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of loos, no seats as such, just a small wooden strip screwed to the top sides of each bowl.. No doors, and a 3ft or 4 ft high partition between each, over which you could sit and chat to your next door neighbour! Very matey! Quite a shock to the nervous system, too, if you had been brought up being used to a modicum of privacy.
Fortunately someone had decreed that there should be raised wooden duckboards along the aisles in front of each battery of bogs. A good piece of forward thinking, perhaps, or the result of bitter past experience. Because, not to put too fine a point upon it, when thousands and thousands of rough and licentious soldiery are gathered together in one place, and all have 'the runs' as it is so aptly named, then things get pretty revolting. And bearing in mind that a few unfortunates failed to get over sea sickness at all, you might get some idea of the hellhole it turned out to be. And all this right next to our sleeping and eating quarters. Happy days....
I really should have learned something from my early experience of reporting sick at Maidstone. But, always a devil for punishment, I reported sick once more when hit by Troopship Dysentery, in the hope of getting treatment. Some hope!!! The routine was the same for all. 24 enormous tablets, about the size of 5 pence pieces were handed to you. You then had to swallow 8 of them on the spot, under the eagle eyes of the RAMC Sergeants. This was more difficult than you my think, as they were apparently made out of 3rd rate blackboard chalk, and there was very little to wash them down with, water being rationed.
You were then told to take the remaining 16 during the next 24 hours. and come back if you needed more. It was a most successful and effective treatment from the M.O.'s point of view. The pills made no difference at all to the dysentery, as far as anyone could tell, but NOBODY ever reported back for more. However, the pills were not entirely without benefit. They were ideal as 'counters' when playing Housey-Housey around the deck, so large and heavy they never blew away!

o o o o o o o

I remember once having a narrow escape. We had to wear our lifejackets everywhere in case of submarine attack, and climbing up a vertical steel ladder from one deck to another carrying books or something in one hand, I could only use the spare hand to grab at the rungs one by one. Naturally, I missed somewhere near the top, fell outwards and backwards, sailing about 10 feet down to the deck I had just left.
The back 'cushion' of my lifejacket was not tied down - as they were supposed to be, - which was very fortunate, as it wafted upwards and was under my head when I hit the deck like a bomb. Without it I am quite certain I would have been killed, at least smashing my skull all over the deckboards. I didn't break my back either, though it jolly well felt like it, I can tell you. Still, even without the addition of splintered bone and buckets of blood, it gave about 1000 bored spectators a good laugh, and relieved the monotony of the voyage briefly. One or two even asked what I did for an encore!

o o o o o o o
VOYAGE TO INDIA (1945) PART 3

DESERT PICNIC

One famous - or infamous - occasion we called into some ghastly little Arab hell-hole somewhere around the Red Sea, in baking heat, to take on water. It had been announced the night before that there would be a 'picnic' ashore for as many as possible. Had we been more experienced, we would have carefully noted the actions of all the old sweats on board, who hung back saying that they would just stay on the ship and relax. But the idea of getting off the ship, even for a short while, with feet on terra firma, was too much to resist. We put our names forward.
Rumours began to abound, - loads of fruit ashore, oranges, bananas, melons. This was the clincher. This we could not miss. Next morning, at 7 a.m. we paraded on deck, the sun already up and hot, small packs on our backs complete with the days sandwiches in the mess tins, and water bottle at out waists. It was going to be a steamer of a day. But who cared? (All of us did, a lot, later in the day!)
To get ashore, about half a mile away, we first had to board flat-bottomed Z craft, like very wide troop landing barges and made of metal, decks and all. By the time the thing - there was only one - trundled slowly out to pick us up it was already red hot, not to mention about an hour behind schedule. With us packed in like sardines, it had to make about 3 trips. It was well after 10 o'clock by the time we had all been ferried ashore, and by now the sun was boiling down out of the sky, heat bouncing and shimmering on the sandy volcanic coast.
Ashore, there was absolutely nothing worthwhile. A few dozen surly, unfriendly, dirty, and constantly hawking and spitting Arab stevedores. NO oranges. NO bananas. NO melons. NO limes. NO pineapples. Only flies and dirt and heat! 'Never mind' we thought, with that incurable optimism of youth, 'we are off to a glorious beach not far away where we can relax and splash in the cooling sea'. HO! HO! and HO! again. We must have booked on the wrong package tour.
When the last of the jolly picnickers had arrived, the officers and NCO's lined us up in platoons, and we marched smartly off along a rough, uneven sandy track. Marching in sand is VERY tiring, and we kept it up for about an hour. No flies out here, though. Obviously they couldn't stand the conditions....
Eventually we got to the beach. By this time the column of marching, shuffling sufferers was spread out over about half a mile. Our platoon was near the rear echelons, covered in dust, but our spirits buoyed up at the thought of plunging into those beckoning seas. It was not to be..... As soon as the first platoon had arrived, imbued with the same idea as us, they had stripped off and hurled themselves in. They damn soon hurled themselves out again!! One step ahead of about a million virulent, evil, stinging jellyfish. We were just in time to watch three of the lads receiving urgent medical attention, with red-purple weals across their anatomies. Further bathing was prohibited. Not that anyone was likely to try it!
By this time the temperature was well into the 100's. There were a few low, scruffy, scratchy bushes dotted about, not enough to go round, and in any case not really big enough to get under. We crawled as close as we could to them, and ate our sandwiches, which were by now more like dry toast, and washed them down with the by now almost boiling liquid from our water bottles. What a fiasco. Now we understood why the old hands had held back.
We 'picnicked' there until late afternoon, almost passing out with heat and boredom, though one small bunch of maniacs did start to kick a ball about. We were then graciously allowed to march back to the docks, hot, thirsty, dusty, sunscorched and utterly fed up. After arriving at this Middle East metropolis it took another 3 hours to ferry us all back to the boat. The rails were lined with the grinning face of the old sweats...."Enjoy the picnic, lads?" "Got any spare oranges wiv yer...?
Worse was to come, and there was ominous trouble developing. Each evening the drinking water taps were opened for two hours, 5 until 7 if I remember correctly, - so that we could fill our water bottles for the next day. This particular night we did not get back aboard until after 7, and some hidebound idiot had turned the water off. Most of us ashore had drunk most if not all of our supply, and were gasping. The idiot O.C. Ship decided that rules were rules, and the water would NOT be turned on again specially for us. Now it was that real trouble began to simmer among some of the units who were not only more mature than us, but had seen plenty of fighting in Africa, Italy or France, and were now being sent out, much against their wishes, to 'have a crack at the Jap'.

Small riots began, some of the crew were thumped, and a ship's officer was said to have been thumped, too. MP's ( Military Police ) were called out to seal off the routes to the OC Troops' quarters and Admin Offices. The MP's then came under at least verbal attack. In that heat, after a day like that, the whole ship was on the verge of mutiny.
The Ship's Captain then countermanded the OC Troops' order, and the taps were turned on again. For some stupid reason, - probably a face-saving exercise - a time limit of 30 minutes was put on it. Now, of course, there was a wild rush, too many troops and too few taps, and fighting broke out. Fortunately commonsense prevailed and the water was left on. The whole thing was so badly handled it was unbelievable. Of course, good officers never ended up running troopships, only the deadbeats that units wanted to be rid of were put on them. That was the general belief, anyway.
Travelling on the ship were quite a number of fighting regiment half-colonels and majors, taking their units out East, and they ( allegedly ) threatened to take over the ship if necessary. (It made a good rumour, anyway.) By this time we were not sailing in convoy, depending on our speed to get away from any Jap submarines in the Indian ocean, so there was no Navy support at hand.
In fact, the taps were left on indefinitely. BUT.....the water we had taken on was ABSOLUTEY GHASTLY. It was so heavily chlorinated it was wellnigh impossible to drink. AND it was at bathwater temperature. It didn't help to know that that was not the fault of anybody running the ship, and we had to put up with it all the way to Bombay. It played hell with everything, - the tea, the cocoa, stews, everything..

o o o o o o o
Now that we were really into the tropics, everyone wanted to sleep on deck for obvious reasons. At 5 a.m. one morning, the ship's crew turned on the hoses to wash down the decks without telling the troops, and thought it hilarious until a group of Cameronians beat hell out of half a dozen of them, stopping just short of putting them over the side!
Then the OC Troops issued another silly order, - how stupid can you get? - nobody at all would be allowed to sleep on deck. That could have sparked off another riot, but that night EVERYONE, even those who normally slept below, stumped out on deck with their pillows, far more than usual, and dared Authority to do its worst. The crew were also given the message
and left in no doubt at all, that the next time they tried the hosing down stunt, someone would go over the side. And I'm sure some of those veterans would have done it. The jolly sailor lads decided not to find out.
The OC Troops backed down, and no more silly orders were issued. When thousands and thousands of men, some of whom had taken part in some of the toughest fighting of the war, are cooped up together in pretty hellish conditions, and are mucked about unnecessarily, then someone is asking for trouble. It wasn't us innocent youngsters, but the squads of Paras, Cameronians, Black Watch, Yorkshire Light Infantry and the like, who were dangerous. There were 6000 plus troops on board, and the pre-war complement of passengers was 200!
To give you some idea of the problems, you have to understand the nature of a Troopship. There was the normal ship's Captain, who was the Final Authority, responsible for the safety of the ship and all who sailed in her, crew and passengers. But - alongside him was a permanent staff of either Army or RAF officers and men, who administered to the needs of all the service personnel travelling on the ship. The OC Troops was normally a half-colonel, or sometimes a Colonel if it was a large ship. Usually they were selected for the job because they were not too suitable for their normal duties. -These teams, - along with the ship's crew - reputedly made fortunes out of fiddling rations, smuggling and any other scam, and there were a lot that they could get up to.

o o o o o o o

Before reaching Bombay, about a week before I think, we were issued with our first Mepacrine tablets. These were tiny little fellows, bright yellow and foul tasting, but very good at preventing Malaria, providing you took them every day without a miss. Field Marshall Bill Slim reckoned that "Dakotas and Mepacrine won the war in Burma." Before they became available, out of 500,000 men in the 14th Army, at any one time there would be 250,000 down with Malaria! Once Mepacrine had got a grip, it dropped to hundreds. But, a rumour was put around - reputedly by the Japs, - that not only did it turn you yellow, (which it did), but it made you permanently impotent (which it didn't). However, this caused so much consternation among the troops that the incidence went sky high again, as they stopped taking the tablets.
So a drill was introduced, whereby every day the men would be paraded, and the platoon commander would personally pop the tablet into the men's mouths one by one, and wait till it was swallowed. The taste was so vile that you couldn't let it dissolve long in your mouth, but swallowed it! It became a Court Martial offence to catch Malaria, I believe, and if the incidence in a Battalion rose above, I think, one or two percent the CO would be demoted.. The sickness rate came rocketing down again after that when a couple of CO's were actually demoted
After we had passed through the Suez Canal, - to the usual shouts of "GET YER KNEES BROWN" from hundred of squaddies at the leave centres along the banks, we left the convoy and headed for Bombay on our own, depending on our speed to get us away from any lurking Japanese submarines., as we steamed full ahead across the Indian Ocean.
Then one morning the coast of India loomed up over the horizon, difficult to see at first with the sun so low to the east. Other signs of life began. An Indian Navy destroyer came alongside to see us safely into port. Fishing vessels and dhows sailed around, and naturally there were thousands of gulls. I don't know about others, but I felt an enormous kind of exhilaration, found it so hard to believe that here was me, - ME - actually arriving in India, a place I had heard so much about at school, and from friends and relations who had been there, done it, almost got the T-shirt.
Bombay. The name itself conjured up the image of India. The Portuguese named it Bonne Baie, or Beautiful Bay, then gave it to Charles II in 1662 as part of his dowry when he married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza. Six years later, short of the readies, he rented it to the Honourable East India Company for 拢10 a year in gold. It's garrison then was 5 Officers, 139 Other Ranks and 54 Topasses, or Portuguese half-castes.. There were rather more here now!
And I was on a high, just so lucky to be here.

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