Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

I've been looking through a copy of Loyalty and Honour, Part II Brigades. A little knowledge, so they say, is a dangerous thing. And I now have a little knowledge on the Jammu and Kashmir ISF. So here we go with the (hopefully not too stupid) questions:

Niehorster indicates that, as of 1939, the Jammu and Kashmir State Forces contained 7 Infantry battalions, a Cavalry battalion, a training battalion, 2 Mountain Artillery Companies, and some supporting units, organized into two Brigades. These were the Jammu Brigade and the Kashmir Brigade. Neither of these forces are the standard AE OOB. Loyalty and Honour does not mention either of these Brigades but does have some of the Jammu and Kashmir Infantry Battalions assigned to other Brigades. 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th and 9th are so listed. Only 7 were listed in 1939, but the 8th might be the training brigade. The 9th was probably raised during the war??

It would appear at first assumption that 3 Infantry (3rd, 5th, 6th) battalions, a training battalion and a cavalry battalion remained in Jammu/Kashmir. Since the Kashmir Brigade was located at Srinagar in 1939, I am tempted to place a reinforced Brigade there in AE. Named the Kashmir Brigade, with 3 Infantry and 1 Cavalry battalions.

Also, Loyalty and Honour lists another Brigade in Waziristan. This is the Wana Brigade, which was probably/possibly used as a training brigade. Lots of battalions moving in and out for the entire war. Probably should be excluded but the OOB fanatic in me keeps wanting to put it in somehow.

Anyone have any information or thoughts on all of this.

quote:

ORIGINAL: inqistor

Does not seem to be brigades (in combat sense) to me. Sending separate battalions to front lines? No way in Commonwealth army.

It looks like Depot Brigades (this was abandoned before WWI, but who knows system used in India, how was it made with Ghurkas?). Andy mentions Regiments, and Regiment in UK nomenclature is administrative unit, which takes care of training reserves from territory (and sending whole locally trained Brigades for Divisions).

But in case of invasion, it would probably muster its training men, and despite names of battalions, I would guess they had much more men, than standard combat battalion (12SS had at Arnhem training battalion of more, than 2200 men)

quote:

ORIGINAL: inqistor

Does not seem to be brigades (in combat sense) to me. Sending separate battalions to front lines? No way in Commonwealth army.

It looks like Depot Brigades (this was abandoned before WWI, but who knows system used in India, how was it made with Ghurkas?). Andy mentions Regiments, and Regiment in UK nomenclature is administrative unit, which takes care of training reserves from territory (and sending whole locally trained Brigades for Divisions).

But in case of invasion, it would probably muster its training men, and despite names of battalions, I would guess they had much more men, than standard combat battalion (12SS had at Arnhem training battalion of more, than 2200 men)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
Jammu and Kashmir Brigades are not in the British or British Indian Army

quote:

ORIGINAL: dwg

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
Jammu and Kashmir Brigades are not in the British or British Indian Army

As Andy points out, Indian States Forces troops aren't in any way standard British or Indian units, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Service_Troops . The Princely States were sovereign nations which had ceded some control to the Raj, and which retained limited forces organised on, roughly, the Indian Army model. These forces varied from token bodyguard units all the way up to brigade and, in the case of Hyderabad, near divisional scale forces, but they weren't really capable of being used as deployed units at brigade or higher level. Think of them as local garrison forces, with a strictly limited capability to deploy out of area. Operation Polo, the Indian-Hyderabadi war of 1948, shows how the ISF units might have coped in high-tempo combat - India defeated the forces of the largest Princely State in 5 days (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Polo ).

Even without looking at the ISF units, there are a significant amount of essentially Lines of Communications/garrison brigades in India, frequent inter-communal violence meant the population was just too restive to leave the country without local garrisons - which remains substantially true today, this wasn't simply some effect of the Raj. If you want to reflect them, and the repeated shifts in organisation will make that difficult, then they really need to be modeled as static units, or played in a similar fashion.

The other component that would become significant in the event of a Japanese penetration into India are the home-defence forces: the Auxiliary Force (India) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_Force_(India) and the Indian Territorial Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Territorial_Force http://www.ordersofbattle.com/Forces/ForceUnits?ForX=84 The Auxiliary Force (India) wasn't called to active duty on a unit basis, but it appears much, if not all, of the ITF may have been (relevant newspaper article here http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/singfreepressb19400812.2.71.aspx )

quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

Didn't the Jammu Forces do rather well against Pakistan in 1947?