9th-12th-Lancers - Year 1986 - Page 0086
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| Regiment | 9th/12th Lancers |
|---|---|
| Year | 1986 |
| Transcription |
THE 9TH/12TH ROYAL LANCERS REGIMENTAL JOURNAL Forty Years On: By Jan Morris The slightly comical name of this magazine has a less than comical mean- ing: it is a reminder that the 9th/12th Royal Lancers has an imperial past. I don’t know how the old 12th spent the 19th century, but the 9th spent much of it shuttling between imperial possessions and fighting imperial wars from Africa to Afghanistan. Their dashing lance-work made them the champion Spearmen of Delhi during the lndian Mutiny of 1857, and it was [hue that they won their first VC (award- ed to the unforgettable, but alas other wise altogether forgotten, Private Goat). Forty years ago I found myself Intel- ligence Officer of this grand old regi- ment during the very last of its imperial assignments, At the end of the war in Europe we were first posted to Egypt, and then moved by rail northwards to what was then Palestine, a British- mandated territory which had been one of the more recent acquisitions of the British Empire. “Don’t put your hands out of the windows", worldly-wise old hands shouted as our troop—train set off across the Sinai desert, "or the Ay-rabs will chop them off for wedding-rings", and the warning (totally fictitious, I need hardly say) seems to me still a true dec- laration of Empire. We were Us, the Ay-rabs were Them, and we were on our way to assume exotic but profoundly traditional duties of an imperial kind, What those duties were it became my task, as 10, to discover and explain. Why we were taking our Sherman tanks up there seemed to me rather a mystery, inappropriate to the problem of Jew v Arab. Things were boiling up towards the war which would result in the est- ablishment of lsrael, and the British were somewhat desperately trying to hold the ring. This was a disagreeable job. The British High Commissioner was the Pontius Pilate of the day, and the sold- iers of the British Army were his legion- airs: murder and revenge stalked the land, roadblocks were everywhere. ter- rorism was rife, and so furious were the various passions that the imperial army had become more or less an army of occupation. But why were the 9th Lancers there? With our heavy tanks we were not much good for fighting guerillas or preventing illegal immigration, and in fact for most of the time we were stuck inside a brand-new barrack complex at Gaza, in the extreme south — to this day i can smell its new concrete, not quite dried out, and still see in my mind’s eye the black tents of the Bedouin who sometimes appeared. like ships at sea. on the desert horizon to the south. 1 had eerie hlanehe. more or less, to learn about the situation as best i could, and so i was able to wander far and wide across countries then totally un- known to tourism — across Sinai to the little fishing port of Aqaba, into the mountains of Jordan, far up into Syria and Lebanon, and over to lraq in the huge articulated buses which used in those days heroically to cross the track- less wastes to Baghdad, Today it would be impossible. Just as we were there for imperial reasons, so my freedom to roam wan an imperial privilege. It was 1946, the Empire still controlled the frontiers of the Middle East, and a solitary British suhaltern in a jeep could drive at will over territorier now irredeemably split by enmities — try driving a jeep now through the Golan Heights, or from Haifa to Bei-ii rut! I had a marvellous time. and my interest in those magical countries was to affect the whole course of my life. but as a regimental intelligence officer I fear I was a failure. It was only long afterwards that i realized why the l regiment was there at all. We were not l there to help govern Palestine, as l hail ‘ supposed: we were there because at Gaza the British then planned to create a brand-new strategic power-base, to replace the shaky imperial foothold: ial Egypt. and keep the Union Jack flyinll for another generation or two over the world of the Arabs and their oilfields. it never happened, of course. Our Empire, like all others. passed away (except for a few places like Hong Kong. where I am writing this essay now), and those expensive new barracks of ours were presently to become a camp for Arab refugees, as they are to this veryday. Pilatewashedhishandsagailu the Delhi Spearmen withdrew from their imperial outposts, and prepared themselves, as soldiers always must, tot ride other tides of history, J M Would you buy your shoes at a butcher? For each trade there is a master — and we are the masters for travelling home. All Tickets for boat, rail and flights. The only appointed agent in Wol'enbilttel. mg [in] W0” ‘NB‘llll at: HHS! llllll SCHIMANSKI KG ensue HERzoesnmssE In 1 Tel 5071773 Certainly not! ill KHAMBUDEN IA Tel 5533 Wolfenbflttels ft'ihrendes Reisebijro 84 |
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