大象传媒

Secundrabad was just north of Hyderabad, where the Nisama Hyderabad lived. I think they measured his weight in gold every year or something. He was one of the richest men in the world at that time.

I think it was from Kamareddi that I was sent to Deolali. It was a place where you always went when you were coming home. If somebody was a bit crazy they'd say he'd gone 'do-lally', because sometimes a chap would try to work his ticket, trying to get out of the army by acting crazy, like saluting sergeants instead of officers and things like that. I had to stay in Deolali for a while before being moved to Bombay. While I was there, I saw a film with Dick Haymes in it, called 'State Fair'.

From Bombay, you were sent home separately - you didn't go home en-block, but individually, as your turn came up. You left your mates and just came home. When it was my turn to go, I left my mate, Alf, behind.

Homeward Bound

In Bombay, I boarded a ship straight away called the 'Georgic', of the Cunard White Line. That was a luxury ship that was.
The first night on board, I felt terrible. I got up in the morning (I'd never slept all night), went up to have a shave and the perspiration was running off my chin in a stream. I thought, "If I stand here any longer, I shall flop!" so I went up on the deck to get a bit of fresh air. I heard over the tannoy system, "Anyone wishing to report sick, report to such and such a deck." It wasn't easy to find if you hadn't been on the ship before, but eventually I found the M/O's place. I had flu, with a terrific temperature, so they put me into dock straight away. That was a shame, as we'd always said that our ambition when we got to India was to see Bombay "from the blunt end of a boat." I went into dock and some of my mates came in to see me. When a chap about two beds from me got smallpox, the Medical Orderlies were up all night vaccinating everybody whether they had been vaccinated before or not. 'Well, I hope I get to do the ENSA girls!' I heard one of them say (ENSA were the entertainers).
Across the Indian Ocean we went and eventually we arrived at Suez. The Egyptian authorities wouldn't let the ship go up through the Canal because of smallpox being aboard. They demanded that all the people who had been in contact with the chap be put ashore. So we all had to go down the side of this big ship, on a sort of rickety ladder, into a lighter to take us to shore. They carried the chap that had smallpox down on a stretcher - he was all done up like a mummy. That was about the last we heard of him; we did hear later that he passed away but I wouldn't be certain about that.

They put us on lorries and took us half way up the Suez Canal, north of Ismailia, to a place called El Bala. There they had laid on an orderly to wait on us, someone who had been specially inoculated. We had to take our own temperature daily and serve quarantine, to make sure we didn't come out with smallpox. We weren't allowed outside.
Eventually, we were allowed to go down into the Suez Canal and have a swim. I went down there on Cup Final day, which would have been in April, 1946. I think Charlton Athletic was playing Derby County. We were down on the banks of the Suez Canal and while we were there the 'Empress of Australia', a big white ship, went through. I didn't know at the time, but my mate, Alf, was on her.

When they thought we were definitely in the all clear, they put us on trucks and took us up to a transit camp at Port Said. Our cooks were German prisoners of war and there were Germans marking our papers. They'd mark a paper when you'd had a meal to make sure you didn't get a double shuffle. There were quite a few people coming over, ready for the victory parade in England. We saw some Greeks in their little frilly aprons! I got a photo taken whilst I was at Port Said, with my bush hat on and stripped to the waist, with a couple of chaps I got to know. You were forever making new friends; you had to.

One day they put us on a train and sent us all the way back down the Suez Canal to Suez. There we picked up the P and O Liner the 'Orontees'. I slept on the floor most of the way home from there, with my life jacket under my head. I remember on one occasion there was a fatigue party needed to go down and peel spuds in the cookhouse. They put a Lance Jack in charge, which I couldn't understand because I was above him in rank. He looked at me and said, "What are you doing? You should be here doing this."

"I know that," I said, "but carry on, mate, I ain't worried!" I knew that they were going around looking for bombardiers to be in charge of duties. Often you just wore your stripes on one arm and, of course, nobody knew anybody, you were all strangers. So when they were looking for a bombardier, I always used to keep the arm without the stripes close to them!

On the 'Orontees', we came all the way back up the Suez Canal again. We stopped at Port Said, where you could throw coins into the water and the native Indians would dive in and get them. That's how they made their living, a sort of begging really. When we went through the Suez Canal it was mostly at night. I can just recollect seeing the North African coast as we entered the Mediterranean. I'd always wanted to see the Rock of Gibraltar, because that was where the unit that I was with in Stanmore had been sent. If I hadn't been chosen to go on native charter, that's where I would have gone too. Three of my mates had sent me a photo of themselves up in the gardens of Gibraltar. I woke up and went up on deck in time to see Gibraltar disappearing off the tail end of the boat.

Home at Last

We went on up through the Bay of Biscay and put in at Southampton. It was the middle of May 1946, about the same time of year that I had boarded the ship at Avonmouth. We thought it was cold! One of the chaps looked over and said, "It must be cold, the natives have got their coats on!"
We were put on trucks - we never went through any Customs - and they took us up to Guildford. There we had our discharge books. They tore out pages and stamped things, and issued you with a suit of clothes. When they had done that, they came over the tannoy system trying to encourage you to sign up and stay in the Army. It wasn't many that did!

At Guildford, I took a train to Reading. I knew what time there was a train coming down from London to Bristol, so when we got to the Southern Railway station at Reading, I got off and asked the porter if the Bristol train had got in yet. "No, it's running a bit late," he replied.
"Well put this on the trucks and whip it through!" I told him. So we dashed through and I waited on the station with my kit bag for the train to come. The first door that came along was first class, so I opened it, got in the corridor and sat down on my kit bag. I had some black looks from some of the officers. "You can look black, mister," I thought to myself. "I'm on me way home!"
I arrived at Temple Meads and thought, "I've lugged this about enough!" and hailed a taxi. I asked how much he would charge to take me out to Iron Acton. It was something like seventeen shillings. It was late on a Friday night. My father had put a Union Jack on the chimney to please Kathleen, and when the taxi drove up I paid him and went in.

When I got in, Kathleen (nearly four by now) had gone to bed. I gave Ilene a kiss and a hug. "We're all off to Blackpool on Monday!" she told me. Three of us had gone out to India together - Richard Dickson ('Dickie'), Alf Kefford and myself. Dickie's mother had promised us all a free holiday in Blackpool when we came back.
I'd been away in India for almost exactly three years and in the Army for almost six.
But now I was home. Home at last!

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