大象传媒

This story has been added to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Mr Grantham and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I went abroad in 1941
I was two years in Ceylon. Whilst I was there I got Dengue fever and I had a temperature of 104. I got a weeks holiday with a tea planter up in the mountains and whilst I was there they had the first fine day for four months.
News had been given that the Japanese were on their way. There wasn't an army on the Island so they were told to defend it the best way they could.We went to bed that night not knowing if we would be alive the next day. We were up before dawn, taking our positions round the field. We went for breakfast about 8 am and just after breakfast we heard the aircraft-about a hundred of them. They bombed the airfield and then went down to Columbo harbour. It was quite frightening but we were quite lucky.
Then I went to India-I went across on the ferry. Then I caught the train to Calcutta and I was on that train for a week. At mealtimes, the train would pull into a siding and the stew pot would come out. You slept in bunks on hardboard and when they put the lights on all the cockroaches would come out. It was not unusual to see bodies floating in the river as you travelled along.
We went all round the coast of South Africa. When the convoy got there half went to Cape Town and half went to Durban. We had a pass to go ashore and were just walking down the docks and guides would take you round.
We saw dolphins and flying fish as we travelled along the coast. When we arrived in Egypt we pulled in alongside the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and the Mauritania. The temperatures were really high and they served jugs of iced water when you went ashore.
In India life expectancy was very low. You knew when there had been a death in the village because the drums would be sounding all night. We had another long train journey from Calcutta to Bombay and then we came back through the Med.When we were approaching Liverpool the alarm went off-there were subs around.
I worked on the Lancasters and one time one crashed on take off and a 400pound bomb rolled away. Our job as armoury was to try to find it-you were scared in case it went off

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