In my last post, I talked about the fallout over a popular newspaper article in August 1944 criticising the lack of welfare for the British Army in India and the South East Asia Command (SEAC). Given that British troop numbers in SEAC were expected to increase significantly as the war in Europe ended, this bad press was concerning for Churchill. Leo Amery sent his Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for India and Burma, Geoffrey FitzClarence, the 5th Earl of Munster (1906–1975), to see for himself. Travelling from Whitehall, Munster took a week to get to Delhi by air, arriving on 10 October 1944. A rarefied experience that was unfamiliar to the vast majority of British soldiers, who took significantly longer to reach the sub-continent in less salubrious conditions by packed troopships.
Image: The Earl of Munster (right) with D’Arcy on the steps of the War Office. (IWM H72)
Once in Delhi, however, Munster embarked on a much more gruelling tour to investigate troop welfare. To understand the current situation regarding welfare, he visited clubs, canteens, leave centres, transit camps and hospitals in Ranchi, Calcutta, Jamilla, Cox’s Bazaar, Cittagong, Imphal, Colombo, Kandy, Madras, Bangalore, Secunderabad, Poona, Bombay and Simla. Given Munster’s energetic tour of India and Burma, it was no surprise that his report of December 1944 opens by emphasising the first challenge to troop welfare: the enormous distances involved.[1]
Image: Europe – With India and Burma Superimposed on the same scale (from Report by the Earl of Munster on the Welfare of Troops in India and South East Asia Commands - December 1944).
Unless you had travelled across India and Burma, the distances involved were something that authorities in London struggled to comprehend. To highlight this challenge, the Munster report includes a map of Europe with a superimposed outline of the sub-continent. Readers may have struggled to understand the distance from Delhi to Calcutta, but were perhaps better able to imagine the journey time from London to Danzig. Whether the actor and ENSA officer, Jack Hawkins, used the same map or created his own, he sent a similar one to Drury Lane to explain why he could not provide ‘blanket coverage’ of India with 100 entertainers![2]
More fundamentally than the concept of distance, Munster’s report highlighted the culture shock experienced by British troops used to European amenities. He urged that welfare improvement should start with the troopships on the journey to Bombay. Once on land, he noted that the Deolali amenities, with its vast tented reception camp, should be improved to make a better impression for the troops on new arrivals to India. Munster concludes that the general lack of buildings for welfare amenities, especially in remote camps and the lack of clubs and canteens in major cities meant that:
British troops cannot be left to find entertainment and relaxation for themselves; almost everything in the way of amenities and absolutely everything in the more remote stations, has to be provided specially for them.”[3]
This was a surprising statement for the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to make, implying that the British authorities should undertake a significant financial commitment to troop welfare in this theatre. It was one thing to grant leave to British soldiers serving in India (a seemingly generous 28 days per year); quite another to meet all their requirements while they were relaxing.
Image: A tailor takes a nap outside his shop, Simla, India, 1944 by Cecil Beaton (IWM IB 2225)
Munster’s report went on to list a range of topics causing British troops’ dissatisfaction in India and Burma, including pay, high commodity prices, poor railway travel conditions, the lack of beer, and the need for legal aid to help with failed marriages back in the UK. Additionally, his report highlighted the lack of live entertainment due to performers’ reluctance to travel to the Far East for months at a time, with little chance of publicity. The lack of musical instruments made it difficult for units to form their own bands to entertain the troops themselves. It was all very well having cinema buildings in Calcutta and a trickle of Western films, but the shortage of projectors across India made this form of recreation somewhat academic:
“For reasons of which I am unaware the total number of projectors received in India during the last 5 months has amounted to 24 only. The requirements of India, if one show is to be given to each man every nine days, have been worked out at 1319 16mm projectors and 446 35mm projectors.”[4]
Radio broadcast, which was the focus of much of the army welfare effort for British troops in Italy and Northwest Europe, was woefully inadequate in India. More programming for the forces was needed on All-India Radio and the BBC, but, more importantly, more wireless sets were needed so soldiers could listen.
To address these deficiencies, Munster set out a series of recommendations to improve British troop welfare across the theatre. He acknowledged that efforts had necessarily been devoted to the military’s operational work in SEAC; however, now was the time to provide the amenities expected by the British troops at a large military base. The report made the following recommendations:
Image: Recommendations from Report by the Earl of Munster on the Welfare of Troops in India and South East Asia Commands - December 1944.
These were sensible recommendations, drawing on experience from Army Welfare in the European theatres. However, Munster’s report neatly side-stepped the thorny question of how to implement these improvements and, more importantly, who was going to pay for all these welfare amenities, especially entertainment. Voluntary organisations, such as the Bengal Entertainment Services Association (BESA), had provided amateur shows to British troops in a limited capacity and had not required investment from the British government. Some ENSA performers had volunteered to go to India, but not enough to make a difference, and a handful of stars, like Noel Coward (at the invitation of Mountbatten), had done so as well.[5]
Looking through Cabinet papers, Clement Attlee, the Deputy Prime Minister, was tasked (presumably by Churchill) with clearing obstacles to improve welfare whilst Munster was touring India. Addressing the financial question of who would foot the bill - Britain or India, Attlee’s private secretary, Kenneth Turpin writes in a memo on 10 November:
“The cost will be financed under the general arrangements between this country and India regarding defence expenditure. There is now no question of the Indian government’s niggardliness causing the entertainment programme for the troops to be less than it would otherwise be.”[6]
A more mundane but nevertheless critical obstacle was the ability for ENSA performers from Britain to travel to India by air rather than spending months on a troopship. A series of letters between Attlee and Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air, during September and October 1944, highlighted this issue and secured the Air Ministry’s assurance that star entertainers would be provided with priority air passage.[7]
Returning to London in November 1944, Munster gave an interview to a national newspaper and highlighted the need for more British entertainers to travel to the Far East. His diplomatic phrasing could have been improved: “We shall have to lure ENSA from the glamour of Paris and Brussels.” This was like a red rag to a bull and the Director of ENSA, Basil Dean, wrote a sharp defence of his organisation’s record in India with an article in The Times on 7 November 1944. Attack being Dean’s favourite form of defence, he used the article to criticise the Ministry of Labour, the Indian government, and the NAAFI. Despite the theatrics, the more important historical document that emerged at the end of 1944 was Munster’s parliamentary report, not Dean’s article.
By December 1944, the question of entertainment and troop welfare in India and Burma had been elevated to the highest levels of government by Bellenger’s article I Accuse Amery, and obstacles had been cleared by Clement Attlee. It demonstrates the importance Churchill placed on troop welfare, but more specifically, it shows the recognition that the Far East theatre of war would only grow in importance as the war in Europe concluded. If British citizen soldiers fighting on the Gothic Line and along the borders of Germany in late 1944 were expected to fight in Burma in 1945, welfare improvements were needed. The next step would be to implement those welfare improvements on the ground, which will be the topic of my next blog post.
[1] ‘CAB 124/1039 : National Service Entertainments Board: Correspondence on Appointments’, Cabinet Papers, The National Archives, n.d.
[2] Jack Hawkins, Anything for a Quiet Life: The Autobiography of Jack Hawkins, 1st Edition (Elm Tree Books Ltd, 1973), p. 73.
[3] ‘CAB 124/1039 : National Service Entertainments Board: Correspondence on Appointments’.
[4] ‘CAB 124/1039 : National Service Entertainments Board: Correspondence on Appointments’.
[5] Oliver Soden, Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024), p. 394.
[6] Letter from K.C. Turpin to Attlee, 10 November 1944. ‘CAB 124/1039 : National Service Entertainments Board: Correspondence on Appointments’.
[7] Letter from Sir Archibald Sinclair to Clement Attlee, 14 October 1944. ‘CAB 124/1039 : National Service Entertainments Board: Correspondence on Appointments’.