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exercises, as they would have to face up to the ‘Huns’, who were ‘twice as big as the Indians in size.’… And the sepoys felt that now that they were here, they were here, and it didn’t matter if they had big guns or small guns or whether they lay on mats like the beggars or slept in feather beds like the princes. Travel was good for the heart, since, contrary to the prognostications and evil forebodings of the priests, they hadn’t died in crossing the black waters.
    The 69th was one of the first regiments to be dispatched to Orleans.

    Born in 1905, Mulk Raj Anand was a radical Indian writer whose work reveals a great empathy with the poor and oppressed. One part of a trilogy, Across the Black Waters , first published in 1939, describes the experiences of Lalu, a peasant whose family is evicted from their land and who becomes a sepoy fighting in the Indian Army in the hope that his war effort will win back lost family land. The book powerfully describes the sense of alienation felt by the Indian soldiers as they get closer to the front. In battle, they are put in the most dangerous positions on the front lines and their regiments suffer very high rates of casualty. Although they want to put on ‘a good show’, the soldiers in Across the Black Waters are also puzzled about what exactly they are doing in France and why the war is a concern of theirs. Eight hundred thousand Indian troops fought in all the theatres of war with almost 50,000 killed or missing and another 65,000 wounded. For its contribution to the war effort, India expected to be rewarded with moves towards independence. When it became obvious that this was not going to happen, support for Gandhi soared.
    A life-long communist, Anand volunteered in the 1930s to fight in the Spanish Civil War. After spending the Second World War in London working for the BBC, he returned to India in 1946. Anand died in Pune in 2004.

ERNST JÜNGER
    RAJPUTS

    from Kriegstagebuch 1914–1918
( War Diary 1914–1918 )
translated by Martin Chalmers
    13. VI.17
    This morning I had probably the most interesting war experience that I’ve had so far.
    Last night our company came forward from the Siegfried-Position. My platoon was assigned to Outpost 3, I had to go with them. In the forefield I came upon Sergeant Hackmann with some men who wanted to carry out a patrol. I tagged along as a battlefield hanger-on. We crossed two wire entanglements and got through between the English posts. To the left of us there were English digging trenches, to the right of us was an occupied piece of trench, from which came the sound of voices. We wanted to take some prisoners, but we didn’t manage it.
    I returned to my outpost in a bad mood, settled down on my coat on the steep slope and dozed. Suddenly there was rustling in the bushes of the little wood, sentries ran away, the sound of muted whispering could be heard. At the same time a man ran up to me: ‘Lieutenant, 70 English are supposed to have appeared at the edge of the wood.’ I had four men immediately to hand, whom I positioned on the slope. Immediately after that a group of men ran across the meadow. ‘Halt, who goes there?’ It was Sergeant Teilengertes trying to collect his men. I quickly gathered everyone together, drew them up in a firing line and crossed the meadow between slope and wood with the men. At the corner of the wood I ordered the line to wheel right. Meanwhile furious shell and machine gun fire had begun from the English side. We ran at a march pace as far as the hill where the English trenches were, in order to gain the dead angle. Then figures appeared on the right wing. I pulled the cord on a hand grenade and threw it at the head of one of them. Unfortunately it was Sergeant Teilengertes who saved himself, thank God, by a hasty sideways leap. At the same time English hand grenades were thrown from above, while the shrapnel fire became unpleasantly