大象传媒

Once his leave was over Bob reported back and was told he was posted overseas, to India. So he was issued with new kit and flew out by Dakota, via Sicily, Cyprus, Palestine, Bahrain, Karachi and Bombay. The journey took several days, no jet lag then of course. Much to his great surprise, on one leg of the journey the pilot was another of his cousins, Richard, who had been a Spitfire pilot and was now on the VIP run, flying officers, NCOs and crates of drink to India and the Far East.

Arriving at Bombay, Bob got in with a bunch of NCOs who insisted they all went for a drink before getting on the train and they plied him with so much whisky that after boarding one of those notorious Indian trains (with all the locals sitting on the roofs and hanging on the sides), he slept through most of the journey to Delhi, awaking with a dreadful hangover and a mouth like the bottom of a parrot's cage. He never touches whisky now unless he has a cold.

At Delhi, Bob was assigned a billet at a barracks built in the Irwin Stadium with another sergeant and they shared a servant (bearer) between them called Tagu Das, a friendly young man whose English was laced with swear words learned from the British, and who looked after them extremely well; making sure their quarters were clean and the laundry was fresh, among his other duties. (Bob and the other sergeant always called him "Bearer-sahib"). He was one of many local people who had official permission to work, or hawk their wares, around the barracks. Once Tagu Das told Bob, "Sergeant-sahib, a pair of your underpants have been stolen off the washing line - but do not worry! The pair I stole to replace them with are better than the ones stolen in the first place!" Another time he informed Bob that he had seen a strange bearer hanging around in the barracks, "So I told him to p*** off, sahib". Beside Tagu Das there was a teenage boy (a punka-wallah) who spent his days sitting on the veranda, pulling a string to work the fan (punka) in the barracks and had no idea of his own age; and a very old man who was paid to polish the boots and shoes. One day the old fellow polished a pair of suede shoes, actually producing a shine on them and got called all the names under the sun by the shoes' owner.

Bob had trouble with corns on his feet and the corn-cuttee-wallah came and removed them with a pot of stiff clay and several hollow antelope horns with the sharp points cut off. He manipulated the narrow ends over the corns and filled the tops of the horns with clay; then he tugged the horns off very sharply, pulling the corns out, roots and all, the pain was excruciating and Bob yelled the place down - but the treatment worked and he was never troubled by corns again. When Bob tried his first mango, he did not know there was a large stone in the middle and took a hefty bite, bit down hard on the stone and said later, "I nearly broke my bloody jaw!" Another day he collapsed at the barrack gates with dehydration as he had not been taking enough salt in his diet. A sepoy (an Indian solder) helped hin to the guardroom and telephoned for the medical office, who took one look at Bob and made him drink as much water as he could stomach, along with plenty of salt.

There was a detachment of Gurkha troops nearby whom Bob would talk to once he picked up some of the Hindi-Urdu jargon and some Gurkhali that was spoken around the barracks. Once he asked one Gurkha if he could look at one of their kukris (the razor sharp knives they use to this day). The Gurkha unsheathed his kukri - and immediately cut Bob's thumb, explaining that when a kukri was brandished you had to draw blood with it.

Bob was assigned to photo-interpretation duties in preparation for the proposed drop of airborne troops on Japan, now that Germany had surrendered and every morning he would walk up the Maidan to his office in what is now India's Government House. He knew with his Arnhem experience he might be dropped on Japan and he was not very happy about it. Suddenly the electrifying news came of two atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that the Japanese had capitulated. Everyone breathed a vast sigh of relief and Bob said,"I remember there was an awful lot of drink downed in the mess that night!"

By now the writing was on the wall that the wartime troops would eventually be demobbed and taken home; and that it was only a matter of time before the British would leave India for good and independence would come. But there were also rumours going about that British troops might be deployed to quell civil disturbances in Indonesia (the Dutch-administered colonies), now that the Japanese had surrended the local population were also agitating for independence. Bob did not fancy going there but he talked with a senior officer who advised him to go for another posting at Government House and he would endorse it, (having looked at Bob's army records and taking into consideration his Arnhem service), saying that after what he had experienced he deserved a safe berth and it would not be long before he would be eligible for demobilisation. So Bob got a transfer to another department concerned with land surveying instead. Increasingly there was a lot of rising unrest in Delhi, with outbreaks of violence directed not just at the British but each community was turning on each other. Bob and everyone else in the barracks were obliged to carry loaded revolvers whenever they went outside into the city, which no-one liked doing but it was necessary in case there was any trouble.

The day came for Bob to leave and he and the others were taken to the station to catch the train on the first leg of the journey home. As they boarded the train there was an anti-British riot going on outside which got out of hand and spilled over into the station; forcing everyone to take refuge on the carriage floor as there were all kinds of objects being thrown at the train and angry shouts and threats uttered. As the train got up steam and began pulling out of the station, a half-brick smashed through the window and knocked one of Bob's friends out cold, which could have killed him. Bob freely admitted that he was even more frightened during this demonstration than he had been in Holland under fire.

On his return home Bob was demobbed after six years, with a suit and his post-war gratuity, to go back into civvy street. He began to pick up the thread of civilan life again and began going to his local church again, as a musical schoolboy having been the first senior chorister at John Keble Church in Mill Hill when it had been newly-built in the 1930s. From photographs taken at the time Bob looks fit, well-fleshed and rather handsome-faced. Doreen, his future sister-in-law, remembers that to her and her friends he looked rather like Errol Flynn the film star. Bob was attracted to a lively auburn-haired girl called Peggy Stanley who lived in Kensal Rise but who was becoming a regular worshipper at JK, and they began courting.

Bob and Peggy were married in 1948 and were together for 54 years.

It is still said that if you meet anyone who says, "I was at Arnhem", you just buy him a drink, and you don't ask any questions.

Waho Mohammed!

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