Hira Singh : when India came to fight in Flanders

From the opening

Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge.--EASTERN PROVERB.

A Sikh who must have stood about six feet without his turban--and only imagination knows how stately he was with it--loomed out of the violet mist of an Indian morning and scrutinized me with calm brown eyes. His khaki uniform, like two of the medal ribbons on his breast, was new, but nothing else about him suggested rawness. Attitude, grayness, dignity, the unstudied strength of his politeness, all sang aloud of battles won. Battles with himself they may have been--but they were won.

I began remembering ice-polished rocks that the glaciers once dropped along Maine valleys, when his quiet voice summoned me back to India and the convalescent camp beyond whose outer gate I stood. Two flags on lances formed the gate and the boundary line was mostly imaginary; but one did not trespass, because at about the point where vision no longer pierced the mist there stood a sentry, and the grounding of a butt on gravel and now and then a cough announced others beyond him again.

"I have permission," I said, "to find a certain Risaldar-major Ranjoor Singh, and to ask him questions."

He smiled. His eyes, betraying nothing but politeness, read the very depths of mine.

"Has the sahib credentials?" he asked. So I showed him the permit covered with signatures that was the one scrap of writing left in my possession after several searchings.

"Thank you," he said gravely. "There were others who had no permits. Will you walk with me through the camp?"

That was new annoyance, for with such a search as I had in mind what interest could there be in a camp for convalescent Sikhs? Tents pitched at intervals--a hospital marquee--a row of trees under which some of the wounded might sit and dream the day through-these were all things one could imagine without journeying to India.

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