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Latest comment: 8 months ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Copied from my talk page:
Hi Philip, greetings, we haven't interacted in a while. It is my strong conviction that the highest headquarters for the Army in India was actually known as 'General Headquarters, India.' The reference you added to the page which is now at India Command, from a book seemingly about the Vietnam War, are, I believe, incorrect. Core histories of the British or Indian Armies will, I believe, show this (eg 'We Shall Shock Them' and others). (Leo Niehorster using 'X Command' sometimes inaccurately all over the place doesn't help things though.) Are you willing to open a dialogue on this? Kind regards Buckshot06(talk)03:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Of course we should discuss it if you think that the naming is wrong.
There is more than one book that is cited is about how the Americans came to be mixed up in the Vietnam War, and the chapter in the book that mentions the India Command is not a one liner comment in a book about the the Vietnam War.
I would suggest that India Command is the name of the command while General Headquarters, India is the description of the organisation that the commander support the commander in chief. The GHQ could be located at a number of different locations, but the command had overall responsibility for the forces in a specific region, which could and did vary over time (eg the inclusion of Burma, Persia and Mesopotamia). See for example pages 216 (31 December 1941) and 297 (10 August 1942) in War Diaries 1939-1945 by Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (who was on the days mentioned Chief of the Imperial General Staff). Is it likely that such a source would use the term "inaccurately all over the place"?
Also in support of India Command, all the contemporary British military organisations that neighboured that command used the term command in their names. Eg as Alan Brooke mentions in his 31 December 1941 diary entry the Middle East Command. -- PBS (talk) 10:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
India Command was run from the Headquarters The Army in India (A.H.Q. India), which was based at Delhi. During the summer months, some elements of the headquarters moved to Simla in Himachal Pradesh state in order to be alongside the government which moved there due to the stifling heat in Delhi. The name, 'The Army in India' was used as the headquarters had operational control over both British Army and Indian Army units serving in the Indian sub-continent.
A.H.Q. India was divided into five Branches, namely:
General Staff Branch;
Adjutant General's Branch;
Quarter-Master General's Branch;
Master General of the Ordnance's Branch;
Engineer-in-Chief's Branch.
Each branch comprised a number of Directorates, in a similar manner to the way the War Office in London was organised. Not surprisingly, with the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the role of A.H.Q. India expanded, and it was redesignated as General Headquarters, India (G.H.Q. India). The initial focus was to raise divisions for deployment overseas, in particular in the Middle East. The entry of Japan into the war on the 8 December 1941, and the subsequent capture of Burma, moved the focus of G.H.Q. India very firmly back to the defence of India. This was the period of most significant growth in G.H.Q. India, until by the end of the Second World War, just over two and a half thousand service personnel were based there.
After the end of the war, G.H.Q. India contracted and then prepared for the partition of British India on the 15 August 1947. G.H.Q. India became the Army Headquarters for the new Indian Army, whilst the Headquarters of Northern Command (see below) became the Headquarters of the new Pakistan Army.
Philip, this is what I found at British Military History.co.uk. 'India Command' seems to have been an informal name for what was -- I seem to have been initially incorrect -- AHQ India. As you quote yourself, and BMH does, it is used sometimes. But the reason it is not a 'Command' in the same form as the others was it didn't answer to the Secretary of State for War; it answers to the SEcretary of State for India and it is part of the Indian Government. I think if we went to Kew we would not find official documents using the term in the archives. Cheers Buckshot06(talk)06:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
I have placed the quoted text into a {{collapse box}} so that it is hidden from searches as it is copyrighted material, and although useful for our discussion it is probably too much copyrighted text. I think it would be better if it was removed.
See Page 71 of "The British Army in the Far East 1941-45" by Alan Jeffreys and Duncan Anderson for more on the two terms. As I said above, from what I can tell the difference is that one term is an organisational one, while the other is a geographic one. Ie a commander of a command has a staff (at a general headquarters GHQ), but his command will consist of several parts that can be viewed in different ways, operational and administrative, and that operations cover all operational units and a geographical area. I think that this page (88) in Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and The Lessons of War in the 20th Century edited by Hew Strachan) is worth a read as it talks about operational units being transferred from India Command to South East Asia Command and I think that this quote makes the difference between GHQ and India Command it clear "Officers who had combat experience against the Japanese were interviewed, and their and their reports were passed on to GHQ for dissemination... Officers and men were also sent to lecture throughout India Command on their experiences." -- PBS (talk) 10:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Among the contemporary (not 50 years later) sources which show the period usage was General Headquarters, India is the 1946 New Year Honours and one or two others after the Second World War.
A good example from the records at Kew is "General Headquarters India: operational instructions and standing orders" Reference: WO 203/4755.
Strachan is writing 50 years after the events in a time when the British Army had no more connection with India. The separate military establishment responsible to the Secretary of State for India had disappeared. What he refers to as "India Command" (which is correct in as much as there was a command responsible for the Indian area) was actually the entire Indian Army or Army in India. Buckshot06(talk)08:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
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