Now this is a hero! Jack Jacob, the general who saved India from more war

At the time of the Bangladesh war, I was visiting an uncle, a Church of England Vicar, who had previously been a Colonel in the British Indian Army (retiring in the 1930s). We watched the television reports and he would make comments like “Frightful area that – Never take recruits from there!” I don’t remember seeing a report of General Jacob. I think his superior was a General (later Field Marshal) Manekshaw who had an impressive moustache like Lord Kitchener’s. There were interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani army officers and it suddenly struck me that they all talked just like my uncle – rather old-fashioned English, spoken rather loud and slowly with quaint turns of phrase. Manekshaw dismissed a pushy BBC reporter “My dear fellow, I’m sure the BBC is terribly well informed and cracking good luck to you”. I think the British made a very good job of the Indian Army, the largest all volunteer force in WWII. Some British families provided officers for “their” regiments for over 100 years. As the Indian Army paid its officers a good salary, which the home British army did not, people of small fortune with military ambitions and abilities could make a career there. Field Marshal Slim of Burma fame (“Uncle Bill” to his men) was one such. My uncle had transferred from the Imperial yeomanry to the Indian Army during the South African war for the same reason.