大象传媒

CHAPTER 3

While the Sixth Division was being prepared for battle, I enjoyed the same life as before, more training and more snooker. When playing snooker in the evening, the lights over the table attracted flies and flying insects of all descriptions. There were so many different kinds that anybody who had not travelled in India would never believe it. One type of monsoon fly would land on the table and promptly shed its wings, so you would be left with two wings and a body. There would be thousands of these and so every few minutes, one would have to brush them up with a dustpan and brush. Also, flying beetles would land on the table every few minutes or even seconds. Often a good shot would go bump over a beetle's body which had just landed, and this would do nothing for the accuracy of the shot!

There was an opportunity to be taught to drive and I quickly volunteered. We had a huge area in which to practise. It was on a disused airfield and we had to drive very, very old lorries. They all had gate gear changes and it was absolutely essential to double de-clutch when changing gear. There was no test to say that we had passed or were proficient in driving, but after weeks and weeks, involving many hours of driving every day, we felt quite expert and capable of driving anywhere. Of course, we had never experienced anything like driving in London in the
rush hour. We did not have to learn the Highway Code.

We had a number of training schemes out in the country. It was very wild terrain and mostly we were out all night. There were very few roads and often we had to find another camp site a mile away, with only a vague idea of the direction in which to go. On one occasion I remember, when we only had one torch between four of us, we could not find this other site, which was somewhere well into the forest. The other three chaps were not prepared to walk off the road in the dark in the direction in which we thought the other camp was. I was the only one prepared to do this and I suggested that I walked straight into the dense growth for about two hundred yards or so, and if I failed to find the camp, I would see the light from the torch being shone by the other chaps. I could retreat back to the road and not become completely lost This worked quite well but it was not until the third attempt that I finally found the other site. I had stumbled and tripped through thick undergrowth, unable to see a thing and also getting extremely wet when I unwittingly walked through a small stream. I felt rather pleased after this incident and thought that maybe my reputation had been enhanced.

After spending some months in Meerut, the Sixth Division was ordered to travel south to Secunderabad, which is close to Hyderabad. The journey of possibly 1200-1500 miles was by train and took five days. We never left the train during that time except at stations to stretch our legs. I remember that we cooked eggs on the platform at more than one station. It was so hot that when we cracked the eggs out on to the concrete platform they cooked perfectly in a matter of seconds! We did it because it seemed like a good trick and not to eat the eggs. Each carriage had four bunks, the two upper ones being hooked up during the day and let down at night.

When we arrived at Secunderabad, we found conditions were good and for the next month or so, we continued training, but at the same time we enjoyed ourselves. There was a good open air cinema nearby, where I saw two top American films before they were released in London. There was also a superb swimming pool close to our barracks and we spent a lot of time there. We continued our all night training schemes out in the country some miles from the camp.

I received a letter from home which told me that quite close to our barracks a Major Ramsey had been posted. He was a retired regular Army Officer who had been called back into the service because of the war. Before the war he had lived in the same house that I moved to when I was seven years old. He moved out as we moved in. We had always kept in touch as a family and so an invitation to visit him and his wife, in his extremely posh bungalow was very welcome. He appeared to live a life of luxury, with several bearers, or servants and plenty of whiskey at 4s16d (22 1/2p) a bottle. I visited him a number of times by bicycle, and always weaved my way back to barracks around midnight, rather the worse for wear!

The time was approaching when we would have to leave India for the Middle East. When the day came, I was one of the drivers of a lorry containing signal equipment, mostly wireless sets. I had a co-driver at my side, an Indian, and six white soldiers with all their baggage in the back. We were all equipped with Lee-Enfield rifles and quite a bit of ammunition.

Some two months before our departure we had a number of 5-ton Chevrolet lorries delivered to us. They were brand spanking new and what a thrill it was to drive them after those old lorries we had learned to drive with. They were all painted in a desert sand colour and they all had synchronized gear boxes, something which was entirely new to us, and so easy to use. So we started off one morning in a convoy of about twenty or so lorries, accompanied by about ten dispatch riders on their motorbikes. As we passed through the gates of the barracks, there were only a few Indians to wave us goodbye. Most conspicuous of them was a very buxom woman who I understood was the local prostitute. How many of the soldiers she recognised and how many of the soldiers recognized her I shall never know, but it seemed to be common knowledge that that was her profession.

We had about 600 miles to go to reach Bombay, and so far as I can remember, the journey was spread over four days. Each night we slept in or beside our vehicles, but the weather was mild and that was no problem. En route, we passed through Poona and Deolali (from whence the expression 'Dulali tap' or soft in the head, came from).

When we reached Bombay we were taken to barracks, where we spent a couple of days, during which time a full shipload of troops was being assembled. Finally the day of embarkation arrived and we were off to the docks with our lorries and all equipment. The ship on this occasion was called the 'Strathaird' , a sister ship of the Strathmore in which we had sailed from England. Out from Bombay and into the Indian Ocean and on a straight course this time because presumably there were no U-boats operating in this area. When we were sailing through the Arabian Sea we saw flying fish, dolphins which followed the ship all the way, and sea snakes floating apparently just under the surface of the water. There were hundreds of them. At night as we looked over the side of the ship, there were always dozens of fluorescent fish just below the surface. We continued into the Gulf of Oman and then into the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. As we went through the Strait we were only a few hundred yards from land, which was very barren and appeared to be uninhabited. We missed the dolphins which for hundreds of miles had been racing alongside the ship, continuously leaping out of the water. We went right through the Gulf, past Abadan and on to Basra. We off-loaded at Basra and this took quite a few days, as the ship was very full with lorries, equipment, guns, ammunition and stores. All the troops had to help with the unloading, which was very heavy work, and went on for at least three days. In the midday sun it was well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and our shirts clung to us like wet rags. We quickly learnt that any fruit you bought had to be washed first and the only permissible drink had to be bottled. The glass bottles for the drinks were of the type where there was a glass ball in the neck, and this had to be pushed in first, before one could drink. During all this time there were peddlers on and around the quayside selling fresh dates and huge watermelons.

Eventually, the ship was unloaded, mostly by us soldiers and we set off in our lorries for our camp, which was a mile or so outside Basra. As soon as we left the built up area, we noticed there were date palms on all sides full of ripe fruit. Our first obstacle was the Shat el Arab river over which there was no bridge. Our crossing was over a pontoon bridge consisting of sections of metal roadway supported on floating pontoons. We made our precarious way over this very narrow and very wobbly makeshift bridge and were glad to reach the other side.

We set up camp at this new location, and everything was fairly comfortable, except for the extreme heat. Now that we were a couple of miles inland it was very much hotter than it was at the quayside. We were told that it was 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade! During the day it felt as if the air was coming straight from a hot oven. It was so hot that, very unusual for the British Army, instructions were given that we could walk around and work with our shirts outside our shorts. I suppose there were fears that too many of us might get heatstroke. One of our chaps suffered from sweaty feet and his feet were so bad in this heat that he was afraid to take his boots off, and at night, in deference to the rest of us, he slept with his feet outside the tent, still with his boots on.

There was a village close by but to visit it, we had to cross the river by boat. These boats which held about eight men had a very high prow and were paddled across by an Iraqi, or at that time, so far as we were concerned, an Arab. To us they were all Arabs. The boatman charged us in fils, but we always argued that it was too much because the story that went around the camp was that we should never pay what was asked. We gave him what we thought it was worth, and walked away, followed by shouts of rage in an unintelligible language. When we returned from the village in the evening and it was very dark and misty, we were not so inclined to argue, as we were anxious to get back to camp and across the river was the only way. These trips at night were quite exciting because it was usually pitch black and there were often two Arabs in the boat and maybe only two soldiers. There was a feeling that if they wanted to dump us in the river we would really have been in trouble. It was always a relief to reach the safety of the other side. One morning a few of us went into the village and I had a haircut and also a shave. The Arab who shaved me used a cutthroat razor with great skill. I did feel some apprehension at the time and although I was probably quite safe, I decided that in future I would shave myself. On another occasion, three of us bought a very large goose from the village and took it back to camp on the back of a lorry. All three of us stood in the back of the lorry with the goose. All of us including the goose were swaying and stumbling as the lorry sped along, sometimes over very rough ground. Geese are reputed to be the best protection against burglars and I can well believe it. The noise it made was enough to awaken the dead. When we arrived back at the camp it was time for us to go on duty immediately, so we only had time to tie the goose to the tent guy ropes, and off we went. Alas, when we returned, the goose was nowhere to be seen, and we never found out who took it or where it went.

There were two streams nearby and one of the pastimes we indulged in was digging turtles out of the sand at the bottom of the streams. They were of course completely buried but one always knew where they were, because whenever we saw a thin stream of bubbles coming up to the surface, there, underneath was a turtle, or more accurately, I suppose, a terrapin. Some of them were painted by us in Brigade colours, and we considered them to be our mascots. One day one of our Indians dropped a very large boulder on top of one of them, completely crushing it. We never did discover why he did it, but presumably, he thought it was either unlucky or evil in some way. He was not very popular after that episode.

We then began our journey through to Baghdad, a distance of about three hundred miles as the crow flies, but as we continually crossed and recrossed the railway line, it was most likely at least four hundred miles. In all that distance I never remember seeing a single train. We were travelling in a convoy of about forty lorries and the road (if you can call it that) was very dusty. Because of this we wore dust masks and had special bags over the muzzles of our rifles. The dust thrown up by the convoy of lorries was so bad that we drove all day without being able to see the lorry in front, except for the few occasions when we stopped for a break or a meal. Even then it took several minutes before the dust subsided. Our rations for each day were a tin each of corned beef and packets of dates. These were dried dates and not the fresh ones we had seen growing on the palm trees in Basra. All the time since we left India I had been eating dates in enormous quantities, packet after packet, mostly while I was driving. We always had army biscuits available and these were like very large dog biscuits. I do not think many of the other chaps liked them, but I did and I happily munched them together with the dates, whenever I felt a little hungry. We also carried survival tins, which contained a slab of a chocolate like substance. I also liked this but you could only eat it if you could somehow obtain an extra tin, because they really were 'survival rations' , only to be eaten in an emergency.

When we finally stopped each evening and had put up our tents we were once more ready to eat. Our most popular and most frequent food at this time was a tin each of McConachys stew, which contained meat, beans and potato and was very filling and very tasty. We each had to collect a tin from a large tub of boiling water, prepared by the Army Catering Corps. We always had tea to drink, never coffee, and this was poured into the other half of our mess tin. These tins were part of each soldier鈥檚 personal kit and carried with him at all time, together with a knife, fork and spoon. We never drank out of cups. After each meal every soldier had to wash his own mess tin and cutlery.

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