Punjabi soldiers in the Second World War

Overview

Men connected with Punjab served in different roles during the Second World War. The National Army Museum describes Force K6, which included men from Punjab in transport units at Dunkirk in 1940. Its account is one example of a wider wartime history; the evidence below also considers logistics and letters home.[3]

Transport work

Ghee Bowman’s study of Force K6 places transport labour within the war in Europe. He traces a preliminary War Office enquiry on 31 August 1939 for trained pack mules without personnel. When the force landed at Marseilles on 26 December, his reconstruction records 1,723 men and around 2,000 mules; its companies were then assigned to different commands and locations. They carried engineering stores and ammunition, including work away from roads or when thawing conditions made them muddy. Their organisation combined drivers and mules with support skills: cooks, blacksmiths and other personnel helped the companies operate as self-contained units. Bowman draws on training material and identified operational diaries. He connects much of the force with Punjab, while cautioning against assigning the men a wider national identification unsupported by his archive and interviews.[1]

His related book, The Indian Contingent, appeared in 2020.[6]

Photographs and letters in Britain

A University of Exeter digitisation account describes a Derbyshire family collection connected with four Royal Indian Army Service Corps men billeted with Herbert Foster. His daughter Betty Cresswell showed Ghee Bowman photographs, letters, press cuttings and objects, which the university team helped digitise. The collection records particular encounters and later correspondence; it is not a complete account of every member of Force K6. The items themselves were not examined for this entry.[4]

A 2023 conference programme also prints Bowman’s summary of his research on the unit’s service in France and Britain. It offers a short, accessible account alongside the longer dissertation, though a conference abstract is not a substitute for the operational records on which that research drew.[5]

Household worries

Gajendra Singh examines connections between overseas service and Punjab: family correspondence. A February 1944 letter addressed from the Middle East to Sialkot expressed anxiety about dependants after news of suffering in Bengal. The writer wanted the war to end and criticised army life. His fears reveal what he communicated, rather than independently proving starvation in Punjab. His wish to leave military life placed concern for dependants beside frustration with the army’s rules and obligations.[2]

Seeking leave

A havildar wrote from Egypt to his father in Punjab in August 1942. Singh reads its claims of house collapse and a father’s injury within a strategy for obtaining leave, and follows the reuse of similar explanations. The reported emergencies are not verified family events. Preserved through military censorship summaries, the correspondence shows how requests to return home were framed for an institution controlling soldiers’ absence and movement.[2]