大象传媒

Born in Chelsea and taken to India soon after in 1930, I lived in Bombay. At seven I was taken back to board at the Prep department of Brighton Hove & Sussex Grammar School. War started, covered trenches were dug on the playing field near the 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥� vegetable patch. I saw the arrival of men rescued from Dunkirk camping out on the school playground.

At the end of the summer term I went off to stay with Aunts and Uncles but then my parents decided that I should join them in India. My father鈥檚 elder brother took me to Liverpool Street Station, gave me ten shillings for the journey and put me on a train with other youngsters going to Liverpool. I boarded the P&O Line ship, SS Stratheden. Thus, at the age of ten, I set sail for India on a scheme arranged by Thomas Cook.

We sailed from Liverpool on the night of 4th September 1940, having experienced an air raid (or was it just a siren warning) that day. On waking next morning we were out of sight of land off the coast of Northern Ireland. There were ships as far as the eye could see, zigzagging slowly at the speed of the slowest tramp. Several well-known liners of the day were amongst them; the SS Strathmore, Strathnaver and Stratheden, the grey-painted Andes on her maiden voyage and the Empress of Britain. I believe the latter was torpedoed off Ireland on her way home. At least three navy ships escorted the convoy under command of the senior naval officer aboard the distinctive three-funnel cruiser, HMS Norfolk.

First stop on route to the Cape was Freetown, Siera Leone, the nearest colonial port on the West Coast of Africa to refuel the convoy. Many, if not all the ships, were able to anchor safely in the large sheltered harbour bay. From there we set off to Capetown, zigzagging all the way.

There were 350 children destined for India and other colonies en route to Australia. There were some eight young ladies described as Matrons in charge but we rarely saw them. Also on board as far as Capetown were 350 sailors going to join a Royal Navy ship at Durban. Parents were supposed to feel their children would be safe in an emergency. However very few of the ratings could swim but they were kind and gave us sweets and biscuits from their canteen.

My ten bob (shillings) pocket money was soon spent in the expensive shop on board. With the other boys in my cabin we decided to do clothes washing for the sailors and we were rewarded with goodies from the canteen. When all the nice things ran out, we were paid with packets of five Woodbine cigarettes but while none of us liked them, we did learn how to smoke!

Our convoy had to stay at Capetown for about a week to wait for a passenger liner to join us after repairs back in Liverpool. That ship was a veteran of WW1 when it had its stern mast hit leaving the stump in place for the rest of its service. It was here that the convoy split with the faster ships, almost entirely the passenger liners, steaming into the Indian Ocean under the protection of an Australian armed merchant ship. This vessel had more than the one 6-inch (?) gun mounted on its stern that the liners disported and anti-aircraft machine guns too.

In no time, it seemed, the six week long adventure ended for me in Bombay where I was met by my Mother. We were soon on our way home by train Delhi for me to settle into the European way of life in India before going to a school in Srinagar, Kashmir in the late spring of 1941. I went to the Sheik Bagh (garden) prep school opened by Hugh Tyndall-Biscoe. His father, the Dorset Missionary, had brought Christianity to the region and established a number of schools to teach craft skills. The prep school catered for some of the many children like me who had come out from Britain to escape the bombing, reduce the pressure on family, friends and organisations who would otherwise have had added responsibilities and distractions due to our unaccompanied presence.

A wonderful but educationally limited year in that beautiful land was followed by four years in Simla, now Shimla, the Summer capital of undivided India catching up with much interrupted learning. I went to Bishop Cotton School there and met some famous people who were honoured guets at the Annual Speech days. Amongst those whose autographs I managed to collect were Viceroy of India Field Marshall Wavell and Eugenie his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten Vicereine and wife of Lord Louis the subsequent Viceroy, Mr Rajagopalachari, Governor General of the Dominion of India and the wounded Rifleman Ganju Lama VC MM, of the 1/7 Gurkha Rifles. The latter was in an Idian Military Hospital In Lucknow in 1945.

My education was concluded back in England at school in Cambridge to be immediately followed by National Service in the Army and a career that finally ended over thirty years later.

My father, a WW1 veteran, joined up again in the Indian Engineers. Too old to fight or be active in other ways, he was made a senior technical recruiting officer in the rank of Colonel, Indian Engineers for the duration. He was posted to Lucknow where many of the recruits he saw came from Northern India and Nepal.

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