THE INDIAN CONTINGENT

THE INDIAN CONTINGENT GHEE BOWMAN

Ghee Bowman brings to light an omitted chapter of the historic Battle of Dunkirk: the crucial role played by Indian soldiers in the evacuation of the Allies from a precarious battlefield. On 28 May 1940, Major Akbar Khan marched at the head of 299 soldiers along a beach in northern France. They were the only Indians in the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk. With Stuka sirens wailing, shells falling in the water and Tommies lining up to be evacuated, these soldiers of the British Indian Army, carrying their disabled imam, found their way to the East Mole and embarked for England in the dead of night. On reaching Dover, they borrowed brass trays and started playing Punjabi folk music, upon which even ‘many British spectators joined in the dance’. The Indian Contingent, through rigorous research and engrossing narration, traces the journey that had brought these men to Europe, led them to captivity under the Germans. A truly engaging storyteller, Ghee Bowman reveals in full, for the first time, the astonishing story of the Indian Contingent, from their arrival in France on 26 December 1939 to their return to an India on the verge of partition.

GHEE BOWMAN

Ghee Bowman was born in England in 1961. After careers in the theatre, education and the voluntary sector, he returned to university in 2014. He is married with two daughters, and lives in Exeter. The Indian Contingent is his first book. Ghee is a storyteller, Quaker and a leader in the Woodcraft Folk, a voluntary youth movement for children and young people.