大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Douglas Gibsons permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

I was almost 18 years of age, as on September 3rd 1939, I sat beside an open door and listened to Neville Chamberlain announce that we were at war with Germany. At the time I was employed as a booking clerk by the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company. By the time of the Sheffield Blitz on December 9th and 12th 1940, I had moved from Dore & Totley Station to Sheffield Parcels Office. After spending the early evening of the Thursday in running from one public air-raid shelter to another and the rest of the night in our family Anderson shelter, I was rather late for the night shift. En route one avoided bomb craters and climbed over the debris created by the German bombers.

Having no wish to be called up into the British Army, I volunteered for the Royal Air Force in February 1941. After attestation at Padgate on March 3rd, we were sent home until September lst. Square bashing and early Wireless/Telegraphy training in Blackpool were followed by more of the latter at Compton Bassett. By February 1942 I had passed the tests to be a wireless operator and was posted to an air station outside Peterborough, but within 48 hours had been posted overseas. Weeks at White Waltham and West Kirby were interspersed with demob leave prior to our embarkation at Port Glasgow on May 7th.

In order to relieve the boredom on board the troopship, HMT Strathaird, I joined Pilot Officer Ward鈥檚 Concert Party and also sat in on a study group organised by a Baptist Lay Pastor. One lasting memory is of my first experience of a tropical storm in Freetown Harbour. Perhaps one should draw a veil over some wild capers with Norman Lacey in Durban. The journey from Bombay to Karachi aboard HMT Varella will take some beating as the worst sea voyage of a lifetime. Afraid one only has hazy memories of the tented camp at Drigh Road, since three weeks were spent in the British General Hospital with gastro-enteritis.

The 6 day journey by train from Karachi to Calcutta in September 1942 was followed by a train/steamer one to our headquarters at Silchar in Assam. The first Christmas in India was celebrated in a chota bungalow on a tea plantation south of Silchar. Whilst there I caught malaria and suspected blackwater fever, which caused panic among
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the medical staff of the Indian Casualty Clearance Station. It was April 1943 before one eventually arrived at Muallungthui in the Lushai Hills.

I developed a great affection for the Lushai people. One village chief described to me how from being head-hunters they had been converted to Christianity in the early part of the 20th century. I kept in touch with our cook鈥檚 helper, Pasena, until he qualified as a schoolmaster and was married. It was at the end of 3 months on the wireless observer post that I returned to Calcutta and had what might be described as a 鈥淒amascus Road experience鈥� when I became a 鈥渂orn-again鈥� Christian instead of a nominal one.

The next posting was to the Midnapore area, which had suffered a typhoon 12 months earlier and was now seeing much starvation and death. Supplying the Indians with food had to be carefully handled lest anyone should die on our post and we became responsible for their burial. Next stop was a houseboat on the Sundarbans where I contracted jaundice. Getting relieved and arriving at the B. G. H. in Calcutta took 48 hours, by which time I suffered a rigor. Sick leave was spent on two mission stations at Jamtara and Mihijam in Bihar State with my friend Bernard Wright. It was at the latter station that I was baptised by immersion along with two Bengali Christians. On the subject of leave I availed myself of all my entitlement during the years in India and enjoyed a sick leave in Shillong, a visit to Darjeeling and four visits to Kalimpong, where I awoke every morning to the sight of Mount Kinchinjunga glistening in the morning sun.

The second Christmas was celebrated at the Birkmyre Hostel, Calcutta, where Harold and Louise Fox were wardens, caring for Anglo-Indian boys who had started work after completing their schooling at Dr. Graham鈥檚 Homes in Kalimpong. Boxing Day saw me riding on a rickshaw en route to the Railway Station in order to catch the train to Rawalpindi. After two months we flew in a Dakota to Agartala in Tripura State, where 177 Transport Wing was based. The snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas were magnificent on our 8 hour flight.

Most of 1944 and 1945 were spent at Agartala as a member of No. 5768 (B) Mobile Signals Unit. 177 Wing鈥檚 squadrons of Dakotas were flying supplies into our troops in Burma and occasionally on our days off we were able to assist in the supply dropping, which was quite a hair-raising experience. Twice I was sent on attachment, first to Comilla, where, whilst convalescing in the hospital, a conversation took place with Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of Lord Louis, Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, who at her husband鈥檚 request was visiting all the medical centres under his command. In April 1945 I was sent to Imphal. En route we hit a cumulo-nimbus cloud which caused the Dakota to roll over a couple of times. Pilot Officer Freddie Cox, in charge of the aircraft, regarded the episode as a miraculous escape.
Though we were a small detachment of less than 20 other ranks, we had a soccer team, which never lost a game. Whilst at Agartala I played regularly at left back for 177 Wing鈥檚 team.

Following VJ Day in August 1945, our unit flew to Singapore in November en route to Labuan, North Borneo. Being due for repatriation, some of us were left behind in Singapore, where we did little work but enjoyed plenty of sightseeing. We noticed the vandalism of the Japanese occupying forces, especially at Tiger Balm鈥檚 Villa. One day, a colleague and I crossed the Johore Straits and visited one of the Sultan鈥檚 palaces. It had a green tiled roof, each coming from Belgium and costing 拢3.00, which in those days was equivalent to an English labourer鈥檚 weekly wage. One of the Sultan of Johore鈥檚 sons arranged for us to have coffee and biscuits on the palace patio after we had taken our photographs.

We sailed on January 6th aboard the Winchester Castle from Singapore via the Suez Canal to Southampton, arriving on the 27th. After leave I was posted to RAF Crosby, near Carlisle. Our chaplain, Squadron Leader Mervyn Wedgwood, arranged for Ray Probart and I to attend a Moral Leadership Course at Dowdswell Court in Gloucestershire. We were both subsequently ordained into the ministry of the Church of England. When in May 2000 I had a hernia repair operation at St. Luke鈥檚 Hospital, Fitzroy Square, London, who should be in the next room also having surgery but Ray!! That was the last time that I saw Wally Noble, the first editor of the Newsletter, who came to visit me on the day of the operation. Demobilisation came in June 1946 at RAF Cardington, near Bedford.

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