of the British Army in India on the eve of the Second World War. Still very much the army depicted by Kipling, it stands on the threshold of a war that will transform the world. This book is the first of three volumes of autobiography that touched a chord in the post-war world.
The second part of the bestselling novelist's dramatic autobiography about his time in the Gurkhas during the second world war This is the second part of John Masters' autobiography: how he fought with his Gurkha regiment during World War II until his promotion to command one of the Chindit columns behind enemy lines in Burma. Written by a bestselling novelist at the height of his powers, it is an exceptionally moving story that culminates in him having to personally shoot a number of wounded British soldiers who cannot be evacuated before their position is overrun by the Japanese. It is an uncomfortable reminder that Churchill's obsession with 'special forces' squandered thousands of Allied lives in operations that owed more to public relations than strategic calculation. This military and moral odyssey is one of the greatest of World War II frontline memoirs.
Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.
The Gurkhas have a long and distinguished service record. This book examines the uniforms, equipment, history and organisation of the Gurkha rifles. It traces the 19th Century origins of the now famous Gurkha regiments and also covers their service history during the Great Mutiny of 1857 and the 3rd Afghan War (1919). During the two World Wars the Gurhah rifles performed countless tours of duty and their regimental battle honours listed in the book bear testimony to their extensive service. A series of full colour illustrations accompany the text.
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First published in 1951, The Nightrunners of Bengal is one of John Masters' series of seven novels which followed several generations of the Savage family serving in the British Army in India. Nightrunners of Bengal focuses on the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The central character, Captain Rodney Savage, is an officer in a Bengal Native Infantry regiment, based in the fictional city of Bhowani. When rebellion breaks out, the British community in Bengal is shattered. Savage's empathy for the Indians is shaken, as the British try to discover who is loyal to them and who is not. One of the great novels of India, Nightrunners of Bengal combines John Master's mastery of story-telling with an intuitive sense of history. This was the first novel that Masters wrote in the series, though not the first novel chronologically, and alongside Bhowani Junction is one of his best-known works.
This is the story of the 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles from the Regiment raising in 1817 as the Cuttack Legion in the service of the Honourable East India Company until it's amalgamation with the 2nd King Edward VII's Gurkha Rifles ( The Sirmoor Rifles) to form the First Battalion of The Royal Gurkha Rifles in 1994. In the course of its 177 years' existence the Regiment has had many changes of title, acquiring its present one in 1959 when it became 'Queen Elizabeths Own'. In the days of the empire when men of many different races and religions served under the British Crown it was probably the Gurkha soldier who most captured the imagination of the British people, partially on ac...