2. YMCA worker's account, IOR/L/Mil/7/18577, India Office Library and Records, British Library, London (IOR).

3. Secretary of State for India to Viceroy, January 22, 1917, and January 26, 1917. IOR/L/Mil/7/18354.

4. IOR/L/Mil/7/18354.

5. Ibid.

6. McMillan, A. W., “Indian Echoes from France,” The East and the West XVIII (1920): 1–20 Google Scholar; WO 95/43.

7. “Report on the Work of Labour during the War,” WO 107/37, 45.

8. “(A)s labour units they (the Indians) were hampered by illness caused by the cold weather and confusion about the terms of their contract.” ww.labourcorps.co.uk (accessed June 22, 2014). An otherwise excellent account of the Chinese Labour Corps accepts the play of ethnic comparison rather too literally. Guoqi, Xu, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 85Google Scholar.

9. For fine explorations of soldier correspondence through “layers of filteration,” see Omissi, David, ed., Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldier's Letters, 1914–1918 (London, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Markovitz, Claude, “Indian Soldiers’ Experiences in France during World War I: Seeing Europe from the Rear of the Front,” in The World in Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia, ed. Liebau, Heike et al. , (Leiden, 2010)Google Scholar; Singh, Gajendra, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars: Between Self and Soldier (New York, 2014)Google Scholar. For the creative addition of German sound recordings of Indian prisoners of war, see Roy, Franziska, Liebau, Heike, and Ahuja, Ravi, eds., When the War Began We Heard of Several Kings: South Asian Prisoners in World War I Germany (Delhi, 2011)Google Scholar; Das, Santanu, “Indian Sepoy Experience in Europe, 1914–1918: Archive, Language and Feeling,” Twentieth Century British History 25 (2014): 391–417 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. To boost the morale of ILC officers, Ampthill stressed that their men did the same work as base or line of communication troops and were therefore “honorably distinguished from Coolies working under indenture.” June 18, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/ 5/738.

11. Sepoy: “native” soldier. Vernacular terms underscored the race difference in service conditions as between British and Indian military personnel.

12. Censor's notes, April 7, 1917, and November 14, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/828. However, the censor kept a sharp eye out for anyone in the ILC taking an interest in British Labour politics. Note, February 13, 1918, Ibid., 395, 399.

13. In the entire corpus of the writings of hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett, I found this one phrase referring to his command of a Kumaon labor company in France: “Shortly after the Kaiser's war, Robert Bellairs and I were on a shooting trip….” Corbett, Jim, The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon (New Delhi, 1955)Google Scholar, 1. However an Indian revenue official who commanded the 23rd United Provinces company composed a highly enthusiastic propaganda pamphlet: Nath, Kashi, Indian Labourers in France (Bombay, 1919)Google Scholar.

14. Lowis, Cecil Champain, The Dripping Tamarinds (London, 1933), 163Google Scholar.

15. Singha, Radhika, “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive’: To France—and Back—in the Indian Labour Corps, 1917–1919,” in Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War, ed. Kitchen, James E., Miller, Alisa, and Rowe, Laura (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012), 199–223 Google Scholar.

16. ILC recruitment poster, Jangi Akhbar, No. 18, 1918.

17. Circular, May 14, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/2/5132.

18. Ladai ka Akhbar, August 21, 1918.

19. Pachuau, Joy, “Sainghinga and his Times: Codifying Mizo Attire,” in MZU Journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, 2, 2 (2015): 272–293 Google Scholar.

20. Sainghinga, Indopui.

21. An additional censorship rule for “coloured labourers” prohibited them from sending home pictures, postcards, photographs, printed matter, and newspaper clippings. WO 107/37, 63.

22. IOR/L/Mil/7/18410. Lowis describes Contalmaison, the work site for a Burma labor company, as “a ghastly hole” in which “everything was battered flat into the mud.” Lowis, The Dripping Tamarinds, 159. For a passing reference to “Indian troops” (the ILC) building an R.F.C aerodrome at Rambervilles in a “stretch of bleak sopping countryside,” see. R.F.C.H.Q.,1914–1918 (London, 1920)Google Scholar, 255, https://archive.org/details/rfchq1914191800bariuoft.

23. “Lekhathawn,” Mizo leh Vai, February 23, 1918. Lushai, or Mizo: an umbrella ethnic term for the inhabitants of the contemporary state of Mizoram.

24. TCHI, September 26, 1917, 623; October 24, 1917, 714. The 23rd UP company located in a stretch of “desolated, wild country-side” along the Somme saw very little of the French. Kashi Nath, Indian Labourers in France, 9, 22.

25. For an American surgeon, the throngs of “coloured labour” in France foretold the doom of European civilization. Cushing, Harvey, From a Surgeon's Journal: 1915–1918 (Boston, 1936), 143, 190Google Scholar. Anticipating objections from British labor, the War Cabinet had decided that Indian laborers would not be brought into the UK itself. June 29, 1917, CAB/23/3, TNA.

26. Singha, Radhika, “Finding Labor from India for the War in Iraq: The Jail Porter and Labour Corps, 1916–1920,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (2007): 412–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Indian Industrial Commission Report, 1916–1918 (Calcutta, 1918)Google Scholar.

28. See Singha, “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive.’”

29. WO 107/37, 11.

30. WO 107/37, 121.

31. White manpower was fleetingly placed in the same frame of comparison, to score points in conscription debates, or to suggest that military discipline would be as salutary for unruly trade-unionists as for civilizationally “backward” colored labor. “An Army of Labour,” The Times, December 27, 1917, 8.

32. Ibid.; “The Fijian and his Ways,” The Times, April 21, 1920.

33. “Indians and half-castes” had not been permitted to enlist. Charles Lucas, The Empire at War, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1924), 395Google ScholarPubMed. If ethnic “purity” was one consideration, the other was to ensure the retention of Indian labor on plantations given the war time boom in cane sugar prices and fears about the suspension of labor supply. See “Indian Labour,” Wairarapa Daily Times, January 20, 1915, 5, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz. Indian settlers were also kept out of the British West Indies Regiment.

34. An instructional pamphlet stated that undue familiarity between white personnel and the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) subverted discipline, but its advice for ILC officers was different: “It is a great mistake to imagine that civility or good fellowship towards an Indian is likely to lower the white man in his eyes…” Notes for the Guidance of Officers of the Labour Corps in France. Pamphlet in WO 107/37 (henceforth Notes), 73, 59. Lord Ampthill, advisor to the ILC may have authored such passages.

35. Singha, “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive.’”

36. WO 107/37, 42.

37. Notes, 73.

38. The “Note on Egyptian Labour,” 1917, has observations such as “They are immoral, and do not confine themselves to ordinary forms of immorality.” Appendix, WO 107/37.

39. WO 107/37, 33, 39–42; Ampthill, February 16, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

40. WO 107/37, 43.

41. Foreign and Political (F&P), Internal, B, August 1917, No.110–115, National Archives of India, Delhi (NAI).

42. “One year or the period of the war, whichever was less.” Ibid. In January 1918 when the War Office insisted on “period of war” for fresh ILC drafts, the Nagas of Manipur refused to go to France. Home, Establishment, B, February 1918, No.191–209, NAI.

43. Fortnightly Report, Madras Presidency, January 17, 1918.

44. Army Department, March 9, 1917, IOR/R/2/513/215.

45. See complaints in TCHI, March 21, 1917, 183.

46. IOR/R/2/513/215; F&P, Internal, B, August 1917, No.110-115, NAI. Local governments were authorized to make compulsory wage deductions for the laborer's family. Ibid.

47. Indian Labourers in France, 5. Bachra: Basra, but, in Hindi, also a calf. See also Viceroy to India Office, May 20, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

48. Some of the Lushais and Nagas in the ILC had gone as porters with the Abor expedition, 1911–1912. Mizo leh Vai, February 1918. The 23rd UP company had men who had served as followers in the South African war; the Kabul, Lushai, and Tibet expeditions; and more recently in Mesopotamia. Memo, Kashi Nath, IOL/L/Mil/5/738.

49. J. H. Lorrain to Mrs Lewin, July 21, 1917, MS 811/IV/65/7(i), Lewin collection, University of London. In the Assam-Burma hills a life-long exemption from the annual house tax was also promised. Improved terms for labor recruitment are also revealed by the monthly wage of Rs. 20/- offered to ILC recruits when the sepoy's wage at the time was Rs.18/- inclusive of allowances. They also received one month's additional pay for the first six months of service and thereafter for every three months service. F&P, Internal, B, August 1917, No.110–115, NAI.

50. Stanley Reed, Introduction to Kashi Nath, Indian Labourers in France. Ironically, Kashi Nath's own description of his UP company is of a heterogenous formation: peasants, ex-soldiers, seasoned followers, and even men of some means and education. Ibid.

51. Markovitz, “Indian Soldiers’ Experiences,” 13.

52. WO 107/37.

53. Ampthill to General H.V Cox, Military Secretary, India Office, July 25, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

54. The DOL agreed that casualties on recovery “would be re-posted only to those companies of the same tribal designation as those in which they previously were serving.” July 17, 1917, WO 95/83. The men in ILC companies stationed at Marseilles said they wouldn't extend their stay if they were separated and sent up in drafts. Ampthill, February 16, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

55. Assam companies: Khasi: 22, 34, 55, 56; Naga: 35, 36, 37, 38; Manipur (princely state): 39, 40, 65, 66; Lushai: 26, 27, 28, 29; Garo: 69, later 83. Smaller ethnic components such as Gurkha were obscured.

56. Burma companies: Chin: 60, 61 later 78 (from Falam); Burma 59, 60.

57. Ampthill to Cox, January 4, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.NWFP companies: 48, 49, 50, later 83.

58. United Provinces (UP) companies: 21, 23, 24, 25, 44, 45, 46, 47, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79, 82, and four Kumaon companies: 70, 73, 77, 85.

59. Bihar and Orissa companies: Bihar: 31, 32, 33; Ranchi: 41, 42, 43; Santhal: 51, 52, 53, 54, 80, 81; Oraon: 57, 58. The Belgian Jesuits favored the label “Catholic” for the companies raised from their laity.

60. Anonymous, Father Douglass of Behala: by Some of His Friends (London, 1952), 92Google Scholar. Bengal companies: 63, 64. Lascars were sea-men.

61. WO 107/37, 38–39, 43–45.

62. Minute, C. H. Selwyn, India Office, May 11, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302. Among the Europeans and Eurasians were serving and retired officials, planters, and missionaries. Lower down, headmen, some of whom were “tribal” chiefs, were appointed over sections of 240, and mates over gangs of 30. IOR/L/Mil/7/18304. Appointments to the command structure were shaped by assistance rendered in recruitment, experience in “managing coolies,” and influence with targeted communities.

63. Gibb to Cox, September 16, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

64. Ampthill to DOL, August 25, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738, 214.

65. Rubinstein, W. D., “Henry Page Croft and the National Party, 1917–1922,” Journal of Contemporary History 1 (1974): 129–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

67. Ibid.

68. WO to India Office, November 24, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18574.

69. Notes, 60.

70. Notes, 50. WO 107/37, 38–42.

71. Photographs, www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection. Italics added.

72. Indopui.

73. E-mail through Rachel Friedli, February 13, 2011. Nai: No!

74. Ampthill, December 17, 1917, critiquing the lack of medical care for the Kumaon companies; January 24, 1918, for the 22nd Khasis at Doingt; March 4, 1918, for work parties at Nancy, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

75. TCHI, November 28, 1917, 803; Indian Labourers in France; Indopui.

76. Daryl Klein, With the Chinks (London and New York, n.d.).

77. “Bombay Labour Corps. Visit to Camps at Poona,” Times of India (TOI), November 9, 1918, 17.

78. Singha, “Finding Labor from India.”

79. Indopui.

80. Adjutant-General India, March 26, 1917, Baroda Residency, War, W-24, NAI.

81. Indopui. Perhaps Sainghinga meant armbands because I do not think that the numbered wristlets riveted onto the CLC and SANLC were used for the ILC.

82. Alexander, Major H. M., On Two Fronts, Being the Adventures of the Indian Mule Corps in France and Gallipoli (London, 1917)Google Scholar.

83. March 8, 1918, WO 95/384. A conference of Labour Group commanders stated sympathetically that they ought to get the clothing of Indian officers, not “coolie blouses.” Ibid.

84. Indopui.

85. Singha, “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive.’”

86. IOR/L/Mil/7/18302. WO 95/43.

87. Ringkahao Ruivana, “R. S. Ruichumhao, Life of a Great Pioneer, Evangelist of Tangkhul Nagas.” somdal.web.com/rsruichumhao.htm (accessed May 23, 2012).

88. Ampthill to DOL, December 17, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

89. H. A. Orton, “A Piece of History for the Indians Who Now are Resident in this Country,” Imperial War Museum, 01/60/1.

90. Ibid.

91. Ruivana, “R. S. Ruichumhao.”

92. See accounts of Fathers Floor and Ory, TCHI, August 22, 1917, 543; TCHI, August 29, 1917, 557. For the way in which war created environments that allowed influenza to assume deadly dimensions see Byerley, Carol, Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

93. Indopui.

94. Indopui.

95. Indopui.

96. Indian Labourers in France, 6–7. The 1st Battalion Gurkhas sailing from Karachi in October 1914 found it difficult to understand why water had to be conserved because they were surrounded by it. “Subdedar Gamirsing Pun stopped all waste … by making 12 selected men each drink one pint of sea water.” www.6thgurkas.org (accessed April 23, 2014).

97. Indopui.

98. Viceroy to India office, February 14, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

99. Ampthill to DOL, July 18, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

100. WO 107/37, 40–41.

101. WO 107/37, 39–40; WO 95/384.

102. WO 95/384.

103. WO 95/83.

104. Transfrontier “Pathans” had a reputation for rock-cutting and tunneling. IOR/P/Conf/56, G1514, 1920. The Welsh Calvinist Mission claimed it had disseminated skills in lime-burning and the use of the carpenter's saw among the Khasis. Natarajan, Nalini, The Missionary among the Khasis (New Delhi, 1977), 64Google Scholar. A settlement of Bengali Christian artisans near Kolkatta provided recruits for the Bengal Labour Corps. Father Douglass of Behala.

105. Lindsay, A. D., “The Organisation of Labour in the Army in France during the War,” The Economic Journal 34 (1924): 69–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. December 18, 1917, WO 95/384.

107. Ampthill to DOL, February 17, 1917. IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

108. Ibid. India supplied huge quantities of forest produce such as lumber, fodder-grass, leather- tanning products and resin for the war.

109. WO 95/384.

110. As the 65^th and 66^th Manipur companies learned to construct camps and make trench boards, Royal Engineers personnel were released for forward areas. WO 107/37, 42. Kumaon labor established a reputation for railway laying in the 5^th Army area. March 4, 1917 WO 95/83; Notes, 59.

111. WO 107/37, 42; November 22, 1917, WO/95/83.

112. Ampthill, January 6, 1918, IORL/Mil/5/738.

113. “The organisation of labour in the army in France.”

114. Ampthill to DOL, December 17, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

115. Ibid.

116. WO 107/37, 28. Describing the skills his Ranchi labor company had acquired in trench tunneling and railway laying, the Reverend A. T. Williams wrote, “The type of British labour in these parts is just left standing cold on a job when these boys get to work and they know it, which is not altogether good for them.” Chota Nagpur Diocesan Paper (October 1918), Bishop's Lodge, Ranchi.

117. March 19, 1917, WO 95/83.

118. Notes, 6–7, 16.

119. WO 107/37, 27.

120. WO 107.37, 72.

121. WO 107/37, 27.

122. WO 107/37, chapter II.

123. WO 107/37, 117.

124. Notes, 6; September 13, 1917, WO 95/83. In May 1918 in Mesopotamia, payment for piece work over and above a daily task was introduced. Report of the Labour directorate Mesopotamian. Expeditionary. Force from October, 1916 to October 1918, 13.

125. WO 107/37, 27–28.

126. May 25, 1918, WO 95/384.

127. See Assistant Director of Labour, December 10, 1917, WO 95/384.

128. WO 107/37, 42–43.

129. E. Pearson (M.P), “Report on Labour Organisation in France,” January/February 1918, CAB 24/58, TNA.

130. Mill owners in India often insisted that there was no need to reduce factory hours from twelve to ten because Indian labor didn't actually work more than eight hours. Indian Industrial Commission Report, 1916–1918 (Calcutta, 1918), 90Google Scholar.

131. H. U. Perrot, “Organised Labour: A Suggestion for India,” TOI, July 4, 1919. Yet Perrot conceded that output might increase despite reduced work hours in the case of “certain aboriginal Indian labor employed on special tasks.” He also suggested that in a newly industrialized country, the state should organize the supply of unskilled labor as it did during the war, instead of leaving it to capital and labor to fight it out. Ibid.

132. TCHI, September 26, 1917, 623. In deep winter work-days were sometimes shortened. TCHI April 10, 1918, 273.

133. TCHI October 3, 1917, 645; October 24, 1917, 713; April 10, 1918, 272. Floor and Ory clearly wanted to ensure against any future relapse into what they termed “paganism” given that a “tribal” revivalist upsurge, the Tana Bhagat movement, was in full flow back in Chota Nagpur.

134. August 8, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/728, 244. In the Khasi, Lushai, and Chin hills the struggle with chiefs over Sunday observance constituted an important plank of Christian community formation.

135. TCHI, October 17, 1917, 694; TCHI November 21, 1917, 789. The ELC did not get Friday off for collective prayers.

136. May 13, 1918, WO 95/384.

137. Labour Commandant, 5^th Army, February 26, 1918, enclosure in Ampthill to Viceroy April 6, 1918, Chelmsford Mss letter No. 183, 272, IOR.

138. January 24, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738; Senior Medical Officer, March 4, 1918, WO 95/83.

139. A while ago they had been getting one day off in seventeen and a half days and now once in eight and a half days. Ampthill, February 21, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

140. “It has become very cold, but we get very good clothes. Sometimes our hands bleed (due to chilblains?) but intelligent men use their socks to cover them.” Letter from Barla, n.d., TCHI January 30, 1918, 93.

141. IOR/L/Mil/5/828, III, 405–406. Ampthill had to ask sometimes for more rice or meat, but the continuous recitation of food items in letters sent by Indian sepoys and laborers does communicate a sense of wondrous plenty in the midst of war: “Day by day we get bread and meat and many kinds of vegetables which we have never tasted in our lives. Even in the early morning we get vegetables with our chapattis,” Noronha Kanda, 43^rd Ranchi company to Kushal Mia Murda, Chota Nagpur, March 3, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/828, I, 187.

142. IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

143. October 23, 1917, onwards, WO 95/4007. See also WW1/182/H, Casualty appendix to war diary, IEF, A, Vol. 24, Pt II, December 1917 to February 1918, NAI.

144. December 8, 1917, WO 95/4007; Tour report, January 6, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

145. Ibid.

146. January 6, 1918, Senior Medical Officer's diary, LOC, Abancourt, WO 95/4007. Later parade time was discussed but rejected as unviable. Ibid.

147. Tour report, January 6, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738. Blargies Communal Cemetery extension nearby has forty-six Indian graves. Indian companies working around Nancy suffered extensive sickness because of a long delay in getting adequate warm clothing and shelter. Ampthill, 20–21 November 1917, Cox, March 4, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

148. Ampthill to Cox, Feb 26, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

149. January 2, 1918, WO 95/4007; Ampthill to DOL, January 4, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738, 70.

150. IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

151. Henry Edward Shortt, IOR Mss Eur C435. For the Abor expedition 1911–1912 see IOR Mss Eur D 1024/3.

152. Cox to Gibb, November 19, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

153. Gibb to Cox, December 1, 1917, (personal) IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

154. Cox to DOL, December 10, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/7/18302.

155. In response to newspaper criticism, the DOL drafted a statement defending the confinement of the CLC, ELC, and SANLC to enclosures: “It would be obviously undesirable, and would show a want of consideration of … the French population to allow them to wander about … without restrictions.” September 21, 1917, WO 95/83. Interestingly, there was no reference to the ILC. The language used for the CLC was more openly racist as in a proposal “to erect Group pounds into which all the Chinese strays will be put.” May 4, 1918, WO 95/537.

156. Ampthill noted, but with disapproval, that the ILC base depot at Les Olives, Marseilles, had no guard room and no guards. February 10, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

157. WO 95/83. The French authorities prohibited the use of cafes for colored labour. August 3, 1917, WO 95/83.

158. October 22, 1917, WO 95/83.

159. Notes, 53. The ILC men may have received 5 francs, that is, Rs.3.2 out of their monthly pay of Rs.20/. TCHI, Nov 28, 1917, 803.

160. WO 107/37, 63.

161. “R. S. Ruichumhao”. When a man of the 41st Ranchi company refused to go to work, the other members of his gang pinned him down “out of fright for the consequences of foolishness.” Father Ory had him tied to a post, perhaps in imitation of the British ritual of field punishment, until he asked for pardon. TCHI, January 9, 1918, 33.

162. Notes, 29.

163. WO 107/37, 63.

164. Notes, 68.

165. For the Abor expedition, 1911–1912, see IOR Mss Eur D 1054.

166. Ampthill to DOL, August 8, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

167. Ibid.

168. Ibid.

169. Ibid.

170. Ampthill to DOL, August 31, 1917. IOR/L/Mil/5/738. Deferred pay could not be withheld because it was part of ILC service conditions. WO 95/43. Military authorities were cautious about cutting into the already low wages of Indian sepoys and laborers.

171. Notes, 54–55; WO 107/37, 46.

172. Manual of Indian Military Law, 1911 Government of India, (Calcutta, 1923), 13, 19Google Scholar. See Indian Army Act (Act VIII of 1911), section 64, cl 1(a) and (b) and sections 74–76.

173. Home, Jails, B, January 1921, No.9–11, 12, 15.

174. WO 95/384.

175. Joatamon, A Mug in Mesopotamia (Poona, 1918), 34Google Scholar.

176. “We have become grossly selfish …. When a man is killed we rush to him to see whether he's got any food in his haversack, or, that priceless possession, a safety-razor.” Burrage, A. M., War is War (New York, 1930)Google Scholar. An American surgeon, fascinated by Indian soldiers, was also ready to believe they were “congenital thieves.” From a Surgeon's Journal: 1915–1918 (Boston, 1936), 62–63 Google Scholar.

177. Punjabi Muslim, Lancers, to Driver, General Hospital, Rouen, October 19, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/828, 362.

178. Indopui.

179. See “A panoramic view of the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois, Pas de Calais,” 1917–06–30 http://m.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205084499 (accessed March 13, 2015).

180. Indopui. The men posted seeds from these stands in their letters home so their families could also taste feren antem, “French greens.” Ibid.

181. Indopui.

182. TCHI September 26, 1917, 623.

183. TCHI, January 16, 1918, 48.

184. Marcosson, Isaac F., The Business of War (London, 1918), 120, 123Google Scholar.

185. TCHI, November 7, 1917, 742; November 28, 1917, 803. However, it was not such homely objects but more warlike ones fashioned in France by two Chang Nagas that were sent back from the Naga hills to the Pitts River Museum, Oxford—a dao, knife, and a German helmet fashioned into a war trophy with the addition of a pair of mithan horns. Report of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1921.

186. See Notes, 56 for safety instructions for Indian and Asiatic personnel on salvage work. There was a far sharper concern that the CLC would demand compensation for work injuries.

187. TCHI, October 3, 1917, 645. Sainghinga, the man of education, had the same attitude. Indopui.

188. Three men of a Ranchi company were mortally injured when one put his foot on a Mills bomb. TCHI, February 20, 1918, 144. The number of near escapes is remarkable.

189. Indopui.

190. TCHI, June 26, 1918, 494.

191. Ibid.

192. Mills, J. P., The Lhota Nagas (London, 1922), 78Google Scholar.

193. Kashi Nath, Indian Labourers in France, 9.

194. Objecting strongly to the proximity of ILC and British West Indian camps at Fournier, Ampthill said it was “not well to keep Indians and Negroes in close proximity” and that there had been “disagreeable incidents.” February 2, 1918, IORL/Mil/5/738. British West Indian soldiers were employed substantially as noncombatants. However, vis-a-vis coloured labour units they assertively underlined their status as combatants who received much the same pay as British soldiers. Howe, Glenford, Race, War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (Oxford, 2002) 121–22, 129Google Scholar.

195. Tour report, January 4, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

196. Indopui.

197. IOR/L/Mil/5, III, 342.

198. “France ram,” Mizo leh Vai, September 1918.

199. Anpthill to DOL, November 24, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

200. TCHI, June 5, 1918, 428.

201. WO 107/37, 73.

202. August 5, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

203. Kashi Nath, Indian Labourers in France, 9–10.

204. Ibid.

205. TCHI, November 28, 1917, 504.

206. There were Lushais who could follow the tonic solfa notation for hymns even if they could not read, and they would repeat the song after a lead singer. “We had gone through Sankey's entire revised song-book with 1200 hymns. … We also loved to sing Alexander's hymns.” Indopui.

207. Indopui.

208. Padre Dinanath, Indian YMCA worker, wrote, “Har chavani Hindustan ka namoona hai”—every Indian encampment was like a sample of Hindustan. “Ham Log France mein kis tarah rehte hain,” Ladai ka Akhbar, August 29, 1918.

209. Kashi Nath, Indian Labourers in France, 46–47.

210. IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

211. Ampthill to Cox, December 17, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

212. Cox, September 12, 1917. IOR/L/Mil/7/18304.

213. Ampthill to DOL, October 19, 1917, and October 23, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738. The Army was searching for ways to use the carcasses of animals slaughtered as unfit for use.

214. Ampthill to Cox, January 4, 1918, IOR/Mil/5/738.

215. Cox, tour diary, March 9, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

216. Ampthill to C. S. Bayley, October 15, 1917, IO/L/Mil/5/738, 152.

217. Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig to WO, March 15, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/7/18759; February 27, 1918, WO 95/384.

218. Traditional sports, such as wrestling, in the Indian Army were being supplemented by modern organized games, such as football and hockey. Ushaw, E. D., “Football at the front,” The Windsor Magazine, 48 (December 1917): 69–75 Google Scholar. In World War One it was the CO's responsibility to organize leisure, for it kept Indian personnel to camp and provided the entry point for war propaganda and “improving” lectures.

219. Page 190.

220. Ampthill to DOL, September 29, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

221. Ibid.

222. Ampthill to DOL, September 9, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

223. IOR/L/PS/11/134, File 1232/18. Gul Khan may have demonstrated rather too conspicuously that he had more influence over the transfrontier men than the British COs. Ibid.

224. The 39^th Manipur company, entertained by some neighboring units, “returned the compliment by giving exhibitions of Naga dances.” Ampthill to DOL, October 14, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

225. Describing a burlesque performance by Indian soldiers in Mesopotamia an officer noted that just as a white man blackened his face, so the brown man whitened his to play a British officer or a memsahib. Arthur Nye Peckham, March 14, 1917, IOR, Mss Eur. D078. For men dressing up as women see “Out door theatre of Indian Porter Corps at Kut” (Mesopotamia), Imperial War Museum photograph Q24574.

226. John E. Brozek, “The History and Evolution of the Wristwatch”, International Watchman Magazine, January, 2004 http://www.qualitytyme.net/pages/rolex_articles/history_of_wristwatch.html (access 15 March 2015).

227. Padre Dinanath referred to sepoys shopping for watches: “Ham log France mein kis tarah rehte hain.” A Parsi traveler noted that sepoys in Mesopotamia were wearing watches, which were cheaper there than in India. Cursetjee, Cursetjee Manockjee, The Land of the Date: A Recent Voyage from Bombay to Basra and Back, 1916–1917 (Allborough, 1991), 204Google Scholar.

228. Sultan Mabarik Khan, Central Indian Horse, France to Gauhar Rahman, Bannu, July 30, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/827, IV, 516.

229. Indian Labourers in France.

230. July 10, 1918, WO 95/4991.

231. “Did you know this,” Port Pirie Recorder, August 8, 1918, 3, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

232. In September 1917 two Egyptian companies were fired upon for striking work after an air raid at Boulogne. September 21, 1917, WO 95/83. After their camps in Dunkirk were bombed on July 30, 1918, the CLC had to be forced back to work. Strangers on the Western Front, 86.

233. July 2, 1917 and September 5, 1917, WO 95/83.

234. WO 107/37, 25.

235. This issue may have prompted the War Office to take on the full number of Indians it had asked for. No more white labor could be sent to France, and the Secretary of State for War said it was “inadvisable” to raise the question of employing the Chinese within ten miles from the front. July 2, 1917, WO 95/83. However, on 1 October 1917 the Commander in Chief in India reported that labor recruitment was being compromised by rumors that steel helmets had been issued to the ILC whereupon the War Office replied that there was no intention to deploy them near the front. October 7, 1917, WO 95/83.

236. Nov 11, 1917, WO 95/83.

237. Ampthill to Cox December 9, 1917, and to DOL, December 14, 1917, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

238. Ampthill to Cox, January 4, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738. TCHI, May 15, 1918, 368; May 22, 1918, 387; July 10, 1918, 534–35.A map shows the ILC bunched close to the frontline in February 1918: “Report on Labour Organisation in France,” 13 and appendix 2.

239. They were praised for a very orderly retreat. WO 107/37, 80; December 17, 1917, WO 95/384.

240. Father Ory to Dr. Moulman, Calcutta, April 2, 1918, IORL/Mil/5/828, Pt. III.

241. Ampthill to Cox, March 31, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/7/18510.

242. Lt. Col. A. O. Vaughan, 61st Labour Group, April 14, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

243. Indopui. Sainghinga composed his memoir sometime during the Second World War. However, writing from the Lushai hills in July 1918, when the men had just returned home, a Baptist missionary reported that seeing old men and women swarming out from Amiens “there arose within their hearts such a chivalrous spirit that for the moment … they could have gone back and forced the oncoming hosts … if someone had given them guns and ammunition. …” J. H. Lorrain to Mrs. Lewin, July 12, 1918, MS 811/IV/66/1 (i), Lewin Collection, University of London.

244. See “The Maurice letter,” TOI, May 14, 1918, 7. Of a report that CLC men had resisted “the Huns” with picks and shovels, see Daryl Klein, With the Chinks, 247. Xu Guoqui contends that this did happen. Strangers on the Western Front, 93.

245. Ampthill who visited the Abancourt emergency labor camp on March 29, 1918, praised Indian companies for marching away steadily carrying their kit, which was “more than can be said for many British units or for the Chinese and Italians who left everything behind.” Ampthill to Cox, March 31, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/7/18510; see also WO 95/4007.

246. IOR/Mil/L/7/18510.

247. WO 107/37, 41; March 5–16, 1918, WO 95/384.

248. Cox, March 12, 1918, IOR/L/Ml/5/738.

249. IOR/L/Mil/5/738; WO 95/4007.

250. Ampthill to Adjutant-General, February 21, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

251. IOR/ L/Mil/7/18302.

252. Lt…, native Christian to Mrs…, nd, IOR/L/Mil/5/828, 405.

253. March 17, 1918, WO 95/83; also Cox, March 12, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/5/738.

254. Ampthill to Cox March 31, 1918, IOR/L/Mil/7/18510.

255. Similarly, sepoys recovering in Britain from war wounds, feeling it was unjust to make them return to the front, had refused to sign papers that they were doing so voluntarily.

256. WO 95/384.

257. WO 107/37, 45. The situation in India was also such that coercion would have been politically disastrous. Singha “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive.’”

258. Sometimes reduced rations signaled official displeasure. April 30, 1918, WO 95/537; May 19, 1918, WO 95/83.

259. IOR/L/Mil/7/18759; May 31, 1918, WO 95/384.

260. “In Winter's Grip, Lessons of the Somme,” Evening Post, January 5, 1917, 10. paperspast.natlib.govt.nz (accessed March 14, 2015).

261. A correspondent enthused about his glimpse of an Indian Labour company cutting trees in French woodland: “On the instant we breathed the atmosphere of Asia, and recalled distant scenes and half-forgotten memories.” “The Army behind the Army,” The War Illustrated, December 15, 1917. As Fendle watched the men of his Burmese company “heaving at a huge mass of rusted German barbed wire … their brown bodies beaded with sweat … his memory recaptured hot, shimmering visions of the Irrawaddy valley; of black river steamers anchored in the glare, of paddy sacks being dumped on to lighters.” The Dripping Tamarinds, 153.

262. Singha, “The Recruiter's Eye on ‘the Primitive.’”

263. TCHI, January 3, 1918, 7.

264. TCHI, January 9, 1918, 33.

265. TCHI, January 3, 1918, 7; R.F.C.H.Q ,1914–1918, 255.

266. Burial parties had preceded the Ranchi companies as they began their work, but ploughing parties began to follow them. TCHI, November 1917 and May 15, 1918, 368. The artist William Orpen remarked on the “incredible” rapidity with which Indians had changed the whole face of this area. An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919, 1921, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20215 (accessed March 14, 2015).

267. Younghusband, Francis, “India,” in The Empire at War, ed. Lucas, Charles, vol. V (London, 1926), 342Google Scholar.