大象传媒

Now, what was the situation we were under? The situation we were under was diabolical. Because, unknown to us, the Germans had infringed the treaty of- it may have been Versailles- whereby, with the declaration of war, all ships of opposing sides must make for the nearest neutral port. Everybody talks about India, the jewel in the British crown. Part of India was the jewel in the English crown. We had French India and we had Portuguese India and these were within the framework of the Empire but they were allowed their own autonomy, we didn鈥檛 impose our will on those particular groups. So Portugal was neutral so, obviously, Goa was the neutral port- OK. So, the Germans weren鈥檛 there because they were at sea. What we didn鈥檛 know was that, by a pre-arranged agreement between the German high command and the whatever, they landed not just any old ships, they landed a full task group of ships to maintain a submarine presence in the Indian Ocean. We could have been torpedoed on that trip.

Now, going from Aden to Bombay. On the first day out we went back on to active service procedures, no voice, no sound, no bells, no cigarette lighters, no this, or that or the other. And the passage of instructions came by means of blackboard with chalk writing on it. And I would say that, unofficially, I was like a message boy, my reading was pretty good.

It was an operational order, highly activated by the notice- ATTENTION! In the largest possible letters telling us to get back to wherever we felt safe at, because a German hostile battleship had been seen- believed to be the Graf Spee. I remember it was all on the board there. And of course the bloody terror started again. We鈥檇 missed Franco鈥檚 ship, now we were going to be caught by the Graf Spee. And one of the people on board said, 鈥淒o you know, it鈥檚 very strange, because in the First World war we were in an identical situation鈥�

He said that this hostile craft and been seen just after they left Aden and by the time they got to Bombay it had been sunk. And when we got to Bombay we heard that the Graf Spee had been sunk at the battle of the River Plate.
So we got to Bombay and that is the end of part 1!

(My family had arrived in Bombay after a protracted voyage on the Strathnaver in 1939)

Once we were on terra firma a la Indian my father was totally in control of the situation, his familiar surroundings. My mother never to grips with the local languages but, by this time, I spoke about bordering on 3 of the Indian dialects. My father knew about 8.

We were met by sister of the lady whom we鈥檇 being staying in Edinburgh with. She was in the same family group as his brother鈥檚 wife鈥檚 family. She was like an aunt. She was one hell of a good-looking girl. I always remember her as very similar to that woman in Casablanca- Ingrid Bergman- with a big hat and this gorgeous dress, she was absolutely gorgeous. I was interested in aviation and somehow this fact must have got to her, because I had the very first ever clockwork model of what became known as the Dakota aircraft. That was what I got at the end of the trip and I thought to myself, now this is incredible, it was terrific, you know. And we just got on the train which ultimately got us to Calcutta where we actually lived in a place called Sibpur.

This is 1940ish. And I got back to normal, as I was before I went out of India, back to my same school which was at a place called Howrah. Howrah was the penultimate district station for Eastern Calcutta. There are 2 stations, Howrah at one end and Sealdah at the other. Calcutta looked after all stations South and Sealdah looked after all stations North.

So we arrived on the train at Howrah and from Howrah we travelled on to the Bengal Engineering College. I think we moved house twice or three times on the campus. And bordering the college on the other side was the Shalimar Ropeworks which was an important installation.

I went from Sibpur to Howrah every day to my junior school which was St Thomas鈥� school and life went back to normal. I think that term started in February or something, after the Christmas holidays, which is very similar to the English school system.

And we found, round about the beginning of about 1941, things got a bit strange. I say this because I got the waft of foreboding, of hostilities coming at us from some end. I wasn鈥檛 clued up enough to know where it would come from. But my mother鈥檚 hairdresser was Japanese, my cobbler was Japanese. We had a cadre of servants, all the trimmings of colonial life- but these things went funny.

And basically two personalities broke the scene. One was Frank Buck the American Zoologist who used to go about and talk about capturing animals in the wild. And he had this great logo behind him which was 鈥淏ring鈥� Em Back alive!鈥� Frank 鈥淏ring 鈥楨m Back Alive鈥� Buck. And, at the same time, curiously enough, a magician came on the scene and his name was Chang. Now Chang had this amazing magic act which was taking place- We had several cinemas in India- I think we had the Lighthouse, the New Empire and the Tiger. The Tiger was in, as the Americans would say, down town Calcutta. And the New Empire and the Tiger literally were next door to each other on the old Hog Market. Chang used to alternate between the New Empire and The Lighthouse because there was no actual theatre as such. What then happened was, Calcutta was on one side of the river and Howrah was on the other. Now Howrah had a great big ungrassed area and all the circuses used to play there, with vast great tents. And India was very adept at doing overnight handpainted brilliant posters of forthcoming events. I mean they had to been seen to be believed. Monsterous great big signs. They reproduce them to a certain extent now for Indian films but, in those days, it was a most amazing piece of artwork. This vast area had the capacity to carry vast bloody great big mural things- these huge posters. The first week, I remember this amazing picture, this terrifying Chinese magician, Chang. And, one day, the circus came to town and who was it? Frank 鈥淏ring 鈥楨m Back Alive鈥� Buck. And he put his poster up. And Chang鈥檚 people decided to put a bigger poster up. So Frank Buck鈥檚 people did the same and this bloody poster war went on. And they started putting them over each others to obliterate each others. And it wasn鈥檛 until some time later- I think I went to one circus and that was 鈥淕unboat Jack鈥�- He rode his motorbike around this bloody wall of death. And he was doing his thing there.

And all the time things were happening. Opposite Government House there was this great road which linked the outer side of Government House to the Victoria Memorial, the Red road. And this is about 300 yards away from the main shopping centre of Calcutta. And they were joined in the centre by a little oblique road which went across. And what happened was they started building what used to be called in those days, baffled walls. These are these great anti-blast walls that were built to protect aircraft. Then I saw they were digging trenches and sandbags were going up, covertly, but you just happened across them if you happened to sort of see them. They weren鈥檛 sort of broadcasting that this was a defensive area of reconstruction, it was just these things kept happening.

Then we had this new thing come up called War Weapons Week. Bloody Hell. I think we had a War Weapons Week in 1940 which was a pretty low key thing. But the 鈥�41 I remember because it was the first time I鈥檇 ever seen a Hurricane aircraft. And this thing kept flying around and they used to come in bloody low. And I remember I was doing my end of year exam and this thing buzzed the school, the cacophony was incredible. I鈥檓 trying to do a blooming written exam while this was going on- And I鈥檓 mad on aircraft and I just couldn鈥檛 cut myself off. Did the exams, I won鈥檛 go into the details of what my results were. One of the things I did do, I came first in the County and I got the Bishop鈥檚 award for Religious Studies, in my day it was called Divinity. He came into my life again as my tutor in school after he retired. He was Bishop David Foss- Westcott he was called the Vicar of Calcutta and the Metropolitan High Bishop of India. And he became my tutor in 1947. So, he had this prize, and I won it. And then we were told, that鈥檚 the end of prizegiving, the schools will now be closed until further notice. Now this was round about the middle to the end of November 1941. We sort of walked off and I thought. 鈥淲hat the Hell鈥檚 going on?鈥�

I鈥檇 seen this war preparation and a Hurricane had come in. Subtly enough, to show that we were prepared for war, all our silver aircraft were camouflaged in 1941. And then, one night, I think it was the night of the 7th of December 1941, would you believe, the air-raid siren went off, the alert. Whoof, down went my stomach, up came the grub- Oh my God, it鈥檚 started again, it鈥檚 followed us down here. And, oh Dear God, we turned on the radio and this was the 鈥渄ay of Infamy鈥�: Pearl Harbour. So, we got the same overture as we did in 1939, the air raid siren goes to alert to denote the beginning of the war. We had this similar sort of thing, Japan had struck Pearl harbour. And then we went to action stations again.

So, because all schools had closed for the duration, my father got this rather belligerent Bengali person, P K Biswas, his name was, (probably B.A. Calcultta- Failed!) He was the most obnoxious person and I had a terrible time with him. And I almost got to the stage of praying for air raids it was so bad. They did come in.

We are in a dockyard vicinity, so we鈥檙e right in the area which was going to be the target, as it happened, for the Japanese airforce. The Japs always used to come at night and I think maybe they were probing defences (which were almost nil as far as I can see.) But, living where I did, it was diagonally adjacent to the Alipur airfield. And there had been a lot of aircraft work being done. Of course, not being at school, I was able to watch the skies. I saw the Brewster Buffalos being prepared- no bombers at that stage. Aircraft activity, nothing from the Japs. It must have been about, could have been March 鈥�42, the raids started, in the form of Recce trips, I don鈥檛 remember any bombs being dropped in those days.

My father, being one of the Professors at this place, (The Bengal Engineering College,) was allocated the job of being an Incident Officer with the Indian equivalent of the A.R.P. which meant every time the aircraft were available to attack us, he had to get to this station to report any bombings. But because he was an Incident officer we had a slit/Anderson shelter in the garden. We couldn鈥檛 use it, obviously, because when the raids came in he had to get in the car and drive to the Incident Centre which was about 3 miles away. So we didn鈥檛 use the garden slit/Anderson shelter and one day I went to play in it and it was full of bloody pythons, because it was a marshy area!

The bombing did come in, it emptied Calcutta. All the Indians made a dash for it and while they were on their way they were set upon by these damn bandits, so some were murdered, some lost all their savings and things. And then gradually they鈥檇 filter back in again. And while this was going on Chang was doing his thing, Frank Buck was doing his thing. And we knew that the raids always came in at night and the shows didn鈥檛 occur until the afternoon. So I did actually go and see Chang, it was fabulous, I remember him taking a man鈥檚 head off with mirrors and things. He was the most amazing, gifted man. He was very tall, what did come across was his appalling Chinese English accent. Can you imagine a foreigner, not necessarily Chinese adopting a Chinese accent speaking English? Very tall, very frightening man, like a nasty bloke in Aladin, you know? Very very foreboding. Frank Buck was a nicer sort of chap, sort of safari suits and whips and things. The reason I bring Chang in is because towards the end of 1942 my father, after trying a great deal, managed to get accepted for the British Indian Army in the Ordnance Corps. And this necessitated us leaving the college because his job more or less finished about the end of December 1942 and he had to take station round about the 7th of February 1943.

Now, this gets a bit political now. What happened, going back slightly, after the fall of Burma, the Indians were so upset because of the possibilities of a Japanese occupation because, obviously, their reputation had gone before them. How did this affect Mahatma Ghandi, the so-called 鈥淢an of Peace?鈥� He did two things, he gave in to the Japanese and surrendered India to the Japanese and he actually appointed his own Commander in Chief of the Indian rebel forces to ally with the Japanese. And one day when we were going past Government House in the car there was a great throng of people and they were all standing around a chap on a horse and he looked like a pantomime general in fancy dress and my father said 鈥淣ow, take a good look at that man, that鈥檚 Subash Chandra Bose and he is going to command the Indian National Army鈥� And, with that, Chandra Bose fell off the horse. So Ghandi the man of peace was actually a terrorist and he disseminated all this information to the Indians who wanted to sort of capitulate to the Japanese. And great numbers of them fled during the raids. The raids were set up to make the Indians appear to be running every direction. But I think a set piece was them to get through Assam and into the Japanese lines through Burma. And they in turn did training with the Japs and fought the British and their own people who were loyal to the British. And that鈥檚 one of the reasons of course that, as far as I was concerned, during the same period of capitulation, I was subjected to an attempted homosexual attack by my Muslim servants on me. And I was so terrified I didn鈥檛 even tell my father about it because I thought I might get beaten. Think of that. They didn鈥檛 succeed in penetration but they got me stripped, attacking me from the rear.

And I was so enraged by this that when my father [joined] the army, I asked him specifically if I could put in for Boy Service and I joined the Royal Military school in Lovedale on the 4th of February 1943 and he joined the Indian Army Ordnance Corps on the 7th of February 1943. Thereafter followed the most appalling time of my life. (I was aged 10 in February 1943.)

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