Tolstoy, Tibet, India and OSS in WW2 whats common

[Sakobav]

I was reading about US presence in India in WW2 CBI theater or China Burma and India. Kharagpur was their HQ and actually the entire IIT campus of old was set up by them including various eastern India airfields. Doing a project in WV Charleston where majority of the team members were Indians a old security guard fella had a sweet spot for us because he served in Assam. Meaning we had free pass to work in state capitol building at night and any hour of the day..had hilarious incidents different story..

Tolstoys the famous Russian writer's grandson Col Ilia Tolstoy worked for Billi DOnovans OSS in India and Ilia was one of the two officers who traveled to Lhasa in 40s with gifts for Dalai Lama from US president. Ilia also did quite a bit research in Northern Canada on Caribou migration, road horse from Sumarkandh to Peshawar and was also a marine scientist. There is an interesting quote in the link below where they state for a person who had so much to write about why he didnt pen the stories, Ilia's retort was with my last name I dare not write..probably intimidated by comparison with his Grandfather.
The documentary below captures their trip from Gangtok to Lhasa and provides some unique insight on life at that period and yes they did travel through Nathu La

http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=3810

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/ ... lama-1942/

http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/45/tolstoy.shtml

Enjoy and do add

[Moin.]

OSS in India. Thats interesting. Thank you for sharing the link Grewalsaab.

Regards
Moin.

[nagarifle]

oss, unit 136 sas and many others were working here during the war time. which Tolstoy would that be? as the family now lives in london, there is anders and nickole who is the writer. of coursre it will not be the origianal chap who wrote the book.

[timmy]

Navi, very interesting stuff!

road horse from Sumarkandh to Peshawar

Wow! Can you imagine? Even today, that would be quite an exotic adventure, I should think. Even after millennia of history, still a fantastic trek.

RE: flying "The Hump": I knew a fellow who had done this. The main aircraft used on this trip was the Curtiss C46 Commando. Powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney R2800s, something must have been wrong, because that engine was one of the most reliable internal combustion engines ever built. But by then, Curtiss as an aircraft manufacturer had started to go to seed. The C46 started life as an upgrade/replacement for the ubiquitous DC3, but had the misfortune of being introduced on the eve of WW2. It had about double the capacity of a DC3, but was often unreliable in flight. The problem was that, fully loaded, the C46 could not fly on one engine, and operating near its ceiling crossing the Himalaya, failures were common, in an area where there was no place to touch down safely. However, the fellow that I knew who flew them liked them well enough.

All of this makes me think and wonder about Chinese claims on Tibet and the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and that portion of Ladakh the Chinese occupy. A whole 'nother subject...

Thanks for sharing, Navi!

[xl_target]

Absolutely fascinating stuff, Navi.
The video in two of the links you posted was pure gold.
Thanks for sharing.

[Sakobav]

Great you guys liked
timmy xl et al Here is a link to CBI and hump
http://www.cbi-history.com/part_xii.html
http://cbi-theater-10.home.comcast.net/ ... kseat.html
timmy some where in these link it was mentioned about the C 46 and it issues they even used helicopter and small planes in this area to rescue crews a famous person was saved once.

Lot of afro american soldiers worked to make that road to Ledo and CBI theater a war is a forgotten one compared to Pacific et al. I read Gen Smiths Defeat to Victory years ago another common sense soldier. Lot of west indian soldiers also fought in Burma..their are amazing narratives and many of the active Indian airfields Chabua, Kalaikunda etc were built then

http://www.cbi-history.com/part_ii.html

[Sakobav]

oss, unit 136 sas and many others were working here during the war time. which Tolstoy would that be? as the family now lives in london, there is anders and nickole who is the writer. of coursre it will not be the origianal chap who wrote the book.

Nags lazy fella read the link he is son of Tolstoys son of the same name who settled in US may be in CT. These chaps were more into agronomy study and maybe his descendants are all over the world.

timmy that must be an amazing horse journey riding into peshawar because he must have been escaping Soviet Union and its a rough one lot of Indian communist leaders used the same route including Netaji Bose to get to Soviet Union actually one of his guides a chap name of Talwar whose elder brother was hanged by Brits died while fording the river between Afghanistan and one of the stan nations there ...I think tworivers traversed the same route albeit one from Kabul to Peshawar in later years in a car maybe Kabul was a fascinating and progressive place till mid 70s going OT here

[nagarifle]

yas,, i should not skip the first page and look for juicy bits, yap he was the grandson of the writer himself.

i wonder what would be the outcome of the war, if the new route was used.?

sidetracking a little;

interestingly, with the stillway road constructed. which in it self makes a very interesting reading, the hardship that the men endured. i did not used to think much of vinger joe, until i started reading something about him. one has to admire the guts and resilient of the men involved.

[Sakobav]

nags

Vinegar Joe at one time was being tagged for European theater war and wasnt happy when he was sent to CBI. He came across very abrasive and wasnt appreciated by Brits or Chiangshek for his blunt style. He predicted Mao would win the war and that Chinese nationalist army had too many issues..and brits he would say when would Limey's get into war again..wasnt pretentious nor would he recommend chaps for medals. Merrill Marauders always felt that they were let down by Joe because he pushed them way too hard to fight and hold a location Col Merrill who died due to strain remarked Boss man doesnt like to give medals, him sending troops in to Jungle based on 2700 calories a day diet vesus 4000 plus they required. ... Finally Nationalist army and Brits had him transferred out..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill's_Marauders

But history would have been way different had Japs some how bypassed Kohima and Imphal in your neck of woods and gotten to Dimapur or Assam plains or even Chitagong..I wonder whether Indian population would have stood up and over thrown Brits with INA leading columns playing a big role with Netaji in charge..thats a separate discussion..Japs couldnt get over that tennis court in DC Bungalow in Kohima and rest we know

[nagarifle]

agree

wonder why the japs do not play tennis much

[Safarigent]

I am sure not many would understand the 'tennis' part of it!

[timmy]

Navi have you read "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" by Barbara Tuchman? She is a powerful historian and my favorite writer. The book goes into a lot of "Vinegar Joe's" dealings with Chiang Kai Shek (who Stilwell called "The Peanut") and President Roosevelt (who Stilwell called "Rubber Legs").

One of these days, I'm simply going to have to start a study of "The Great Game" and all of its out workings.

I take it, then, gentlemen, that had the Japanese been able to get through Kohima and Imphal, you think that an uprising would have taken place? My questions would be, in such a scenario:

How far would the uprising have spread? Would it have been nationwide, regional, or what?

What would the impact of an uprising have been on the future of India? For example, surely such an event would have thrown Jinnah's plans upside down, or maybe they would have furthered them? What about the South, with respect to the laster unified India? I am thinking here that perhaps less of the ?machinery of state" would have been intact for use by the leadership.

How would the INA have figured in the scenario where the uprising was fairly successful, but in the end, the Japanese still lose? Would not Bose and the resulting administration be viewed as an enemy co-combatant? Or would he have switched sides (or even, could he) a la Italy?

What happens to Gandhi, Nehru, and Sirdar Patel in this scenario?

It seems that there is s lot to comtemplate here.

Please trasnlate the "tennis court" thing for a gringo!

[nagarifle]

the tennis thing, Stalingrad is well known for stopping the German during the WW11. in asia its the battle of Kohima, the furthest the Jap got was the Tennis court of the DC banglow. Then the Jap went back home.

Kohima has a large cemetery of 1,420 Allied war dead maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The cemetery lies on the slopes of Garrison Hill, in what was once the Deputy Commissioner's tennis court which was the scene of the Battle of the Tennis Court.

The epitaph carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery has become world-famous as the Kohima Epitaph. It reads:
" When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today ”


http://www.burmastar.org.uk/The%20Battl ... Kohima.htm

[timmy]

Thanks for the tip, Naga!

[Sakobav]

Timmy

Just catching up with posts. No I havent read any of Stilwells books but regarding INA strategy and Boses role had they succeeded ..well there was no love lost between Bose and Gandhi and especially between Bose and Patel ( the political boss and strongman behind Gandhi and nehru) . The latters issue was Patel's elder brother had passed away in Europe sanatorium and willed quite a bit of his stuff to Bose since they both were at the same location. Patel had to sue Bose to get some of it back. Bose felt slighted by Nehru since he also didnt come to his rescue when Bose was squeezed out and isolated by Gandhi patel using political means.

I personally believe Bose would have thrown Gandhi, Jinnah et al in jail if need be and would have resisted partitioning of the country. Gandhi, Nehru and Patel would have never tolerated Bose as the boss and Bose was bit head strong and time being of essence would have demanded quick actions and congress and Muslim league would have dragged their feet and Indian kongs/nawabs etc would have also opposed INA. the x factor is whether the masses and Indian army would have jumped on Bose bandwagon and forced both the parties to compromise? Remember Brits Mughals et al were successful in india because the elites to maintain their interests always worked with aggressors against nations interest as a whole.

Key question here is US role would they have forced Allies to secure peace with Bose govt when Japanese were defeated.

Just my 2c

best