ANDREW WHITEHEAD
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Partition Voices:
Frank Leeson

Partition Voices: Frank Leeson
​


Frank Leeson giving a first-hand account of the invasion of Kashmir in October 1947 by Frontier tribesmen from Pakistan and of the evacuation of those trapped at St Joseph's Catholic mission hospital at Baramulla in Kashmir. He was taking to Andrew Whitehead at his home near Worthing in Sussex on 20th June 2001.

Frank Leeson, born in 1926, enlisted in the British army in about 1944 and for the next three years or so served as a khassadar in the tribal agency of South Waziristan in the North West Frontier Province (which became part of Pakistan at independence in August 1947). He had a first-hand vantage point on the movement of armed tribesmen as they headed towards Kashmir. He also accompanied the Pakistan army when they evacuated those trapped at St Joseph's Catholic mission hospital in Baramulla in early November 1947. He wrote about his time on the Frontier in his book Frontier Legion: with the Khassadars of North Waziristan, published in 2003.

He was also a photographer and he allowed me to use the photograph below in my book A Mission in Kashmir - it was taken at Rawalpindi on 13th November 1947, and shows Orakzai tribesmen on their way to join the lashkar fighting in Kashmir. Others of his photos can be seen here.


Picture
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  • Home
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  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
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        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
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      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
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      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
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      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
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      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
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      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
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