大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Fred Hastings, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
====

[when the war started]
I was working in Monaghan at that time. I joined up in 1940, Nov 40. I was called up in April of 41, to Blackpool, and joined the RAF. I did training in Kirkham, Lancashire, and then was posted to 111 sqdn at North Weal near Stanstead airport. I served there about 6 months, then went to Tealing, Dundee, Scotland. I was there about a year. Operational training unit, training young pilots.

From there I went, I was posted then abroad and I went to west Kirby. From Liverpool we sailed to Durban. The destination then was secret, or meant to be. It was India. When we arrived at Durban the boat for India had gone. We were late, because of a breakdown in one of the troopships in the convoy.

We went to Bombay, and from Bombay we were posted to Nagpur in the central province of India. Repairing the aircraft 鈥� liberators and hurricanes and some spitfires. From there we went to Quetta which is in Pakistan, northern Pakistan. And from there we went to Chittagong, which is now Bangladesh 鈥� it was then east Bengal.
I was there for a good while. We were out to the Burma border, servicing aircraft for the various sqdns.
That would be 1943. And then when I was there I was going on a trip to Calcutta, and you cross the Ramaputa river. It was v wide, you needed a ferry. So what you did, you hitchhiked. 4 of us were going. Hitchhiked an American plane. When we arrived there they said they hadn鈥檛 a trip for us that day, we had to stay overnight. They didn鈥檛 give us mosquito nets so we were attacked with them. So we got an attack of malaria, and was in hospital for a while. I was in hospital when VE day, when the Germans surrendered.

After a while we were sent then to Madras in southern India. From there there was about 陆 mil troops waiting for the attack on Java, which is now Indonesia, and Malaya and Singapore.
Then somebody said 鈥淭hey鈥檝e dropped the atomic bomb on Japan 鈥� Hiroshima!鈥�
So then within a week the Japs surrendered.

But the attack was supposed to take place on the 3rd of Sept, and we carried it out. We landed then on the beaches. Some of us had to wade actually over, a place called Port Sweatenham.
From there we went to Kuala Lumpur.
The japs were surrendering, coming in with white flags, convoys of them. We had been a bit scared that there would be sporadic fighting, but there wasn鈥檛. They were quite subdued, the troops who were there. We were there a short while, then went to Singapore.

That was when the war ended. There was [a big celebration]. It was quite a relief. They expected, the japs were fierce fighters, didn鈥檛 take prisoners to kindly, and you know the way they suffered. And then it was a big relief when the POWs were released, some of them were in terrible condition, the way they had been treated. So then we were there quite a while in Singapore. We got home, we had been there nearly 10 months after that. It was a bit of a disappointment, but it was fine. We survived it. Just with the malaria, but the malaria didn鈥檛 repeat itself luckily enough.
I went back home then, got married. And settled down in Belfast. Been there since.
I was in a Naval air station, got a job there at Sydenham
Got qualifications, was able to teach engineering at the North Down technical college.

The worst thing was the insects and the heat. A lot of poverty there. Especially Bangladesh and Calcutta. It was terrible.

The train journeys there could take, one of them took 10 days. This other one was going from Karachi to Nagpur. Coming through this desert, the Sin desert, about 3am. There was this awful rattle outside, it sounded like gunfire. All the native Indians jumped up and got quite excited.
鈥淲hat happened?鈥�
What happened was, the train had hit a camel. All its hide and all had got wrapped round the wheels. A terrible mess. The driver thought there was a man on it. That proved wrong. The police came and everything.
The native Indians thought they were attacked by armed Dacoits who attacked the train a year before and robbed the people on the train. But that wasn鈥檛 the case. It was just a camel.

[American planes?]
We worked on the avengers and liberators, yes. We had Mosquitos 鈥� British planes. Blenheims. A lot of them.

[Chindits and the High Road to China?]
That was after that.

There was trouble in Malaya. The Chinese were there at the time. I saw a lot of their troops, we were told to avoid them. When the japs attacked china, the Chinese surrendered. China was sorta split between Gen Chiang-Kai-shek and these comminust Maoists. There was a battle going on there. I think that was one of the reasons we held back there.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.