大象传媒

This is Michael Charnaud鈥檚 story: it has been added by Pauline Colcutt (on behalf of the Fernhurst Centre), with permission from the author who understands the terms and conditions of adding his story to the website.

An unusual and true story of a young boy who with his mother became a prisoner of both the Germans and the Japanese May 1942 - August 1945

CHAPTER 9 - SYDNEY - CEYLON 1945 AND FLIGHT TO ENGLAND (PART TWO)

We travelled in stately fashion in a comfortable sleeper across the huge subcontinent of India for 4 days by train via Madras, From that city southwards we passed through scenes of indescribable drought and famine in South India, such a contrast to the damp lushness of the northern Jungle in Ceylon, that one could in an instant appreciate why over the past 2,000 years there had been so many invasions of the Tamils attacking the ancient cities of Lanka. We eventually arrived at Colombo Fort station at 11 am in a tropical downpour. There we met up with my brother Hugh in his bright red Singer Sports car. Helen was still in naval uniform on special compassionate leave and had travelled overnight the 9 hours from Trinco. I travelled with Hugh in the pouring rain in my new smart all white tropical shorts and shirt. By the time we reached the Galle Face Hotel they had turned into a mottled red and pink pair from the dye leaking from the wet leather seats! We all five of us in the family had a wonderful reunion and our first meal ever round a table together, as with the war and the disruption that it had caused our family, it had been impossible, spread as we were across the world from England to Ceylon, India Australia and Japan. Mother and I spent six months in Ceylon just recuperating and enjoying ourselves mostly at Luckyland Estate in the cool hills of Udapussellawa 5,000ft above sea level. However, after a couple of weeks it was arranged that I would stay with a Singhalese family, the Fonseka鈥檚 in Colombo and would go to a Singhalese cramming school to prepare myself to catch up on my education. I stayed in their lovely relaxed rambling typical Singhalese house in Cinnamon Gardens. Father Fonseka was an orchid enthusiast and a member of the orchid circle in Colombo through which he had met Father also a keen grower. Sadly all those lovely rambling old Sinhalese bungalows with their spacious gardens and gracious easy going living, oozing character and tranquillity have now all vanished to be consumed by modern small boxlike apartments. Each morning I would walk to Alexandria College and sweat over maths and Shakespeare etc and then for relaxation would walk in the heat of the early afternoon to the Colombo Swimming Club which overlooked the sea and had a lovely pool. It was packed with servicemen and women having a romantic time amongst the coconut palm trees waiting for a ship to return to England. There were about half a dozen old school friends I knew as well of my age so we all had a great time together diving showing off to the girls and just feeling wonderful . Shortly before Christmas I got bitten by an insect on my chin and the following day I bumped it on the same place on the edge of the swimming pool. Next morning the whole chin was hard red and sore and not quite knowing what to do, I walked to the Galle Face Hotel and saw the resident doctor there, a man who had the appropriate name of Dr. Chisel! He took one look at my chin and arranged for me to go that very instant into the planters Fraser Nursing Home. His speed undoubtedly saved my life. There was no anti-biotic available apart from Sulpha or M and B tablets. These me put me on immediately and I lay in bed in an acute coma and next day was so delirious that I was running round the garden in the most terrible nightmares as the poison attacked my brain. He then lanced the boil and the puss etc poured out and within a day I was back to normal. I realised what a close thing it had been and how lucky I was to survive with speedy good attention whereas my poor Aunt Helen had not! Septicaemia in those days was very dangerous prior to the wide availability of anti-biotics.

A few days later Hugh came in his Red Singer Sports car to take me back up-country. It was cool in Colombo early in the morning, this time a perfect tropical day. I remarked that as we left there was a terrible whine in the rear of the car:

鈥淥h don鈥檛 worry Mike, the crown wheel is worn and may well conk out, but I have taken the precaution of buying a replacement which I will fit at home. Hugh having spent the war in tanks and armoured cars had been trained well by the army to pull anything to pieces and put it together again. So we journeyed on, the whine and clanking getting ever louder until we started to climb the low foothills and at a village called Mawanella it eventually packed up and were lucky to push the car into a handy cadjan palm leaf roofed Sinhalese garage. The Sinhalese are quite the most amazing mechanics and a hour or so later the differential was out in bits, the old crown wheel removed only to find that the new one was the wrong size and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Again ingenuity came into play and with cleaning all the old shards of metal and a few adjustments and packing washers, the old was refitted and judged to have enough teeth to just engage and carry us up on a 6,500 ft mountain climb. With Hugh life was never dull, in fact it was always a thrill a minute!. We thanked and paid our Sinhalese mechanic saviour and left finally as it was getting dark and stopped for refreshments in the Officers Club in Kandy. There we had a sandwich and a beer in the bar, finally leaving hurriedly after Hugh had punched a loud mouthed American for being derogatory of the British. Hugh was very small in build but was a champion inter- public school boxer because of his speed, agility and accuracy. We climbed the mountains in bright clear moonlight in the cold frosty mountain air stopping on the Rambodde pass to put on my POW GI overcoat which fortunately was in the back of the car. We finally arrived at Hugh鈥檚 house at 3 am some 17 hours after leaving Colombo 150 miles away! At midnight being hungry we had tucked into about a dozen mince pies of the gross that Mother had ordered from the Galle Face Hotel for her Christmas parties . She was furious when she counted them and we both got a good blasting:
鈥淵ou are both thoroughly irresponsible and cant even be trusted to do a collection without eating half my stock!鈥� However all was soon forgotten and Christmas was wonderful at Luckyland, the same huge fir tree touching the ceiling laden with baubles presents etc. Helen was up on leave and we all had a riotous time as a family together. This was our first and only Christmas as a family together. After Christmas it would soon be back to Colombo for swatting, but in the meantime Mother was shocked at the mess of Hugh鈥檚 house and was determined to spring clean it. So we went down the valley 5 miles to his little simple abode. She worked all morning with his cook cleaning, and chucking out rubbish whilst I went around Hugoland our Estate, with Hugh. At midday we returned and had a light meal and had just sat down, when the cook rushed in:
鈥淐ome quick Master, there is a large snake just coming out of the chicken coop鈥�

We went to see, and sure enough there was an enormous grey cobra emerging from the run. Hugh gave chase and the snake slid into a monsoon ditch. He jammed a walking stick in the middle of the snake鈥檚 back and shouted 鈥� Get me another stick quick Mike鈥� . I looked around and found a broken branch which he wedged against the serpents neck so that he was then able to grab his head firmly and wrap his long body around his arm. 鈥淕ive me a handkerchief quick鈥� and I passed him mine for the cobra to bite and then he tried to yank out his fangs. But it did not work so I rushed to his car which as usual was in bits, and found a pair of pliers and we were able to draw them out easily. Cobra fangs are quite small at the rear of their mouths, in sharp contrast to the enormous teeth of the other Ceylon snake the Russell鈥檚 Viper. But a cobra鈥檚 bite if he were to get you is really dangerous being a neurotoxin and a man is usually dead within half an hour with the heart muscles seized up.

We played with him on the lawn, and a crowd of villagers appeared and later he was confined to the elegant teak bookcase which became his new home. There he was happy, quiet and content with water and a hen鈥檚 egg to eat once week. An advertisement was placed in 鈥淭he Times of Ceylon鈥�:
鈥淐obra for Sale. Nice Quiet self effacing Character, well house trained,. Any Offers?鈥�
Two days later he got a letter from a senior executive from one of the big insurance companies in Colombo.
鈥淲e would like some further details and information as to his character, but we do feel that on the face of it he would appear to be an eminently suitable character to join our Board of Directors!鈥�
But shortly after the Christmas break it was back to Colombo and swatting to prepare myself for a return to school. It was now March 1946 and out of the past 6 years I had received only 13 months education in Australia. The whole of 1940 I had been confined to my bed recuperating from an attack of tuberculosis and then there had been 3 陆 years as a POW and a further six months travelled by ship etc and getting on my feet again.
Since our return to Ceylon Mother had written to Mr Bellamy the House Master of Army House, Bradfield College, Berkshire where Hugh had been, to tell him of our experiences. He very kindly accepted me without having to undergo the normal common entrance exam, providing I undertook to have a lot of private tuition on the side to catch up with my contemporaries. The problem now once again was transport as all passenger shipping was commandeered by the armed services trying to get personnel from the far east back to England to be demobilised. However a friend in RAF Transport Command heard of our plight and very kindly arranged for us to travel aboard an RAF York which was a modified high wing Lancaster bomber. So on the 11th April 1946 we said goodbye to Father and to the tropical lushness and beauty of Ceylon. It had been a wonderful relaxing interlude full of Happy memories and it was going to be seven more years in the future before I returned to work. But at that moment it was all the excitement of what was in those days a most exceptional and rare form of travel. We drove to RAF Ratmalana on the south of Colombo not far from the Mount Lavinia Hotel where we stayed. There was the York sitting on the tarmac in front of the control tower. She was small even by the standards of those days, a squat high wing square bodied aircraft. There were just 25 passengers all seated in the stern of the plane, all of whom were service personnel, mostly RAF, Mother was the only female, and as we boarded we just chucked our bags on a heap on the floor opposite the side port door. On top of the bags the crew then loaded about half a dozen full sticks of bananas having first filled all sorts of crannies in the cockpit and under the large radio set with pineapples for their families back home who had long forgotten about tropical fruit. We finally took off on the 11th April 1946 at about 10am on a bright clear morning from with the huge deafening roar and vibration from the four great petrol Merlin engines. The plane shuddered with the ear splitting vibration and slowly the pilot released his brakes, we gathered speed and then slowly we were airborne, on the move once again just skimming over the coconut palms, on my first air trip and certainly quite the most exciting and enjoyable one of my whole life. The plane climbed slowly and very steadily on the one side Colombo spread below , on the other the hills with the beautiful point of Adam鈥檚 Peak towering 8,000 ft in the distance. Slowly we climbed up over the sea until we cruised at 180 knots at 10,000 ft. There was no pressurization or any form of heat control and we donned our warm woollies as we passed over the gently rolling Nilgri Hills of South India. We could look down like a bird flying slowly over the tea estates only a three or four thousand feet below and see the tea-pluckers spread across the lovely rolling pea green tea fields. We watched lorries and cars travel along the snake like roads, then later when further north and we were over the desert we could watch the camel trains, till eventually 8 hours later we arrived at the RAF base Karachi just in time for a welcome cup of tea. In the evening we had a good meal and spent a comfortable night in standard black iron beds in the officers mess, and then after breakfast we were en route again for RAF Shaibah near Basra. As we reached Iraq we flew over the vast marshlands of the delta spread out below like a huge fern stretching across to the horizon. Ahead the sky became pitch black every so often illuminated by gigantic flashes of forked lightning which gave a terrifying look to the scene arriving and landing luckily just before the most violent tropical storm struck the base. The storm was ferocious with driving rain and a furious wind that bent the casurina pines around base. It got pitch dark but the rain continued lashing down flooding everywhere and then there was a roar as a Dakota ended up near station with both its twin propellers all covered in telephone wires as it had lost its way in landing, but fortunately no harm came to anyone this time. So we spent another night in the officers mess. The walls of the dining room were decorated with the most wonderful portraits of Arabs in their traditional dress, the pigments for the paintings had all been made from local ochre rock and the intense blues and other colours again were from other local rocks. They had been done by an RAF officer stationed there. And so for another night and then up early flying over the the steep hills and deep wadis of Saudi Arabia looking at the Camel caravan trains, to reach Cairo for lunch in sight of the pyramids. In the early afternoon we took off and the pilot invited me into the cockpit whilst he descended to 5,000 ft for a low flight over Sollum and El Alamein to see the battle-field and all the wrecked tanks guns etc at close quarters. We reached Castel Benito near Tripoli about 10 pm and a quick meal and then off on the final leg to England. This entailed us flying for a part of the way at 17,500 ft and we sat wearing our oxygen masks. Half way through I wanted to use the toilet and walked three rows back and clutched the wall to steady myself from feeling so drunk. I staggered back to my seat re fixed my oxygen mask and once again was fully conscious and normal. The following morning at about 4.30 am on the 14th April 1946 we landed at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire and I was the colonial boy back at last in the land of my birth. We had a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and about an hour later boarded a coach on a bright clear spring day and arrived in bombed out London.. This was the end of our travels.

Cont/鈥︹�ee A Child鈥檚 War Part Twenty

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