大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Thomas Nutt at the 2nd Batt RIR event, Campbell College, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Bruce Logan.
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One time we didn鈥檛 go on west to Rawalpindi, and we were there for a couple of months, and it was very enjoyable relaxing time in Rawalpindi. But I think probably one of the best times I had there was a visit from the Forces鈥� sweetheart, Vera Lynn. That was 1944, we were stationed at Airgatala. And she came and sang her usual songs, the ones everyone remembers 鈥� 鈥淭he blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover鈥�. I was lucky in the respect that we were towing gliders from Rawalpindi to outside Calcutta, in preparation for the Invasion of Burma. And when I went up to Rawalpindi, there she was again. That we were lucky enough, but this time she was performing to a vast audience of Army personnel and Air Force. But when we had her at 31 squadron at Agatala, quite a small group, and we had her more or less to ourselves.

Another person we had, and we all were very fond of, was Freddy Mills. He was champion light-heavyweight boxer at that particular time, and he spent about a week with us in our camp, and put on various displays with a partner. He had a partner by the name of Al Rumption, who was also a champion boxer, but not so well known as Freddy Mills.

[yanks]
At one stage the American relieved the Squadron from duties, dropping supplies. The Americans took over from us and most of the squadron went up on leave to the NW Frontier. But a few us had to, one plane and a number of men, had to stay behind. Unfortunately I had to remain behind, but I had a time with the Americans and the food then was terrific compared with what we had been getting in our camps. The Americans always had ice-cream with their pudding, and we wondered, 鈥淗ow did they get the ice-cream?鈥� 鈥� we found out that they took a Flying Fortress up into the Stratosphere, until there was ice in the cream, then came down and had ice-cream.
An incident that will always stick in my mind is, one Sunday morning we were working on this one aircraft that we had. The American padre came round in his jeep with this loudhailer, shouting 鈥渋f anyone wants to come to church tonight in the canteen, they鈥檒l enjoy the service and there鈥檒l be a can of beer for everyone afterwards鈥�. We all decided to go!

We had a terrible time in India, because we had 鈥� Although we had, 1943-44, dropping supplies, but we had nevertheless quite a lot of free time. If you had any free time at all, all you had to do was get on a plane. If you were off for a weekend you鈥檇 get on a plane bound for Calcutta, spend the week in Calcutta and went out to dum-dum and get the train back the next day. There was no, you just went if you were free. You didn鈥檛 have to ask anyone. There was discipline in GB, and we had discipline in India. I don鈥檛 know how we coped, but discipline was very lax.
We had in one station, Caipur, which I went to first, was a permanent RAF base in India. And in it we had great facilities. We had a bearer which looked after us, we had a char-wallah who came round every morning, we had a pu-wallah, we had a punka-wallah. The punka-wallah was the one who, the punkas were all lined up and someone, the punka-wallah, sat outside pulling it. Slower and slower, the punka-wallah was asleep. Someone had to give him a shout to wake him up.

Manitar was another hill station which we went to. As well as our fortnight鈥檚 annual leave every year in India, we had to take 1 week鈥檚 compulsory leave at a Hill station. The 2 hill stations were Maintar and Darjeeling. Manitar was usually our favourite. I enjoyed my stay in India, even with the hardship.

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