The Kings Gora-Wallahs
The Kings Gora-Wallahs
The Kings Gora-Wallahs – Synopsis
This is a story set in British India of the 1920’s and although written as fiction the majority of events are true. Adapted from personal interviews with ex-soldiers who served in India in the period written of, or drawn from fact closely researched over two years. The story centres in the main around a British battalion serving in India, hence the title, ‘Gora-Wallahs’, which is the name native Indian soldiers called the British soldiers. Even though some of the leading characters are officers and soldiers, the story is not confined exclusively to the role of the military in service in India, there are other main characters.
Robert Christie, born in India and now returning to take up a career with the Indian Civil Service. Adjudged autocratic during its reign, the Indian Civil Service is now recognised as the most even-handed governmental administering body the world has ever seen. Although tyrant ruled, it was based on benevolent tyranny, the tyrants at all level of governing were raised and educated with such high moral integrity that they could neither lie nor commit a disloyal act. They exercised their positions in the belief that they were there to protect the rights of the common man and to that end they were unsurpassed.
Emma Schofield, a doctor for many years in charge of a mission hospital on the Northwest Frontier. Living from day to day, because of the ever present lawless Pathan tribesmen, in the shadow of violent death.
Kishna, a Rajput Princess who Robert Christie falls in love with. Rose Rickman, the niece of the battalion regimental sergeant-major who takes up nursing and upon being kidnapped by Pathan bandits becomes embroiled in a Border war.
On reading, the book may seem at times too fundamental, the values of the characters too forthright. This, it must be remembered, were the days of the British Raj where correctness before the native Indians was of all importance. Even the soldiers of seventy years ago were of a more temperate mind, much improved on their predecessor. Before 1914 the British Army in India was riddled with drunkenness and venereal disease. The Great War swept that all away to be replaced by a younger generation broadly schooled and overall prouder of their chosen calling.
Regardless of the fact, unbeknown at the time, that the British Empire in India had only another few short decades to run, the country still contained many of the vices and virtues that were there when Alexander the Great first ventured onto its furnace hot north-western plains. Then, as now, the words used to describe India’s temperaments and features would hardly have changed. Vibrant, mystifying, secretive, poverty, pageantry, savagery but for those who arrived from cold, misty north Atlantic shore lands, to see with their hearts as well as their eyes another word sits far about the others; beguile.
Pointed Sword
Pointed Sword
Pointed Sword – Synopsis
This is a novel of China at a time in her history when she fought a war that was not of her choosing. Having seized Manchuria and other northern Chinese provinces, Japan, in 1937 launched an undeclared war southwards into China’s heartland.
This story is about a number of people who find themselves directly or indirectly drawn into this conflict.
Han Chih, a peasant farmer, taking on the role of a soldier after an attack by a Japanese raiding party that destroyed his village and slaughtered his family. Ruth McRae, a doctor from Canada who volunteers to journey to China in order to treat Chinese war casualties. Still Willows, a girl in her late teens of a cultured Shanghai family who chooses to leave her home to attend the wounded on China’s brutal battlefields. Chuck Ashman, an American transport pilot under contract to fly for the Chinese. Ann Lin, a victim of Japanese savagery on their entry into Nanking and sworn to take revenge for her butchered family. And Mark Ellison, an Englishman working for an English trading company but also a witness to the horror of Nanking. For which he was determined to seek reprisal for the murder of those who’s friendship he had treasured.
Each to find their destiny linked to that of a Brigade of coarse but steadfast provincial soldiers from the shores of the China Sea who called themselves, Pointed Sword.
Tonkawa Sunset
Tonkawa Sunset
Tonkawa Sunset – Synopsis
This writing is a fictional narration of events based on factual happenings that occurred on the Texas western frontier of 1860’s America. Of John Steadman, who left Texas to fight for the Confederate cause with General Robert E Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, during the Civil War. Of Alin, his wife, who remained behind on their frontier homestead, to be taken by a raiding Comanche warrior band, causing her husband, on returning, a long disheartening search. Of Nathan, the son of an English father and Indian mother, a defending leader of his mother’s tribe.
Though foremost, this is a story of a Texas Indian Tribe that allied themselves with the white settlers against brutal, blood lust Comanches, in an attempt to secure for the frontier and their tribe, the Tonkawas, a lasting peace.
About Don MacNaughton
They Stood in the Door
Don MacNaughton was born in Victoria B.C. Canada but in 1960 he journeyed to England where he joined the Parachute Regiment serving with that regiment until 1982. On leaving army service he settled with his wife and family in Aldershot, Hampshire, where, retired and now a widower he still resides.
Other published novels by Don are:
Although this book is of the Army, describing vicious fighting against Arabian hill tribesmen, Aden terrorists and Indonesian troops in the jungles of Borneo, it is not a war book. The purpose of this story is to introduce its reader to the men who have and are so professionally serving them and their country. But above all it wishes to unveil the barrack-room humour that is so distinctively unique to the British Army and which at times can only be described as totally unbelievable.
‘An army is a crowd which obeys.’
Napoleon Bonaparte
They Stayed a Soldier
Although a factual and descriptive story in its own right this book is but a follow on of the author’s first novel ‘They Stood in the Door’. In so writing he has retained many of the original characters, bringing them away from the brushfire wars of the 1960s into the turbulent confusion of Northern Ireland in the early ’70s. A difficult and challenging time for the British soldier, for he now found himself killing and being killed by his fellow countrymen. However, his reaction and response to this, as accounted here, may surprise and shock many unfamiliar with the British ‘squaddies’ temperament.
For when the One Great Scorer comes
To Write against your name,
He marks—not that you won or lost—
But how you played the game,
Grantland Rice