大象传媒

This is an impression of what life was like for one seven year old in the far east ... told in story form. It was enterd by a volunteer from the RAF Museum,Cosford on behalf of Mr Walker.

In 1942, the war came to us in Calcutta. I was seven years old and for us it was both our exciting and a worrying time. I used to have my hair cut regularly at a Japanese hair dressing salon until it was quite suddenly closed down. There were other Japanese shops and offices that became transformed into Indian or Anglo-Indian businesses over night.

I was at the High School Kindergarten which was a 15-minute walk from home... a large top floor flat in a fairly substantial building on Central Avenue. My father was in the Calcutta Police Force and we were in a block of flats for married police officers and their families I enjoyed the daily walks to and from the school where I had started my education two years earlier.

I could watch the trams and other traffic and chat with the roadside traders. I did well and was happy there and I must have been a bit of a success because I was handed a real baton and instructed to conduct the kindergarten choir. My shorts were on the loose side so I received a tremendous ovation following my encore before we'd even managed to finish the final song in the concert.

We were all issued with little shouder bags that contained a gas mask, a large square rubber to place in the mouth (to absorb shock), a square bicycle lamp, a first-aid tin box, a pencil and notepad, some ointments in tubes and a tiny bottle of smelling salts.... oh and a football ref's whistle.

We had drill practise following assembly. We had to learn how to breath in the masks while running and jumping about: not as easy as it looks because we kept 'misting up' and smashing into one another. We really enjoyed squeezing ointments onto one another and taking sniffs of the smelling salts. If you sniffed to hard your eyes nearly shot out of their sockets and there were enough tear drops to make a few cups of tea.

We suddenly appeared to be invaded by 'Yanks' and all their trucks, jeeps and amazing weaponry. As they passed by they seemed to enjoy flinging wads of rupees at the population from their huge noisy vehicles. It resembled ticker tape and it seemed as if all India were eager to fight over snatching it up. My father was called out at all hours in order to help quell hysterical mobs and prevent dangerous brawls and knife-fights mostly between negroes and white americans who`d had a skinful ---- and help out at various bombed sites where the Japs left their calling cards.

Wailing sirens sounded and the civilian population were sent scuttling down to basements, behind 'blast walls' that were built in the front of all larger entrances to buildings and anywhere that looked safe. I recall seeing sandbags built in or near windows to act as protective buffers against shrapnel. Zig-zag slit trenches were created in areas of open parkland. We had some that were provided for our building and the 'Thana' or police sub-station next door.

Apart from us children who made use of these trenches to play out war games with water pistols, sticks, bows and arrows and mud ball grenades, they were hardly ever used by the general public. I bit clean through my anti-shock rubber on one occasion when our building was narrowly missed by a Jap incendiary.

During these many regular air-raids we usually listened to All-India Radio. The reception was not good as commentary was frequently interupted by pops, shrieks and whistles caused by atmospherics. Our hero was an Indian Air Force Hurricane pilot by the name of Pring. He was a squadron leader who, night after night, shot down Zeros in fierce combat. We used to listen to his exploits with baited breath; we became an integral part of this man who was up there fighting our battles for us. It was rather like listening to a soccer match in the sky. We reacted to his every valiant move and kill with rapturous joy.

He became the focal point of a Zero attack in the early hours of one morning. As we sat in the flckering glow of a lamp, we stared at one another in utter disbelief -through the static came the unmistakable whining of Pring's death dive - the end of our friend . There was a silence that seemed to last for a eternity. We all cried unashamedly . The poignant wail of the all-clear broke the unnerving quiet, its initial bellows slowly becoming a series of muffled moans.

The wide road which was like the Mall in London and which led directly towards the Victoria Memorial, one of Calcutta's larger colonial buildings dedicated to the Empress, was cordoned off and converted into a temporary landing strip for fighters. It was known as 'Red Road' and became home to Hurricanes Spitfires Typhoons Lysanders and the like.

It became a favourite haunt of mine and I used to take a sketch pad and make drawings of these aircraft from the perimeter fencing. This is when I first realised just how attractive aircraft were especially the Hurricanes and spitfires. I spent many happy hours watching them taking fuel taxiing around being armed and taking off and landing. They made us feel very safe somehow just knowing that they were there.

My friends and I made model planes out of wood and flew them about in out-streched arms and we also collected fragments from crashed aircraft. We especially valued the thick perspex from cockpit canopies as we used to fashion dress rings from this material. Our tools were shards of glass with which it took is ages to obtain a ring from . The coloured 'stone' settings were made from toothbrush handles cut down into smaller pieces These in turn were slotted into the perspex rings.

To read Mr Walker's wife, Irene's, story of her wartime childhood in Pilsley, Derbyshire (A 2791253), go the RAF Cosford Roadshow peronal page.

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