大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with William McMaster at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 Association, and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Matt Morrow, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I joined up at 18. Apart from 4 months with the American Air Force. 8th Air Force, 303 Bomb Group, that was their full title. They took over our airfield at Molesworth in England. I was only 4 months there when I was posted to the Far East, and I remained there until the war was over. Which was just over 3 years before I was back home again, to Portglenone. I鈥檓 still there yet.

It took us about the best part of 3 months to get to where we were going to. The first landfall we had was Sierra Leone on West Africa. We couldn鈥檛 use the Suez canal, because the Italian Army had part of North Africa so the Suez canal was closed to us. We had to go round the Cape of Good Hope, the long way round. Past Africa. That鈥檚 why it took us so long. We did have a stop at Cape Town, for a short time. And then we boarded a different ship and headed out to Bombay. From there it was all land route.

[most memorable experience]
The journey through India. When we came off the ship in Bombay we boarded the train, a troop train. Wooden carriages and wooden bench seats to sit on. Nowhere to lie down. It took 3 days from Bombay to Trichnapalay. By the time we got there, we had 3 engines on it. They kept adding carriages to it. And an engine at the front, one in the middle and one at the back. Unheard of in this part of the world. They maybe thought, better doing that than taking a few carriages. There鈥檚 some reason for it, anyway. I don鈥檛 know how they synchronised them in those days, because they had no communication system. They鈥檇 have had to synchronise all they engines so they didn鈥檛 have one doing nothing and the other 2 doing all the work. They had to run quite smoothly. But you were able to stand by the window and watch the wildlife. Tigers, lions and elephants and the rest of them.
A big change, every way, to the western life. Most enjoyable, but the hardship was unbelievable too. You know, you didn鈥檛 have anything.

They sent us first of all to the south of India, to a place called Trichnapalay. They were just building the airstrip at that time with tree-trunks, and then they filled in between them with gravel. The gravel was all chopped up with hand-hammers, and put into wicker baskets, and women carried it on their heads, up to where the airstrip was being built. The menfolk spread it in between the tree-trunks. And then they came along with a roller. Man-handled, you might say, only in this case it was women pulling it. Made out of drums, probably filled with stones or whatever they filled it up with. There was about 20 women on it. A long rope, they pulled the roller up.

That was it. Back in those days. What we were trying to do was make an airfield for the Indian Air Force. They were quite young at the time. The Royal Indian Air Force, RIF instead of RAF. They were getting themselves into the routine of Sqdn life.

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