With the threat of the First World War England created an army reserve which was to be responsible for defending the coast. Edward Fitzgerald Charlesworth (Great Britain, 1894-1979) joined up as a volunteer and was assigned to the 4th Queens battalion. This unit performed so well in training that they were dispatched to India during the war. There they were to replace the regular troops who were being returned to fight on the front in Europe. Charlesworth was stationed in the northwestern province of Kashmir.

From his embarkation at Southhampton until his discharge he recorded his experiences in photographs. He documented the life of British soldiers, the indigenous population and the Indian landscape. Like his comrades, Charlesworth was itching to take part in the war in Europe. Yet his time in India was not entirely without action, as his photographs reveal. The 4th Queens was deployed during the Mohmand blockade in November, 1917, and, not long before the battalion returned to England, in the Third Afghan War in 1919, including the rebellion in Peshawar. Charlesworth recorded both events in almost photojournalistic reportages.

After his return to England Edward Fitzgerald Charlesworth's photographs ended up in a drawer. It was only after his death that they were taken out again by his widow, who wanted to chose the pictures to her grandson, photojournalist Peter Charlesworth. He immediately recognized their historic value and made his grandfather's photo report available for the public in THE ROAD TO KASHMIR (1914-1919). Although the collection bears witness to the eye of a natural talent, Edward Fitzgerald Charlesworth never saw photography as anything other than a hobby.