PARTITION - additional recordings / Andrew Whitehead / ___________________________________I CD-12 Francis Leo ('Frank') Leeson interviewed at his home in Worthing by Andrew Whitehead, 20th June 2001 bom 1926; enlisted in the army cl944; nuclear bombs dropped while at sea heading east, and ship was diverted to Bombay; served as a khassadar in the NWFP tribal agency of South Waziristan, C1944-47; later travelled across south Asia on behalf of National Geographic; joined the British Army; afterwards worked in insurance. Wrote a typescript account of his time in South Waziristan, 'Frontier Legion' - which includes a more complete account of his mission to evacuate the Baramulla convent than is contained here. Has extensive diaries, photographs, scrap books, and other records. Tr 1 Aged 74. 'We were intercepting Mahsouds who were comign down thro N Waziristan with the intention of sacking and pillaging in the plains generally. But quite a no of those Mahsouds were intending to go on to Kashmir. This was early October [47]' 'They felt there was a cause I'm sure, but loot etc was also v much to the front of their minds. We actually had a camp outside the walls of the post I was in at the time and there they were impounded, all these Mahsouds - I've actually got a picture of that - but it was general talk. We were more obsessed at the time with getting the Hindu and Gurkha troops out of N Waz'n into India....' PHOTO OF AFRIDIS GOING TO K [and see more towards end] 'That was much later on, that was about the 17th November... they were carrying on pouring into K for weeks after the initial invasion, and of course they were not only going in up the M'bad road, but also directly across into the Poonch area'. [Mahsouds and Afridis] 'were typical tribesmen in these baggy trousers and shirts hanging outside with waistcoats, v roughly tied turbans or pugris as we called them, and their weapons were mainly the standard type of army rifle of that period, the ?Lee Enfield or imitations of them ...' HOW MUCH OFFICIAL SUPPORT FOR TRIBAL INVASION 'We cdn't really see anythng from W'stan. It was until we started our journey home at the end of Oct and we were in a scout convoy passing thro Nowshera that we encountered hugh crowds of people waiting for a tribal convoy which was expected, carring tribesmen into K. And as we had the crescent and stars on the sides of our trucks, scout trucks, they obv thought that we were something to do with this, and they were throwing flowers at us as we passed thro Nowshera. When we got to Rawalpindi then of course we realied what 1