大象传媒

far as our duties were concerned, we had to work hard and long hours. We were at the end of the supply line-First Europe -2nd Middle East- the rest nowhere. This applied not only to equipment but to 'Bodies'. We managed to muster three "watches". Our only Corporal, late of Alor Star and Butterworth, (a 'regular' with a droll sense of humour) was in charge of one watch. I was in charge of another and Arthur Mallard was in charge of the other. With high ranking officers in charge of Arms, Signals and the Americans and with the latter only working half the hours we did, it was a ridiculous situation. In spite of the fact that Mallard and Tweedale were made ACI by Parry, our Signals Officer (himself only P/O), it didn't iron out the inequalities. We sorted this out ourselves by virtually ignoring rank. P/O Parry said once " I don鈥檛 mind you not saluting but I wish you wouldn鈥檛 wink at me when high ranking officers are around." We saw P/O Parry about once a month. He had the good sense to leave us to do what we knew how to do- and he didn鈥檛. With understaffing, a heavy workload, and an accumulated knowledge of communication, we were in a very strong position and we knew it.

After a few months he called Mallard and me to see him. " you really must apply for promotion to LAC. Otherwise the situation is ridiculous seeing the responsibilities you carry" (Flattery!!!) What he didn't seem to realise was that most of our traffic office Signals Personnel were either Local government Officers (like myself), Civil Servants, Teachers, Insurance Workers or in some other profession where our pay was made up at home. The more the RAF paid us the less went into our banks at home - and so promotion was meaningless.

Anyway I told him that as I would have to pass a trade test board to be promoted to LAC, it really wasn't on as I had forgotten what little I ever knew about Radios and maintenance. The result was that for the next few days P/O Parry kept popping up in the hope of imparting gems of wisdom re the equipment. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to know much about it himself but his final sally always was "it prevents feedback from anode to grid鈥�. So much so that when he was sighted it was a case of "here comes feedback" or "how's his Anode today?". This mysterious statement was revealed for what it was when I went for my TTB. He had the station CO with him and the station warrant officer. It all looked very serious and official. "I shall ask you three questions" he said. "Your routing of traffic and knowledge of Morse is not in question so I shall ask you things of a practical nature". The first question I haven't a clue about, but I replied "It presents feedback from anode to grid".

-"Good!" said he, looking very relieved - "and how would you charge this" and he pushed a wet battery towards me with the printed instructions on the battery facing me - "excellent!". Finally, "If your transmitter went down, what would you do?" - "send for a mechanic".

Passed!! Thus I became an LAC. A rare case of promotion this side of the ocean. So cheer up my lads "bless 'em all".

I've always been good at working out Duty Rosters. (it loomed later when I was back home and chief collector). So by general consent it was left to me to work them out. The main requirement was that everyone must have one day off a week to go into Calcutta if he so required. My system gave them one day off in three, but meant two days pretty hard work.

Duty Roster

Day One: 0800hrs - 1200hrs -------------------- 1800hrs - 2400hrs -
Day Two: 1200hrs - 1800hrs 0001hrs - 0800hrs
Day Three Off Duty All Day

Dan and I and Bob Stannard soon found friends in the Cantonment. I was installed as organist and choir master at the local church, which duties I was able to fill at least two weeks out of three. As a result I became very friendly with the Rev. R. Brown and his wife Dora and often had dinner at their house. When he was on furlough, he was replaced by Rev. Firth who was equally friendly. The Browns lived at 6 River Side. At 26 River Side lived Doctor and Mrs Lowe. He was a specialist in Tropical diseases and gave record recitals of classical music most Wednesday evenings to which everyone was invited and light refreshments were offered. Usually between ten to twenty servicemen would come and every programme ended with a short piece of Bach, either Edwin Fischer in a Bach Concerto or a Stockowsky orchestral transcription. Dan and I got to know them very well and in addition to the Wednesdays we were often invited to partake of evening dinner with them when the records he played would be those he daren't play to the less sophisticated music lover. This was where I first came to know the Bach B minor Mass well. I was also occasionally invited by Mr and Mrs Glover. He was an engineer with more simple music tastes and indeed he once flattered me by expressing the opinion that my performance of Handel's "Pastoral Symphony" was one of his great musical experiences. A heart of gold, if not much taste musically. Another regular source of entertainment was the station "Cinema", with a different film every night.

All in all then, Barrackpore was very kind to me and I had very little spare time which almost all went in letter writing. A trip to Calcutta once a week became almost a ritual. Coming off duty at 8am we could either sleep 'til lunch and go in by the RAF bus or train in the early afternoon - or forget sleep and go in by train after breakfast. Trains were frequent and cheap and the RAF bus returned from Calcutta at Midnight. We came to know Calcutta very well. Our routine - first of all the "India Coffee House" for some lovely coffee and buns - then sight seeing, shopping in the Hogg Market, a visit to the Bank or Post Office, Chowringhi, the Maidon, a cinema and finally a meal at Fresco's or Firpos and then back home leaving around Midnight. If we returned by train, a call at a roadside stall for a cool drink would be made (the bottles were kept reasonable cool by being kept in piles of wet sawdust) and then we would step over or between the sleepers in the forecourts of Seldar Station and then on through the Indian night to Barrackpore Station where we would take a rickshaw to "G" Block, or if we were hard up we would walk.

G Block was a large two storied barrack block and also contained the RAF Post Office and a small canteen on the ground floor. I was on the top floor and got increasingly organised as time went by. Heavy wooden doors at each end of each floor were closed at night and barred by a heavy wooden bar. I鈥檇 got an end bed, found room for a charpoy and trestle table for writing on with a lamp on and a chair. The beds were the usual wooden frames, string charpoys with mosquito nets. Bats, or "Flying Foxes", as we called them, were apt to fly around at night. I shared a "Bearer", A Dhobi", had regular calls from the "Cha Wallah" who had buns and cakes as well as tea - none of it exactly gourmet - and even for a time had myself shaved in bed in the morning.

On the other side were the insects, mosquitoes, disease, and over all - the heat. These things were ever present. Round the year, the shade temperature varied from about sixty degrees (which seemed to us to be very cold in the early hours of a Winter morning) to a hundred and twenty degrees in the summer just prior to the monsoons. Before the monsoons, for weeks it would be unbearably hot with steely grey skies and the relentless sun. In normal times, of course, all sensible people who could afford to do so, had abandoned Calcutta and Barrackpore for a Hill Station round about the beginning of May and wouldn't return until September when the rains and the heat had dissipated. We, unfortunately, had no such choice. No one can appreciate what the coming of the monsoons means even for ordinary living unless they have spent the three previous months in the plains of Bengal.

It got so that the sheer effort needed to walk to the cook house at midday wasn't on. The thought of a hot meal was revolting. Then at last, faintly in the distance there appears a fine line of cloud. Lightning flashes soundlessly and spectacularly. Then, at last, an occasional drop of rain as big as an old penny on the ground. The wind begins to blow, cool and steady. Then suddenly, the heavens open, and its all water, everywhere. Rain such as we never experience it in England - but now welcome. Even in the monsoons it doesn't rain all the time - there are fine and dry intervals - but even so about forty inches of rain falls in three months - sixty three inches in the full year.

Manchester gets 33.8 inches in a full year. Cherrapung's (the wettest place in the world, between Comilla and Shillong) gets over 425 inches of rain a year, which is almost unbelievable. Monsoons and Tropical storms represent weather excesses such as we've never seen in England, but they are normal in Bengal. What really tears the place apart is the Hurricane or Tropical Cyclone. They require an ocean temperature of 79 degrees and these conditions are fairly common in the Bay of Bengal where there is more destruction than anywhere else in the world. Only once did it happen whilst I was in Barrackpore, but it was certainly an unforgettable experience.

We had closed and fastened the heavy doors in the billet to keep out the rain. Suddenly the wind and rain intensified - the billet doors were burst open by its force and all the beds were flung like drift wood to the far end of the billet. Eventually we managed to force the doors back and barricade them and then we started to re-introduce some order into the chaos inside the billet. The noise, the rain, the lightening are astonishing. Eventually "came the dawn" and the hurricane passed. The mess outside was alarming and we wondered what could have happened to those who were in less substantial buildings than ours. Well! Trees were uprooted all over the place, some laying across the roads. Many of the more flimsy buildings had disappeared, many others were wrecked. Low lying buildings, such as the houses in the Cantonment were OK even if there was damage to shutters and/or trees uprooted in their gardens. The governors residence (mostly used by the higher ranking officers) and the billets had only received superficial damage, but otherwise - what a mess!! There was also the inevitable flooding.
A couple of days later - after the road had been cleared - I went into Calcutta and not only were there fallen and broken trees all over the place but the telegraph posts (metal) had all been bent at right angles at a certain height, and of course, were completely U\S with the wires broken and tangled.

India is used to disasters, which rarely rate more than a few lines in English newspapers. Life continued, except for the unfortunate who lost their lives.

The river Hooghly was over a quarter of a mile across at Barrackpore. There was no regular organised ferry service to Serampore across on the other bank, but there was the native boat man with his small boat manipulated by a kind of punt-come-oar who would take you across the river for a negotiated fee. This we did on a few occasions. Serampore consisted of just one street, leading from the river to the railway. It had a cinema showing Indian films, with no subtitles as the customers were almost entirely Indian. One thing I remember was that Char (tea) was brought round during the interval (one anna) and poured into small earthenware bowls which everyone threw away after use. How they made a profit I don't know.

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