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Chapter twenty-nine. Crisis |
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medical assistance to Zemi |
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We could look back now on eighteen months of North Cachar Watch and Ward. This last year had been on the whole a good one. There'd been a bad smallpox outbreak in Khangnam and Peisia, just when those villages were cut off by the Rains; a vaccinator's negligence had contributed. The deathroll had been 20 per cent of the village strength. But what, before, would have been a major tragedy, famine coming straight on top of disease, had been mitigated by " V " Force relief. Rice, salt, medical help - we had had all these, Perry and I disbursing them at discretion. |
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Never before had the Barail known such assistance. There was a full-time medical officer and all the drugs we wanted, all the quinine, all the mepacrine - guns, red blankets, powder and shot, everything we had promised and much more. We had had experience, too, in handling guerillas. I think it was Dundee who said that no one could lead a Highland Army who had not shaken every man in it by the hand, and much the same is true of the Assam hillman, to whom any leader is first among equals and nothing more. His attachment is not to the unit, but is entirely personal, (206) and you cannot count on any man unless that attachment exists. |
