At the age of 17, he joined the Canadian Army and was stationed in England, where he had married Doris Wright of West Hartlepool, in 1943.

[4] After the war, Haight went to Afghanistan and worked as a surveyor for the American construction company Morrison–Knudsen, which was engaged in building roads there.

After he criticised the Azad Kashmir commanders there for their "boy scout tactics", the government apparently promoted him to the rank of a "brigadier general".

[7] According to a New York Times report by Robert Trumbull, Haight was able to successfully discharge his command by playing on the vanity of the tribesmen and exploiting their tribal rivalries.

The fighters are said to have attempted to steal Haight's truck and some captured guns, and he ended up killing a couple of them in the ensuing firefight.

[11][d] Haight estimated that there were 15,000 tribal fighters in Kashmir, and a similar number on the move ("coming and going on dispersed along the border").