A GREAT ARMY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 20, 20 December 1932, Page 2

A GREAT ARMY

END OF THE PIONEER CORPS. A CHAPTER OF INDIAN HISTORY. The decision that has led to the abolition of the Pioneer Corps of the Indian Army is no doubt based on modern experience and modern requirements, but their ending involves the disappearance of the last two infantry battalions of the fqmous old Coast Army of the Carnatic (says a correspondent of the London Times). The Ist and 2nd Battalions of King George’s Own Pioneers were, till the World War, the 61st and 64th Pioneers, or the old Ist and 4th Madras Native Infantry. Gradually this old army, which has borne perhaps the largest share of all in the rebuilding of India, has faded away, till, after the War, thess two battalions were the only survivors of the old Line. The Coast Army, as it was affection-

ately called, had taken part in all the campaigns which saved Southern India from the French, had crossed bayonets with Sergeant Bernadotte, late King of Sweden, and formed the bulk of

the native troops in the four Mysore Wars (1746-99). Specially had its corps distinguished themselves in the last and final storming of Seringapatam, in which the Afghan usurpation of tire Carnatic came to an end and the old Hindu kingdom of Mysore was restored. It was the Madras sepoys who alongside the Royal troops had dominated in the Mahratta Wars.

It was with them and his 33rd Foot that Arthur Wellesley won Assaye and Argaum, stormed Ghnwilgarli, and smashed the forces of Sindia and the Bonsla. THE MUTINY. When the terrible days of the Mutiny of the Bengal Army fell on India the 52 regiments of the Madras Line stood firm. Of the eight cavalry corps, one, to the delight of the Bengali officers, did refuse to march to the Ganges, but that was all. At

Hyderabad the Native Troop of Madras Horse Artillery actually quelled an outbreak. In those days tlie Madras Army., isolated from Bengal by masses of jungle and many Native

States, was a magnificently organised force, with a prestige enhanced by its faithfulness. But times were changing. The march of the Pax Britannica was undermining the martial qualities of the races of the Deccan and Carnatic now so long at peace. Nor were the frontier climate and frontier ways very acceptable to the Madras sepoy. Thus for reasons no doubt inex&rable the Army of the Carnatic slowly dwindled till in 1914 it stood at the three Pioneer battalions and six of the ordinary infantry. The rest of the Line had been reconstituted with northern races. The reductions after the World War saw these six go and only the Pioneers left. These latter corps were largely drawn from the “depressed classes,” or from the Indian Christians. For centuries these, with rum and beef in their bellies and Brown Bess on their shoulders, had carried the Union Jack from the Gi'eat Wall of China to Africa and the French Islands. Now even they are gone. With the Ist Pioneers goes the oldest corps in India. From the inde-

pendent sepoy companies that Clive took to Bengal from Madras after the Black Hole of Calcutta was formed the Ist Madras Nntive Infantry. Now only in the Queen’s Own Sappers and Miners, out of the whole of the Indian Army, is the sepoy of the Carnatic represented, and then only by the Pariah and native Christian classes. To those set on old glories and old traditions and all for which the British officer and his sepoy have stood, the reflection is a sad one.