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Captain Alfred Richardson ISO JP
His story of wartime India in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Royal Corps of Signals Eastern Command. OC No.4 Company.

Captain Alfred Richardson was second in command to Major Henderson who was a solicitor from Aberdeen. However Major Henderson was demobbed first and Alfred took over command of the Company.

Background

Alfred Richardson was called up in 1942 when he was 28 years old. Prior to this he had been in a reserved occupation working for the Ministry of Pensions. He was initially sent to a North Wales camp in Prestatyn where he applied to become an officer. Everyone had to do four weeks of basic infantry training first and after that he was sent to join the Signals training unit in Henley on Thames.
He subsequently had to do three months in OCTU (The Officer Cadet Training Unit) most of which was at Mhow in central India.

Before that he met Elsie May Davis, whose father worked in the local Co-op. One alarming incident Alfred remembers was slipping out of the Davis house in Highfield Street,Middleton, near Manchester, clutching a small packet of butter (highly sought after in the days of rationing) when the whole sky lit up, and anti-aircraft guns started firing because a German bomber came over and was dropping bombs. In those early days there was little defence against the the bombers as the British had not yet built enough night-fighter planes to shoot down them down . Alfred arrived home safely after dodging from building to building to escape the bombs .

In 1942, shortly after he had been conscripted in the army he married Elsie May Davis. He had applied for three days special leave from the army for the purpose. They married in Parkfield Church in Archer Park, Middleton, (now in Greater Manchester) and went for a three-day honeymoon in Blackpool.

On the boat trip out to India, their ships were escorted by destroyers almost to America to avoid the German U Boats, and were then part of the first convoy to go through the Mediterranean (previously the Mediterranean had been held by the Germans and Italians, and convoys had to travel round the tip of South Africa).

The troop ships were packed and Alfred remembers going below to the troop decks and saying to a colleague that the decks were fairly spacious and he did not know why there should be any complaints about lack of room. His colleague told him that the troops slept in the same area where they ate so Alfred realised that all was not as he had thought. He had assumed that the men had separate sleeping quarters!
The troops spent most of their time on deck, talking and looking out to sea, but had some duties cleaning. One of the worst parts of the voyages, both going out to India and returning home, was having to wash and bathe in seawater, in which it was impossible to get a lather.

Work in India

There were several placements in India but for the main part Alfred was stationed in Bengal at Khargpur, where the remit was to keep the lines of communication open between Delhi and Calcutta and between Calcutta and Madras. Sections of the telegraph lines on which the messages were sent were stolen from time to time by the locals who melted them down and made copper ornaments from them. Alfred's company had patrols out to prevent the thefts as far as possible

The troops lived in cane huts called "bashers", as did the officers,separately. Alfred remembers that in some units the bearers (civilian waiters) brought in a cup of tea so that it could be drunk in bed in the morning. At one station he was even shaved in bed, half asleep by a fierce looking Pathan wielding a cut-throat razor. The luxury treatment however applied only to the old Indian Army stations They would be given tea and fruit for breakfast including mangoes, and curries made of chicken, lamb or vegetables at night. At one station the bearer would make patterns of coloured rice to decorate the table before they ate. There were several times when rice was denied to the troops however because there was famine and the rice was given to the local population.

Alfred received 100 rupees at one point for passing a test in Urdu.This was encouragement for English troops to learn the language Some of.the Indian Army officers were known as VCOs (Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers) roughly equivalent to warrant officers in the British army, but there were also Indian King's Commissioned officers

On their days off Major Henderson and he would go for a drink at the Bengal and Nagpur Railway Club. This was run by Eurasians, ie half cast people who tended to be estranged a little from other parts of society. Towards the end of the war they started to have American beer, which was much better quality. All the troops smoked and had an allocation, but Alfred was a pipe smoker and there was no pipe tobacco so he gave up which could have saved him from subsequent possible ill health.

D Day in Europe meant very little to the troops in India who thought they would be out there ten years longer. There was a lot of Japanese propaganda telling the Indian population that Japan would win the war and that then India would be set free from the British. The only reason the war finished earlier was because of the atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which, regrettable as they were, according to Alfred also saved thousands of lives because Japan capitulated and the war finished much earlier than every one expected.

On the journey back to England (three weeks on the ship again), the drink had to be carefully controlled, but there was a lot of singing nevertheless. That was in 1946 and Alfred recalls the most popular song was “Roll me over, in the clover’ ending with ‘then lay me down and do it again!’ Alfred remembers that on one occasion whilst acting as troop deck officer of the day he had to report on the state of the troop deck to the Captain of the ship on the bridge (to say that everything was in order) This was when they were going through the Suez Canal and he could not get the Captain to listen because it was so difficult to steer through the canal in the large ship that the captain was concentrating 100% on the task in hand.

Back Home

Alfred’s wife May worked at Mather and Platts in Chadderton on munitions. There was no choice about where to work and the Co-op biscuit works where May used to work closed down during the war. May was set to work on making bomb detonators and they worked a twelve-hour shift with only two half hour breaks. They were standing all that time in a huge cold draughty shed.
May always tells the story that there were just 300 women and thousands of men, so it was impossible to go to the canteen because of the ‘cat calling’ and unwanted attention they would receive.

After the War

May and Alf went to live in digs at Cleveleys near Blackpool whilst Alfred got established in the civil service once more. They were there in the fierce winter of ’46 - ’47 when the snow lasted until May, and tell stories of huddling together under a coat in front of a one bar electric fire. The following year after the birth of their daughter Ann they moved to Bispham where they spent many happy years. They now reside in Poulton le Fylde.

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