The Story of CYRIL ASKEW

Cyril joined the 1st King’s Liverpool Regiment in 1935 and was based for six months at the Barracks in Sandy Road, Waterloo, Liverpool for basic training.

"I was 18 years old and had signed up for 7 years. Army training was quite a shock to the system; we were always up at 0500, given tea and a piece of seed cake, then a run along the length of Seaforth Front. They would bang an ink stamp on the back of our hands at the far end to make sure we did the full run. Some of the lads would take turns to stop along the way to press hands together to transfer the ink stamp. We tried all these tricks, but discipline was very tough and we were trained well."

Upon completion of training, Cyril was transferred into the 2nd Regiment in order to go overseas. Posted to the North West Frontier, the troop ship took the battalion out from Liverpool, across the Irish Sea, the Bay of Biscay, East across the full length of the Mediterranean Sea, out through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea & Indian Ocean to Bombay. Finally, the Battalion traveled by rail up to the Afghan border.

"We were delayed as we entered the Mediterranean; this was due to the Spanish Civil War which was raging at the time. Otherwise the voyage was without incident and I don’t remember much about it. Once we arrived into the border area there was lots of ribbing about us new arrivals having "white knees"... plenty of banter but good comradeship, typical Liverpool lads!

It was 1937 by the time I arrived on station. This was still in the days of Empire – the British Raj, and we were a policing force really, keeping order amongst the warring tribes. There were such different religions and cultures with extreme separations of language, religion which strictly governed tribal relationships. This border region was known as the North West Frontier, being a belt of territory between 20 and 200 miles separating Afghanistan and north West India (now Pakistan). It was a tangle of mountainous and thoroughly inhospitable country without communications – hardly any roads to speak of, just tracks which were only passable by camels or mules.

Our presence was all about the demonstration of power; to show India that British Forces were capable of keeping order amongst the constantly warring tribes. The local tribesmen were Pathans, a Muslim people speaking Pushtu...