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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by a volunteer from Lincoln CSV Action Desk on behalf of Carole Tattersall and has been added with her permission. Mrs Tattersall fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My father, Thomas Alan Rush, served with the Royal Artillery in India during the Second World War. His unit was ‘B’ troop, 208 Field SP Regiment, Royal Artillery stationed at Meerut, India. I was born in November 1940, so I cannot remember his call-up or early years before embarkation. My mother did show me photographs he sent during the war in uniform and wearing a bush hat and told me about an Indian man who did his washing and odd jobs; a ‘dhobi-wallah’ I think he was called. HE also played for the regiment football and hockey teams while out there.

However, I do remember vividly his return on demobilisation. It was pouring with rain in Browning Street, Leicester, when an army truck stopped outside our house and out climbed my father. He was sun tanned and looked very happy to be home at last. After all the kisses and hugs he started to unpack the things he had brought home with him. He gave me some lovely presents, a red leather toy elephant, a beautifully dressed dolly and a little leather handbag which I still possess to this day. He gave my mother a miniature carved elephant in a leather case, two small round decorative ‘Komachi’ tins which contained a red paste and a tiny mirror in the hinged lid. This red paste was used by Indian ladies to put a red spot in the middle of their forehead, but my mother used it as a rouge to redden her cheeks, which was the fashion at the time. He also gave my mother (Edna Rush), younger brother (Jimmy Rush) and myself a pair of hand-made leather ‘chopleys’, a type of Indian sandal.

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