Page 22 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

large reward for information, but it was a long time before anything came they never became acclimatized to Bahrain and, from no fault of theirs,
to light. The police worked away at the case and in 1930, after prolonged
investigation, three of the men were arrested. The fourth man was in
Muscat. They had left Bahrain immediately after the attempt and then,
thinking that the coast was clear, they returned. They were a gang of
professional gunmen who would do any job for payment. Though they
never divulged for whom they were working we knew who had em­
ployed them, but we had no proof. Two of the men were implicated in
attacks on villages in the previous year. One of the three was shot while
trying to escape from jail. The other two were tried, sentenced to life
imprisonment and sent to the Andaman islands, as in those days long-term
prisoners from Bahrain were accommodated in jails in Lidia or elsewhere.
In November, soon after we had moved into the new house, in which
we lived for the next thirty years, we went to India where, with the help
of the Indian Army authorities, I recruited a body of ex-Indian-Army
Punjabis for service in Bahrain. But on the day on which we left there
was yet another incident. I was awakened before dawn by a crowd of
villagers, to be told that a village close to the town, on the coast, had been
attacked. Without breakfast, which later I much regretted, I went to the
village. It was an unpleasant affair, there were three badly wounded vil­
lagers and the body of another outside his house. One of the robbers lay
dead at the entrance to the village, still clasping a handful of gold orna­ with the development of the oil industry and the increase in the number
ments which he had stolen. There were signs that several more of the
raiders had been wounded. I sent out patrols and search-parties, but it
seemed that the men had come by sea and they escaped again by boat. I
hurried home, finished my packing, and after reporting to the Shaikh we
rushed to the pier in time to catch the mail boat which was to take us to
Karachi.
After the excitements of Bahrain it was pleasant to have a few restful
days on the ship. But I was annoyed on arriving in Karachi •when the first
man I met, the Military Transport Officer, who turned out to be someone
I had known in England, said eagerly, ‘Now what is the true story about
the shooting of the Political Agent, and the Lady in the Bath?’ I intro­
duced him to Marjorie and said, with some hauteur, ‘As this is the lady
in question she can tell you what happened.* He was suitably abashed and
invited us to dinner.
Soon after we returned to Bahrain the first parties of Punjabis arrived
and at the same time I engaged a British officer, Captain L. S. Parke, to
serve as a police officer. He held the post until the Punjabis returned to
India. They were a fine body of men and they gave valuable service, but
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they were unpopular among the Arabs, who regarded them as expensive
foreign mercenaries. One day I suggested to the Shaikh that it would be
better to have a police force of local men. He agreed, but he doubted if
we would get men to join. I put up a notice calling for recruits, offering
pay of about £2 a month and rations and uniform. Today the police are
paid over £15 a month. There was no lack of recruits. So many applied
to join that I was able to choose men of fine physique and a certain
amount of intelligence; many of them were negroes, descendants of
African slaves. The Shaikh encouraged recruiting by telling his retainers
to send their sons and young brothers to the fort as recruits.
They were the same type of men as those who were with me in the
Camel Corps on the Western Desert. They were keen to learn, they took
pride in their appearance and they were always cheerful. I enjoyed
watching section after section of raw recruits developing from sloppy
young Arabs into smart, trained men. They showed an aptitude for drill
and after some time I was able to find suitable men to promote as N.C.O.s.
By 1932, when the last of the Punjabis had completed their service, the
new police were ready to take over. A few of the Punjabi N.C.O.s
remained as instructors.
For many years service in the Police was a popular profession, but
of so-called educated young men it became difficult to obtain recruits.
The Bahrainis now prefer to work for the oil company and nobody who
has been to school wants to be a policeman. Today the cycle has com­
pleted its turn and more than three-quarters of the Bahrain police are
foreigners from other Arab states.
As the years passed I introduced various developments in the police
force. I started a camel section which was made up entirely of negroes,
many of them manumitted slaves. They did useful work patrolling the
coast before Jeeps and Land Rovers made their appearance in Bahrain.
Later they provided hundreds of Europeans with subjects for photo­
graphy. A very black policeman, with a scarlet turban, on a white camel,
against a background of palm trees, made a wonderful coloured photo­
graph. I also started a cavalry section, mounted on Arab ponies provided
by the Shaikh. They are now rarely seen except on state occasions, when
they provide mounted escorts, greys in front of the V.I.P.’s car and bays
behind it, the scarlet turbans and the red-and-white pennants—red and
white being the Bahrain colours—providing a splash of colour in official
processions.
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