大象传媒

OFFICER TRAINING

My application to hold a commission had by now been granted. It had taken only six months for it to be processed (the speed at which the Army moved in these situations was frightening) and in March 1943 I went to an Officer Cadet training unit at Tonfanau near Towyn in North Wales to embark on seven months of hard work, both physically and mentally - not a good time to start out on a venture of this kind as North Wales can be cold and wet in March and the first month was spent almost entirely out of doors in the hills of Cader Idris undergoing what the Army called 'battle training'. Among other things, this comprised crawling along ditches in a foot of water while live ammunition was fired over our heads. On being congratulated by the sadistic training staff for keeping our heads down, we usually replied we were too bloody tired to lift them anyway. Another joy was the obstacle course, one of its features being a triple dannert barbed-wire fence - one roll of barbed-wire on top of two supporting rolls - overall about five feet high. Negotiating this meant that the first man had to throw himself on top of the wire, crushing it almost to the ground, and the others then walked over him. Why was it that on so many occasions I was the unlucky cadet to be first in line when we encountered the barbed wire? Some devious plan seemed always to ensure this. Twenty mile marches took place on some occasions including sleeping rough in the rain. Surviving such a regime now seems impossible, but I did it and was fitter at the end of the first month or so than I have ever been in my life.

The technical gunnery side was thoroughly interesting. We realised for the first time the various capabilities of the anti-aircraft gun and with my little time spent on rockets, I was able to offer my experience to others.

During a week's leave prior to my final month Eve and I were married at St Andrews Church in Cobham, Surrey. This church was chosen because it was in the area where she was stationed and the necessary residential qualification could therefore be satisfied - a ludicrous law that I never understood.

October saw me posted to my first unit as a young officer. The headquarters were in Brighton with me attached to an AA battery at Peacehaven. Within a month I was in the Isle of Man undergoing a further infantry training course and early in January 1944 returned to my unit on the South coast to spend a thoroughly unsatisfactory two or three months. I had fallen foul of the battery commander, who wasn't at all happy at having a reasonably presentable young officer queering his pitch as he saw it in his quest for popularity with the A.T.S. girls. My refusal to call another officer named Lionel and the butt of many unkind remarks by other officers by the degrading name of Nellie resulted in a head-on collision which brought about my transfer to an all-male mobile unit.

After some mobile training exercises we found ourselves on the South coast preparatory to the June invasion of Normandy in an anti-aircraft role defending the troops who were about to make the invasion. The landing having been successful, we were then to up-sticks and cross the Channel to operate in a similar role in France, due to cross over on D-day plus 4 or 5. However, Allied air superiority quickly made it clear that little heavy anti-aircraft defence was necessary and we stayed in England.

A move then occurred to Oswestry, where the Army found itself with a large pool of trained anti-aircraft officers and nothing for them to do. The unit I was with soon made the crossing to France but I and others continued to be held in this pool. There followed a few months of exercises and life was carefree and enjoyable. Soon after the transfer to Oswestry my daughter was born. I was in Rhyl at the time learning among other things, to drive a 3-ton lorry. By this time 鈥榙oodle bugs' or flying bombs were causing serious problems and units were established on Foulness Island, among other places, to combat these. Troops once again being under canvas, this time including A. T. S. girls, with the House of Commons having been assured they were not, some genius decided that I was the man to be in charge of the rapid construction of enough Nissan huts to shelter a whole battery - some 250 people. It took me no time at all to make sure that the practical men I had been given would handle the construction and I would make sure that they had whatever comforts and leave I could arrange. This arrangement worked eminently satisfactorily, much to the delight of Colonel Jimmy Carreras, the unit commanding officer, who was later to be better known as the producer of the Hammer horror films at Bray studios.

INDIA

This happy situation continued until early 1945 when, having been told to prepare myself for a posting to East Africa, I found myself on the way to Greenock to embark on a troopship bound for Bombay. Out of a total of 13,000 troops on this ship there were only twenty three artillery officers and it was decided that with their gunnery knowledge they would have the honour of doing watches in the various gun positions on the boat, it being a defensively equipped merchant ship. Someone must have had a real grudge against me because I was given the position in the sharp end of the boat. I am not a good sailor and the bow position was not the place to be with the boat taking a course out into the Atlantic where the swell has to be seen to be believed. The troopship had previously been to the United States for refitting and was well stocked with all sorts of goodies including chocolate, something we had seen little of for years. The chocolate and the effect of the swell resulted in my lying prostrate at the bottom of the gun position not caring whether I lived or died. I gladly gave all my chocolate away and it was a long time before I could face chocolate again.
There were a fair number of a Spaniards on the boat returning to Gibraltar. They had been evacuated to England early in the war to get them away from the dangers of being in Gib, although they might, of course, have been taken to England for security reasons - I never really found out - but if it had been for safety reasons, as things turned out, they would have been safer in Gibraltar.

On arriving at Gibraltar, someone decided that the other 13,000 were just as capable of looking out for any enemy ships as the artillery officers, especially as there were by now no enemy ships in the Mediterranean. With no duties and no responsibilities I enjoyed what was to be a Mediterranean cruise and, beyond the Med, through the Red Sea to Aden and then to India. My lasting memory of the Red Sea and particularly Aden was how red it all was - the land, of course, not the water!

We were three or four days out from Bombay when the war in Europe ended and,
after docking and spending a few hours in Bombay (my first ever Chinese meal), we were on our way to the major transit camp at Deolali. We were there privileged to have the services of one Shankar who was to be our bearer - one bearer to about four officers. He quickly established his entrepreneurial qualities by informing us that his shoe cleaning brushes etc were very old and he would need new ones. Having given him a substantial amount of rupees, he then spent the rest of our time in Deolali, about a week, cleaning our shoes with the oldest, grottiest set of brushes ever seen. He would, of course, have done this with every group that went through his hands and one day, no doubt, would have, by Indian bearer standards, become quite wealthy. I've no doubt they were all at it but it was a good introduction to the way things were conducted.
Soon after landing in Bombay we had time to have a look around and, having eventually dismissed the crowds of children who were begging or offering their older sisters for our enjoyment, noticed the number of buildings which were heavily stained with red up to a height of about three or four feet. We were told by the waiters in the Chinese restaurant that the stains were caused by the blood of martyrs. We later learned that they were caused by the spit from the many people who chewed betel nuts.

One of the first things I asked for at Deolali was a posting East of Dacca for the very good reason that rates of pay were higher if you were stationed there. This however produced no response from the Army and I landed up in Poona with a permanent posting to a unit that was booked for the inevitable invasion of Malaya. They were an anti-aircraft unit but with 40mm Bofors light guns, not the heavy guns I had been used to. Their task was to put these guns, self-propelled, on the back of Morris trucks down on the invasion beach and protect the invading troops from low-flying Japanese aircraft. So here I was with guns I knew nothing about, with troops whose language I couldn't speak and who had already completed their combined operations training. The prospect was not attractive. However, some progress was made learning Urdu and some knowledge of the guns added to a hope that things might turn out all right in the end. They did, of course.

We had waterproofed the trucks and equipment, had sent them to Bombay harbour to be loaded on the ships and were ourselves preparing to embark soon with the date for the invasion set, as I later found out, for September 9th. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs ended the war on August 15''', about a week before we were due to set sail. In the end we sent one battery of about 250 men who were all Punjabi Mussulmen (Muslims) to do the landing and the two Rajput batteries stayed in India.

Our billet was a place called Gulunche about 35 miles from Poona. There followed a year's holiday, playing football, cricket, and arranging concert parties and, all in all, having a very good time. Memories include the frequent playing of the Grieg piano concerto on a wind-up gramophone, being stung by a scorpion, finding a snake asleep under the lid of my 'thunder box' or portable toilet, and having eating contests with the Indian officers. I developed a liking for the Indian food we were served and some of the desserts were delicious.

At this time I found out my younger brother was stationed in Madras, although I didn't have an address to contact him. We were miles apart yet luck was to play a part. With a not very serious eye on what I might do for a living in civilian life, I applied for an introductory school teaching course to be held in Bangalore, a delightful city where walking through the avenues in the warm evening with the smell of jasmine in the air was a wonderful experience. During a visit to a local N.A.A.F.I. canteen I was talking to some friends outside when I heard a piano being played. I said to my friends that I knew who was playing it - it would be my brother. And so it turned out. He was on a quick duty in Bangalore and we spent only an hour or two together.

During my stay in Bangalore I paid a few visits to schools in the city. The children were partly Indian and partly Malayan and Chinese I believe. I was very impressed by their apparent eagerness to learn; they were exceptionally bright and uncommonly enthusiastic about the lessons being taught - a quite enlightening experience.

Poverty in India was of course widely apparent and I had the impression that it was accepted as being a way of life set out for the people of India and accepted indeed in a fatalistic way by the people themselves. The British 'sahib' had certainly trained the natives to be servile and wealthy Indians were glad to go along with this. The sight of maimed children was a common thing and I was assured that many children would have been deliberately maimed soon after birth to enable their parents to beg more successfully.

Not long before it was time for me to come home, and with independence clearly about to happen, one of the sad phenomena was the educated Anglo-Indians who spoke perfect Urdu but tried to make their speech in this language sound halting and imperfect in order to make themselves appear more English. It was being said at the time that the future of Anglo-Indians in India after independence would be difficult. How true this was I never really established, but certainly there were a fair number of 'Anglos' on the boat coming home to make their life in England.

By now I had been made a Captain with the overall responsibility for the Quartermasters stores, not a difficult task as no accounting had been in vogue during the war in the Far East, although an entirely different situation existed in the U.K. where literally every bootlace had to be accounted for. This was to have hilarious consequences when, just before leaving India in June, the Army decided it was about time they started accounting but, no records having been kept, the opening stock could be anything that the Captain Q.M. wanted it to be. I tried to explain this delightful situation to the Captain Q.M. who was to take over from me having coming out from the U.K. but he simply didn't grasp what a joy this was to a Q.M. I can see him now when I was riding on the back of a lorry on my way to Poona station to catch the train to Bombay en route to England. He was running down the road after the lorry shouting some incomprehensible nonsense which sounded like 鈥淗ow do I account for this?鈥� with a sheaf of papers in his hand. A suitable two-fingered reply was all he got, stupid man.

GOING HOME

Another holiday cruise through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Med brought me back to England, docking at Liverpool where I was issued with my chalk-striped blue demob suit and then the train to London where my wife and daughter were waiting for me. The little girl however was not at all impressed by this stranger and it took some time for us to get acquainted.

Six years then - what did it all add up to? I had an easy war and faced very little danger. Certainly thousands of people faced more danger than I did and many of them were civilians in places like the East End of London. I found adapting to soldiering easy and this, of course, helped to make life comfortable. There were one or two unpleasant situations, Plymouth, Dover, being blown off a motorbike by a rocket on the East Coast, whether as a result of blast or fright I am still not sure. And I volunteered for some silly things, such as flying a Taylorcraft fluster monoplane over the Burma jungle spotting for the artillery - I heard nothing more of this. This came out of a desire to do something vaguely heroic without thinking too much of what was involved. Many people have far more reasons for hating those six years than I.

The opportunity arose to continue soldiering in India and making the Army a career. Little or no thought was given to this as I thought only of returning home to my wife and daughter.

The humour and comradeship were worth having. I suppose that a wartime situation brings out the desirable 'help each other' qualities. On the whole I am glad that I went through it, although I don't think I matured much as a result. I remember on the boat going to India the haunted look on the faces of some of the troops who were returning to the jungle after U.K. leave. What, I wondered were they feeling, having to go back to something that most of us on that boat had never experienced and had no knowledge of its effect on men.

One last thought - my decorations for my part were Victory Medal and the Defence of Great Britain Medal. My daughter's godfather who was a part-time fireman and had never left his front door received exactly the same.

Arthur Finn 1994

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