Читать книгу Proceed to Peshawar - George J. Hill - Страница 10

Preface

At about 9:00 in the morning on Tuesday 16 November 1943, a U.S. Army jeep pulled away from the Services Hotel in Peshawar, North-West Frontier Province, India. Three men were on board, and the jeep was fully loaded. It was getting under way on what all of the passengers knew would be a dangerous and—if successful—historic journey.

The jeep was driven by a forty-six-year-old man wearing a military aviator’s sheep-lined leather jacket and the gold maple leaves of a U.S. Army major on his shirt collars. His round face, black eyebrows, and deeply tanned skin gave him an almost oriental appearance. He squinted grimly under the brim of his dark brown officer’s hat. Although he was usually very talkative, the major was uncommonly quiet as the jeep pulled out. He had been expected a day earlier, but he had been delayed and he was not in a good mood. In the right front passenger seat was a large man, forty-three years old, dressed comfortably in a tweed jacket and khaki trousers that might or might not be of military origin. He wore a soft civilian cap and horn-rim glasses. With his easy smile, bald head, and moustache, he looked more like a professor than a soldier. But he, too, was a major, and when he chose to wear his badges of rank, they were British. Another man, this one in an American uniform, sat in the back seat. At forty-one, he was the youngest of the three Allied officers. Blue-eyed, tanned, trim, and rather handsome, he wore the silver bars of a U.S. Navy lieutenant on each lapel. Later in the trip the Navy man would share the back seat with a uniformed officer of the local militia. The militia officer was to assist the safe passage of the jeep and its passengers as it proceeded through tribal territory. The militia officer would be replaced at each stage of the trip by another khassadar (tribal policeman) who would vouchsafe and guide the Westerners through his own territory.

The three Allied officers knew from previous experience that they were now players in what had for nearly four decades been known as the Great Game—the struggle for dominance in Central Asia, in which India was the prize. And they knew this was the first time that American military officers had joined the game, armed and under orders, as the saying goes.

This book will tell the story of the remarkable month-long journey along the Indian–Afghan border that these three Allied officers took in the late fall of 1943. The participants and those to whom they reported, and those who received the reports of the journey, are all dead—most of them a long time ago. The reports that they wrote about the trip have long since been filed away and forgotten, or destroyed. However, we now know that the area traversed by these officers is an area of vital interest to the United States—indeed to the entire world—and it therefore may be instructive to see what they encountered, and what lessons we may learn from their experiences. At the very least, by reviewing the report of this journey we can see that a brave spirit and willingness to push on against the odds is neither new in our own time, nor has it been forgotten. Success in dangerous endeavors is not for the faint hearted.