So, I recently inherited a knife that has "from the Irvin Cartledge expedition into the northwest frontier of India" inscribed on the scabbard. The design matches the region it claims to be from. But I want to know more about this expedition if possible. My vague guess is that it was a military or exploratory expedition into modern day Pakistan during British 'rule'. I have yet to find any references to this particular expedition however, and even different spelling variations of 'Irvin Cartledge" have brought up no result. If you know about these expeditions, or can point me in a possible direction, I would greatly appreciate it.
Although the Internet in general seems to be striking out on this one, I do have a few suggestions:
Investigate your grandfather's service history. Do you know which unit he served under? If you have the name of the regiment, you can probably find which areas the unit was deployed in. You mentioned in another post that your Grandfather was stationed in Karachi at some point.
Looking at your other post, I can say safely that the sheath is probably no older than the early 20th century.
Based on the lack of internet hits, I would say that the "Irvin Cartledge expedition" might have another name, or that Mr. Cartledge might not be as prominent in the regimental histories as he might have hoped!
Does anyone know of a British archive of activities in the region from the 1800s to WWII?