JOST A MON

Matthew Gibb (1849-1920), great-grandfather of the Bee Gees, was a military man. According the Scottish records office, he was 5’ 5¾” tall at enlistment at the age of 18 in the 60th Rifles (which later became known as Scottish Rifles, The Cameronians). He was a shoemaker in the parish of Abbey, Paisley, Scotland when he joined up. His eyes were hazel, and his hair was brown. He served in India (1867-1878, 1880-81), Afghanistan (1878-1880), South Africa (1881-1882) and back home in 1882. He was discharged in 1905 with a rank of Quartermaster, after having served nearly four decades with the Forces. His conduct was reported as ‘Exemplary’ and was awarded the Good Conduct medal and the Long Service medal, and another one for combat in Afghanistan.

“In spite of the above mentioned good conduct and decorations, it appears that in 1874 while serving in India, he was arrested for drunkenness, tried, and reduced in rank from Corporal back to Private.”

To his descendants today, this seems entirely out of character, for all his sons were teetotallers, and he himself appears as unbending and stern in his photographs. And yet how could something as trivial as drunkenness result in so harsh a punishment?

The Regimental Headquarters of the 60th Rifles is in Winchester, and the details of Gibb’s service are available in greater detail there.

He was one among the many BOR – British Other Ranks – soldiers from these isles who served in India, along with the much larger native forces. They bivouacked in Cantonments waiting to be called out on campaign. When he joined, India was the largest and most important  of British colonies. The Army acted as a vast Imperial police force, maintaining law and order and British interests in the region. Gibb was one of sixty thousand white soldiers living and working along with Indian army men in garrison towns across the subcontinent.

It was for the most part a fairly uneventful routine. Gibb’s battalion was moved around from station to station: Benares, Bara Gali, Rawalpindi, Changla Gali, Fatehgarh: carrying out peacekeeping duties and training exercises, ready to be called upon when trouble broke out. He was promoted fairly quickly to Lance Corporal soon after his arrival in India.

A Lance Corporal is not a rank but an appointment. Gibb’s performance was evaluated whilst he remained in this probationary state. Clearly he did well, and was soon made Corporal with attendant privileges, more pay, better pension.

At the time, there were no serious engagements for the Army. There were occasional skirmishes, but in the main, his existence consisted of waking up, parading, facing the odd inspection, guard duties, a never-ending dullness that prompted the bored infractions of military life. For many soldiers there was little to do during the day except go to the wet canteen and drink. And drink they did, hard drinks like rum and arrack. And they gambled, and they lost their money, and they drank more and gambled more in a bottomless spiral.

  This drunkenness was a serious problem at the time, and in many pubs were signs ‘No Red Coats or Dogs’ because the soldiers would drink to excess. But alcohol had long been a part of army life. It was long believed that it would help the troops withstand the heat, and was certainly healthier to drink than water in India. By the 1860s, however, there was growing concern about the effects of alcohol on discipline and well-being. Soldiers were encouraged to join Army Temperance Groups. Severe punishments were meted out to anyone found drunk on duty.

In Gibb’s case, he was found so drunk that he was hauled up before his commanding officer, sentenced to two weeks’ solitary confinement and reduced in rank. That was the end of his hitherto stellar rise through the ranks, a serious blow to his hopes of bettering his life.

Matthew Gibb was not completely crushed, however, for by the end of that year, he had obtained an Army Certificate of Education, Second Class. This was in recognition of his effort to become literate, having gone to school to educate himself. And then it took him another eight years to regain his rank of Corporal, in 1882. Eventually he ended up being a Staff Sergeant.

This was a man of determination, who had managed to pull himself by his bootstrings to a dignified station in life.

[Matthew Gibb’s early life had been a stark contrast. He was one of several children listed as living in the William Gibb household in the 1851 Census. William was a handloom weaver, a craftsman of that cloth mimicking cashmere that came to be known after the Scottish town of Paisley. But in the 1861 census, Matthew was no longer living with his parents: aged 12, he was in the East Lane Ragged School.

A Ragged School, or Industrial School for Destitute Children, was for orphans or indigent children to receive a good education and vocational training and three square meals a day. Boys received training in shoemaking, tailoring, to inculcate in them a work ethic and discipline. This was one of several institutions set up in the Victorian period out of a deep sense of philanthropy and Christian imperative to do good. The Paisley Ragged School was part of that national movement, much of which was driven not by the wealthy but by common folk such as the Portsmouth cobbler who trained up children in his trade from 1818. By the middle of the 19th century, there were nearly 700 Ragged schools throughout Britain providing a home, a basic education and a trade for society’s poorest children.

In Paisley, only children from the margins of society were selected to the Ragged School. In particular, those begging on the street or in danger of falling into crime were given priority. In the 1850s, during the so-called Golden age of the Paisley looms, Matthew’s father had been earning well, despite frequent fluctuations in labour demand. The Paisley shawl was in favour during that time, with even Queen Victoria promoting it. But as the decade wore on, the condition of the weavers gradually worsened.  Mechanised looms began to replace craftsmen as the Industrial revolution trundled remorselessly. The craftsmen tried to compete by producing larger amounts of the cloth, but only ended up flooding the market and driving down prices. Although the power loom could never weave a pattern as complex as a Paisley, its cheaply produced shawls began to undercut the prices of the real thing as well. The result for Matthew’s father and his cohorts was disaster.

In 1854, Matthew’s mother died; shortly thereafter, William left his children destitute as he went in search of work elsewhere in Scotland. He was away for two years, leaving his children to be cared for by the parish, effectively abandoned. In 1857, Matthew was in the Ragged School; in 1863, his father was institutionalised, driven insane by depression. By the 1870s, the Paisley shawl works were for all purposes extinct, and William Gibb died in a poor-house in 1874.

From BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? – Robin Gibb.]

Kynock finished his drink and asked the private to get him - I swear to God - a 'rum Antares.' 

... 

The rum Antares was a tall slender glass with a little ice floating at the top, filled with pale amber liquid. At the bottom was a bright red globule about the size of a thumbnail; crimson filaments waved up from it. 

'What's that red stuff?' 

'Cinnamon. Oh, some ester with cinnamon in it. Quite good .... want a taste?' 

'No, I'll stick to beer, thanks.'

What was founded by a chap called Chach, was once a distant vassal of the Sassanians, and promoted piracy in the Arabian Sea? And so incurred the wrath of the newly resurgent Arabs, and was invaded, and was the earliest part of the Indian subcontinent to be occupied by the Muslims?

In a word, Sindh.

King Chach, the progenitor of what was to be a rather short-lived dynasty, lived between AD 632-671, and wasof the Brahmin caste. He reigned in a city called Al-Rur by the Arabs, and the country’s principal port was Daybul, neither of which is readily identifiable today owing to the large shifts in the delta of the river Indus in the ensuing centuries. There had been proposals by the Arab garrisons of the farthest east to invade Sindh as early as 644, but it appears that the Caliphs of the time were not keen on the idea, mindful as they were of the rumours of a land of utter lawlessness. By 710, however, the Arabs were ready to extend their eastern frontier, and they concocted a neat economic and political ruse to do so.

It is said that the king of Ceylon sent some beautiful women to Hajjaj, the Muslim governor of Iraq, and en route, their ship was captured by pirates out of Daybul. One of the women, distressed, cried out to Hajjaj for help, and he decided to oblige. He ordered the Sindhi king, Chach’s son Dahir (c. 679-712), to free the prisoners. Dahir explained that he had no control over the pirates, and couldn’t oblige. Hajjaj then sent a couple of naval expeditions, both of which were destroyed by the pirates.

There was little else to do but launch a full-fledged invasion. For this, Hajjaj tasked a young cousin, Muhammad bin al-Qasim al-Thaqafi. al-Thaqafi arranged a force of 6000 Syrians, and they set out through southern Iran and Makran, investing the city of Fannazbur on the way.

The first engagement of the war was the siege of Daybul. al-Thaqafi set up a large catapult, a swing-beam hand-pulled weapon, to bombard the city. The artillerymen targeted a big Buddhist stupa atop which a red flag fluttered; when it was brought down, the spirit of the defenders wilted, and the Arabs penetrated the city and slaughtered the inhabitants for three days. Dahir’s governor fled ignominiously, but hundreds of priests were murdered, and their temples laid waste.

It must be pointed out that the Arabs always offered terms to their enemies before engaging them in war. Accept Islam, they would say, and be spared. Submit to our rule and pay tax, and be spared. Fight, and we will reduce you to rack and ruin. Many cities preferred to accept the suzerainty of the invaders rather than resist, especially those with little affection for their own rulers. Such cities faced little change in their fates other than a new master. Those that fought back were invariably shattered and suffered miserable consequences.

In keeping with the then custom, al-Thaqafi reorganised the civic planning of Daybul, and, having established the foundations for the central mosque, apportioned land for four thousand Muslim settlers.

Continuing his campaign, al-Thaqafi headed inland. He was accosted by two Buddhist monks who informed him that the towns on his route would be willing to submit to him. He spared such towns. Where he met with resistance, he saw that there were serious divisions between the ruling Hindu class and the commoners: the former were determined to outmatch him, whereas the latter, supported by the pacifist Buddhists, were keen to avoid bloodshed. Siwistan, for example, fell to him after such a political divide; he allowed his soldiers to loot the rulers but the Buddhists and the farmers and the artisans were spared.

Four thousand Zutt tribals then abandoned the Chachs, and entered into al-Thaqafi’s service. (Who were the Zutt? That was the Arabic name for the Jats, agriculturists of the Indus, and there are songs sung about them. But that’s another story.)

Dahir continued to oppose the Muslims, and met their main force across the banks of the Indus. It is said that he arrayed sixty elephants and twenty thousand infantry against the Arabs. al-Thaqafi ordered boats to be arranged on the western bank of the Indus in a row as wide as the river; soldiers clambered aboard the row and swung it across the river; this became a bridge over which the cavalry could cross, which they did and decimated Dahir’s defenders.

Dahir himself, atop a great war elephant, fought valiantly. He was accompanied by two slave girls in his howdah: one to pass him betel leaves to chew, and the other to pass him arrows. A furious fight ensued. The Arabs set fire to Dahir’s howdah and his elephant threw himself into the river. Dahir was seized and beheaded, his body later identified by his slave girls.

That was the end of the Hindus’ resistance. Many of Dahir’s women immolated themselves. Those that didn’t were enslaved and sent to Iraq as gifts to Hajjaj, who passed the choicest ones on to the Caliph. al-Thaqafi insisted on sparing all the artisans and workers and farmers. Then he realised that he needed skilled locals to administer his new dominions. He established a bureaucracy in charge of the collection of the poll tax (for those who refused to convert to Islam), and he noted that the best administrators were the Brahmins. It is apparent that the arriviste Muslims found it advantageous to ally themselves to the erstwhile ruling dynasties to give themselves some sort of legitimacy among the populace. The Brahmins negotiated freedom for Dahir’s wife (who, it is said, then became al-Thaqafi’s wife) and the surviving members of his family. Then they explained that they had been much honoured in the country, and would appreciate the opportunity to serve al-Thaqafi if they were once again restored to their privileges. He obliged them, and they became the tax collectors for the new state.

Much of the information of the fall of Hindu Sindh and the rise of Islam is in the Chachnamah, a book considerably influenced by Arabic literary tradition. This was written by Ali bin Hamid al-Kufi nearly five hundred years after the events it describes. While its historical authenticity has been questioned, there is literary evidence of some of its sections deriving from eighth century Arabic and Persian literature, and it serves to illuminate at least some of the aspects of the early Arab efforts at conquering Sindh.

There are excerpts of martial poetry extant from the time. The chronicler Mada’ini writes about the Arab who killed Dahir at the Indus, who is supposed to have announced:

The horses at the battle of Dahir and the spears
And Mohammed bin Qasim bin Muhammad
Bear witness that I fearlessly scattered the host of them
Until I came up on their chief with my sword,
And left him rolled in the dirt.
Dust on his unpillowed cheek.

[All details in this blog are from Hugh Kennedy’s The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread Of Islam Changed The World We Live In, Orion Books, London, 2008.]

I dreamed this thing
This thing of dreams
An army marching close
Each soldier cut off
At the knees
Which was strange and all
Since they were
Foot-soldiers.

The skirmish was suddenly over.
We stopped to roll a smoke
and the Germans did too and
so there we stood,
insane, across from each other -
barely on our feet still.
'Cigarette break,' someone said hoarsely.
The German nodden understandingly: 'Ja, Pause. Sofort!'
We sat down, them and us, in the grass
five paces away from each other;
we laid our rifles at our feet
and plucked
tobacco from our bags.
Yes, the things one sees in war!
Pass it along, not a soul in hell
will believe you. Then calmly, silently
- cautiously looking each other in the eye -
we ground out the final roll-ups, they their cigarettes,
and the same voice rasped, raw and bloodshot:
'End of cigarette break!'

(From Geert Mak, In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century, Vintage Books, 2007)

The Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University is a repository of much military art, from which (with the kind permission of the Curator) I reproduce the following.

The first is a gouache dating from between 1750-90 of the last Great Mughal, Aurangzeb, at the Siege of Golconda. The Qutb Shahi rulers of this kingdom in the Deccan had refused to bow to the Mughal imperium, and to punish them for their insolence, Aurangzeb himself led his forces against them in 1687. Under the redoubtable Tana Shah, the fortress at Golconda withstood the siege for eight months, ably supported by the Marathas who harried the Mughal army endlessly. Eventually, through bribery, the redoubt fell, and the Mughals marched in victoriously, extinguishing the Qutb Shahis.

So what did a Mughal military officer look like in the 17th century? Here is a watercolour that shows one such, circa 1650. Mughal military ranks, inspired by the Persians, were numerical, named mansab, that, beginning in 1573, denoted an officer’s salary, obligations, and position in the hierarchy. Mansabs were further divided by ethnic origin (in Mughal studies, at least) such as Iranis, Turanis, Afghans, Indian Muslims, Marathas, Rajputs, and other Hindus. Though they were usually of aristocratic origin, the mansabs were not hereditary ranks. There were 33 grades of mansabs, commanders of 10 through to commanders of 10,000, either of cavalry or infantry; their pay (jagir) was expected to support not only themselves but also supply and equip their troops. Finally, any mansab could be transferred from one part of the empire to another, although in practice, the senior-most very likely stayed in their own fiefs until called upon for service.

Two hundred years later, the East India Company controlled two-thirds of the subcontinent. Its armies comprised Indians from almost every part of the country. From Kerala came the martial clans known as Nairs. This picture shows some of its members part of a Nair brigade in the service of the British, as painted by the Swiss artist Paul Aimé Vallouy (1832-1899) and part of a series of three charcoal and watercolour drawings made in 1855.

Like their Indian counterparts, native soldiers from the Caribbean and the British African territories found themselves on the wrong side of the colour bar. Their experience, however, showed a less benevolent side to the Empire.

In 1914, black men from the British West Indies hoped to contribute to the war effort on an equal footing as fighting soldiers. Even Jamaica’s most celebrated black leader enthusiastically endorsed the Empire’s cause. Marcus Garvey wrote to the Governor of Jamaica in September 1914 on behalf of his newly formed Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League:

Being mindful of the great protecting and civilising influence of the English nation and people of whom we are subjects, and their justice to all men, and especially to their Negro subjects scattered all over the world, we hereby beg to express our loyalty and devotion to His Majesty the King and Empire… Thrice we hail ‘God Save the King!’ Long live the King and Empire.

By supporting the war, they were not expressing their undying devotion to the plantation owners or to the white people who were seen as exploiting them. They were displaying a genuine loyalty to the Crown and to the greater British values that they believed it embodied.

In fact, the British authorities did not entirely welcome these loyal sentiments. The War Office had conceded it needed the highly trained non-white Indian Army at the front. In the case of the eager, unproved black volunteers of the British West Indies, it arrived at a different decision. In May 1915, the War Office agreed that these troops could be sent to the Western Front. But they could serve only as labour corps.

In Jamaica, the young Stanley Stair decided to volunteer. A poor plantation labourer of 15 years of age, he was eager for the pay, the adventure, and the opportunity to see the world. His grandchildren live in London, and they say that he died in 2008 at the age of 107. He was the last of the British West Indian Regiment soldiers. He told his granddaughter that he had gone to sign up, but was then sent back because he was too young. But there was another recruitment office in the same town, and he went there, and gave them the older age. He was a man who thought he had a duty to defend what was an attack on Britain; being only fifteen didn’t deter him at all.

Stanley Stair mentioned in an interview on the occasion of his 100th birthday that he went on board a ship called the Verdala, which took several weeks to reach France, having stopped in Cuba in Halifax. He never elaborated further, but it so happened that to avoid a German gunboat, the Verdala’s course was diverted via Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, equipped only with warm-weather uniforms, the men endured a blizzard. 600 of them suffered exposure. Five died, and frostbite necessitated more than a 100 amputations. This raised quite a stink on the island. The newspaper, The Gleaner spoke of ‘the dead and the maimed.’ People were horrified… It went on to say, ‘We can’t guess who it was that sent a 1000 men from a hot tropical climate to a country of Arctic cold. Rest assured this country’s indignation has been fully conveyed by the Colonial Office.’

Stanley Stair survived the Verdala journey intact, and reached the Western Front in France in September 1916. There, the 3rd Battalion joined the support work for the fighting soldiers. The British West Indies’ regimental diary is different from that of regular combat troops. Here were men who had joined up thinking they were going to fight at the front for King and Empire, and this can’t have been what they were expecting. An entry from 9 September 1916 reads:

Ammunition dump road repaired. Loaded shells, about 6000 handled.

The next day:

Trenches for cables to heavy batteries dug out. Shelled.

Then:

Day and night working and unloading shells. 9000 shells handled. Usual work.

Usual work…

Usual work…

Sharp frost at night.

This became a theme.

300 men work all night in addition to day on clearing ammunition.

Three killed, three wounded, two missing, presumed dead.

On and on it goes like this. It was drudgery, but it was dangerous drudgery. The men were carrying artillery shells up to the field guns so they could be loaded and fired. They were supporting trenches for troops to sit in. The enemy obviously didn’t want them to continue, so they were fired on as they worked.

It might appear as menial, discriminatory work today, but it was absolutely essential to the war effort. Stanley Stair never showed any sign he was not OK with it. But it couldn’t have provided for those black soldiers what they hoped for, the chance to show themselves equal on the field of battle. After the war, Stanley Stair returned to Jamaica. He worked his way up to become overseer of a large plantation, and he raised fifteen children.

In retrospect, it is difficult to understand why the men of the British West Indies would have wanted to join up. Stanley Stair emerged unscathed and remarkably positive, but there’s no doubt that his regiment was treated thoroughly shabbily from the beginning to the end of the war. They weren’t allowed to fight for Britain, but they were allowed to die for Britain.

[Text and images from Ian Hislop’s Not Forgotten, shown recently on Channel 4.]