大象传媒

My father( Dick) was an intensively private man, and his war experiences were not something he ever discussed with his family. He just put it behind him and got on with life in peacetime, in much the same way as I suspect he had just got on with things during the war.

He only told me this story in 1972 when he knew that he was dying with cancer and I believe he felt that he had to tell it before it was too late.

My father was a very able driver, having learnt to drive his father's car at the age of 12. So when he was called up and joined the army, he was assigned to the role of driver, and very early in his army career he was assigned to Brigadier Slim - I believe this would have been in 1940-41.

Brigadier Slim eventually became General Slim, and my father remained his driver throughout the war, and was sent to Burma with him. During their time in the UK General Slim was driven in a Daimler, and when the orders came to go to Burma, General Slim insisted that the Daimler should go too, and of course he was in a position of sufficient authority that his request was granted and the Daimler was duly shipped to Burma. This would have been toward the end of 1941.

My father and General Slim both survived the war years in Burma, and on the night that victory was declared against the Japanese, they both got drunk together. My father woke the next morning with a filthy hangover and found he was wearing the general's medals. General Slim quickly appeared in his tent, and asked my father to return the medals, and that not another word would be said about the incident. My father, in retelling this, was clearly delighted that he had been 'General' for a night, rather than just Sergeant Palmer, and I think he had a genuine respect and liking for General Slim.

This liking probably explains why he was quite happy to execute the general's next order, probably without thinking through all of the consequences.

General Slim was very concnerned about his Daimler. He had been driven in it for 5 years now and he was very attached to it. Furthermore he was convinced that now the war was won, he would not hold quite the same influence as before, and that nobody would be very bothered about getting his Daimler back from Burma.

He had apparently got sufficiently good contacts in Calcutta that he could be assured of getting it shipped back from Calcutta to the UK. The question was - how to get it from somewhere near Chittagong in Burma to Calcutta.

Palmer was to be the solution. General Slim had known him for years, and trusted him to take good care of his car. In fact I dont know which was more important to my father - caring for the car or the General. I have a sneaky suspicion that the car might have won if it had come to a contest.

So General Slim asked my father to take the car to Calcutta. I don't believe it was an order. I think General Slim knew that the army would not agree to what he was proposing to do, and so the army was not to know. This was between my father and General Slim, and if Palmer had felt it was too risky, I dont think General Slim would have pushed him.

So the plan was to drive a Daimler through the jungle across Burma, and into India and to reach Calcutta where it could be handed over. My father was told he could take a soldier with him, and my father chose his companion. I dont know his name - my father didnt tell me.

They set off with nothing better than a map which when unfolded showed the whole of Burma and India, which gives an idea of the scale of the map. I dont even think that Chittagong would necessarily have even been marked.

Father viewed the whole thing as a huge adventure. He related to me how they travelled through jungle, often not on roads at all, but on beaten tracks. They went through tiny villages where the population had not seen a white European before, let alone two driving a Daimler.

He described how they would negotiate with the villagers for accommodation for the night and for food, and described the mixed feelings he had in one village when he went into the hut they had given him for the night. My father was always a very smartly dressed man in civilan life, and was clean shaven ( he had even shaved his head to cope with the heat and the lice). My father could not conceive of not shaving, and so in a hut in a village in the middle of Bruma, my father got out his shaving mirror and proceeded to shave himself in the normal way, except that in the mirror he could see dozens of eyes peeping though the gaps in the wooden structure, as his new hosts checked him out very thoroughly. I often wonder what they made of this short, young man who must have appeared out of the jungle in a car, and proceeded to behave for all the world as if he was at home in England.

They hit a problem when they reached the Irrawaddy river. From the rudimentary map they had, it was not clear where, if anywhere, there was a bridge. They had no language with which to ask anybody, but somehow they managed to establish with the local people that there was no way of crossing the river easily.

Not deterred, they built a pontoon with the help of the villagers, and they loaded the car onto the pontoon and floated it off down the river. Apparently it was quite fast flowing and even using large poles they were swept a long way downstream before they finally reached the other side. However, as they had no real idea of where they were, or what was on the other side, they took the view that one place was a good as another, and they just set off again.

All in all, my father's adventure took him 3 weeks. He succeeded in bringing the Daimler to Calcutta, and then the war was over for him.

It took him weeks to return to the UK - he finally got home in early summer 1946. He had let his hair grow back, and had not had it cut -on the basis that the first thing he wanted to do was to get a haircut on civvy street. My mother handed over to him very proudly all the savings she had made from his army pay ( by working and letting out their London home) and he promptly went out and blew it on - you've guessed it - a brand new MG sports car.

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