Roberts is writing about the Indian Mutiny [as it was called when I was at school] and his role in it. He mentions that as a junior officer in the Quartermaster's department he was in Umballa in the early days of the uprising. He recounts a meeting that was summoned by the Commander in Chief of the British army in India - General George Anson. Present were the top five military officers in the Punjab plus their aides. Secrecy was vital so nobody else was allowed in and guards were posted outside. Roberts himself was hanging about nearby awaiting what decision would be made so that he could start his task of allocating supplies to different units. In due course the meeting ended with a decision to form a mobile column of reliable troops that would march through the Punjab to rescue isolated outposts.
Roberts then makes a remark that I found to be quite astonishing. It is a noteworthy fact, he says, that every man who was in that room would be dead within seven weeks.
We are accustomed to senior military officers spending their time far behind the lines, safe and secure. Casualties among generals are, today, rare to the point of being unthinkable. And yet here are the top five military commanders of the British army in northern India all killed within a few weeks.
Now to be fair, Anson himself succumbed to cholera rather than enemy bullets. But even so that is quite astonishing. Almost as astonishing is the fact that Roberts did not find this fact to be as remarkable as I do. It was worth commenting on, but only as a throwaway line. Casualties among generals and brigadiers was obviously only to be expected.
Clearly being a senior military commander in the 1850s was a dangerous job.
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