Page:FM Bailey letters from LA Bethell.pdf/4

Letter 3, 1st January 1930 IMG 0331

Indian army officers returning sick or wounded from the front – and such officers, after being three months sick etc. revert automatically to the India office.

Therefore departments like Staff, Signals, Flying Corps, Munitions, et cetera refuse to take on I.A. officers unless they know they can have them for good. They are not going to waste time training them so long as they may be bagged any time by the India Office or the Foreign Office.

The reason why I think you will find difficulty in getting this certificate from India or Foreign Offices is that the Indian folk are seriously concerned at the growing shortage of experienced officers and are sending back to the East any and every officer they can possibly manage


 * Sorry old bird
 * Yours aye
 * Leonard, Bethell

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Letter 3, 1st January 1930

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New Clan Dorking New Year’s Day

My dear Bailey

So many thanks from us both for your card at Xmas. The best of good wishes to you for the New Year: and may Nepal turn out to be all that you may hope of it.

I looked carefully through the New Year lists this morning but could find no trace of you. I know you care little for these things: but your friends do, on your behalf. Dawkes, however, appeared: and by his time in Kathmandu, new status has developed “according to plan” one will expect greater things for you than the courteous nod that he got when he laid it down.

I still have hopes that you will let me, some

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day, do that biography of the time we had together and the events adjoining: but I agree it would be rummie(?) now. You would, in any case, have a full draft copy of it to blue pencil before I sent it up to G.W.B. (Blackwood). But all that time is full of the