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Aboard the 'Mataroa'

At Avonmouth, we boarded a ship called the 'Mataroa' and set off on 15th May 1943 on the first stage of our voyage to India. The 'Mataroa' was a refrigerator ship, quite unsuitable for passengers. There may have been sections that were all right, but where we were was well down below the water line. You couldn't open a porthole or look out. We were in hammocks and they were virtually touching one another. The smell was horrible with so many people all down there. Every morning we had boat stations. We were given a place on the deck, near a lifeboat, and when they blew a whistle you had to dash to your station. One morning they did it with the lights out and we couldn't find our way out of there. We realised that if we did get struck by anything then we'd be trapped like rats. We would never have got out.

We left the Bristol Channel and went up the Irish Sea to Greenock, up in the Firth of Forth, and there a convoy assembled. We were going to go in convoy because of the U-boats. There were quite a lot of ships in the convoy and all the way around the outside were destroyers and an aircraft carrier protecting us. One of the ships was the 'Caernarvon Castle', which I think was a luxury liner. Of course, the convoy could only travel as slow as the slowest would let it travel. We zigzagged all the way down the Atlantic to stop U-boats tracking us. We were told it took the U-boats so many minutes to get their torpedoes ready to fire on a ship. So once the commodore's ship had sounded two blasts on its fog-horn you turned so many degrees to port, or whatever, and when he sounded one blast you turned so many degrees in the opposite direction. One day a German Fokke Wulf Condor flew over and tried to bomb the aircraft carrier, and there was apparently quite a bit of U-boat action around us because the destroyers were dropping depth charges quite regularly.

At that time, you couldn't go through the Suez Canal, because of the fighting in North Africa, so we had to go down the coast of Africa and right round the Cape.

Freetown, West Africa.

We had numerous injections and I was vaccinated for the first time in my life. I hadn't been vaccinated for smallpox as a child because my father wouldn't have itdone. We put into Freetown harbour, on the coast of West Africa, though we weren't allowed ashore. Whilst we were anchored, ! was supposed to be on duty, posting sentries on the watertight doors. But I had a tremendous temperature and the officer in charge said, "You get down to sick bay, Bombardier, the Sergeant and I will mount the guard." I was admitted into the sick bay with vaccine fever and I stayed there as long as I could because it was much more comfortable. I had a bed there!

While we were in Freetown harbour, a ship caught fire out at sea and a destroyer went out and sank it (after it had been evacuated), because having it blazing was a light for the enemy.

The next port of call was Capetown, South Africa. We anchored in the harbour and that was my first and only view of Table Mountain. Next day we headed into the Indian Ocean for Durban.

At Durban we had a wonderful welcome. On the quayside was a lady in white. Apparently she was well known all through the war, the widow of a previous Lord Mayor of Durban. She would stand on the quayside singing patriotic songs. She did this for all the convoys. Of course, the English people there were quite patriotic and friendly to us.

We were billeted some little way out of Durban but were able to get into town most days by train after dinner, to go to the cinema or something or other. You piled on the train - the natives would stand on the running boards and sit on the roof. We could always get a good meal in Durban for a shilling, as it was subsidised for the miners. There was a Jewish club and you could get in there for a shilling and get waited on at table. There were tablecloths and serviettes and everything. If we were really short of money, there was a lady who belonged to the 'League of Hostesses'. We could ring her up and go up to her flat and she would give us a meal, let us have a bath and pay for a cinema show as well. The hospitality in Durban was out of this world and they treated us like lords.

We were at Durban for six weeks until eventually we boarded the P&O liner, the 'Strathmore'. She was accompanied by her sister ship, the 'Strathern', and a destroyer. We set sail across the Indian Ocean, our destination India. As we left, the lady in white sang us out again. You know, 'Land of Hope and Glory' and all that sort of thing. Of course, it was much better on these ships because they were luxury P&O liners. We slept on deck quite a bit, out in the open, because it was so warm.

Arrival in India.

We arrived at Bombay to quite a different welcome to what we had at Durban. I remember one bombardier wrote in a letter home to his wife that when we got to Durban they threw oranges at us and when we got to Bombay he didn't know what they were going to throw at us. He got hauled over the coals for that because the letters were censored. Bombardier Rickard his name was.

We had one evening out in Bombay while we were there. We donned our 'Bombay bowlers' for the first time, the old horrible-looking pith helmets, and our shorts that were too long - they came down around our knees and looked horrible! I can't remember much about Bombay, but one thing I do remember is the 'Gateway to India' which, if I remember correctly, was a big building something like the Arc de Triumph.

Malegaon.

Next day we were on a train and taken to a place called Malegaon. The heat we found was very trying. We weren't allowed to have any cold drinks because you could get tummy bugs and what have you. So we had to drink tea, or 'char' as the Indians would call it, which just made you perspire all the more. The water was far from pure and you could get dysentery and all sorts and it had to be chlorinated. Despite all that, I still got a tummy bug whilst I was there. The toilet facilities were horrible, just a hole in the ground. The heat rose up and it was a mass of maggots. That toilet wasn't a place you went to out of choice!

We were at Malegaon a week when they decided that they were crying out for bombardiers in Karachi. I still had my tummy bug, so I went out and got some flour and mixed it up to see if it would bind me. Before being posted, we had to go on parade. I thought, "What's going to happen to me with full kit on if I get the trots?" Anyway, willpower won in the end - I knew it would be virtually impossible to do anything till we got on the train!

West India - Karachi Airbase.

And so we were taken off to Karachi. Actually, we were stationed at Karachi Airbase, which was a little way out from Karachi itself. This was a transit camp run by the Yanks. We were on the ack-ack defences around the camp. Not that we ever saw any action there - the Japs never got that far anyway, not even their planes. There was one very large hanger that the Americans were using. A Dakota in there looked lost. It had been built to house the airship 'R1O1' but that had crashed in France on the way out.

Our colonel in Karachi was Colonel Terry, who, incidentally, had been Captain Terry when I had joined up at Stubbington. It was here that I had a tattoo put on my arm, 'True love, Ilene & Kathleen'.

By now I was in the 18th Indian Light Ack-ack Regiment. There were just us BORs (British Other Ranks) and the rest were Madrasees. They spoke different languages -Tamale, Telego, Camerees and what have you. Our gun crew there consisted of Sergeant Kilby, from Newport, myself and about ten Madras Indians. It was our job to train the Indians on the Bofor guns.

The bombardier who I took over from told me, "Don't bother about the rations you were issued with, you can queue up behind the Yanks and they ain't going to say anything. You can get as much food as you like over there!" So, the first morning, I went over and queued up with the Americans. They fried the eggs in some big thing, don't know what it was. You had trays with different sections on them and I saw the Yanks piling up about eight rounds of toast and what have you. I went along
with my tray to where the eggs were being fried. "Sunny side up, buddy?" he said to
me and I looked at him a bit strange.
I said, "Yes please," not knowing what he was on about. (He meant did I want them
turned over). So he put a slicer under the eggs and dropped four of them on my plate! "Come back and get some more!" he said.Then you went along and picked up little pancakes with maple syrup and different things.Oh, there were lashings of food - you could have as much as you liked! I went over for all my meals the whole time I was there.

The Indians cooked for themselves and they would sit on their haunches and eat with their hands. The sergeant and 1 built them a table to let them be a little more civilised having their meal. While they were cooking, the sergeant said "Oi, go and see how they're getting on with the table, Ken." So I went out there and they had the dixies all over the table but they were still sat down on their haunches!
They lived in tents; they had ridge tents and they dug out the floor about a foot or so deep to make them higher. But the sergeant and I had quite a big marquee and we slept on charpoys. A charpoy is a wooden frame to make the shape of a bed, with four legs. They weave over hemp to make the base, then you put your straw palliasse on the top to sleep and suspend your mosquito net down each side. You had to sleep under a mosquito net, like the one drawn on an aerogram I sent home (see next page). You also had a couple of blankets if you needed them. It was difficult to sleep because these charpoys were alive with bugs, hundreds of them! If you shook or jarred your charpoy on the floor all these bugs would fall out! That wasn't too pleasant - you'd look over the mosquito nets and see them crawling all over it.

One day, while I was having my dinner, I mentioned about my charpoy to an American sergeant cook who was sat next to me. "Ah, you want a camp bed, bombardier," he said. "When you go back to your site, at such and such a tent on the way up, just go in there and help yourself - there's camp beds in there and you're welcome to one." So on my way back I helped myself to a camp bed, a canvas one that folded up, and disposed of my charpoy quickly. I took that camp bed all over India with me. When I left, I gave it to a Madrasee cook named Das, because I didn't want to bring it home with me.

In Karachi they hardly ever saw any rain. Only on one occasion did we have rain whilst I was there and the sergeant who had been there much longer than I had said that it was the first he had seen. It only rained for a short while, but it rained so hard that the dugout the Indians had made filled up with water. They came in saying "Sahib, Sahib, pani!" ('pani' means 'much water'). But within an hour it was gone - you wouldn't have thought it had rained. You see, we were on the edge of the Sind Desert. Because we didn't get much rain, the Americans had some open-air cinemas there and they'd get all the latest films from Hollywood. We could go along in the evenings and sit down in the seats and have a free cinema show.

We spent Christmas 1943 at Karachi. In February of the following year, we were told we were going to be on the move, though where to we didn't know.

To be continued.

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