India in action: a collection of pictures by Anthony Gross

horseback over the Arakan Hills. Magnificent scenery as we slowly made our way up the pass, sometimes dismounting and walking up the beds of streams, the horses splashing in the shallow water while we leapt from stone to stone. Behind us the sea, till, coming over the crest, we looked down into the Mayu Valley, where the river winds with its many backwaters (Chaungs) down to the sea at Akyab. Tha t night, very saddle-.sore, we encamped in a temple beside an enormous overturned Buddha looking up into the sky. [LD3 165]. Some Indian officers of the Rajput Regiment invited us to come and visit them in their forward positions. O n the way my Indian doctor told me how all the wounded were being evacuated 24 miles over the pass I had crossed the previous day, how they were carried on stretchers, borne sometimes by mules, but mostly b y Indian stretcher-bearers. W e reached the rendezvous, but were told that the unit had gone forward during the night, taking a hill jutting out into the Japanese positions; that the invitation still held good; that we should follow the guide. So off we went. A sharp climb, till we could see all the Jap valley below us, then, remembering my "Twin Nobs" experiences, whenever I felt I was on the skyline, I bent low and ran across the gap. On our other side was a high mountain covered in jungle. At last we reached our Indian friends who took us for a tour of the new positions. Sharpshooters with telescopic rifles were perched up on the tallest trees, small sections were cunningly placed in vantage points. Wh e n we told them the care we had taken in coming up the hill they broke into laughter, for the danger wasn't from the valley at all, but from the high hill on our right. They did us grandly with an excellent curry, all the ingredients of which, goat and vegetables, were produced from the gardens of the Japanese-held village of Laungchaung— "When my patrols go out for information they know the most important things to bring back"—said the Sikh officer. Later, when I was painting them a patrol came in with a Japanese parasol—"The Japanese like having their geisha girls with them when they can"--sighed an officer from Lahore. [LD3334]. I spent some charming hours with an Irish painter, now in charge of trans- port for his unit. Sitting in state among his mules, his beautiful Irish mare rubbing its nose in his hand, while we talked on art. His wit was playing fancifully with army life or with painters, and this in the strange surroundings of a Burmese jungle. [LD3347]. Then the third battle of Dombaik was due to start; the Indian Navy, who were taking part in it, offered to take me along with them. W e went in M.L.'s It was night as we approached the enemy coast. Suddenly the battle started on land with an artillery barrage. W e could just see the silhouette of the coast against the approaching dawn, when the M.L.'s, one behind the other, sailed up the coast, bombarding with all the guns they had. It was now broad daylight. The laps were starting to return our fire, so under cover of a smoke screen we retired. Now I left the Arakan and proceeded by train from Chittagong up into Assam. It was here, on the trip by train, that I saw my only stretch of "Dorothy Lamour" jungle; huge moss-covered trees with immense creepers hanging down to the impenetrable tangle of fallen trunks and sodden vegetation. W e left the train and travelled up into the Naga Hills by road. At one time w e were mending a puncture, high up in a classical mountain landscape. Small groups of Naga tribesmen stood around in their picturesque costume. [LD3339]. Then some of them. putting aside their spears, bent down to help us. Later we gave them a lift and looking back into the interior of the truck, the Nagas, with their strange beads and ear-rings, their cloaks of matted grass and brilliant red, their intricate leggings of woven bamboo thread, their spears, looked like a cart-full of chorus for an Italian opera. W e passed many teams of these fierce head-hunting tribesmen engaged on building roads or perched high up above us hewing out the face of the cliff. Then, beyond the end of any roads, we came upon the little Khasi porters carrying crates of ammunition over hundreds of miles of mountain track. How tired we were at the end of our first day's march when all these little brown men, dressed in black, carrying colossal loads, kept jogging past us with the greeting: "Kubleh, Kubleh." A missionary in charge of them told us what great work they had done during the evacuation of Burma. The monsoons had already started. Th e refugees were stranded and dying in the jungle. Wh e n the Khasis were asked to volunteer to carry help to them, they all volunteered, and a thousand were chosen to carry food and medicine into the heart of the jungle. Up into the mountains we went till we were among pine forests, pine trees covered in orchids. Here at last we met the Chin Levies, men who have been fighting the Jap, holding up his advance for well over a year. [LD3338]. Dressed in uniforms of their own fancy—odds and ends of army equipment spread out through an entire village platoon, for the rest turbans and blankets of their own design, the whole capped with a feather, the sign of the levies. They are armed with flint-locks—I saw the date of 1796 on one—powder horns and tinder-boxes, and dahs (a Burmese knife). Wh e n asked if they would not prefer a modern rifle they answered no, as they would be always running out of ammunition, as it is they make their own.- They keep a goat for a year under their hut, and filter the accumulated drop- pings for saltpetre, soak a special type of bean before eating it, for sulphur.