To begin with as first arrivals we had quite an exciting time here ani ran into a bit of "fun." TI managed to get wounded in both arms but made up for it by capturing one of their armoured trains and so became the hero of the day. All that kind of thing is now over and the country is quiet once more.
T am afraid inv stay in India wa: not a very long one. I had four months in an Officers' Training School at Belgaum. Belgaum was a very nice place and I enjoyed my stay there very much. The weather was perfect and the surrounding country was delightful. "From Rel-gaum at the finish of my training I had ten days', leave and spent it divided between Bombay "and Delhi before pounding up perth to join inv regiment.
T enjoyed Bombay—spending most of my time in the sea, going to pictures, and doing a bit of dancing With a Shanghai girl I met in Bom-
"Garden of Eden?"
I had a week in Quetta before going overseas. was quite cold—right in the heart of the mountains ọn the North-West "Frontier, Up there you needed a fire in your roomy and a couple f blankets on the bed. Amd when you got up in the morning you didn't waste much time lover dressing. used to make us do P. men and you were really glad to do it to get warm.
"Here it is exactly the reverse—the job is trying to keep cool The temperature these days is about 110. degrees and we are about to get some hot weath ug about 130 degrees or more. What they call the "date ripener"—it will last for about six weeks. Well, if I am alive at the end of that I am sure I will be able to go through an; From the time T in the morning till I go to t night T am wet through. And to think that this was once the "G: of Eden." against the Germans. Thef same enemy against which a little more than a quarter of a century later he was to find himself leading an t Army"in his country's defence, after an attack as wanton as that which he had helped to resist as.a "boy.
"When the Revolution came in 1917 his regiment was one of first to Eo over and as trained Soldiers were searce in the Red Army he began to rise rapidly.
He fought throughout the civil war and by 1919 was commanding a division in the First Cavalry Army of Marshal Budenny who now commands the Armies in the South while Timoshenko himself commands the armies in the centre.
There is a historic painting that shows a meeting between the two. most celebrated soldiers of the revolution, Marshal Budenny and Marshal ' Voroshiloff—now ' Commander in the North and defender of Leningrad—in the background is Timoshenko. But he did not long remain in the background and later on he eclipsed even Budenny and Voroshiloff and became, as well if not better known than they.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.