Second Mohmand Campaign

Date	1935
Location	Peshawar border of the North West Frontier
Result	Jirga and peace

Belligerents

Mohmands

British Army

The Second Mohmand Campaign of 1935 was a British military campaign against the Mohmand tribes in the Northwest Frontier area of British India, now Pakistan. Tanks were used, the first operational use of tanks in India. The First Mohmand Campaign in 1897–98 followed earlier military expeditions in 1851–1852, 1854, 1864, 1879, 1880. After the First Mohmand Campaign, there was an expedition in 1908 and another in 1933, taking about a month in August.

In 1935 the Mohmands, influenced by the Haji of Turangzai and his three sons the Badshah Guls, were marauding in the plains. At the end of July about 2000 tribesmen were disrupting working parties repairing the Mohinand-Gandab Road.

The Government decided to send a sizeable punitive force against them, called the Mohmand Force or Mohforce. The force, mobilised by 17 August, included the Nowshera and Peshawar Brigades of the Indian Army, a section of the Royal Tank Corps, the 18th King Edward's Own Cavalry, and the 22nd Derajat Mountain Battery (Frontier Force), with air support from the Indian Wing commanded by Basil Embry. The commanders of the Peshawar and Nowshera Brigades, Claude Auchinleck and Harold Alexander, both rose to high rank in World War II. Auchinleck, the senior Brigadier, commanded Mohforce; as the Peshawar District G.O.C. General Muspratt was on leave in Britain.

Mohforce left near the end of summer, with two tanks in front of the leading troops which could be used to outflank tribesman who pinned down the infantry. The tanks were Vickers Mark IIB, with a single Vickers machine gun. They did not have their radios, which had been withdrawn for their annual overhaul, so one tank had to act as a “runner” between the tanks and the infantry. The Mohmands, having no word for tanks, called them “the snakes that spit”.

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