doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 20 Gauge William Evans - What to do with the stock

An appeal for some help from trw999 or lagopus or anyone who can access British death records. This gun is staying in the family,so I'd like to connect the dots.

I'm still wondering about the boy/man for whom this 20 bore was bought, William Henry Wakefield, born 06January1891 in Kendal, son of Jacob Wakefield and Annie nee Brougham (apparently an American - daughter of the US Consul in Liverpool). I thought if I could get a date and place of death, it would tell me if he were ever in India. But there is nothing on the on-line death records from UK for a person with that name and birth date. I can find no record of marriage or other activities - just birth date, parents, and the information on his father buying him this shotgun + that sketch on the Wakefield genealogy board of a fully grown man.

There is a William Henry Wakefield b. 05 January 1891 (place of birth not mentioned), who died in Northampton in 1971 - married a Northampton woman born about the same time - but I somehow don't think this is the man - the marriage looks very "local.".

I'm wondering if UK national records would have a record of his death if he died say in India? Do you have suggestions on where I might look? There are no records of this name in the Indian family history office records. Many thanks.

(of course it could be he just traded the shotgun in and it was bought by General Palit's father or grandfather in London during their frequent trips there - though with the long pull...why?). (edit: and I may have the answer sitting in that 500 page manual typed manuscript he have us....I'll take a look.)

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and in the interest of history here is a partial quote from one interlocutor upon Gen. Palit's death:

"It was plain bad luck and bad vibes with Churchill that saw General Sir Claude Auchinleck, heading the Middle East Command in the Second World War when the going was tough against Rommel�s Afrika Korps, being shunted off just as the tide of the battle was turning in July 1942 at Alam Haifa. Auchinleck was handed his Field Marshal�s baton and kicked upstairs as Commander-in-Chief, India. Career-wise, it was catastrophic for the �Auk� but a boon for Palit. Few native officers in the British Indian Army were better connected to the C-in-C than �Monty� Palit. His father � Colonel A.N. Palit, an �OBE�, was the Medical Officer attached to the 62nd Punjabis in the 1920s, a battalion of which the then Major Auchinleck was Adjutant. For an Anglophilic army, fealty to the crown mattered. �Monty� Palit got choice postings.

Commissioned into the elite Baloch Regiment in 1939 out of the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, Palit at the time of Partition won a prized billet with the (3/9) Gurkhas � a regiment the British scrupulously avoided posting Indian officers to � and which unit he led in a hard-fought action to capture the crestline above the Haji Pir salient in the Poonch sector in the 1947-48 Kashmir operations. Palit was wounded and won the Vir Chakra. Thereafter, he rose swiftly to command the 7 Infantry Brigade stationed in NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) and only a year or so into his tenure, was rushed into the job of Director, Military Operations, at the Army Headquarters, manifestly the most coveted post in the army for a Brigadier-ranked officer and that too a relatively newly minted one. Fatefully for him, the mountain war with China in 1962 intervened.........."

(edit: Reading Gun. Palit's notes on his family...that's a pretty snarky picture of the man and his family - Indian bureaucracy, as normal, had plenty of snipers....and I played golf once with an Indian 3 star Sikh who commented that with Palit "you see his fight coming from 50 yards away.")

For those curious about the history of guns, here's more about the .20 Williams Evans.

General D.K. Palit published a memoir in 2004 titled "Musings & Memories" (we have the first volume in manuscript form) in two volumes and 650 pages in which he discusses much of his life.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Musings_Memories.html?id=SPLSMXSl8dEC

Some pages were devoted to people he met along the way including me and my wife. Here are excerpts from P. 597:

,,,,,"Christopher, the younger son, then three years old, used to love riding on my pommel as I hit the ball about the 61st Cavalry polo ground; and I soon became his favorite outsider. That's how close we had become to each other. On Sunday's, Patel's day off, Genevi�ve even insisted on serving me at table with a cooked breakfast from her kitchen!

....."And when Gene began to accompany me on duck and partridge shoots at Aurangpur, it put a firm seal on our closeness. (Gene, as one might have expected, possessed a single-barrel "pump gun" - the hallmark of the average American sportsman! - heavy and cumbersome with its 32" barrel. So he began to use my William Evans fully-finished box-lock .20 bore (bequeathed to me by my old friend Reggie Sawhney, when he married his American second wife and migrated to the States). After a three-year stint, when the Williams' were posted back to Washington, I in turn presented the gun to Gene."

Uh. excuse me General....I hit everything with that "cumbersome Remington 870." (Oh the Empire - even its remnants - and its pretentions! ...) And you gave the Williams Evans to Genevi�ve, not me (ok maybe you gave it to me but she claims it, QED).

Oh well. I'll post a bit of information separately about Indian Navy Captain Reggie Sawhney which will take the story back another generation.

As noted in the previous post Major General D.K. �Monty� Palit was given the .20 gauge Williams Evens by Indian Naval Captain Reggie Sawhney, date not mentioned but it had to be after 1975. Sawhney was a big man, big enough to have added an extension to the stock if need be. He is mentioned in a few Indian and British officers� memoirs such that a picture of him can be put together somewhat.

Born Lahore probably a few years earlier than General Palit say 1912 or so? His father was Indian, a Professor (probably at Punjab University in Lahore - founded about 1880 and prestigious); his mother was British.. His brother was Duggie Sawney of the Indian 16th cavalry (and brother-in-law of Indian industrial titan J.R.D. Tata) and he had a sister named Sheila Sawhney (both mentioned in Palit�s book). He was one of a group of students who with Palit traveled to UK on the SS Strathmore in Sept 1936. He was known as a sportsman, natty dresser, a pukka Sahib, something of a dilettante, a person who put play above work, and someone who was not excessively serious about his job even though he rose to the rank of captain and commanded the Indian equivilent of Annapolis.

He was an Indian Naval reserve officer in 1947 when India and Pakistan split apart; he was apparently torn about which way to cast his lot even though he was Hindu because of his ties to Lahore but wound up in the Indian Navy.

�.. British Naval officer Benjamin Samson recounted an incident in 1947 when Sawhney, then a Naval Reserve Lt. Commander, signaled that he was having difficulty making up his mind which side to choose, Pakistan or India, and asked for an extension. The Indian officer Daya Shankar went over to the soon to be Pakistan Naval officer Siddique Choudhury and said �why don�t we come to an agreement, I�ll give you two extra ships and you keep Sawhney.�

�.. Samson went on to note that Sawhney was �a well-known character with a tremendous sense of humour, who whilst very English in many ways, was yet a complete desi-Punjabi and fond of the �good life�! He also did not like to over-stretch himself in any way in so far as work was concerned, which he considered an unnecessary chore; he could never understand why the Navy took their work so seriously � So here he was, liked by most because he was good company and an intelligent person, but not exactly the first person to choose for your team.�
A Few Good Men. Benjamin Abraham Samson 1916-2016.
http://www.basamson100.com/commander-ins-delhi.php

Air Marshal Idris Hasan Latif commented that Capt Reggie Sawhney of the Navy was deputy commandant of the JSW (National Defense Academy). He noted that Sawhney was a charming and friendly person with a wonderful sense of humor and recounted an incident where Sawhney humiliated the chief grounds instructor for being �disguised as a gentleman� (that might have been funny to the class-conscious but Sawhney comes across to us today as a first class pretentious twit).
The Ladder of His Life (Biography of Air Chief Marshal Idris Hasan Latif, PVSM)
https://www.amazon.com/Ladder-His-Life-Biography-Marshal/dp/9381904855

1975 Then US Ambassador to India William B. Saxbe commented on Sawhney who was his regular hunting and fishing companion. Per Saxbe Sawhney's mother was British, his father an Indian professor. He had been a captain in the Indian navy, and he had run the cadet school. He had retired from the navy and was an agent for an American sugar company. Saxbe mentioned that when they went hunting, Reggie would bring a table and tablecloth and the silver service to set it up so their lunch was ready when they came in (picture the servants doing the work).
I have seen the Elephant; an Autobiography. William B. Saxbe, US Ambassador to India 1975.
https://books.google.com/books/about/I_ve_Seen_the_Elephant.html?id=dz53AAAAMAAJ

Palit notes that Sawhney was very different from himself, but he ultimately became the General�s regular week-end shooting companion when both had retired. And here the trail ends. Sawhney died about 2000. His American wife may be alive and might know where and how he got the Williams Evans. He had to have come to the USA on a "Marriage Visa" and as such there will be extensive records at State about him, his family and American wife. That might be a stretch to get and track down. But for now�that�s about as far back as I can take the story. It�s been fun.

Passing out parade dec 1950. Sawhney naval officer on podium behind commander taking the salute. Cadets carrying SMLE Enfield .303's.

I owned Saxbe's Parker trap gun, sold it to a friend who still enjoys it. I have another friend who served in the East in the seventies who may remember something about Saxbe or Sawhney. Guns are a great link. I have a big game gun from my "other friend" which he used when in the East with the government.

Great story eight...And thanks. There are inevitably hangers-on in embassy circles abroad who get to be well-known and it sounds like Sawhney, who worked for an American company, ran with the American community. Perhaps your friend might remember who Sawhney married and when.

Funny, this started off with a stock...and ended with a history investigation, an enjoyable trip for me...thanks.. I guess guns do have souls in a way.

Just to correct one part of this story - Gen Palit shot a Holland & Holland, not a Churchill as I believed:

Some of Saxbe's guns ended up in Sloan's Auction House in Rockville, MD after his death. I bought a couple of guns in that auction, one of them a nice Parker VHE trap gun with 32" ventilated rib barrels and a miserable stock and forearm with a silver nameplate with Saxbe's name engraved. On a visit to Larry Del Grego's shop in Ilion, New York, I saw a finished stock on the bench and asked about it. Lawrence, Larry's son, told me he had made the stock and forearm for a customer who wasn't satisfied with it for some reason. I had the Saxbe gun in the car, and asked Lawrence if that stock and forearm would possibly fit on the gun. Of course, Lawrence said that it would be unlikely there would be an acceptable fit. Larry and I went out for a long lunch and good conversation. When we got back to the shop, the stock and forearm were perfectly fitted to the Saxbe trap gun. There were no gaps between wood and metal anywhere on the gun. I don't know much about Saxbe's other guns, but I'm sure there were a bunch of them.

It's a beauty

You guys....you have a beautiful gun that might have known mine...and you keep the photos to yourself. Oh well...We'd like to see the Parker...but evidently it's in "Purdah?"

Saxbe's Parker lives in Connecticut now.