STUDENT’S INTERLUDE Extract from Student’s Interlude in Unofficial History by Field-Marshall Sir William Slim K.G., G.C.B, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., G.B.E., D.S.O., M.C.
Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1959.
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‘
anch Pir!’ announced the colonel, and as he said it we heard the first shot.
The first shot of a fight affects people in different ways. The Gurkhas halted around us, fell suddenly silent, then a low buzz of talk came from them. Our old subadar-major sighed gently. ‘Oho, oho!’ he breathed in a mixture of mild interest and satisfaction. The colonel let his false teeth fall to his lower lip and recovered them with an audible click. For myself, I had momentarily an uncomfortable crosschannel feeling where my breakfast should have been. Why do battles always start at dawn on an empty stomach?
© National Army Museum
The transport was now halted and closing up in the shelter of the outcrop that cut off our view. The colonel and I walked forward until we could see round it. There, rising from one corner of a large walled enclosure was the tower, a tall, rather graceful structure, tapering to its summit, just below which ran the usual projecting platform.
A Waziri tribesman with rifle, North West Frontier, 1919
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Through our glasses we could see a company of the Frontier Force trickling forward in workmanlike fashion from cover to cover towards the walls. A Lewis gun was making the dust fly every five seconds round a loophole half-way up the tower, and a couple of machine-guns joined in, steadily traversing along the wall. A platoon in two widely extended lines passed out of sight at the double round an angle of the enclosure, and a few moments
