The last post: letters home to India during the first world war

mcan · Feb 26, 2014

More than a million Indian soldiers fought in the first world war. As the British Library's collection of their correspondence is put online, Daljit Nagra reflects on their horror, heroes and hopes

'Our people have many lice in their clothes, and they bite terribly. They are worse than a rifle bullet. But there are no mosquitoes or other creatures which bite mankind, and no snakes or scorpions at all." This extract is from a letter by an Indian soldier in 1915. He is in France and writing home to a friend. The letter comes from a collection of correspondence copied by British military censors, revealing the experiences of the many Indian soldiers who fought in the first world war, that has just been digitised by Europeana 1914-1918 and the British Library. The collection also contains the censors' summaries of the letters, revealing their concerns.
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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/found-translation-indias-first-world-war

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The last post: letters home to India during the first world war

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