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Memories of an Artillery Gunner Part Four — From India to Sumatra and demob in March 1946

Part Four of an oral history interview with Mr. Jack Clifton conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum

Yes, it was a good trip. When we got there, oh, you could smell Bombay from out at sea, phew!
It was a Counter Mortar Battery then but to be quite honest I never found anybody in that Battery that knew how to counter a mortar! The training was abysmal, it really was.

We went to Bombay and then we went to where the famous race track is and then we went to a place called, I think it is Quambitar (?) and set up camp there, a piece of cake really. We used to go into Bangalore and they didn’t know what to do with us really. Then we were told one day, you are over here to finish your training for our attack on Penang. We were going to invade this island and we were told ‘it is stationed by a Japanese Guards Division’, whether this is true or not I don’t know that had been on rest since the invasion of Malaya. Well I can’t imagine the chaps giving them all that rest but that’s what they told us. We didn’t think much of that. Then we moved on to one of the big ports in India, quite a way up the coast and we boarded a troopship, all the barges strung around the outside, I thought, oh, crumbs don’t like the look of this! Been in the Army all these years and going to get bumped off on this bloomin’ island. We put to sea after a couple of days and it was announced that an atom bomb had been dropped on Japan and we were going to return to Madras. And we went back there and they wouldn’t let us ashore, stuck on this perishing boat. This is a funny aside, an Officer, he drew up on the outside of where the boat was tied up and came aboard about something. Another Senior Officer on board, I heard him, ‘We are going to pinch that jeep’ and he sent word out and it was winched aboard by crane and when the owner of it came back, ‘Where’s my so and so jeep?’ He blamed the native population for pinching it but it wasn’t, it was on our boat!

Anyway we set off again and we’d been gone sometime and we were told we were going to Sumatra. I thought to myself, I hope that the Japs there have been told that the war is over! And all the boys thought the same. We landed off the habour, it was near Medan in Sumatra, I think it’s the capital. We landed there and got into the landing craft because the beach was crowded with soldiers and the jetty there, that was crowded with them too. All the troops thought are they going to fire on us when we get there? When we got near the beach, they circle round and then they go in, ‘cor, oh dear there’s a lot of Japs there’. When we got there they made no effort to come to see us but a few of the Senior Officers came down to meet the barges and it was quite a peaceful handover, phew, were we relieved!

We went then to Medan where we were stationed. That was quite a noisy place, it wasn’t the Japanese, certain of the Japanese were put on patrol at night, they joined us in other words because they could move around, you didn’t hear them! A pretty solid, clonk, clonk, clonk, with the boots on but the Japs, never heard them. I tell you it would frighten you to death with a big Jap standing behind you.

I was in Head Quarters and I was allocated a room in a hotel in Medan and I was told that, ‘don’t open the windows’ because it was bloomin’ hot there’, I thought ’cor I’m going to sweat tonight’ So in the morning I had a little complaint to make about sweating there, ‘Well in the next room to you was a wanted War Criminal!’ I understand that he was executed, I didn’t see that, I understand that he was shipped off somewhere. Phew! that was a near one.

In Medan it was a very noisy stay, the Japs were OK but the Indonesians, it was when they started their ‘Trouble’ and at night there were bangs and crashes going on. You had to ignore that. Some of our chaps were murdered. I didn’t leave there until March after the war had finished. A few soldiers killed but it was mainly civilians that they killed. I don’t know why but it was all trouble.

We were disbanded in numbers, you had your Group number, mine was 28 and I, with others, was taken to Singapore. We waited there for a week or so and there was talk of going off on the New Amsterdam, the Dutch boat, it was the pride of their fleet. Oh, we had a luxurious trip home - it really got a move on. Mind you it was loaded up with prominent Dutch men, there were more Dutch men then soldiers on board. They all spoke English! It amazed us when we got to Medan, if you spoke to a Dutch man they would speak back in English to you. Amazing.

We arrived in Southampton. Then up to London for my de-mob gear and that was it, that was me finished! It was March 1946. I had a very interesting time, I didn’t kill anybody at least unless I killed a German when I fired at their aeroplanes, I don’t think so though.

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