大象传媒

I was 16 when the War started, then living at Canvey Island and attended Southend Grammar School. After Matriculation I got a job in the City of London with a firm of Chartered Accountants earning a weekly wage of 25 shillings for 5陆 days from which I had to pay my fare into London, buy my lunch, give my Mother a few shillings but I still had some left over for leisure!

My Father joined the War Reserve Constabulary and was involved with one of the first air raids of the War when German planes bombed the oil installations at Thames Haven. He retired from the Police on health grounds and we moved to Danbury in 1940. I couldn鈥檛 travel to London because of the transport restrictions (buses to Chelmsford station were infrequent and all services ceased at dusk) so I moved to London to lodge with friends. I became an ARP Messenger and then an ARP Warden. I experienced the first major raid on the East End when the house I was staying in (in West Kilburn) was damaged by a land mine then I moved to Shepherds Bush only to be firebombed out then onto Cricklewood.

Despite the nightly air raids my friends and I still enjoyed going to dances at the Hammersmith Palais and the Astoria, and listened to wonderful dance music from famous bands such as Oscar Rabin, Ted Heath, Harry Gold and Henry Hall. We used to return home late at night on the Tube and had to clamber over thousands of sleeping bodies on the platforms.

I joined up in 1941 for the RAF and the following year was posted to Blackpool for basic training as a Wireless Operator. After 3 months there I was sent to Yatesbury, Wiltshire to complete my training and posted to No 11 Group at Hornchurch. In November 1942 I was posted overseas and left Liverpool in a massive troop convoy. We traveled on the Orion, a pre war luxury liner converted to a troop carrier with no luxury left! Together with 200 men we slept and ate on a deck below the water line 鈥� sleeping on the floor, tables or hammocks. For the first few days there was a near riot because there was not enough food but then we hit a huge storm. This 26,000 ton liner was tossed about like a matchstick, everything that wasn鈥檛 lashed down was smashed and everyone was seasick. The stench below decks was unbearable so food was the last things on our minds!

We sailed north past Scotland and onto Canada, landed some troops at Belize then towards Africa, we were escorted by the HMS Birmingham and lots of destroyers and smaller craft and our route was to avoid the U Boat 鈥淏ox鈥�. We didn鈥檛 know where we were going but knew it would be warm because we had been issued with tropical kit and eventually arrived at Durban in South Africa. Here it was very hot and we enjoyed food we had not seen for years in ration struck Britain 鈥� pineapples, melons, steaks, jam and all sorts of sweets and chocolate. Our lads were bemused to see bare breasted Zulu women and we were shocked to see apartheid in action in a supposedly devout Christian country - white only clubs and restaurants, separate toilets and buses.

Many of the lads left at intervals to go who know where and soon it was my turn to board an ancient Polish boat HMS Pulaski on my way to India via the Jap sub infested Indian Ocean with only one destroyer as an escort. However one of the boilers burst and we had to stop at Madagascar which had just been retaken by the French. After a couple of days we returned to Africa and picked up a boat, the American Prince, loaded with hundreds of US troops where we enjoyed good food and hospitality and eventually arrived in Bombay. There we boarded a very slow train to Calcutta stopping at station restaurants for food and we had to be aware of thieving monkeys or kite birds that swooped down and grabbed food out of our hands. Calcutta was an overpopulated city suffering a famine 鈥� dustcarts collected bodies of those who had died during the night - the humidity, smell and dirt was overpowering.

Then we were off again to the Arakan Front in the Burma campaign via train and truck arriving at Ramu, a dirt forward airstrip housing 2 fighter squadrons who were the most advanced RAF air support behind the Army. I was in a radio operations 鈥渞oom鈥� under canvas and had to radio information to our base at 224 Group and relayed by scout teams behind enemy lines.

Life was very primitive 鈥� we lived on liquid bully beef (no refrigeration!) and hard tack mainly, with occasional chicken, goat or buffalo meat bought from local villagers. We got our water from a village Hindu bathing tank which had been used for all purposes 鈥� washing, toilet and drinking! We had to clean it out and put in chlorine tablets and boil for 20 minutes. Our toilet facilities were slit trenches and no luxuries like toilet paper. We had to cope with Japanese marauders who were around all the time and monotonous food as well as mosquitoes, leeches, snakes, crocodiles and other friendly creature! There was no contact with home, some post arrived every month and our families did not know where we were.

After about 10 months in this area around Buthidaung we were ordered to leave and went to the coast to pick up an Indian junk from Cox鈥檚 Bazaar then onto Chittagong with a party of Gurkha troops and onto a Gurkha camp at Comilla (now all in Bangladesh). It was only after the War I learnt that it was at this point Burma fell to the Japanese and we had escaped by a whisker. After a good Christmas in Comilla I was posted to the Afghan border at Quetta to do a 6 month course in radio technology. It was a temperate climate with near English food and the first bath for a year. I celebrated my 21st birthday here marred by the death of a mate of mine who had died suddenly during the night having eaten something toxic.

From there I was sent to Jiwani a remote staging post on the Persian border and it was here that I learnt I was to be seconded to the Royal Indian Air Force as an instructor training their pilots and others. This moved me south to Secunderabad and Hyderabad where I spent the last 2 years of my service in comparative comfort. During this time we heard with great jubilation that dropping the atom bombs had ended the War in the east and thought we would be on our way home very soon. But I had to wait until April 1946 before I was repatriated and came home on the Rangatiki via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean to a wonderful homecoming in May.

My 4 years away had its compensations 鈥� I saw the Taj Mahal more than once, went on leave to the hill stations at Darjeeling and Shillong, saw the Himalayas and Everest, and to the Blue Hills to Bangalore and Ooticamund amongst a host of other interesting sights.

My service career ended in England with a transfer to the RAF Educational Corps for nearly 6 months in various stations in Hertfordshire and Wiltshire to be finally demobbed back into Civvy Street in November 1946

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