The Indian Army

6 December marks 80 years since Ruperra Castle was gutted by fire during the second world war. To commemorate the event we are telling stories from our book, Ruperra Castle War and Flames 1939-46.

The British Indian Army, officially renamed the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj before independence in 1974. 

Arrival of the Indian Army soldiers caused a great sensation in the area, Tom Grocutt, then aged four, remembered seeing them arrive at Machen station. “There’s a troop train in the station!” I followed my elder sister down Station Hill. I found myself a little space among a crowd of children and adults along the picket fence, to look through the slats. We saw horses slipping and sliding down the ramps from the trucks into the yard. Among the busy scene we saw lots of khaki turbans and a big bearded man on a horse who rode past very near to me. The hooves of the horses seemed to be making great thuds as they went down the slope towards the main road. 

Tom Grocutt

“The excitement was over in about half an hour and not knowing anything about the war, we later learned that that it was just after Dunkirk and soldiers were being sent to Ruperra from all over the place to recover and reform their units.”
 
John Rowlands, then a schoolboy, remembered the Indian soldiers bringing three or four strings of horses through Machen, up the Dranllwyn and over the mountain for training. “One afternoon as I arrived back for afternoon school, a mule came galloping down the Dranllwyn. He’d broken loose and everybody was running out of his way. I got hold of the rope that was loose but he took me down to Ted Harris’s shop before I could stop him! Then I handed him over to the soldier that had come back with a horse to look for him.
 
"When I got back down to school I was a quarter of an hour late and I had the cane for it. That’s how I remember it so well. They half believed me, but not entirely, and although someone said they’d heard that I’d stopped the runaway horse, I never had an apology and I had a good two across the hands for it."
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Doris Oram

​Doris Oram living in No 3 The Row in Draethen would see,
​“A whole troop of Indian soldiers riding down the road exercising their lovely black horses. The road would be full of them.”

​Winifred Knibbs, who lived along the Ruperra Drive in Park Wall Cottage, said “All of us neighbours used to visit each other and do the rounds. As children we used to go down to Mrs Blackburn’s in the Preserve. The Indian soldiers would be cooking out in the open air. 

​"Some nights, when we were walking home from school across the park, they would come galloping along the path like nothing I’d ever seen before, stampeding along one behind the other. I think this was the exercise route for the horses - right across the track and then down the avenue of oaks and then back to where they camped."

Park Wall Cottage

John Hicks from Machen remembered the Indian soldiers wearing tight boots and jodhpurs, with a dark top coat. “We used to watch the Indian soldiers making chapatis. There was enough room for three people to stand around what seemed like a big bake stone resting on four steel rods, with coal glowing underneath. When they put the mixture on it was like oatmeal and they’d spread it with their fingers and turn the chapatis by throwing them up in the air. Then, when each one was cooked, they’d stack them up on a big steel plate and take them to a big marquee where all their tables and benches were laid out.
 
“Their sleeping quarters were in the same sort of tent but with divisions and camp beds in there. The horses were under canvas further up the track, but they used to tire them out in the day and I think they had a feeding tent for them there as well.”

Herbie Spring

Herbie Spring used always to come home to the Draethen “with a handkerchief full of chapatis and sugar. It was easy for us to walk up past the Hollybush pub, over the top and down past the Castle straight into the woods where the Indian soldiers were camped.”

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​Bernard Spooner said, “The Indian soldiers at the Castle used to make us children very welcome. The first chapati I ever tasted was down there! We loved the tea they made in brilliantly clean stainless steel buckets using condensed milk because of course for us, sugar was rationed.”

​Dennis Gooding from the Waterloo, remembers, as a fourteen year old boy, that “The Indian soldiers were good to us boys. A lot of them spoke English and so they could converse with us. They rode the horses and used the mules to carry their packs.” 

Dennis Gooding

Albert (Ally) Griffiths

Another local boy, Albert (Ally) Griffiths, remembered an Indian soldier coming to his house in Waterloo. “My father was able to speak some Indian languages after his time in the 1914-18 War so, when the Indian soldiers came to the Castle and went to the Greenmeadow Pub on their horses for a drink, he got friendly with one of the sergeants.

​One Saturday night, when my mother answered a knock at the door, there was the Indian sergeant stood there with his turban on and a big black beard! She couldn’t see my father because he was hiding round the side. He had invited him home for supper!” 

​Eric Coleman, as a Machen boy, remembered getting friendly with some of the Indian soldiers. “They were very nice people and I was invited to a meal with them. I found that they were not used to being treated as equals. They had obviously been brought up as subservient people and as such they clicked their heels and put their hands together and bowed when they spoke to you. We used to say ‘you don’t have to do that to us, you know, we’re all in it together.’ But of course it was the tail end of the Raj.” 

Eric Coleman

After Ruperra...

None of the Indian Army soldiers remained in the Caerphilly area after the war and nobody seems to have kept in touch with them for any length of time. There are just one or two photographs. A later report told of the Unit with their mules being used to carry the materials up the cliff to build the isolation hospital on Flatholm Island in the Bristol Channel where many of them died of the diseases they caught from sailors isolated from incoming ships. 

Two Indian soldiers holding a horse for a British officer

80 years on and Ruperra Castle is still a ruin at risk of collapse - help Ruperra Castle Preservation Trust save the Castle and surrounding buildings and gardens by campaigning to secure them to use for community benefit, and to ensure a better future for our precious local heritage. Help us secure a future for this important monument - become a member before the end of 2021 and we will send you a free copy of our book – Ruperra Castle War and Flames 1939-46. You can also buy the book separately for £6.