Talk:Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Nature of Troops

Is it known what the make-up of the troops was? Was there any white British person there, apart from Dyer himself? Esedowns (talk) 21:22, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

The article says there were 25 men of the 1/9 Gurkhas and apparently 25 of the 59th Sindh Rifles. Each of these contingents was slightly below platoon strength and might or might not have had a lieutenant in command, depending on the exact circumstances in which Dyer rounded them up. The officers would probably be British, but, since the 1917 reforms, they could have been Indian. Either way they would have had no say in the events because Dyer was giving the orders at the scene. I don't know if the Hunter report mentions them.

There's a problem with the article in that the lead para claims the troops kept firing until they exhausted their ammunition (as Churchill claimed in the House, probably mistakenly), while the relevant paragraph lower down notes that they were ordered to cease fire after using one-third of their ammunition, which is more likely. Had the troops run out of ammunition, there remained a large number of protestors who could have torn them to pieces at will, as mobs did to about two and a half million people at the time of Partition.

With 1908 Pattern webbing, if this had reached the Indian Army and if it was fully loaded, the troops would have been carrying 150 rounds each, meaning the contingent present could have fired 7,500 rounds, which would obviously have resulted in a far higher death toll. As far as we know there were about 400 dead, many as a result of panic and trampling rather than gunfire -- supposedly 120 bodies were recovered from that dreadful well that people tried to hide in. Dyer claimed that the troops fired about 1,650 rounds. One-third of a full 1908 webbing load for 50 riflemen would have been 2,500 rounds, but we don't know how much the troops were carrying. And they may have deliberately wasted quite a few of their shots by firing high or wide, because you would, wouldn't you? But it's unlikely that the troops were allowed to run themselves out of ammunition. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:54, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Demands for an apology-note at the end of the second paragraph -currently note 99

Wikiuser Lumet has raised a question which I think needs to be discussed. But he has done it by way of amending the article, which of course is visible to the non editing public. That I think is the wrong way to do it. I am therefore reversing his amendment and putting his question here . If anybody can answer the question and has a source I think the answer needs to be put in the article. I don't know who the author of this section is. Spinney Hill (talk) 15:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC) The question is : Is this referring to the 1923 version of "Duties in aid of the civil power", issued by the War Office?Spinney Hill (talk) 15:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Spinney Hill (talk) 09:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

If it helps anyone looking into this matter, the second paragraph in that section (about Sir William Vincent) appears to have been added entirely by one redlink user, Jad1968nz, in a series of edits on 2 April 2019, including the footnote.

Except for some minor copy-editing, the paragraph hasn't been modified since that time. It's unclear to me how much of the information in the paragraph actually comes from the referenced source.

If anyone has ready access to the documents in question, the paragraph could use a good going-over to address Lumet's question and verify general accuracy. 2600:100A:B1C3:82F3:0:1C:75E4:9301 (talk) 22:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)