大象传媒

People in story: Kenneth Hulbert, Royal Army Medical Corps
Location of story: India

Taken from the diaries of Kenneth Hulbert (1912-2003)
Served in the Royal Army Medical Corp, World War II

This is the fourth instalment in a series of excerpts from the war diaries of my father, Kenneth Hulbert, adapted for 鈥楾he People鈥檚 War鈥� website. Kenneth Hulbert served as a lieutenant, then captain and finally a major, working for hospitals in Egypt, the Sudan and India. I edited his diaries and published them as a book 鈥業 will lift up mine eyes鈥� just after he died in May 2003.

It was February 1942. Captain Kenneth Hulbert had returned to Egypt after sixth months in Sudan to a camp on the Suez Canal. His orders were to board a ship called The Andes, bound for the east. Rumours were that it the destination was Singapore, but the island was captured by the Japanese on 15 February. The ship was grossly overcrowded with 4000 passengers, mostly Australians of 7th Division who were in the siege of Tobruk. Just before sailing some Australians heard that the destination was rumoured to be Java. An American naval officer in the dining room told them that now the Japanese had Singapore they could attack anything within a thousand miles. He said that it would take the USA seven years to rebuild its fleet again after Pearl Harbour.

The Andes sailed out of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. She was the only ship in sight with no escort and so was moving very fast at 26 knots. This made the ship vibrate so much that the cutlery rattled in the dining room. They arrived at Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) on 27th February. The harbour was full of shipping and dominated by an enormous sign saying 鈥楲ipton鈥檚 tea鈥�.

On 1st March the medical team were told that Number 18 General Hospital 鈥� the unit that Captain Hulbert was assigned to - was to leave The Andes and board another ship 鈥� the Mendoza. It was a filthy ship that had been used for the white slave run from Marseilles to South America. The crew called her 鈥渢he bitch鈥�. It was crawling with cockroaches, so the troops were given permission to sleep on deck.

The condition of the ship wasn鈥檛 the only problem. No one had unloaded the medical equipment, which was now on its way to Australia on The Andes. Without it there was no chance of functioning again as a hospital. So one of the officers had to stay behind to try and get the ship with the equipment to turn back or retrieve the equipment.

5th March
On as orderly officer today. We are sailing north up the west coast of India with just one corvette. This really is a miserable ship. The sea, however, is calm and there is sun all day and marvellous stars to see at night if you can鈥檛 sleep lying on the deck. How wonderful the night sky is here. At 4am the sailors hose down the deck and they don鈥檛 bother to wake anyone up first, so we all sleep with one eye and one ear open to avoid getting soaked. I hope that this voyage does not take too long.

10th March
Sailing up the west coast of India. We arrived at Karachi at midday. The ship bumped the side of the wooden quay and did some damage. Then a message came, saying 鈥楶roceed back to Bombay鈥�. The captain nearly turned the air purple! However, it is reassuring to see the Union Jack flying.

Eventually, three days later they disembarked at Bombay and boarded a train on the quayside. The joke going around was that would all end up in Poona 鈥� the spiritual home of the British army in India. It was a bit of a music hall joke, because Poona was where one found the stereotype of the die-hard colonial army colonels, brigadiers and major-generals sitting on verandas sipping pink gin. The phrase they all quoted was, 鈥淕ad sir, when I was in Poona!鈥�. And Poona it was, which caused great hilarity.

The officers arrived at Kirkee 鈥� an important arsenal town just to the west of Poona 鈥� where they were billeted in an empty hospital. It was made up of single-storey temporary buildings with concrete floors. Poona was nothing like the glamorous place they had imagined. Despite its reputation as being the Mecca of the British army it was drab, dirty and dull. This was the watering hole of the British sahibs and memsahibs 鈥� some of the most class-ridden people in British India. They were also dreadful snobs, used to a privileged way of life and regarded the Indians as 鈥渢he natives鈥�. Times had changed little since E. M. Forster wrote 鈥楢 Passage to India鈥�. The women were as bad as, if not worse than, the men. When the Queen Alexandra nursing sisters went to the club wearing their uniforms one memsahib was heard to say 鈥淲hat are these charwomen doing in here?鈥� The medical officers all felt that the apathy of Singapore 鈥� the complacency that led to its falling to the Japanese 鈥� was here as well and wished they were back in the Middle East.

This was pre-monsoon season when the weather was at its hottest and driest. The landscape was dry, brown and dusty. Every so often a small whirlwind came along and a column of dust went spiralling up into the air, moving like a drunken man. The wind sometimes came tearing through the camp, slamming all the doors and taking tiles off the roof.

9th April
There was heavy rain today 鈥� the first I have seen since last September in the Sudan. They call these the 鈥榤ango rains鈥�, because they herald the ripening of the mangoes. It is a kind of little monsoon and doesn鈥檛 last long.

Then the failure of the Cripps Mission to India was announced. Sir Stafford Cripps, a lawyer and labour politician, was sent by the British Government in March 1942 to try and persuade the Indian people to cooperate with the British in the war effort, on the understanding that they would receive independence when it was over. His proposals, which included post-war general elections, were rejected by Congress and the Muslim League. This accelerated the anti-British feelings and worse was to follow.

14th April
The news is bad. Gandhi and the Congress are going to start a civil disobedience campaign. The sign 鈥楺uit India鈥� is painted on the roads and walls. This just what we feel that we would like to do.

13th May
The whole atmosphere here is depressing with a touch of unreality. The V for Victory signs are up everywhere, along with 鈥楺uit India鈥� signs.

At the hospital life was a routine of surgical rounds and routine orderly duties, but the organisation was somewhat chaotic. The total capacity at the hospital was over 2000 beds. Each ward was an army barrack block 鈥� a large, stone building on two floors with thick walls and revolving electric fans in the roof. Then the monsoon began. And it rained and rained.

By now life had settled into a pattern and Kenneth was busy at work, which helped to take his mind off Jackie and the worsening political situation. Every morning the medical officers met with the Colonel in his office and then started the day鈥檚 work of ward rounds, orderly duties and operations. Many of the patients had malaria, dysentery and diabetes. On several occasions Kenneth had to visit detention barracks to inspect the prisoners 鈥� a rather grim experience. Time off was spent on walking into Poona to go shopping, visit the club, the cinema or the Chinese restaurant.

9th August
Gandhi has been arrested and is detained here in Poona in the Aga Khan鈥檚 Palace. All the other Congress leaders have also been arrested.

This produced an instantaneous reaction among the people. There were disturbances and riots in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Allahabad, Kanpur, Benares and many other places, as well as in Poona. All the British in Poona were in a potentially highly dangerous situation. Anti-British feelings were running at fever pitch and Kenneth and his fellow-officers were right in the middle of the cauldron at the place where Gandhi was imprisoned. People began destroying government buildings and anything that symbolised British imperialism. As the news spread from the towns to the villages, they started to blow up bridges, remove railway tracks and cut telephone and telegraph wires. Trains were hijacked and draped in national flags, and there were physical attacks on Europeans.

12th August
There have been riots in Poona today but nothing happened near the hospital.

13th November
Cable came saying that my cousin, Jeremy Smsith, the son of my mother鈥檚 brother Tom, had been killed at El Alamein. He had been serving in the South African Army.

This was an important victory 鈥� the first major defeat of the Germans by the British on land, though a tragedy for Kenneth鈥檚 Uncle Tom and his family. It was, of course, at El Alamein that one of the most significant battles of the war was fought. The involvement of the USA after Pearl Harbour in 1941, the Russian counter-offensive in Stalingrad (now St. Petersburg) on 19th November and other victories signaled a turning point in the war. The Grand Alliance of Britain, Russia and the USA, formed in 1941, was starting to become a serious threat to the Germans and Italians.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of work to do at the hospital. Kenneth was in charge of two huts with around 80 patients. It was a heavy workload; there were notes to keep up-to-date and no time for an afternoon siesta. He was mostly working as a physician but also doing some anaesthetics and also a correspondence course for the FRCS. It was a hard slog, compounded by the fact that it took six months to get answers back from England.

19th December
I have bought a skeleton. The procedure was to go to the Indian Medical College in Poona and go round the back to see the anatomy room attendant. He will supply a complete skeleton for 16 rupees (about 拢1). The agreement is that he brings it to your room after dark, wrapped up in a dhoti cloth. Now I have to paint on all the attachments.

25th December, Christmas Day
The third Christmas of the war. I went to a service in the hospital chapel in the morning, then back to my ward where the Indian orderlies came and hung garlands 鈥� horrible wet flowers 鈥� around my neck. Christmas dinner was served on the ward at midday, but ours was a rather a poor do. In the evening we heard the King鈥檚 speech on the radio.

The political situation was worsening. In February Gandhi, who was still imprisoned at the Aga Khan鈥檚 Palace in Poona, started a fast. By the 21st February he was gravely ill. The diary entry for that day reads simply: There is a very tense atmosphere here in Poona.

The situation for the British, particularly in Poona, was very serious indeed. They were in a potentially highly volatile position. The popular response to the news of Gandhi鈥檚 fast was immediate. All over the country there were demonstrations and strikes. Prisoners went on sympathetic hunger strikes. Newspapers like the Manchester Guardian and the Chicago Sun clamoured for Gandhi鈥檚 release. Then, on 1st March, Gandhi ended his fast. A few weeks later he was taken seriously ill with malaria and the Indian people demanded his immediate release. The British, believing him to be near death, conceded and released him. But this only heightened anti-British feeling still further.

Then, Kenneth was told that he was being posted to Number 72 Indian General Hospital in Lahore.

He left Poona early in the morning on 6th March 1943 and caught the Deccan Queen Express to Bombay. With time to spare in Bombay he went for a walk around the city and bought a Moffat鈥檚 translation of the Bible to read on the long journey to Lahore. After the beauty of the Western Ghats the scenery north from Bombay was flat and dull 鈥� just scrub, stones, rocks and empty rivers. The next day he was woken at 7am by a bearer with a tray of tea and toast. An hour later the train stopped at another station where the passengers climbed out and walked along the platform to the dining car for breakfast, as there were no corridors on Indian trains. This was repeated for every meal. The train reached Delhi at 9pm and, in the dark, Kenneth could just see the Red Fort. The station was swarming with people carrying tea trays that just popped through the window if anyone opened it. The next day the train passed through the Punjab where, from the window, he saw fields of waving corn and the Golden Temple of the Sikhs at Amritsar, just visible in the distance.

By the time Kenneth reached Lahore he had been travelling for 46 hours. He boarded a local train for Lahore Cantonment station and arrived at Number 72 Indian General Hospital. Lahore Cantonment was the British residential district, an attractive area of wide, tree-lined streets and white bungalows set in large, shady gardens. As usual, the staff arrived first and the equipment later. The hospital was just a group of tents on the maidan (open space) of the military area. Kenneth found he was the only Englishman there as all the other doctors were Indians.

By 11th March, the equipment was beginning to arrive and the hospital began to function. But at the beginning of May Kenneth received further orders to pack up and move. The route was north-east towards the foothills of the Himalayas.

Conversation on the train inevitably came round to the future of India. The Indian officers simply wanted to rule themselves, but didn鈥檛 know how to get over the Hindu-Muslim situation and felt that the division of India would be wrong. Partition, of course, is what happened four years later.

Many of the Indian troops had never been on a train. One of them pulled the communication cord and then protested his innocence; another threw a lump of wood out of the window and knocked a signalman senseless; and another leant out and smacked a woman with a stick. At one stop the Pathans in the unit got out a drum and did a war dance. At every station the train was besieged with children chanting, 鈥淣o momma, no poppa, no brother, no sister, no cousins, no uncles, no aunts. No food. Baksheesh鈥�.

Over the next few months, Kenneth Hulbert would witness famine andhuman suffering on a massive scale in what is now Bangladesh.

Instalment five follows.

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