After World War II
From 1945 to 1947 Rees commanded the Indian 4th Infantry Division and from August to September 1947, he commanded the neutral Punjab Boundary Force tasked to maintain law and order in the Punjab which was to be divided during the transfer of power to India and Pakistan. The force was too small to control such a large area, particularly since the police forces either disintegrated or became polarised. Despite the Boundary Force's best efforts full-scale riots and massacres took place. The scrupulous neutrality shown by Rees's force brought serious criticism from the politicians of both sides and it was disbanded in early September 1947, two weeks after independence. Rees has also been criticised for refusing to heed the advice of "Military Advisors" and "Alternate Military Advisors" from the Indian and Pakistani sides on the grounds that they were junior to him.
Promoted to the permanent rank of major-general in 1947, Rees took the job as head of the Military Committee of the Indian Emergency Cabinet until he retired from the army in 1948.
He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Monmouthshire on 15 January 1955.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Wynford Rees
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“The alcoholic trance is not just a haze, as though the eyes were also unshaven. It is not a mere buzzing in the ears, a dizziness or disturbance of balance. One arrives in the garden again, at nursery time, when the gentle animals are fed and in all the world there are only toys.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)
“Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skins and furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)