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MEMORIES OF VSK (1939 – 1946)

by John Gardiner

My father was in the Army in India, and he had a year’s leave over 1937 to 1938. This meant that we travelled to England by ship when I was seven. On our return, I was told that in early 1939, I would be going to a boarding school in “the hills”. Until then I would join the army day school in Barrackpore. The battalion stationed there was the East Lancs, so I found that I wasn’t able to understand a word the other children were saying.

My reaction to being told about boarding school? I don’t think I had one. Over the years, I have listened to parents agonizing over their child’s possible response to the news that the family was off to England after several years in East Africa. “We are not telling Clarence about it yet, as we know how upset he will be over leaving all his friends”. I maintain that children are happy to allow their parents to make major family decisions.

I can recall the complications of buying a trunk, collecting together the suggested clothing at shops in Calcutta, and watching my mother sew on all the name tags. Also required were essentials like hockey stick, football boots, tennis shoes. Thank goodness Victoria didn’t list Polo as one of its set games!

Finally the day came and I set off by train with my mother, the change at Siliguri and the rest of the day in the Toy Train, struggling up the endless bends. Then the walk up the hill to the school, where someone with a list decided I was to go to “Commercial”. This was a word I had never heard before, and I presumed it meant “Junior”. Later my parents were impressed that at the tender age of nine, I was being taught to manage an office.

It was all very bewildering, and at bedtime I was told to arrange my shoes at the foot of the bed. As I bent down to place them there, I cracked a front tooth on the iron frame at the bottom of the bed. The boy in the next bed laughed, and I had met Bill Copley. We remained close friends for many years after that day.

I was placed in Standard Two, looked after by Miss Simmons. She was a large and gentle lady, who worked hard at lessening the agonies of home sickness. I remember a class project, where each of us had to build a Roman galley from cardboard, where all the banks of oars moved in unison at the tug of a lever.

At the end of that first year at school, Miss Simmons gave all of us a book with spaces to stick coloured cards of animals that came with bars of Cadbury chocolate. At the start of my second year, I brought back a dozen bars, and then found that the picture cards had been discontinued. Nice chocolate, though!

The Commercial block was its own entity. Two class rooms, and a small dining space at the foot of the stairs, and a dormitory above. We had our own playing flat behind and slightly up the hill. We were much in awe of The Big School at the other end of the Top Flat. The only time we saw anything of it was when Victoria was playing football or hockey against Goethals (the Enemy), when we were allocated places in the stand between the Top and Bottom Flats.

Rumours of life in the Big School leaked back to us. The most frightening was that we would be expected to do all our work in pen and ink. And there was some mysterious activity called “Prep” that happened five nights a week. We gathered that attendance was compulsory.

Well into that first year we were told that “we” were at war.

“Who with?” was our response.

“Germany” “Oh, that’s all right… we beat them last time!” said the more knowledgeable ones among us.

We soon noticed that the knives laid out for our meals in the Commercial dining room were made in one of two places, Sheffield and Germany. Suddenly it was necessary to get to the table early, so as to be able to make sure that you had a British knife. Late arrivals risked finding themselves left with a “traitor’s knife”. This caused a considerable loss of face.

And so my first year at Victoria ended, some of the class were of course veterans of two complete years. All the same, I was looking forward to finding bewildered looking new boys around when we came back.

In March 1940, I joined the First Batch train at Barrackpore to travel to school. Most of this group were big city smoothies from Calcutta, an impressive place with more than one cinema …..and trams.

Our class teacher in Standard Three was Mrs. Clarke, who took all the classes in Art lessons. A talented artist in her own right, she tried hard to get us to persuade parents to send extra art materials. We wrote letters home every Saturday, and the format was displayed on the blackboard. “Dear Dad and Mum… Thanks…Ask”. I knew that my parents couldn’t afford these luxuries, so I used to leave the requests out.

Later in the war, Mrs. Clarke made pastel portraits of soldiers from different regions of India, and these were used to illustrate a calendar, the sale of which raised funds for the Red Cross. One of the original drawings is now displayed in the Gurkha Museum in Winchester.

All the school buildings faced west across the wide valley. Our classroom was at the extreme south end of the main block, a rather dark area, as it was shadowed by the block that included the armoury and the flat allocated to Padre Elliot.

In the long wet months of the monsoon, our usual play area was the concrete floor of the verandah at that end of the building. The start of the monsoon was usually announced by spectacular electrical storms. On a particular stormy day, the wall of the building was struck by lightning, and this knocked everyone off their feet. There was a strong smell of sulphur, and for many years later, the outer wall was stained a dark yellow.

Weekday evenings were taken up by official team games, and the pattern followed the climate. Cricket at the beginning of the year, football as soon as the monsoon arrived and hockey towards the end of the year.

In addition there were the games we played to amuse ourselves at the weekends. These included marbles, tops and more energetic pastimes like “Seven Tiles”, “French Cricket” and “Gooli Dunda”. This one was declared dangerous every year, but a year later, it would be back. We never discovered who decided when it was time to switch to a new craze. But continuing with marbles when the rest of the school had switched to Seven Tiles risked being labelled “Non Trendy”.

For most of the time I was there, the school was led by "Toady" Nugent. He was Irish, and when he got excited (which was often), he was very hard to understand. The year I took the Senior Cambridge examination, Mr. Nugent decided that he would do the reading for our Dictation test. The text included a phrase that went "the cows were chewing the cud"… most of us wrote "khud", we were sure that's what he said, and that spelling was the more familiar.

In 1942, most of India was nervous about the approach of the Japanese army, pouring up through Burma. On Christmas Day 1941, a Jap observation plane flew over Calcutta, so all the Cal boys thought they were about to see some excitement. The next day, a large percentage of the population of the city tried to leave by train. So many boarded the carriages, the engines couldn’t move the trains.

On an assembly day, Toady addressed the entire school on the subject of starting tales about the war. His speech included "Any body, caught spreading rumours about Japanese planes over Calcutta, will be severely flogged in public." That speech was shouted endlessly in corridors for years to follow.

A public flogging, administered on the stage at the north end of the assembly hall was the ultimate threat. On the few occasions that the punishment was carried out, the victim was marched up by the master on duty, then Toady would appear from his office and the charge was read to the whole school.

A chair would be positioned and Toady set about the task with enthusiasm. Legend had it that most of the recipients were not too distressed. At the end, Toady would reel back, struggling for breath, gasping, “There! Let that be a lesson to you.”

In one of our trips to the Plaza cinema, we saw the Charles Laughton version of “The Mutiny on the Bounty”. The scene that impressed the entire school was the flogging of a crew member. Half way through the number of lashes, the ship’s doctor stepped forward and after a brief inspection, announced “Captain, this man is dead”.

“Continue the punishment!” roared Captain Bligh. We were impressed. Now that was the way a flogging should be carried out!

I remember Rev. Elliot and Rev. Solomon, both of whom made the front room of the padre’s accommodation above the Armoury available to anyone who wanted to play Draughts, Ludo, Caroms. There was a selection of magazine to read.. My understanding of campaigns of World War 2 is still based on "Picture Post" of those days..

Mr. Prins taught us History, and a selected few were allowed to study Latin. The dunderheads had to do Hindi. His favourite response to our answers to his questions was "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

On one occasion after day-dreaming in class in class, Verny ordered me to join the Cadets, which delighted me. As an Army brat, I knew all the correct moves in foot and arms drill years before that day .We used to practice platoon attacks on the Upper Flat, later this was polished in the woods around the school. I can recall afternoons on range, waiting for the mist to clear and reveal the targets. The highlight of my time in the Cadets was a camp in Assam, where we took part in exercises against the Gurkhas, and had the chance to use live ammunition. We had been told that all unused rounds would be handed in at the end of the exercise. We weren’t risking that and so fired off all the 50 rounds in the bandolier in minutes. The results were bruised shoulders and the barrel too hot to touch, but what great fun. The final treat was to fire a Tommy gun or two inch mortar.

Mr. Doyle was a great storyteller, and we soon found we could easily divert him from the lesson plan. "Please Sir, what can you tell us about ..."

Mr. Ferris taught us Geography, and brightened up the lessons by telling us about his relatives, and there was always one in the particular corner of the globe under discussion. "My cousin in Manaos…". But he could play the bugle, and had kept goal for the India hockey team. He fell from grace on one of those rare occasions when the sun shone in the monsoon season. The headmaster was about to declare a Sunshine Holiday, when Mr. Ferris pointed out that there was an eclipse of the sun on Thursday, so why not save the holiday until then. Like to guess what Thursday’s weather was like?

Mr. Oliver was a brilliant teacher in Mathematics and Science, and owned a range of chalk-striped suits, and was shorter than everyone in the class. He also taught us the rudiments of Rugby. Mr. Oliver must have been shorter than all the boys in the upper half of the school. One evening on the way up the stairs towards the dining hall, our class bully was running through the crowd kicking people in the behind. He did not recognize "Oly", the master on duty and booted him as well. Dinner always started with Grace being said, and any announcements were made by the teacher in charge before we were told to sit. The whole school waited with bated breath for the reaction, but after a whole minute of silence, Mr. Oliver told us to be seated. As far as I know, he never mentioned the incident to the perpetrator.

Mr. Hill taught Carpentry, we all called it "Manual". Every lesson ended with us arranged around him in a circle. Armed with a 12 inch length of wood, he would fire questions at us (in Spanish Inquisition style), "What’s the half of one and seven eighths"? The slightest delay brought a crack on the head with the piece of wood. Later he went off to war, and we sympathized with any Japanese soldier that came within range of his short plank.

Mr. Hill looked after the Scout troop at one stage, and mundane skills like knot tying and bandaging imaginary wounds with your scarf were forgotten. Each Wednesday evening, the troop would be divided into two sections, to play "Capture the Standard". The team captains would decide on the numbers of attackers and defenders, and we spend the next two hours locked in mortal combat, trying to capture their flag while protecting our own. Scout troop members were easily identified by their black eyes and fat lips. For light relief, there was always "British Bulldog", and "Bokbok", two other blood sports. Surely some of us must have breezed through selection for the SAS?

I can remember Mr. Hill's method of improving the fielding ability of the school cricket team. They would be spread out on the Bottom Flat, while he stood near the Top Flat wall with a bat and a box full of old cricket balls. Each ball would be driven high into the air, any successful catches brought a small money prize. The injured would be led away quietly.

Another of his responsibilities was the organizing of the mob sent out to re-capture anyone silly enough to run away from school. Once an absentee was noticed, they would set off in hot pursuit towards Kurseong Railway station. They were known as "Hill's Bloodhounds".

I could never see the point of running away, I was sure that neither of my parents would approve, then send me back, to face the public canning, administered by the Headmaster on the stage of the Assembly Hall.

After finding some photographs on the VADHA web site, I found I was able to recall Mr. Price, who taught us Mathematics.

On the day our class was introduced to the mysteries of Logarithms, Mr. Price handed out the tables, and then launched into the explanation of characteristics and mantissa. Fifteen minutes later, someone at the back of the class was brave enough to put a hand up.

"Excuse me, Sir, do we have to learn these tables by heart?"

Mr. Price was a great believer in questions from previous exam papers. He would cover blackboard after blackboard with that neat hand of his, and as he was ambidextrous, he never stopped writing!

The only language options for the Senior Cambridge examinations were Latin and Hindi. Selection was simple, Mr. Prins decided which ones were clever enough to tackle Latin, and then all the remaining dunderheads had to do Hindi.

I was well aware that my parents and I would be leaving India soon after my time at Victoria ended. Not the best incentive to buckle down to serious language study.

Our Hindi - English Reader contained some twelve Hindi passages, and we knew that one would appear in the School Certificate exam paper. So, learn to recognize a few key words in Hindi script, know the general theme of each tale, and you have an (almost) foolproof method of obtaining an "only just failed" mark from the examiner. That was my theory.

On the big day, I spent ten minutes scanning the text in Hindi script, and finally found a word that told me it was the story that concerned the hunter who puts a heavy narrow necked jar containing sweet meats in the forest. Once a monkey gets the sweets in his fist, it is unwilling to release the bait, so an easy capture is assured.

I came out of the examination hall, and explained my system to another candidate. He looked at me for a minute. "The text was about Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles". There must have been a very puzzled examiner in Cambridge that year.

For many years, a small man who lived in fear of the Headmaster took our Hindi lessons. We soon discovered that he prepared his own medicine, and it was easy to convince him that we were in need of his help. The cure to whatever exotic complaint we could think up was always the same, tiny pills made from sugar. Our class thug, P……, had pockets full, which he used to stir into his tea.

There is still a feeling of guilt over the way we… and I am sure our class were not the only ones guilty… treated the small man who had the unenvied task of teaching us Hindi. When we were in the Junior Cambridge class, our room was directly opposite the office of the Head Master, the infamous Toady Nugent.

Our Hindi tutor was petrified of the Head, and had obviously been told of the importance of keeping discipline during the lessons. As soon as the lesson was under way, the teacher would be lured to a desk at the front of the class and that was the signal for the shortest boy in the class to disappear through an opening that led to the space under the stepped platform. He would worm his way to the front, and then drum his toes on the boards.

This was the signal for the class to go into their routine.

“Rats! Rats, sir, under the floor! If we don’t kill them, we will get bitten and all die of plague.”

The poor man’s face would go grey with worry. “Please boys, don’t make mischief. Otherwise Head Master will come and shout at me, again.”

Our Hindi – English reader contained a series of stories to be translated, and one followed a strange tale that concerned an elephant and a mouse. The teacher tried desperately to avoid the story, but we pointed out that if we didn’t learn to translate all the stories we would have little chance of getting through our Cambridge exam.

And so the poor man, knowing very well the ambush that awaited him, would start into the story.

“One day an elephant was asleep in the forest. A mouse ran out of his hole.”

Total bedlam. “Please, Sir, didn’t the elephant know the mouse was in there? How long had he been in there, Sir? So were these two very close friends, Sir?”

More pleas from the poor man, his eyes locked on the door that faced Toady’s office.

Although "Toady" Nugent was Headmaster for most of my time, I can recall a Mr. Clarke, married to the very talented Art teacher. They used to invite pairs of boys to tea on Sunday, I presume it was an early chance for us to hone our conversational skills, but as soon as the lucky pair got back, the rest of us wanted to know which kind of cakes had been served. The Clarke's had two daughters; the younger could climb trees better than all of us. To a small boy, that is a positive attribute.

Another fragment of useless information… the altitude of the Head Master's tennis court was exactly 6000 feet.

The class that I moved through the school with included Bul Bul and Puss Puss Carapiet, both hockey stars and difficult to tackle because they were left handed. Irvine Clarke whose sister had the distinction of being Dow Hill’s tallest girl, Mordecai Cowen, added two phrases to our language.. "He hit the hammer right on the head" and "Don’t take my comic to church, the padre will confirm it (I think he meant confiscate)". Mordecai was very keen on the music of the day, and he wrote the words of all the current songs into a spare exercise book. This meant long hours by the radio or wind-up gramophone, scribbling the words onto scrap paper. During one of Mr. Oliver's classes, Mordecai was transposing his latest song into his fair songbook, when "Oly" realized that he had lost the attention of at least one of the class. He called Mordecai out to the front and studied the carefully written contents. I forget the punishment, but his final order is still clear. "Go back to your desk, you dance-hall tick!"

Stanley Prins was one of two chosen to take Latin, but as a dayboy, he was considered different to the rest of us. Bisset was the class budding artist; the margins of every exercise book he owned were crammed with detailed sketches of German soldiers, trucks and tanks. Guzda came from Bombay and brought more tuck with him each year than the rest of us put together, so naturally we let him join our gang. Copley the first boy I spoke to on my first day.. Davies who never stopped smiling, and never mentioned his walk out of Burma in 1941. Pearson, our class bully, who was elevated to hero status for standing up to defend Davies from a teacher that harassed him over his perpetual grin.

At my first ever VADHA re-union in 2000, I was approached by Trevalyn Howe, who confessed to arranging to sit next to me in class, so he could copy parts of my essays. I tried to collect monies due… sadly he thought I was joking.

The class included a Burmese boy, James Htaw, and for a brief while, two Chinese brothers. They seemed to carry large sums of Chinese National currency and came equipped with Parker fountain pens and wore very smart jackets.

Irvine Clarke came from Jamalpur, and at one stage I lived only 6 miles away at Monghyr. His father was on the committee of the Railway Institute, and looked after the selection of the films to be shown on Saturday evenings. This meant that Irvine and I were able to pick the films for the December to February, when we would be back at home. He was the only boy I met after leaving school. In mid 1947, my parents and I were on a troopship to England. I spotted Clarke on a lower deck. He had joined the British Army, and his battalion was making the same move

I suppose they all had first names, but we never found out what they were. Boarding schools in those days were surname only establishments.

In early 1942, with Japan into the war, a lot of people were nervous about air raids. Around that time one of us discovered that an inverted hockey stick, pushed along at just the right angle, would judder and make the floorboards of the verandas vibrate. About ten of ten were doing this one day, producing a wonderful roar, unaware that our dormitory matron had her head out of her flat window, anxiously scanning the skies for massed Jap bombers.

That same year, the school and district was hit by a violent storm. Many of the huge cryptomaria trees that lined both Top and Bottom Flats came crashing down. Our compensation was the discovery that long sections of their thick bark could be used as toboggans on the steep grass slope down to Bottom Flat.

It was a school tradition that Standard 6 provided the bell ringers to mark the important moments in the day; "Start of Period One", "End of Games", "Prep" and "Dinner". As the bell was on the veranda of the dining hall, dinner was the shortest bell signal, allowing the official could get to his table first and switch plates with someone else.

At least once a week, dinner was meat and veg. under a pastry lid, and although the topping was sliced to an accuracy of a millimetre, that didn't prevent the criminals undermining with their spoon, so that the last to get the dish found very little under his pastry. Finally a system developed where the server divided the pie on to the ten plates, and he was the last to choose. King Solomon and hungry boarders were equally wise.

In the dining hall we were arranged by classes, the Senior Cambridge nearest the top end, then two lines of tables of ten, all the way down to Standard Three, near the doors to the kitchen. The Prefects (aka The Oppressors) had their own table on a raised platform, and among their perks was toast instead of bread at breakfast, and newspapers to read. It was a constant criticism from the masses that our un-elected leaders always read the sports pages before the headlines on page one. Our point was that we were in he middle of World War Two, and we felt the happenings in North Africa, Burma and the Pacific Islands were more important than batting averages. Truthfully, we were just upset that they had toast!

At Easter, we had boiled eggs, dyed a pale purple. I think we had an egg for breakfast most days, and the freshness was occasionally suspect. If you were not happy, it was in order to take your egg to the kitchen where you would hold up the plate for inspection by the head bearer. Silas would reel back, steady him against a table, then declare "Egg OK!" If you were insistent, you returned to your place and minutes later, he would deliver a scrambled egg. The same one, of course. To this day, I will never order scrambled eggs in restaurants and hotels.

It was a school tradition that the classes staying on after the end of term to do Junior and Senior Cambridge examinations would see the rest of the school off from Kurseong station. The fit ones would run with the Toy Train as far as they could, the minimum acceptable distance was as far as "Jesus Rock". This was a huge monolith on the outer edge of the road where it turned away behind the ridge, out of sight from Kurseong. The rock appeared to show a line of text on a vertical face from some 20 metres away. Walk closer and the letters disappeared. Soon after Jesus Rock there was a near vertical path down the "khud", a chance to catch the train up as it traversed the same ridge lower down. It took hours to get back to school again.

In my day, there were parts of the school that were “out of bounds”, and this was explained to all of us very soon after our arrival. I suppose some of it made sense… as soon as we were dressed for the day, the dormitories became “no go” areas.

The area behind the Assembly Hall was totally out of bounds, why I have no idea, even after the Roman Catholic chapel was built and put into use.

In my second year, I was allocated a bed in one of the dormitories at the south end of the school. Our dormitory matron was a Mrs. Heywood, who insisted that every boy passed her inspection before being allowed down the stairs. Those with uncombed hair and un-polished shoes were sent back to smarten themselves up. I found a way past this formality by climbing out the window, slide down the roof of the verandah, and then use a drainpipe to reach the ground. This worked until a Monday morning, when she noticed me collecting clothes from the locker room, when I was questioned as to why I was in her dormitory area. She couldn’t recollect seeing me before. More cross examination!

The lady’s husband used to take our morning Physical Training sessions on the Bottom Flat. Very occasionally he would demonstrate the next exercise… and to our delight, we discovered that he wore his trousers over his pyjamas.

The school gymnasium came into its own as soon as the monsoon arrived. When not in use, the doors were locked. But those in the know had their own way in… through a narrow gap between wall and eaves of the roof. This allowed those proud owners of roller skates to play our version of Ice Hockey… the puck was a Cherry Blossom shoe polish tin filled with sand.

On one occasion four of us made a swing from a broom handle slid through the Roman Rings that hung from a roof member. The one enjoying the ride changed his mind as we pushed him higher on each swing, and dismounted. There was an ominous crack, followed by a scream of agony… one of his gumboots took on a frightening shape.

The rest of us went out over the wall in seconds and fled to the other end of the school. After thinking the situation over, we agreed that the victim could not be left until the next formal use of the gym, so a junior was that he was wanted in the “Day Bogs”. He heard the clamour, told a teacher and the wounded one was rescued.

To his eternal fame, and our relief, he told the master that found him that he had broken into the gym on his own. After several weeks in the hospital and a leg cast, he returned in triumph. It was agreed that the three who abandoned him to his fate would hand over some of our four annas worth of goodies from the tuck shop for several weeks.

The wall at the south end of the gym had hundreds of names scratched into the green moss that covered the grey stones. Then suddenly this became illegal, and all the names were cleaned off. Some of these were dated as far back as the 20’s, to us this was a terrible crime, the Head Master actually obliterating VSK history.

The covered walk past the gym towards the Day Bogs was supported by heavy timber uprights and horizontal rails and for some reason these spaces were favourite sites for large spiders to spin their webs. This allowed us two diversions. One was to bend the top of a supple twig into a loop, then collect webs over the loop, until it became a miniature tennis racquet that could be used to bounce a small pebble. In the second one, moving a spider to the next web left both creatures believing their patch had been invaded by the other.

Beetles were also collected, and tradition demanded that anyone brave enough to take a bite on a finger became the new owner of that particular beast. Stag beetles bites were considered “easy”… one from a rhino was a more serious undertaking, especially when the present owner enraged the prize by stroking its head just before the challenger’s finger was offered up.

A proven way of preventing the dormitory matron from inspecting your locker was to keep at least one harmless yet impressive grass snake in there. This meant collecting ladybirds each day for the snake’s supper.

Official lessons in the Science Laboratory had one advantage… the chance to hunt for droplets of mercury, trapped for years in the grooves of the tables. This meant pushing the end of your 12-inch ruler into the recess and moving the mercury to the end of the table. Later this offered some amusement, rolling the mercury around the palm of your hand. Eventually it would spill, disappearing in a silver flash as it hit the floor.

Occasionally a group of boys would visit a tea estate further down the hill, equipped with shorts rolled up in their towels. This was to give us swimming lessons in the rectangular tank that stored water for the estate. The contents were drawn from a nearby jhora, so diving in risked a heart attack from the temperature. Obviously the concrete structure had never been intended to teach people to swim….. it was a uniform depth, sufficient to drown even the tallest Victorian.

Memory tells me that a few of us could swim; the rest lined the edge, shivering in the wind, awaiting their personal swimming lesson. This meant being attached to a lasso of rope, tied to the end of a bamboo pole. You then were persuaded to release your iron-like grip on the lip of the tank, and you were then towed along one side, under the surface most of the time. Meanwhile the teacher shouted instructions, none of which you could hear in the foam your thrashing arms and legs were creating.

Needless to say I was still a total non-swimmer when I left school in December 1946. I graduated to dog- paddle level in my last weeks in India, while waiting with my parents at the Transit Camp at Deolali .. the Army in India’s first and last call.

I am sure that the two senior dormitories had showers, but the same area beside the two dormitories in the south block offered a strange white tiled trough, that contained about a foot of water. Bathing entailed standing beside the trough, splashing water over yourself, apply soap, then more splashed water to finish off.

When all were considered clean, we were allowed to lower the level to about an inch, then stand at one end of the trough, and launch ourselves down to the other end. Apart from the risk to one’s future in the marriage stakes, it was necessary to put your arms above your head to save your skull from colliding with the wall at the far end.

The original tile fitter had not achieved perfect alignment, so the edges of raised tiles removed a layer of skin from the rib cage. This meant that the plungers of the junior dormitories could always be identified by the tribal markings on their chests.

Half a mile along the same ridge was Dow Hill, the sister school to Victoria.

Every Sunday, the Anglican girls would walk to the Chapel at Victoria, where the left hand side was reserved for their use. Most of Victoria sat on the right; the exception to this rigid rule was the choir, positioned immediately behind the senior girls. This provided the means of passing letters, which in due course would be delivered to the embarrassed recipient.

There were formal meetings between the two schools when “Socials” were arranged. Among the archives displayed on Aubrey Ballantine’s VADHA web site, there is a formal invitation, written by the Head Mistress of Dow Hill, asking the boys of Victoria to attend one of these gatherings.

When Victoria boys were the hosts, a junior class would be given the task of scouring the forest for stag moss. This would be used to deck the door and window frames of the Assembly Hall.

Music would be provided by the school’s wind-up gramophone and the very limited selection of 78-rpm records.

I think that most of the boys of the more senior classes would have wanted to attend. To make up the numbers, entire classes of the middle school would be ordered to turn up.

People who attended co-educational schools will be amused, but the ordeal of a Social was something that produced nightmares. The boys would be lined along one wall of the hall, the girls opposite. The more nervous ones would be massed in the corners, like rats at the arrival of the terrier.

Sooner or later a teacher would grab one of the reluctant ones, frog-march him across No Mans Land and bark “You! Dance with Her!”. For the next three minutes, the couple would stumble around the room… convention demanded that traffic went anti-clockwise.

This mad social whirl came to a halt if either school was struck by one of the ailments that growing children are prone to. As soon as measles, German measles, chicken pox or mumps was confirmed, the school would be placed in quarantine. This meant that Socials with the other school were cancelled, as well as outings to Kurseong’s own flea pit. To most of us this was the more serious implication of the quarantine, especially if the latest Errol Flynn epic was due.

Those afflicted were sent to the hospital that served both schools. If numbers exceeded the numbers of beds there, then the overflow stayed in the dormitories.

Gradually the numbers of patients would dwindle, this was followed by a nervous two-week wait in case there were further cases.

And woe betide the unfortunate boy who prolonged the ban on Socials and cinema trips.

One year it was mumps that was the scourge. Five of us sufferers were locked away in an upstairs ward of the hospital. We were lucky to have a generous supply of comics, but these could not be passed to non-mumpers. We discovered that a classmate had been admitted with a broken leg, and we were warned that we were not allowed to visit him under any circumstances.

The unfortunate had no reading matter, and he shouted up a request for something to be passed to him.

It was common practice for the hospital to issue squares of cotton as handkerchiefs, so we unravelled some, made up a long chord and lowered some comics to the broken legged one.

A few days later we were attacked by the irate nurse. The downstairs patient had developed a spectacular case of mumps, so much so that his head and neck now tapered the wrong way. We were all able to swear with total conviction that we hadn’t been down to see the victim. So the charge of lying was added to our dossiers.

There were occasional school concerts. Under the leadership of Mrs. Clarke, our entire class had to draw, paint and then cut out cardboard masks, representing different animals. I must have drawn the short straw, as mine was the elephant. I have no memory of the song, and this was years before the “Doctor Doolittle” movie came along.

On another occasion I played Henry the Eighth, and my pal Basset had the part of one of his many queens. The scene was set at breakfast, and for as few happy hours we were under the impression that we would get to eat something pleasant on stage. The producer supplied already emptied eggshells, which when turned upside down in the eggcups looked normal. My allusions of the theatre were shattered at an early age.

Some of the senior classes were given a fascinating lecture by an American Air Force officer on “Skip Bombing”, where light bombers dropped their weapons just feet above the surface of the sea, so that the bomb bounced several times before slamming into the side of the target ship.

There was a visit from a magician in the Assembly Hall. The cleverness with playing cards was too far away from those at the back of the hall, but his finale involved a saucer that was handed to a victim. Then on stage, the man lit a candle and waved his hands over the flame. There was a yelp from the saucer-holder, as the object in his hands became too hot to handle.

This impressed us immensely, until some know-all in a senior class explained that the saucer was covered in something that stung… the distant candle was merely a stage prop.

The school was often visited by Father Prior, an impressive old gentleman wearing white with a beard to match. One of his favourite stories was that the purpose of the steep roaring mountain streams was to move sand and rocks down towards the sea, thus making “King George’s empire ever bigger”.

His other party trick was to tell us “The Monkey’s Paw”, and this always soon before bed-time. I don’t think we really understood the play, but most were scared witless.

Our homes were scattered over a large area of India, so it made sense for the travel to and from school to be in two Batches.

Us rugged Up-country boys would leave school on the first of December, while the effete Calcutta city slickers would stay an extra day. The same split occurred at the start of the school year. The Calcutta batch left Sealdah on the first of March, the Up-country wallahs the following evening.

My father moved from one posting to another over the years, but my parents wisely decided I should stay at the same school throughout my secondary education. I travelled to five different “homes” over eight years. The closest was Barrackpore, 18 miles north of Calcutta… the furthest in Sialkot in the Punjab.

If I left school around midday on a Monday, I would be in Siliguri that evening and reach Sealdah the next morning. A trip across Calcutta that day to catch the Typhoon Express that evening. I would be on that train Tuesday night, and all of Wednesday. On Thursday I reached Lahore, where I changed trains. A second change was necessary at Firozabad, and I reached home that evening.

For two years I had the dubious distinction of living the furthest from school. Prior to 1941, this honour was held by Smiler Davies, who used to go home BY SHIP! His parents lived in central Burma.

Around this time, we had a letter from an aunt in England. The family was concerned about my cousin who was starting at a new school, and that meant a trip of 12 miles.

I suppose that all people at boarding schools are perpetually hungry. It certainly applied at Victoria.

On one occasion someone in our gang was taken by visiting parents to Darjeeling for the weekend. On Sunday evening he returned, carrying that so easily recognised white cardboard box labelled “Firpo’s”. Cream cakes!

We found a discrete corner and the box was opened, and we were allowed to choose two each. After minutes of agonizing over the choice and settling claims and counter claims, it was time to peel away the paper doily and savour the first mouthful.

It was then that we realized that the cake box had travelled back in the boot, nestled up against the two-gallon petrol tin (this was before the British Army captured its first Jerry can). Every cake had soaked up the heavy fumes. Un-edible , you say? At a boarding school? No risk of that.

We struggled through; slightly dizzy from inhaling the petrol fumes. If a naked light had been near, the hillside would still bear the scars.

The forest near the school included small clearings where the locals grew their own foodstuffs, the time of the year decided if the crop was maize or mooli (a large horseradish).

Walks over weekends often took us past these patches, and I confess that we used to help ourselves, and smuggle the maize back to the school, not particularly well hidden under our sweaters.

On one day we were carrying our booty back and blundered into a man carrying a kukri in one hand, a heavy branch on his other shoulder. He gave a roar that showed his displeasure, dropped his firewood and charged, kukri held aloft. We were not sure if this was a string of abuse or a Nepalese war cry. But this was not the time to enquire; we fled into the forest, crashing through the undergrowth, leaving a trail of maize underfoot.

We heard a strange noise behind us and the one of the braver thieves looked over his shoulder. The man was rolling on the ground, crippled with laughter at the look of terror on our faces. The maize fields were safe for weeks.

Among the things that happened towards the end of the school year was the construction of ”Ever Lasters”. This needed an empty shoe polish tin, a stick of classroom chalk, and some candle wax. The piece if chalk had to be short enough to fit, when standing upright, in the tin with the lid on. Then a hole had to be bored down the centre of the chalk and some grooves cut across the base of the chalk. A short piece of string as a wick helped the device to work more efficiently.

The term “Ever Laster” implied that as the melting wax was collected in the tin, this all-essential piece of equipment would last for… well, several days. Why did we need these? Apart from increasing the chance of a bedding fire in the dormitory, I haven’t the slightest idea!

The Assembly Hall was fitted with a few stoves, which bought comfort to those at desks a few feet away while the rest of us froze. The solution was to find a tin, the ones that came with Polson’s Butter were acknowledged as the best. Cut out top and bottom, drill holes around the curved side, then make a grid out of wire to support the charcoal made from twigs earlier in the day, and behold! Your private heating system for those long Prep sessions in the Hall.

All right, there was a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, but it prevented frostbite!

And finally, the plane tree at the south end of the Bottom flat, behind the pavilion. Do Victorians still believe that they will not be allowed to leave school at the end of term if a single leaf is still attached to the tree? We took it very seriously, so much so that volunteers could always be found to hurl stones up at the surviving leaves in the last weeks of November. No wonder the corrugated roof of that pavilion looked so battered.

The only use of that pavilion seemed to be to provide a place to store the long coir matting for the cricket pitch, and the building reeked of the damp mat. And mysteriously, as smoking was forbidden throughout the school, the faint suggestion of tobacco smoke.

Special Memories

The sound of the wind in the cryptomaria trees that surrounded both Top and Bottom Flat.

The very damp walk through the forest to Goethal’s to watch one of our teams play the "enemy", and removing leeches from your legs when we got back to school.

Watching the sun’s first rays strike the white face of Kanchenjunga, changing it to a bright pink.

Roller skate races around the verandas and corridors of the main block. The brave ones cut the corner by leaping across the outside of the vertical drainpipe.

Twig races along the deep monsoon ditch in front of the main building, a raging torrent in the rainy season.

Buns at teatime on Sundays, the dreaded smell of brinjal "jackies" at least once a week, "pish pash", a personal favourite. Saving chillies from lunchtime (they were hidden in the flower vase on the table) to make Aloo sandwiches to eat after evening prayers in the Assembly Hall..

The school nurse issuing a spoonful of Mag. Sulph. to every boy in the school. We had to say "Thank you, Nurse" to prove we had swallowed the disgusting stuff, thus preventing us from spitting it out later.. The chaos in the Bogs two hours later…..

The excitement of Sports Day, having numbers sewn onto your vest. The Head Prefect (Bowen?) breaking the school high jump record that had stood at 5 feet 7.5 inches for years. The Old Boys Race over 100 yards. It was run on a handicap system, a yard start for every year since the entry left school. It was won every year by some sprightly old gentleman that left the school in the 19th.^th century.

Looking through Stanley Prins’ “Summoned by the Bell”, I recognized the slide that was part of the Obstacle Race. This was a rectangular wooden box, that the participants slid down. The top surface had a few large holes cut in the top surface. This provided ventilation and allowed a teacher to check that a logjam wasn’t developing.

Queuing at the Tuck Shop, clutching 4 annas, deciding whether you wanted a curry puff, sticky cake or coconut ice. Buying illegal jalebes in the school servant’s lines.

How good supper was at Siliguri station on the way home, and the horrible breakfast in the same room three months later.

Trips on the Toy Train to Darjeeling to watch our hockey team. One year the final at St. Pauls went to extra time. When we got to Ghoom, the train had gone, so we walked most of the way back until we thumbed a lift on a goods train.

The race down the terraced tea estate to get to the Plaza for a rare cinema trip. The noise of some two hundred boys breaking open the husks of monkey nuts in the cinema, while the prefects on the balcony shouted "Stop eating cheenas!"

Exeats at weekends to walk to The Tank and Duke’s Nose. Green Plain at the South end of Top Flat was in bounds, in the centre there were 3 heavy wooden posts, used to support straw filled sacks for the Cadets’ bayonet practice. We once left a prisoner tied to a post, so he missed supper.

Lying in bed at night as the monsoon rain hammered on the corrugated tin roof. Each dormitory had selected storytellers, and the subject matter came from the films seen in the last holidays. Lining the wall along Top Flat to watch the sun go down, chanting "Going..Going.. Gone!" One day closer to Going Home Day. Counting off the days to the end of term on home made charts glued to the underside of desk lids. Making elaborate labels for ourselves and Dow Hill favourites on graph paper. These were glued to our tin trunks for the journey home. Making huge signs to hang on the front of the Big Train engine as we pulled into Sealdah. These were made from up to 40 layers of exercise book pages and home made glue, topped with glossy art paper to form the school badge or the entwined letters VSK. At least one of these became the roof of a shunter’s shed in the railway yards north of Sealdah.

Legend had it that one year, before I arrived, the railways made the serious mistake of booking both Victoria and Goethals to travel home on the same day. There was an armed truce at the start of the journey and this lasted until the train reached Jalpaiguri, the station where the school badge was hung on the front of the engine. A riot ensued, and parents waiting at Sealdah watched their dear off-springs being led away under a police escort. The dread at the end of the holidays, some sadist gave February only 28 days. Being handed over to the teacher in charge at Sealdah, by parents trying to be cheerful, with 275 days to the end of term. Trying to ignore the sobs of new boys suffering their first night in a "dorm". "Jug Night" a huge bonfire on Top Flat, around which the teachers were obliged to sing a song each. Later sleeping on the floor under our beds, to avoid the barrage of tennis shoes that went on most of the night. This section of my life ended in December 1946, when our batch of JC and SC candidates finished the last exam and we woke up to the fact that our sheltered life in the cocoon that was Victoria was over. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Eight months after leaving school, I was in the Army.

You can imagine my delight when I found the VADHA VICTORIA KURSEONG pages on the Internet. I printed all the newsletters, drooled over the VS photographs, and bored my wife silly with shouts of "He was in my class!"

You may ask why I waited so long before making contact. From somewhere I had got the impression that when the confrontation between India and China along the common border got nasty, the Indian Army had taken over the school as a base. Where that came from I have no idea… perhaps it was from that nice waiter at the Chinese restaurant!

“NO CHANCE TO GATHER MOSS”

John Gardiner’s life

In the late 1920’s, my father was serving with the First Battalion of The Black Watch. He had joined the Army in 1916, well under age and was soon involved in the hell that was life of the trenches of France. He survived that with wounds and then was moved to the Italian front. After the Armistice was signed in November 1918, he became part of the army of occupation in Austria.

He left the Army, with the hope that he would be able to resume his trade as an electrician. Sadly for him, companies in his home area of Birmingham had no vacancies; they were still employing the women who had been trained during the war.

He decided to use the skills that he had already acquired, signed another set of attestation papers and was told to report to the barracks in Perth, Scotland. This was the depot of The Black Watch. In a very short time, he was on a troopship heading for India.

My mother was working for a family connected with the Indian Forestry Commission, looking after the three children.

My parents met at a regimental evening, and they were married soon after. My father was due extended leave in England, which explains how I was born in Croydon, Surrey

I spent just over a year in this country, and went to India at the tender age of 14 months, so my mother and I joined my father at Dehra Dun, one of the Army’s many hill stations. . I was followed by a brother and sister, sadly they both died from enteric fever on the same day in December 1932, Neil at the age of 15 months, while Janet was just seven days old.

One day while we were living in Dehra Dun, my father sent a message home, suggesting that I should be kept indoors, as there was a report of a bear in the area. Alas, I had already set off on a solo walk. I was found a few miles down the main road.

After several more years with his regiment, my father was posted to one of the many Auxiliary Force units that backed up the Regular Army. This particular battalion was formed from the personnel that worked for the Bengal Nagpur Railway. His main duties were the small arms training, and he was also responsible for the annual check on the weapons and ammunition held in the armouries at each railway town. This entailed going “on Tour”, when he and the family were allocated a special coach that was attached to the end of a train. This would be shunted into its own shelter for a day. While my father checked the contents of the armoury, we were free to amuse ourselves for the day.

We were at Kharagpur in 1934 when most of Bihar State felt the effects of an earthquake. Our bungalow was within sight of the town’s Railway Institute, topped by the main water tank. As the building lurched from side to side, waves of water flooded over the alternative ends of the tank. Another indication came from watching the chickens in the garden falling over. Many years later we lived in Monghyr, a town partially destroyed on that day.

While we were at Kharagpur, I was invited to a child’s birthday party. Earlier that week the man of the house had been hunting, and the party had been charged by a black bear. After it was shot, it was clear that the animal had a cub nearby, and this was taken home. At the party, I was asked if I would like this small bundle of fur, and carried it home in triumph. I handed the cub to my mother, who had assumed that I had been given a “teddy bear”. The poor thing was dropped in panic.

This bear (called Bhalu, naturally) lived with us for many years, one of a mob of pets that included dog, cat, rabbit, a small dear, a mongoose and a parrot. They would sleep on the floor of whichever room had the punkah working.

Bhalu had a warped sense of humour. The click of the gate usually announced the arrival of the “box wallah”, carrying his tin trunk of wares on his head. Bhalu used to slide down the end steps of the veranda, take cover behind the hedge, then rear up at the correct moment. This produced a high scream of terror, a bang as the trunk hit the ground, and then a clatter as the box wallah sailed over the high gate. Several days would pass before the man came to the kitchen door to ask for his goods back.

Bhalu wore a smirk on his drooling mouth for days after his latest ambush.

Rikki, the mongoose, had the run of the house, except when there were boiled eggs for breakfast. The smell of the egg excited him that much that he would race up the tablecloth to plunge his head into the eggshell.

A mongoose breaks into an egg by flinging it, scrum half style, through his legs against a wall. Rikki would be treated to an egg every now and then. The next time we would give him a table tennis ball. Not only did this “egg” refused to break when fired at a wall, it bounced back at speed, getting Rikki into a rage.

Education was limited in that part of India, and so it was decided that a boarding in the hills was the solution. And so I was sent to St. Paul’s in Darjeeling. I remember little of that year; I seemed to have spent most of it in the school sanatorium, working my way through every illness that children are prone to.

In 1936 – 37 my father was due his year’s leave in Britain. A months trip on a ship at the age of seven has to be a special thrill, and when we were crossing a very rough Bay of Biscay, I discovered that wet decks are ideal skating surfaces. A collision with a life jacket locker was the reason for me arriving in England with a black eye.

We stayed with a variety of relatives, in Brixton, Malvern and a pub in Sussex, but the highlight was a month in a cottage on the south coast lent to us by the Forestry family that my mother had worked for. I can remember being taken to Croydon, then London’s airport, and the Imperial War Museum, where my father talked his way into the photographic section and hunted for the parts of the trenches that he had sampled.

In early 1938 we sailed back to India, and a long train journey got us to Barrackpore, where my father took on the weapon training for the Bengal Artillery. This was another Auxiliary Unit, the personnel being the managers and engineers of the many jute factories along the west back on the Hoogli River. For some strange reason, every one of them hailed from Dundee. My father’s connection with the Black Watch created a strong bond, strengthened by a mutual love of whisky.

I attended the local army day school for the rest of that year. The infantry battalion in the barracks was the East Yorkshires, and initially I had great difficulty understanding what the children were saying.

In March 1939, I started at Victoria School, where I spent the next eight years. Although my father was posted to five different army units over those years, it was decided I should stay at the same school.

While I was at home in the 1941 – 42 holidays, we had to pack and travel to Delhi, where my father was stationed in the Red Fort. We had a bungalow in the famous Delhi Ridge, the scene of the battles during the Indian Mutiny. I had just started to explore the area, when the Army discovered an error. It was Calcutta where we should have moved to… 18 miles away from Barrackpore. Anther long journey by train.

My father was promoted to Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant and was attached to the East Bengal Railway battalion, whose offices and armoury were enclosed in a high wall, between the two stations at Sealdah. My father had a theory that hundreds of people were employed to roll empty oil drums from Sealdah East to the North station every night, over the hundreds of yards of cobbled stones. And the following night, they all had to be trundled back again.

A new town to explore, and it offered the mysteries of the New Market, the big shops and cinemas of Chowringee.

It was around this time that Japan entered the war, and just before sunset one evening, a Japanese reconnaissance plane circled over the city, just out of range of the anti-aircraft guns. Most people assumed the worst, and next morning thousands e decided to take a train, any train, out of Calcutta. The tall iron gates were closed in an attempt to control the flow; these were flattened by the sheer weight of the crowd. So many boarded the trains that the locomotives were unable to move the overloaded carriages.

Part of my father’s duties was to provide the defence of Sealdah Station against air attack. For this he had four Lewis guns, these were mounted as high on the roofs as possible. Luckily the Emperor and his generals didn’t order low level strafing raids on the trains and platforms.

In 1942, my father was commissioned and posted to Meerut, where he was involved in the training of Pioneer battalions

Our next posting was to Sialkot in the Punjab, which was the hockey stick centre of India. The temperatures in the summer in the Punjab were ghastly, but during my school holidays, the mornings were crisp and clear, with the snows of the Himalayas visible all day.

At this time I held the record for the distance to be covered to get to school. This meant three days of travelling and some 1000 miles.

In 1945, we were on the move again, so my journey home from school took me to Monghyr, on the banks of the Ganges. This was where the army had established the Eastern Command Bridging Camp, and my father had become commanding officer.

A large part of Monghyr was enclosed in an ancient Mughal fort. The maharaja’s palace had been taken over as offices for the camp, and the one time private library became our accommodation.

This offered the perfect playground for a 16 year old. The camp included a large “tank”, providing a stretch of water to build Bailey bridge across. There were American motorboats available to tow the bridge sections; the tank was teeming with fish, all eager to be hooked. A mile away, the unit had several boats on the Ganges River, including a CrisCraft cabin cruiser. This had been the property of a local minor raja, and at the start of the war he had offered this to the army. With four bunks, a cooker and a rudimentary fridge, it was ideal for Sunday picnics on the river. Even the start of the journey to school was a treat; we used an amphibious DUKW to cross the Ganges to catch a train to Jalpaiguri.

Another plus was that Monghyr is just six miles by train from Jamalpur. This was another railway town, and it boasted a Railway Institute. Irvine Clarke, a pal at Victoria lived in Jamalpur, and his uncle was the committee member in charge of ordering the Saturday evening film. This meant that Irvine and I advised on the appropriate films to be screened between December and March.

My father’s Army service should have ended in July 1945, but he took deferment for two years, making it possible for me to take my Cambridge School Certificate examinations at Victoria.

As the sub-continent of India moved towards independence, the tensions between the Hindu and Muslim communities steadily rose, and isolated attacks on individuals became organised assaults on whole villages.

The Indian Army took on the task of keeping the two groups apart, and my father, accompanied by six armed sepoys patrolled every day in a four wheel drive vehicle. Many years later he told me about some of the incidents, the worst of which involved the massacre of everyone on a train, stopped by laying a sleeper across the tracks.

In December 1946, I completed my secondary education. My mother returned to Dowhill in March 1947, where she was a dormitory matron. This left my father and I to tend for ourselves. I used to spend days shooting green pigeon with a .22 rifle, catching fish, and in the evenings we went to the very run down Monghyr Club to play snooker and table tennis.

Early that year, Monghyr had its own night of excitement when the Police mutinied, told the officers to leave, and before dawn, blazed off hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the sky. At daylight