Syed Shahid Hamid - Military Career

Military Career

During the Second World War, he saw extensive service on the Burma front where his eyes were badly injured, He was in the retreat from Rangoon and finally was evacuated from Shewbo to Calcutta. On being declared fit for duty he was posted to Staff College, Quetta in 1943 and was a Senior Instructor at the Command and Staff College, Quetta. Auchinleck made him his private Military Secretary and had played an influential role in the decision making of Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck during in World War II. Shahid Hamid was an inside player in the crucial months leading up to the Partition. During his time in Delhi, he resided at 12 Willingdon Crescent.

Shahid Hamid was at the centre of the political storm during Partition when Auchinleck attempted to keep the army united and was then forced to divide it between India and Pakistan, while the Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, went ahead and divided the South Asia. A few months ago, after the partition, then-Colonel Shahid Hamid told the local journalist, Ahmed Rashid, that he was finishing a book on the drawing-up of the Radcliffe Award which delineated the border between India and Pakistan. Hamid told Ahmed Rasid that, in his book, he could prove conclusively that Mountbatten fiddled the boundary in Punjab in favour of India.