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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, they found that the wall of the fort was lined with Army automatic weapons, covering the Police lines.  The fireworks were over.

 

In May 1947, my father handed over the Bridging Camp to an Indian Army officer, and we started on our last Indian rail journey, initially covered in wreaths.  This was to Deolali, the first and last posting for anyone that served in India.

 

By a happy coincidence, we were joined by several old friends, so that about eight of us “Army brats” had a wonderful three-week holiday.  I even learnt how to swim.

 

The ship was a German vessel, seized as reparation at the end of the war.  The ship was packed with Army personnel, all keen to get back to Britain and civilian life.

 

The other passengers in our compartment from Southampton to London must have been entertained by the excited comments from us newcomers… “Look how green the grass is!  Just look how fat all the cows are!”

 

We were met by a bewildering selection of aunts and uncles, and after a long welcome in the station bar, we split up.  My parents went to stay with an uncle in Wandsworth, I to another family near Croydon.

 

Then the same family that had employed my mother all those years ago came to the rescue, and we had the use of a beautiful house in South Croydon to get us all under the same roof.

 

After his 30 years in the Army, it was no surprise that my father thought that the same career would suit me.  And so in August 1947, I signed the attestation papers and reported to Stoughton Barracks in Guildford.

 

Apart from being the depot for the Queen’s Regiment, the barracks was one of the many basic training centres for National Service, the fate for everyone when they reached the age of 18.

 

I was in a barrack room with 30 other bewildered people, being taught the mysteries of putting equipment together, blancoing webbing, polishing brass and boots.  Foot and rifle drill… in fact all the attributes that come under the heading of ‘square bashing’.  Six weeks later, we performed with style and precision for admiring parents in our Passing Out Parade.

 

From there I moved on to Malvern in Worcestershire, where I was taught the many skills of Military Engineering at 1 Training Regiment Royal Engineers. The barracks had been built as an American Army Hospital during the war. Wounded and sick soldiers do not need a lot of space for washing and shaving, but 30 of us jostling around 3 hand basins caused accidents.  A jogged elbow caused a cut under my nose, and this was still bleeding when I went on parade.

 

I stood to attention with blood dripping of my chin onto carefully polished boots.  I did not expect sympathy, but the corporal’s comment was “And I suppose you want a bloody medal!”  Silent prayer… “I want to go home!”

 

We used to be hauled out of bed well before the official reveille, to get endless chores done.  Once a week there was a formal kit inspection, where every item of clothing and equipment had to be laid out in the prescribed manner.   The accepted method to achieve perfection was to stretch a length of string across the 15 beds down one side of the room, then move knife, spoon and fork up to touch the string.  Then on to the next line of possessions…

 

Our training included digging trenches and shelters, laying and lifting mines, building Bailey bridges, handling boats. This part of the course was covered on the Severn River, which in the winter rains is a fast flowing torrent.  The training corporals would take us down stream a mile, then we had to row heavy Naval whalers back.  Since that time I have nothing but sympathy for Chalton Heston in his galley slave days of Ben Hur.

 

 We had heard the story that a training corporal had been killed recently on the training area, while supervising the lifting of a heavy timber structure.  To nobody’s surprise, there was lots more square bashing.  After 13 weeks of training, I was allowed to call myself “Sapper”, a far superior life form to that of a mere infantry private.

 

As a regular soldier, I had been able to select both regiment and trade, but while waiting to be trained as a draughtsman, I was posted to a working Engineer Squadron, building extensions to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.  This was in February, and that meant digging ditches, laying cement and breezeblocks, with temperatures just above freezing point. Our accommodation was basic, leaky Nissen huts, which, legend had it, had been turned down by the Free Polish Army in 1942.

 

       On the plus side, occasionally we worked on the edge of the parade square, where the officer cadets were put through their paces by their drill instructors, all on loan from the Brigade of Guards.  These gentlemen had developed their patter over the years, and we enjoyed the experience of watching future officers being taken down several notches.

 

       The Engineer Squadrons at Camberley had proud histories.  They had all been Bailey bridge specialists in France and Germany towards the end of the war, and several lockers in the huts were adorned with photographs of the bridges that were flung across the Rhine and other major rivers, sometimes under fire.

 

Release from hard labour at last, and a posting to an Army Trade Training Centre, to start my training as a mechanical draughtsman.  Most of the people on the course had been working in drawing offices before their deferred call up, and they taught me far more than the instructor.  This was a trade… I seemed to remember most of my mathematics from school days, so could explain topics like fractions and the properties of triangles.

 

I then moved on to the Royal Engineers Depot in the wilds of Hampshire.  It was an accepted fact that the location for a new army camp is decided after a survey of the nearby amenities.  Is there a near by pub?  Cinema?  Railway Station?  Village with young daughters?  If the answer to all is “NO”, then the ideal spot has been found..

 

Barton Stacey fitted all these requirements, and there were some 5000 of us there, awaiting the next decision in our military careers.  There was a problem keeping all these people from getting bored.  A common solution was to march a hundred or so out into the countryside for “map reading exercises”.  We then had an hour’s sleep in the shade of a hedge.

 

Word filtered down that I was earmarked for Malaya, and I was sent on embarkation leave.    

 

My parents were still trying to find somewhere to live, and a temporary solution was for my father to take a job with a Territorial Army Unit in Putney, where a basic flat was available above the drill hall where the anti-aircraft guns were stored.  For my four-week leave, the main advantage was the London Underground station only 200 yards away.  This meant that all the delights of London were in easy reach.

 

Back to Barton Stacey, and we were shuffled to different huts, with some 200 of us destined for the Far East.  More detailed information was deemed unnecessary, even though it could mean Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong or Borneo.   “Yours is not to reason why” was still the way things were done.

 

A date was announced, only 10 days away.  A final weekend at home, and then a 4am reveille.  We paraded on the square, were counted and checked, then trucked to Andover.  A troop train to Liverpool, and a queue formed at the bottom of the gang-plank.

 

A comic amongst us pointed out to a stony faced Red Cap (Military Police) that he would prefer a cabin on the sun deck, this merry jape was ignored.  We were led down a series of steep companionways to a troop deck a long way down into the bowels of the ship.  There were portholes, just above the waterline, and rows of fixed tables and benches.  The only other amenity was a series of hooks on the ceiling (“deck head” to sailors). 

 

We were handed a rolled hammock each.  “Find two hooks seven part apart and get organized.  Stow all your gear against that bulkhead”.   Our luxury cruise had begun.

 

Our meals were taken at the tables, and had to be collected from the galley by one from each table.  The table orderlies queued at the counter then carried the food to us in flat dixies.  Getting down all the stairs meant the occasional accident.  At breakfast, dropped rashers of bacon could be dusted over, but a drop pan of stew meant that meal was a blank. 

 

We were allowed up on deck to wave at some disinterested dockhands, and then discovered that the ship was being pulled away from the quayside. Someone realised that we had no idea what the ship was called.  Her Majesty’s Troopship “Devonshire” was the answer and the RAF flag on the mast proved it was normally used for moving Air Force personnel.

 

The Tannoy system was turned on and we listened to the Opening Ceremony of the 1948 Olympics Games from the White City Stadium in London..  An easy date to look up years later, 12 August 1948, which meant I had been in the Army 364 days.  We watched England disappear into the haze in silence.  At the age of 18, three years away from home sounds like a life sentence.

 

We discovered that there were Air Force personnel on board, allocated to a deck  even lower than ours. Some two hundred of them were heading for Allahabad, where they would be training the recently formed Pakistan Air Force.

 

As always the passage of the Suez Canal was interesting, and we had to ignore the jibes of Army people along the bank “You’re going the wrong way!”  As a one-time army brat, this was my fifth trip through the canal.

 

As soon as the weather permitted, many of us took to sleeping on deck, even though teak decking is hard through a single blanket.  But a morning lie-in was not wise.  The crew hosed the deck down with seawater at first light, whether there were sleepers stretched out or not.

 

In the Red Sea we called at the port of Massawa, moored downwind from a ship that was coaling.  That meant that every deck was covered in a layer of black dust.

 

Then Aden, where we had a few hours ashore.  Most of us visited the NAAFI Club, and were entertain by a large and wobbly contingent of Royal Navy, singing “This old coat of mine, has seen some story weather”.  I won’t explain what else is entailed.

 

At Karachi, we unloaded our RAF passengers, and they set off by truck to their station.  We were asked if we would like some time ashore.  After weeks at sea, it seemed a good idea.  We were lined up in three ranks on the quayside, and then marched for several miles around the docks. That was not exactly what we had in mind.

 

The next call was Colombo, where we watched huge waves created by monsoon winds pounding against the harbour wall, sending sheets of spray high into the air.

 

Now the last and longest stage of the journey, across the Bay of Bengal and down the Malacca Straits towards the port of Singapore.  We spend hours in heavy rain, with visibility down to a few hundred yards, the surface flattened by the downpour.

 

Exactly a month after leaving Liverpool we entered Keppel Harbour at dawn.  A military band played jolly and martial music, as we struggled into equipment, hoisted kitbags onto shoulders and descended the gangplank. We were loaded into a line of trucks for the short journey to Gillman Barracks, the home of the Singapore Engineer Regiment.  The blocks were built well before the war, with high ceilings and plenty of windows to allow the breeze to cool us.

 

Now we were thinned down to just 16, all addressed to somewhere call ETC, some distance up the Malayan Peninsula.  At dusk, we were issued with a rifle and 50 rounds of ammunition each.  The same trucks moved us to the railway station but we were assured that it was only hours to our final destination, the garrison at Kluang, in the centre of Johore State.

 

Less reassuring were the notices in each coach.

 

 “IN THE EVENT OF FIRING ON THE LINE SIDE, LIE ON THE FLOOR.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU LEAVE THE TRAIN”.  To prove we were not the only targets, this advice was repeated in Chinese, Malay, Hindi and Tamil.  I still have one of the notices as a souvenir.

 

This was our first knowledge of “The Emergency”, a situation declared about the time we were embarked on this trip.  It seemed that some of the locals had other ideas on how the country should be governed.

             

As soon as we crossed the causeway, we were told to draw the blinds at the windows, and the interior lights were extinguished.  There were concerns.  The green blinds looked far from bullet proof, and was there a risk that any belligerent gunman would be able to judge the height of the floor that we were advised to lie on.

 

Later we found that each train included rotating gun turrets, and as a protection against mines, the real train was preceded by an armoured locomotive, towing a gun turret flat.  We presumed the crew of the advanced train was paid danger money.

 

A few miles south of Kluang, the road and railway separated, creating a stretch of line that could not be reached in a hurry.  Over the next three years, If we ever heard a dull thud around 11 o’clock, it meant the line had been blown up again, and no mail the next day.

 

Four hours later, we arrived at Kluang.  A three-mile truck ride, and we arrived at The Engineer Training Centre – Far East.  Tea and soup in the cookhouse, and we were shown to spaces in huts, where everyone else was fast asleep.

 

So back to the remembered chore of tucking in a mosquito net, and our first night in a hut a with coconut thatch roof.

 

Next morning I reported to the unit office.  I was handed the keys of “the drawing office”, all of six feet square, my working area.  The presence of many dead flies and a very smelly lizard showed the previous draughtsman had left some months before.

 

It appeared that my arrival had been looked forward to.  In the next few days, I had customers with requests for training diagrammes, a stencil for ‘No Smoking’ signs, and an interesting question from the adjutant… Could I design a yacht?  I had to confess that a three-month course in basic drafting had not prepared me for a project at that level.

 

       My duties included looking after the map store (a rack of sliding drawers) and later I became the Garrison Security Clerk, this involved typing out daily reports that went to Army Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.  This added little in the way of work load, most of the report said “NTR” – nothing to report.

 

The Training Centre main purpose was to impart sapper skills to locally enlisted Malays, Chinese and Indians.  Later new Gurkhas recruits went through the same process.

 

Training had come to a halt when the Emergency had been declared, when British NCO’s plus a few men had been sent out to isolated rubber estates, guarding the factories and the tappers working on the trees.

 

Before long, most of us new arrivals were put through a cadre course.  A month later, we all rose to the dizzy height of lance corporal.  This made us available as guard commanders, and we then spent at least two nights a week in dingy temporary guardrooms.

 

But we found that was plenty to do.  The small unit had teams to play football, hockey, cricket and rugby against other units in the garrison.

 

The garrison included some 2000 troops, the separate camps were arranged either side of a mile long grass runway.  A separate smaller strip was the base of an AOP flight, equipped with light Auster aircraft, originally spotters for Artillery, now used for communications.

 

Occasionally a Dakota would deliver vital stores or visiting top brass.  One such landing coincided with one of our monthly garrison parades.  On this occasion all the units were lined up to be inspected by Field Marshall Slim (of 14th Army and Burma fame).  We were saved from two hours of sweating in the morning sun by a Dakota needing to land.

 

The Airforce, based in Singapore, was often used to bomb patches of jungle that could contain terrorist gangs, and we once watched Meteor jet fighters firing rockets into the hills a few miles away.

 

On another strike by Royal Navy fighters, a Seafire got into trouble and made a wheels up descent on the airstrip.  It came to a halt with a very bent prop just short of a deep monsoon drain. Souvenir hunters were kept away by an armed guard, and the next day a Navy truck arrived.  After salvaging the guns and some of the cockpit instruments, petrol was poured over the fuselage and it was set alight.   We were appalled at the waste, even more when someone in our hut had to pay for an aluminium mess tin that he had lost.

 

Our camp was the highest in the garrison, perched on a small hill that overlooked the airstrip.  Our elevation had its disadvantages, as the local water department pumped a set number of gallons to the garrison each day.  That meant we were the last to get water each evening, and our taps gurgled dry before everybody else’s.  Any sudden increase in the garrison population reduced the minutes we had water even further.  

 

In 1949, a mysterious request appeared on the notice boards.  “Volunteers required, those with experience in handling boats should apply”.

 

Army tradition insists “Never volunteer for nothing”.  But whatever this was about it could get us away from the boring duties of guard commanders.         

 

Sixteen of us volunteered for what ever was involved.  Nothing happened for two weeks, then new maps arrived, and I was told not to talk about the area covered.  A discrete inspection showed they were of Pahang State, further north up the Malayan peninsula.  A few meandering rivers were indicated, ominously large patches were left white, labelled  “Unexplored – probably jungle.” 

 

A few days later we had to collect stores from the railway station.  These were American Army Storm Boats, mainly of marine ply, plus outboard engines and spares.  The stores area became a noisy part of the camp where each engine was mounted in a suitably modified 80-gallon drum.  Water was added and then the engines were run for several hours.

 

We were issued with jungle boots, new uniforms and small bottles of oil, to be smeared along every seam of our clothing.  This, we were told, would dissuade lice from gathering and keeping us awake.  Plus malaria pills, and tablets to drop into our water bottles, these to slaughter all the beings that live in river water.  This was all beginning to sound different to the boating holiday we had planned.

 

Finally a rifle and 50 rounds of ammunition, and we loaded ourselves, the boats and engines onto a special train.  We soon discovered it was cooler and more comfortable to ride in the boats on flat bed wagons than the wooden seats in the single third class carriage.

 

We travelled north, through Kuala Lumpur, then switched to a line that went through gradually thickening jungle.

 

At Temerloh, our stores were moved into three-ton trucks, heading for a one-time factory on the banks of the Pahang River, now the home of the Devonshire Regiment.  The boats and engines were established on the bank of the river, together with around a hundred Jerry Cans.  While the boats were checked for damage, a small team started mixing oil and petrol for the outboard engines.  Other empty jerry cans were lashed to the inside of the hull to provide buoyancy in the case of an accident

 

While we were unloading the boats, an Artillery battery was lobbing shells into the jungle on the opposite of the river.  We seemed to have talked ourselves into something of a war.

 

Two platoons of Gurkha Riflemen arrived, our passengers and escort on the trip into the river delta.

 

The first day took us 30 miles downriver to a point where another river entered the main stream.  This was the base of a Royal Artillery unit, and our stop over for the night.  They asked us where we were heading, and when we said south along the tributary, we were told that the last river patrol to head in that direction had been the Japanese… and they never came back.

 

 Impressed?  We were….  Uplifted?  No!

 

We spent the next day working our way upstream, the river a narrow winding strip through the jungle, the endless green growing all the way down to the water’s edge.  In some places, high branches reached across us in a solid green ceiling.

 

At one point we found a path that climbed up the bank.  The map showed no village, and three of us scrambled up the bank to investigate.  We found a single straw roofed hut, with a few basics for sale. The shopkeeper was a very nervous and solitary Chinese, and we wondered where his customers were, there wasn’t another building in sight.

 

It was not long before sunset when the leading boat pulled into a small bay.  It took nearly thirty minutes to cut away the undergrowth that grew right down to the water, enough to allow the first crew and escort to clamber up the steep bank.

 

I am not sure what we expected on our arrival, but we were shown a patch of trees and thick undergrowth and told to clear enough space to sleep in.  The Gurkhas joined the rest of their battalion just yards away, and we set to with machetes to make enough room to spread a large tarpaulin. One half lay on the ground, then the rest over a branch to create a cover, just in case it rained.  It did two hours later.

 

We were shown our way to the Gurkha cook tent, where we collected rice and vegetable curry, with a mug full of tea.

 

Next morning we were up early.  It seemed that the Gurkhas eat twice a day, and the equivalent of breakfast came around 9 o’clock.  It consisted of… you guessed it… rice and vegetable curry.  We were able to convince the cook that early morning tea was essential.  Later, we discovered that the cook tent had a supply of tinned fruit, and that our hosts had no liking for it.  We used to trade our rum ration for peaches, apricots, pears and sliced pineapple, all served drenched in Carnation milk.  That constituted our midday meal.

 

That first day we widened the path to the water, constructed a floating platform from empty jerry cans, established the engine workshop… a plank between two trees that the outboard motors could be clamped to, covered by a tarpaulin. The engines were heavy and the task of getting them in and out of the boats was eased by rigging block and tackle from a branch that overhung the water.

 

The considerable supply of petrol and oil in jerry cans needed a space with a floor above the mud. 

 

Others worked on building separate huts, each with a floor and a canvas roof, with rudimentary shelves for the stowage of plates and mugs.  We soon realized that boots had to be stowed upside down to keep the insides as dry as possible, and checked each morning for creepy crawlies.

 

Another must was the digging of a latrine pit, with two logs across the chasm.  The drill was squat on one, hold on to the other. 

 

Two days later, we took on the duties that were the reason for us being there, moving men and supplies up and down the river system.  This whole operation, planned to winkle out any terrorist gangs that had retreated deep into the swamps, involved several battalions of infantry, forming a perimeter. 

 

All our rations, fuel and other supplies were dropped to us at a clearing a mile away.  “Drop Day” became our equivalent of a village fair.  A large armed escort covered the clearing, while others lit smoky fires to guide the aircraft in.

 

The Dakota would make a high pass, then drop to just above the jungle canopy.  A sudden roar of engines, then we could see the loads tumble from the open door.  Seconds later the load was on the ground and groups would race out to retrieve the boxes and cans.

 

During several passes, only one parachute failed to open, and the load hit the ground with a loud crunch.  A wail of despair from the retrievers… The Air Force had flattened every tin of beer.

 

A quick hunt for any overlooked loads, then the hike back to camp, with the armed escort being the last to leave.

 

That night we celebrated with a change of menu… rice and mutton curry.

 

Occasionally, when a change of diet was required, we would make up charges from cigarette tins and plastic explosive, then down to the bank with several Gurkhas as retrievers, for some noisy fishing.  We had to make sure that our assistants could really swim, and that they were still on the bank when the depth charge went off.  Some of the fish that drifted to the surface looked like creatures from pre-history, but it meant we could feast on fish and chips that evening.

 

At one stage, three boats and their crews were moved away further up river.  Soon after we arrived, the heavy rain that came every afternoon dwindled away.  This caused a drop in the water level, and we started fouling propellers on the branches of water-logged trees.  A crew was detailed to clear all the obstructions with plastic explosives.

 

Every time a propeller fouled an underwater obstruction, the brass shear pin gave way, a design to protect the expensive prop.  Soon we were requesting large numbers of spare shear pins, and each boat carried a supply.

 

Parachutes began to accumulate, and two boat crews were detailed to return them to Temerloh.  This was a welcome change, and we were spurred on by the thought of a chance to shower and sample the Army’s favourite cuisine, eggs and chips.

 

We stayed at the Artillery detachment on the way in and out, and found the answer to the nervous manner displayed by the solitary shop keeper.  A month earlier he had been picked up and questioned and spilt the names of a several people who acted as collectors for the terrorist gang in the area.

 

Coming back three days later, we were flagged down by a patrol of Seaforth Highlanders… could we move them upstream?  To split the load we asked how many people were involved.  Divide that number by two, load half into the lead boat, then the rest into mine.  Alas, the officer had forgotten the presence of two Malay policemen.  By the time the error was found, the first boat was on its way upstream.

 

By the time our passengers were loaded, we were well down in the water.  A few days earlier, a branch had pushed a hole in the plywood near the stern, and so some adjustment was necessary to the trim, to get the hole away from the waterline.

 

We set off after the first boat, and with the load our usual ski boat skim across the surface was now the slog of a heavy tug.  All the storm boats had originally been fitted with a canvas spray guard in the bows, but this was missing, and a small amount of water was coming over the nose.

 

About a mile later, this changed to a steady trickle.  Then the trim changed, and we were in trouble.  As the bows dipped under the surface, I told those closest to me to stay in the boat and hold on.

 

The junior officer in charge of the patrol shouted, “Swim to the bank!”

 

This was an instruction to men in full equipment, carrying rifles and extra ammunition.  In seconds, weapons and loads were being shed, and the water was full of struggling men.  One of the policemen was in trouble, but allowing him to grab me seemed the wrong option.  I stayed out of reach, until he drifted towards the bank and was able to hang on to the bushes.

 

It was soon established that all there were no casualties, but a considerable amount of rifles, two Sten guns and a Bren machinegun were on the bottom of the river.

 

The engine was waterlogged, but we used paddles to get all the patrol onto the same bank.  I was told by their officer, in no uncertain manner that I would be facing a court martial, and with that, the patrol moved off into the jungle.

 

Within two hours the other boat, having unloaded its share of the men, was back to check on us.   We marked tree trunks at the point were we had foundered, and then were towed back to camp, and I made a report to the captain in charge of our detachment.

 

The next morning, the Colonel of the Seaforths Highlanders arrived to question  the two of us who had been crewing the boat..  We were asked to go through the accident, and although the Colonel made no comment, we got the impression that his subaltern had not mentioned his “swim to the bank” order.  We were asked why we were so confident that the boat would stay on the surface, so I showed him the floatation cans lashed to the inside of each boat.

 

It was obvious that the Colonel’s main concern was the retrieval of the missing weapons.  Within an hour, we were on our way to the accident site.  Our escort positioned themselves to cover that section of river, while we attached long ropes to trees on both banks.  Taking in and letting out the ropes allowed us to adjust the position of the boat, while we took it in turns to dive to the bottom.

 

Some 30 minutes later, the first rifle was found.  The weight of the weapons had ensured that they were all contained in a small area on the riverbed.  We worked until he light began to fade, by which time we had everything except a Sten gun and a grenade launcher.

 

More than a month later, the two of us were called into our Colonel’s office and were told that the Seaforths were pleased with our efforts, and that we could forget threats about facing a court martial.

 

Towards the end of our spell in the jungle, uniforms started to fall apart.  We worked out that this was happening to those who had obeyed orders and had smeared the seams of their clothes with the anti-lice oil.  One of our number completed the operation clad in just jungle hat, belt and boots.

 

After some two months in the Pahang basin, we made our way back to Temeloh.  The boats were hauled out of the river for a final time and the well warn engines crated. Someone managed to work a miracle with the Pay Section of the Devonshire Regiment, so that evening funds were available to buy an impressive amount of Tiger Beer.  Next morning, the now rather battered and patched boats were loaded onto flat-bedded wagons and we headed for Kluang.

 

Weapons were checked and handed in, our filthy jungle greens and boots thrown away.  We were given two months pay, and all of us were sent to the Army Leave Centre on Penang Island for two weeks.  Beaches, good food, ice-cold beer and sympathetic WVS volunteers.

 

The days raced by, and soon we were on the train back to camp.  On the first day back, the Sergeant Major took us to one side and we had it explained to us, in no uncertain manner, that our “Glory days as Kamikaze pilots were over” and we would revert to the usual standards of dress and discipline.   

 

So it was back to normal duties, parades, guard duties, and for me, preparing training posters.

 

Gradually the Kluang garrison had amenities added.  The tin shack that was our canteen, with beer and Fanta at one end and egg and chips cooked over a charcoal fire at the other was replaced by a big NAAFI, with canteen, bar, even a snooker table. A huge Quonset hut was erected and within months was showing films three evenings a week.  The Gurkha lines across the airstrip found space for a swimming pool.  One entertainment was to watch Gurkha recruits, fresh from Nepal, being taught how to swim.  This involved marching along the high diving board and plunging in, still standing rigidly to attention.

 

One day I was asked if I would like to attempt the design of the Garrison squash court.  It was duly built, and I was told that the design had been accepted as the standard in the Far East Command.

 

The road to Singapore was still classified as a “two vehicle road” because of the risk of ambushes.  On a trip to pick up supplies from the Engineering Stores Depot, the windscreen in our 4WD Dodge truck suddenly developed a small round hole, even though we didn’t hear the crack of the weapon that fired it.  Coming back several hours later, we were very alert to things going on around us.

 

Even with the minimum of two Army vehicles, the convoy would get longer as the journey progressed; civilian cars would tuck themselves behind the lead vehicle, just in case a sniper was keen to have a go.

 

There was a trip to Mersing, a small fishing village on the East Coast.  At low tide the sand stretched for miles, and we borrowed a dug-out canoe to surf in the gentle waves that rolled in.  Then we drove along the high water mark till we reached a small stream.  The water flowing out spread across the beach. less than an inch deep, and it seemed obvious that the truck could ford this.  Wrong!  The truck sank to its axles instantly, and with the high water mark and trees to attach the winch cable to several hundred yards away, we were in trouble..  Before the in-coming tide reached the stranded vehicle, we collected a long branch and lashed it to the front bumper as a marker.  The second truck headed for camp, some 70 miles away, while the rest of us watched the sea engulf our Dodge four-wheel drive.  When the unit’s rescue truck arrived, all that was visible was the top of the branch and a slick as the fuel escaped from the tank.

 

Next morning, with the recovery truck well anchored, a long cable was run out and attached.  Thirty minutes later, we had our rather water-logged vehicle back.  It was towed back to Kluang, and the filling in of the Army’s standard road accident report caused some amusement, but not for the sergeant in charge of the trip.

 

Conditions… choppy.     Visibility.. 3 nautical miles.

 

Other vehicles involved…. S.S Titanic.

 

A very important thing in Army life is to play any sport well enough to represent your own unit.  Suddenly you cannot be spared for mundane activities like route marches and polishing dustbins.  During my Engineer training there was a hunt for people able to play hockey… most of the ones in my barrack room had never seen a hockey stick.  Being selected for the training regiment was easy, and we went to Aldershot to take part in a tournament between several training regiments.  I have no memory of how we got on in the tournament….  the important thing was missing several days from the training grounds, and lying in bed until a civilized hour, listening to other people being shouted at on the parade ground.

 

In Malaya I was part of the unit teams for hockey and rugby, and played at comfortable places like the Johore Bahru Sports Club.  Suddenly we found how the other (civilian) half lived.

 

At some time during the three years, the Russians made threatening noises around the city of Berlin, a relatively small enclave, well behind the area that the Red Army had seized in 1945.

 

The War Office reacted by freezing all release, both for National Servicemen and Regulars, so that the numbers in Britain’s forces began to grow.  Among the small numbers stationed at Kluang we had a conscript who had made himself unpopular with his endless chanting on how he was about to head for England and “Civvy Street”.  He was just 24 hours away from leaving when the word came through that release was suspended.  The look of agony on his face did wonders for the morale of everybody else.  A whole year went by before the Cold War eased enough for Whitehall to reconsider the situation.   

 

And so 1950 changed to 1951, and going home to England became a reality.  We were issued with Battledress, the wear for colder climates, bought presents for family and girlfriends, gave away items of equipment used in Malaya.  Finally the same 16 regular soldiers that arrived in Kluang three years earlier, boarded the train to Singapore and a troopship.

 

This time the passage of the Suez Canal was our turn to be abusive. “Why don’t you plonkers go overseas?” we bawled at the people along the banks. Such jolly banter!

 

For the second part of the voyage, I was part of a team that worked near the bakery, slicing endless trays of freshly baked loaves for each meal.  We worked one day on, the next off, when we burrowed down to a lower deck and slept in total darkness.  It was warm work, so we were still wearing jungle green the day we sailed into Liverpool.

 

We ventured up onto deck and peered through the rain.  A large neon sign on the jetty read “Welcome to Britain in Festival Year”.  It looked a miserable place.

 

The permanent staff on board got busy and we queued for pay, leave passes and a rail warrant to get us to our homes.  We all had 67 days of dis-embarkation leave… two whole months!

 

My parents had moved and now lived in a small village near Matlock, in Derbyshire.  This required a train journey with a change at Manchester, a bus to get to Holloway, and the help of a policeman to find road and house. Home after three years!

 

The family enjoyed visits to towns and cities I had never seen, including Derby and Nottingham, a long trip to relatives in the south of England, a day in Sheffield with a “Rev”, a friend from the same unit in Malaya.

 

Eventually the leave ended, and we all met again at Barton Stacey, the Royal Engineers depot.  Within days we were on our separate ways to different units.  My posting was to 49 Railway Training Regiment at Longmoor, until then I had no idea that the Army involved itself in running a railway.

 

My rail warrant took me to Liss, a small station in Hampshire.  The normal procedure is to hunt around the outside of the station, where a board would explain how to get to the camp, be it by truck or local bus.  On this occasion I asked the porter on the platform, “How do I get to Longmoor Camp?”

 

“Platform One” was his bewildering answer.

 

I made my way to that part of the station, and found a steam locomotive and three carriages marked LMR.  I approached the engine, and found the driver, wearing blue overalls and a peaked and RE badged cap.

 

“Does this go to Longmoor” I asked.

 

“I’ll be in trouble if I take it to Waterloo!” was his response.

 

This was my introduction to the Longmoor Military Railway, where a number of army tradesmen learned their crafts… drivers, firemen, track-layers, signalmen, diesel and steam fitters and transportation clerks.  The railway ran a regular timetable from Liss to Longmoor Camp, then on to Bordon, the training centre for REME.  The tracks also served several large stores depots, and during the war, the woods in the area had concealed many huge ammunition dumps.

 

It was a regular experience to have film units arrive to use the trains and tracks as background for films under production.  Presumably the Army was easier to negotiate with than Southern Railways.  On one occasion they rounded up soldiers as extras, who were given Russian uniforms and wooden tommy guns and lined the tracks on Longmoor stations.  The engine had a huge red star added and the carriages carried what we presumed read “Russian State Railways”.  The drama was added to by a fall of snow.  Next morning we discovered that the part time actors had been there until 5 o’clock in the morning. Rumour had it that George Cole was the star, but the delightful continuity girl got all our attention.

 

On another occasion, old coaches were painted a dusty grey and the sign-writers added “New South Wales”.  The ancient steam locomotive was not working, so the train was pushed in to a siding by a diesel engine, carefully off camera, and the puffs of steam provided by a generator.  This was all about the early career of Dame Nellie Melba, a famous singer of the 1890’s.

 

Soon after arrival, I joined a three-month course to upgrade my drafting skills.

 

On completion, I was classified as an A2 craftsman, and the Army introduced a new pay structure, and like a well-run hotel, I was marked as “five star”.  This involved a substantial pay rise.

 

My duties were mainly teaching Engineering Drafting and Mathematics, but soldiering continued, with parades and the usual chores of keeping barrack rooms neat and tidy.

 

The word filtered down to us that the War Office felt that Britain was an easy target for any invader. They of course meant the Russians, traditionally with snow on their boots.  “We must offer the back of a hedgehog, not the soft underbelly of a rabbit” was the brave Churchillian slogan.

 

This implied that non-frontline units, including us, would have to start a toughening up campaign.  There were night exercises, when the REME at Bordon and us sappers at Longmoor took turns to be invaders and defenders.  These soon got out of hand, when rifles and blank ammunition were discarded, and fists flew.  After this, the Russians would be easy meat!

 

In addition, we were put through a series of fitness tests, all in full marching order.  This meant running 100 yards in a stated number of seconds, and carrying each other, fireman lift style, all against a stopwatch    Route marches got longer and faster, with the last stage requiring everyone to cover nine miles in two hours. Now before any jogger makes “easy-peasy” noises, remember that marching order means rifle, full webbing equipment, boots, and steel helmet, over that far from comfortable Battle Dress.

 

These marches were held on Saturday morning, and each one of us went back the following Saturday, until we achieved the two hour target.  Welcome to world of blisters!

 

By the end of 1952, the tail back for release had shrunk to five months, and my de-mob day was in sight.  I was asked about signing on for another seven years.  It was certain that I would be in line for another overseas tour, and there was every chance it would mean the flies and heat of the Middle East.  I politely turned down the offer, and set about writing letters, seeking a job in the world outside the Army.

 

I had become interested in military aircraft, and I received a hopeful sounding reply from the Gloucester Aircraft Company.  The company made the Meteor, the RAF’s front line fighter, so the omens looked good.  An extra advantage was the fact that my parents now lived in a small village in the same county.

 

I left Longmoor on the last day January 1953, heading for the De-Mobilization Centre in Aldershot.  A strange place where all equipment and uniform is handed in, civilian suits, shirts, shoes and a hat are issued, and everyone is polite. I had been in the Army for 5 years, 5 months and 18 days.

 

Home was now Little Compton, near Moreton–in-the-Marsh, a village so small it did not have a shop… but there was a pub.  On one of my father’s first visits, he was quietly approached by a man who asked if he liked rabbits.

 

Contact had been made with the local poacher. Discretion was the byword.  After dark there would be a tap on the window, a sign that a brace of rabbits was hanging on the doorknob.  Payment was made in pints of cider.

 

An interview was arranged with Glosters, and my father drove me into the big city.  I was questioned about my drafting experience, and 30 minutes later I was offered £ 8 a week as a trainee draughtsman.  After Army pay, it sounded like a fortune.

 

Glosters took on several trainee draughtsmen at that time and most of them had just left the Services.  I recognised one.. he had been on the permanent staff at the Penang leave centre, convalescing after a spell in the jungle.  At that time I had marvelled at the cushiness of his duties.  These involved pulling three kayaks out from the boathouse, watching them all day, then locking them away in the evening.

 

On a Sunday evening I was dropped at a Government hostel half a mile from the factory, and reported on the Monday morning to the Production Drawing Office and set to work, altering drawings for the Meteor jet fighter.  Soon I was involved in more interesting design work.   Among these was the installation of cameras in the Photo Reconnaissance version of the Meteor, fitting the boxes for the G-suit for the pilot, and heating systems for various Black Boxes.

 

With parents near Morton in the March, work in Gloucester and a girl friend in Worcester, some cheap form of transport was necessary, so I bought a Francis Barnett 200cc motorcycle.  There was nothing like today’s compulsory training for new riders, you bought a provisional licence, read the machine handbook, fired up the engine and plunged into the traffic.

      

Later I was transferred to the Main Design Office, to work on the Javelin all-weather fighter.  I was part of the development team, which meant that the work was varied.

 

One of the highlights of the year was the Farnborough Air Show, and if you had created a good impression, your name was added to the list of people to visit the Royal Aeronautical Society on Technician’s Day.  

 

My first ever visit to the SBAC Air Show at Farnborough had been in 1952, while I was still in the Army.  Two of us went up by train from Longmoor.  This show will always be remembered for the crash of the prototype De Havilland DH 110, which killed John Derry, his flight assistant and 27 people in the ground.  The aircraft had just completed a supersonic dive, and was making a high-speed pass of the airfield when it broke up in flight.

 

In September of that year my father died, and my mother moved down to the South Coast, so as to be near one of her sisters.

 

My terms of employment included one day a week at Gloucester Technical College, working towards the National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering.  Two years later, I switched to Cheltenham College, where Aircraft Design and Airframe Structures were included in the course towards the Higher National.

The end of year examinations came in June, and so as the weather improved, us hostel dwellers should have had our noses in our books each evening.  On some occasions two of us decided that we would concentrate much better after some fresh air.  This meant a motorcycle ride to Fairford, which was an American base with B47 bombers.  We would find ourselves a convenient tree stump, just outside the perimeter fence and watch these impressive aircraft landing and taking off.

 

Plane spotting was always thirsty work, so we called in at a pub on the way back, and by then it was too late to study.  But there was always the next evening to browse through simultaneous equations and the way beams bend under load.

 

In 1955 I was married to Maureen, a girl I had met during my Army service, and we moved into a just completed house in Gloucester.

 

In 1957, Britain was caught up in the crisis over the seizure of the Suez Canal, and army reservists were called back to full time service.  On a trip to the Farnborough Air Show, the coach passed long lines of trucks, all painted in desert colours, heading for the docks in Southampton.  Suddenly I remembered that I was still part of the Army Reserve.  A nervous time for me, but presumably the Army had no need to call in draughtsmen.

 

Towards the end of the 50’s, the British Aircraft industry had a period in the doldrums, and the younger people in the design departments began to consider a move to the United States or Canada.   I had contacted Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, with a plan to cross the Atlantic towards the end of the year.

 

Then Cessna lost a big government contract, the design of a four-engined transport, and they laid off staff.  I was in the process of listing other North American aerospace companies, when I found an advert… “Lecturer required to teach Engineering Drawing in Mombasa”.  That sounded interesting, so I responded.  Maureen and I were invited to an interview at the Crown Agents in Whitehall, London.  Within 30 minutes, I was told the job was mine, as long as I could be there in two weeks!

 

We said three weeks was a possibility, and started into the rush of handing in our notices, selling off odds and ends, putting the house up for rent.

 

The contract was for two years, after which I would be entitled to 10 weeks leave in England, with paid air tickets.  I taught at the same place for the next 23 years, an indication of how happy I was with the work and the society we had moved into.

 

We left London Airport on a Saturday morning on a Canadair 4, operated by British Caledonian.  The range of airliners were shorter in those days, so we landed at Rome for lunch, Benghazi for supper, more fuel at Wadi Halfa, Khartoum for a very early breakfast, Entebbe mid morning and Nairobi soon after midday.  A switch to another airport, then an East African Airways Dakota to Mombasa.

 

We had left London in snow, and stepped off into the Kenya Coast’s high temperature and humidity… still wearing thick winter clothing!  Our hotel was nothing like a holiday beach paradise, … grey sheets, grey sugar in the tea tray, and I had a very tearful wife on my hands.. “I want to go home!”

 

I had a meeting with the Principal on Monday morning, and was shown around the beautiful grounds of the Polytechnic by the other lecturer in the small department that I was joining.

 

 

The Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education (MIOME) had been established some five years earlier.  Capital had come from the British Government, the Aga Khan, the Sultan of Zanzibar, and other Muslim communities.  Students were drawn from all parts of East Africa, while most of the teaching staff had been recruited from Britain.

 

The courses offered included Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, a Commercial Department had just opened and there were plans to include Building.

 

The Institute was run on the lines of a boarding school, with rigid discipline, compulsory games every evening, house masters and prefects to look after the boarders.  There were some day students as well, mostly Asians and Coastal Arabs.

 

I had never taught in Britain, but had heard of the horrors of teaching students at secondary modern schools, where a large percentage of the students were not particularly interested in their own education.  This was very different. 

 

The students well aware that they had a unique chance, and the training on offer would mean a well-paid job when they completed their course.  Organizations like the Railways, the Electrical generators, and local industry constantly sent their training officers to us, looking for likely recruits.

 

The first reaction of the students to a new member of staff was interesting.  I found myself being grilled on what exactly I had been doing in my previous career.  After explaining that I had been a draughtsman in industry and the Army, I was accepted.  I had with me prints of several drawings from my time at Glosters, and that was good enough for my questioners.

 

The average hours a week meant 22 hours of teaching, between 7.45 and 4 o’clock Mondays to Fridays, plus Saturday mornings. Drawing does produce a lot of work to be marked, but free periods took care of that.

 

I was soon appointed a housemaster, and that meant looking after games on several evenings a week. In addition there were minor squabbles to be judged, and as Master on Duty, there were punishment sessions to run on Saturday afternoons.

 

All detected infringements were recorded, the perpetrator being given a “stripe”.  Anyone unfortunate to reach a total of three stripes meant their name went on the “Blue List”, and Saturday afternoons were spent cutting grass, picking up stones on the games field, and similar chores.

 

Mombasa was a heaven for us.  Miles of empty beaches, goggling, sailing, fishing, and Tsavo Game Park just 60 miles away.    The town itselfa offered a range of clubs, with facilities for sport, rowing, sailing, deep-sea fishing and amateur dramatics.  It would need a very dull person to say there was nothing to do.

 

As soon as funds permitted, we bought a car and were able to take trips to the Game Parks, and the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.  On one trip we stayed at the Outspan Hotel in Nyeri.  We had one night at “Treetops”, a wooden structure built onto a fig tree that overlooks a pool and salt lick, where from the comfort of a comfortable seat and a blanket, it is possible to watch elephant, rhino and buffalo come down to drink.

 

A plaque in the dining room of Treetops proudly proclaimed  that “a Princess arrived one evening, and left as a Queen the following morning”.  Queen Elizabeth was staying overnight when the word came through that her father, King George VI had died. The cemetery in Nyeri included the grave of Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement.

 

Sadly something went wrong with my marriage and my wife and I separated, for a trial period initially, but the attempted reconciliation did not work.

 

Later I met Lilian, who had two young daughters.  While the unpleasantness of two divorces happened, she moved to Kampala in Uganda, where she worked at the hotel run by a friend of her family.

 

Lilian and I were married in Mombasa in April 1965; we had our reception in the Institute Nautical School and a brief honeymoon in Malindi, a holiday resort north of Mombasa.

 

When my overseas leave came up a few months later, we left Jillie and Tina with friends upcountry and flew to England.  We hired a small car and toured Scotland.  Coming home was the best part of the trip, three weeks on the “Kenya Castle”, through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and down the coast of East Africa to Mombasa. 

 

Our son Alan was born in July 1966, and we felt that our family was complete.

 

Both of us became involved in the Little Theatre Club, I on stage, while Lilian helped with the stage crew and making costumes.  The Club always had a Pantomime before Christmas each year; another popular event was the Old Time Music Hall.  There were as many as 8 productions a year, including serious plays, musicals and comedies.

 

The Theatre Club became recognised as somewhere to recruit extras for visiting film units.  A lot of the film version of Sidney Sheldon’s “Master of the Game” was shot in Mombasa, and I achieved some small measure of fame by getting the part of a Durban dock supervisor.  “Hey!  Get back to work”  was my contribution, as the hero planned to escape.  When we watched the film on TV years later, we were appalled by the long scenes that got no further than the cutting room floor.

 

Another project starred Joan Collins, an Italian film entitled “La Arbrito” (The Referee).  We were told it was the tale of a world famous football referee, being feted at a Kenya beach hotel.  About twenty of us were invited to make up the numbers at his reception, standing around in evening wear, sipping cold tea.  Afterwards there was a magnificent lunch, and we were paid as well!

 

I had assisted at a control for the Safari Rally for the first time in 1963.  Now it became a regular thing to run a control every Easter, when accompanied by friends and a gaggle of children we would transport a tent, food and drink, lamps, the necessary signboards, clock and documents to some obscure junction in the wilds and record the passage of the rally cars through the control.

 

  Our favourite area was the Taita Hills, some 120 miles from Mombasa.  We would stay at that point to see the cars through on their way towards the Coast, and a second time as they headed for Nairobi, so we would be there for over 24 hours.

 

The next step was to take on the organizing of some seven controls in the Taita Hills, and when the incumbent left, I became Chairman of the area, looking after the 400 kilometres of route that passed through the Coast Province.

 

The interest spread to local motor sport, and after a few years, we found ourselves running the Mombasa Motor Club … planning the year’s programme of events, writing the monthly newsletters, and organizing a lot of the events.  MMC ran a busy timetable.  Each year there were two Kenya Championship rallies, the Malindi and the Coast 800.  There were as many as 10 training rallies, each of 120 kilometres, and two social weekends, built around rallies of some 300 kilometres.  Track events included Autocross and Motocross meetings, with both cars and motorcycles taking part, and the more modest members entered Treasure Hunts.

 

I soon learnt every track and road in the Coast Province, and this resulted in invitations to navigate for rally drivers.  The philosophy was “If you can afford, drive.  If you can’t, then navigate.”

 

A friend of mine was workshop manager for the company that imported Peugeots, and that meant he had access to a works prepared 504.  The company provided the fuel for the rally car and the service crew, I was paid a shilling for each rally, to get me covered for insurance.  Sam and I had a lot of fun in that car.

 

While planning rallies, we met Ray Meyers, a wonderful old gentleman that managed a huge cattle ranch.  His rather ramshackle home became our base whenever we were in that area, and his grandson who worked on the ranch created a new road crossed the ranch and circled a range of hills.  This loop became part of the route for the Safari Rally.  Ray was always happy to see us; the difficulty lay in getting away again. “Why not stay another night?” was his way of putting temptation in our way.

 

When there was a total eclipse of the sun, the ranch became home to hundreds of people, who pitched their tents and enjoyed Ray’s wonderful hospitality.

 

A lot of people are convinced that taking part in a rally must be a very dangerous past time, but for all the high speed crashes that TV stations love, very few crews are hurt.  This is because the full safety harness holds driver and navigator so tightly into their seats that there is no risk of them coming into contact with the interior of the car when it goes into a series of rolls.

 

Rally planning has its moments as well.  One evening Lilian and I went out to check a section of some 70 kilometres.  This started at the site of the one time British Army base at Mackinnon Road, and followed bush tracks.  We were in a borrowed two-wheel drive pick-up truck.  We came round a corner and were confronted with a wide area of loose sand.  I attempted to drive through, but the vehicle ground to a halt.  We knew there was no point on waiting for another car to come by, and as we too far from the tarmac on the main road, we started walking towards the next village. The sun soon set, and we walked for the next four hours and twenty kilometres. No, there were no street lamps or torch.  At the village we were given a welcome drink of water and the local taxi driver was summoned.  Although we had very little money on us, he took us to Voi on the main Mombasa road.  The police at a check point flagged down a coach and insisted they took us home.

 

We walked in on a daughter in tears, convinced parents had been eaten. A friend with a Range Rover took us to the scene, and we found the pick up, with a jerry can of fuel still roped into the open back.

 

Several months later we were able to settle with the taxi driver… it seemed that credit to rally people is risk free!

 

Years later we were talking to Ray Meyers at the ranch and he launched into a tale about these silly people who once walked through the bush.  We confessed it was us.

 

Among our circle of friends was someone who had convinced his directors that the best way to entertain visitors and potential customers of his packaging company was to take them deep sea fishing.  This entailed leaving the mooring before first light and heading for deep water.

 

Fishing can be tiring; a rolling boat and endless sunshine, but the thrill of the scream of the reel as a sailfish or black marlin takes the lure is heart stopping.  Most trips were as part of club competitions, and the radio kept us informed on how the other boats were faring.

 

Our leave periods every two years usually entailed letting a house and hiring a car, one year we had the use of a camper vehicle and toured Scotland.  Other holidays were spent in rented houses; one was on a moor in Cornwall, without another dwelling in sight.  The children were convinced that it had to be haunted.  Soon after bedtime on our first night, there was a rush to get into our bed… “We can hear something!”   It turned out to be cattle chewing grass in the next field.

 

Initially our children went to Mombasa day schools, later the girls attended a boarding school in England.  Alan went to a boarding school in up-country Kenya, finishing his secondary education in Mombasa.

 

Kenya had become independent in 1963, and gradually we found that the Institute began to change.  The rules now permitted the enrolment of non-Muslim students, and we came under the control of the Ministry of Education.  That meant that problems could not be put right by a short visit to an office, it meant a letter or phone call to Nairobi, 300 miles away.  Coming back from leave was followed by a lack of salary for a few months.  The standard explanation was “the computer does not know you are back”

 

The Institute evolved to become the Mombasa Technical Institute, followed by Polytechnic status.  Sadly these changes were not always improvements.

 

One Principal decided that rigid rules, prefects and compulsory games were not applicable, in fact anything that existed before his arrival was under suspicion and likely to be abandoned.

 

I left the Mombasa Polytechnic in1982, and having been out of industry for over 20 years, and not wanting to go into teaching in the UK, I elected to stay on in Kenya.

 

After taking on Kenya citizenship, I was given some space in a friend’s office in a tower block on town, and established my own firm.  This was “Graffix”, offering contract drafting, advertising and public relations.

 

Some years earlier, a friend had left the office of one of the Kenyan national newspapers to start his own paper.  This was “Coastweek”, that came out every Friday.  I was asked to take on the motoring column.  Mostly I covered the happenings at the Motor Club, but tackled other topics of interests to motorists.  Hot favourites were the pot-holed roads, the standard of driving, and the latest horror stories of the “Matatus”.  These were un-official minibuses, usually untaxed, and badly maintained, that most Kenyans had to use to get to and from work each day.  Because the take-home pay of the drivers and conductors depended on the number of people moved each day, there was always a race to beat the opposition to the next clump of passengers on the side of the road.

 

Whenever the Mombasa Agricultural Show was on, totally anarchy ruled…if the road was blocked, use the pavement. As the way to the showground crossed the Nyali pontoon bridge, the scrum blocked the main road from Mombasa to the north coast.

 

I ran Graffix Advertising for two years, and was then offered the post of Training Officer of the local Vehicle Assembly plant.

 

Lilian worked in the accounts office of a group of doctors, until the renewal of her work permit was denied.  She continued to look after the paperwork involved in being secretary of several of the clubs of Mombasa.

 

We had had a serious scare when my son Alan was diagnosed as having typhoid, and now a second crisis when Lilian developed cerebral malaria.  Suddenly we had to balance the attractions of the climate and the pleasures of out live with the reality of life threatening illness.

 

In July 1985, we returned to England.  We found a very basic flat on the South Coast, and then turned our attentions to getting jobs.  We learnt that Crawley, the area that included Gatwick Airport, had the lowest un-employment rate in the country, and so we rented a house in that town.

 

My mother was delighted to have all of us back in England, and I would visit her in her flat in Seaford every Saturday.

 

Before we moved I had an offer of work from an agency.  The wording was vague.. “There is a company in Worthing that designs cars or something.  They want someone to work out the weight of all the parts… or something.”

 

I expressed an interest, was interviewed and became a Weights Engineer at International Automotive Design.

 

This company offered the facilities of a design studio, as well as the staff to build and test prototype vehicles for any major constructor.

 

I was initially involved in the design of the new     400 series of Volvo, this for a company based in Holland.  There were several senior engineers based in Worthing, leading the design team.

 

My work involved the calculation of the weight of every component, from body panels, doors, glass, to wheels and suspension, working from the drawings as they became available.  If changes to parts became necessary, then the improvement (or otherwise) had to be checked.  Weight reduction was a constant campaign, leading to discussion (argument?) with the design draughtsmen involved.

 

Later when CAD (Computer Aided Design) took over from manual drawing, I was trained in the system of assessing the weight of panels on the computer screen.  Spreadsheets in Excel became a vital skill to develop the weight report on a complete vehicle.

 

In my five years with IAD, I worked on numerous projects, including an electrically powered car, an impressive street car version of a Formula One car.

 

Meanwhile, Lilian had taken on a temporary position with the accounts department of Virgin Atlantic Airways in Crawley.

 

My younger daughter, Tina, decided that life in England was not for her, and she returned to East Africa.  She lived and worked in Tanzania, where she married and started a family.

 

In April 1986, we moved into our own house in Goring on Sea, part of Worthing, only 5 miles from where I worked.  We hadn’t been here long, when Virgin called, pleading for Lilian to return.  She worked for the company for a total of 14 years.

 

We took advantage of cheaper flights and had holidays in Florida.  On one trip we travelled free first class to California, with Paul, our son in law as pilot.  On that occasion Lilian and I visited my first wife in Los Angeles.  A year ago, Maureen and her husband Edward were in London, and the four of us had a very pleasant meal together.  Finally old wounds had been healed.

 

Around this time, my son Alan joined the Army, choosing the trade of Armourer in the REME.  After initial training, he went through a series of courses at Bordon, each to expand his knowledge in servicing a wide range of weapons.  His nine years included time in Germany, Cyprus with the UN, Belize, the Outer Hebrides, The Falkland Islands and The 1991 Gulf War.

 

Meanwhile, the rest of the family had been busy.  My elder daughter Jillie married Paul, a pilot who had flown in Kenya.  They met at the annual re-union of people who had at some time in their life lived in East Africa.  The gathering is known as the Whitecap Safari, for some strange reason, after a beer bottled in Kenya.

 

The wedding was set for a Saturday in October, just 36 hours before the huge storm that devastated the South West of England.  Over a million trees were toppled, huge areas lost electricity and many buildings severely damaged.  This meant the church organ wouldn’t play and the only power at the reception came courtesy of the local hospital and a long cable.

 

Guests commiserated with Jillie over their big day being ruined.  She said it felt like being back in Kenya!

 

Tina married David in Nairobi in 1994.  The setting was the Coffee Garden in Karen, the one time home of Karen Blixen, the well-known writer. Someone decided that bride and father should arrive in a horse drawn carriage. I found those few minutes more frightening than whole nights in a rally car. Tina and David now live in Dar es Salaam, where they run their own Security and Fire Fighting group.

 

Alan came out of the Army in 1995 and joined Surrey Police.  He married Michelle, and he transferred to Sussex, so that branch of the family was just 4 miles from our home.

 

There were changes in my own circumstances.  The Worthing design group ran into difficulties, and started laying off personnel.  For the first time in my life I suffered the trauma of redundancy. 

 

Over the next two years I did a series of temporary jobs.  These included working for a company building car alarms, assembling electric kettles, driving a bus taking the personnel of a company to and from work and a six month period as a volunteer at an industrial museum.

 

Again an agency came up with a job, as weights engineer at the Ford Design Centre near Basildon in Essex. This was 85 miles from Worthing, too far to commute daily, and that meant existing in “Bed and Breakfast” for four nights a week.  I had been there for 11 months when I heard that the Korean group, Daewoo was recruiting design group for the Technical Centre in Worthing, using the same premises that IAD had used.

 

I had an interview on a Friday evening which went well.  And so once again I had a short drive to get to work each morning, and the advantages of dealing with the same engineers I had known two years earlier.

 

Daewoo was very keen on sports and social activities, and I joined a very active motor club.  We organized treasure hunts, short rallies and trips to car shows and manufacturers.

 

I came up with the idea of raising funds for the “ Children in Need” fund, and put together a team to drive a Matix, Daewoo’s smallest saloon, around the M25 London Orbital Motorway, some 120 miles around the capital for 24 hours.   That meant persuading seven different police forces that it would be a safe venture.  Daewoo Sales lent us a vehicle, Elf gave us the fuel, and Clackett Lane Services allowed us to use their facilities as a base.  The manager kindly agreed to keep members of the team supplied with coffee and snacks right through the 24 hours.

 

While two people drove the vehicle, others shook collecting tins at the public at the entrances to the buildings on both the clockwise and anti-clockwise carriageways of the motorway.

 

At the end of the 24 hours, the car had covered some 1300 miles, and the sum collected was slightly over £1500.  This included money collected from the hundreds employed at the Daewoo Technical Centre.

 

The public using the facilities at Clackett Lane was very generous, although some decided they needed to use their mobile phones as they reached the pro-offered collecting tins. Later we did find several foreign coins, but the bank changed them.  At one stage an elderly lady approached the collectors with a question.  “Was there an AA mechanic in the area?”  She had found a flat tyre and wasn’t strong enough to get the wheel nuts off.  The two collectors told her to collect money, while they changed her wheel.   She refused to let anyone pass her without a donation, and also put a £ 5 note in as a thank you.

 

This rather unusual event, known as “The Magic Roundabout” was run in 1998 and 1999.

 

In July 1984, my mother achieved the impressive age of 100, and was the recipient of the formal telegram of congratulations from the Queen.  She died just short of her 101st birthday, after a long and active life.  Right until the end she would tell me incidents of her early life.  At some stage I tried to draw up a family tree, and discovered that her mother was born in France.  So, at the age of 65, I found I was one quarter French!  After the initial shock, I realised that there were advantages.  If England failed to win enough matches in the Five Nations Rugby, I could (quietly) cheer for another national team.  Sadly attempts to get special discounts on “Booze Cruises” to Calais were turned down.

 

My final job was with Rolls Royce during 2000,once again as a Weights Engineer, when I worked at the factory in Crewe.  This put me back into  “Bed and Breakfast” for five months, as it entailed a 250 mile drive on Sunday evening to get there, and the same to get home on Friday afternoon.

 

Lilian worked at Virgin until 2001.  She decided she had had enough and sent an Email to her boss.  Twenty-four hours later the terrible attack on the New York Trade Centre occurred, an event that was to have a huge impact on the world’s airlines.

 

She was able to withdraw her notice, and then applied for the option of Early Retirement / Voluntary Redundancy.  This made a big difference to family finances.

 

We had had holidays in Tanzania before, but suddenly we were able to go out there for long periods.  With Tina’s additional persuasion we had five months in Dar es Salaam from December 2001.

 

This allowed me to resume my interest in rally organizing with two local clubs, including reviving the Tanganyika 1000 Rally, as part of the club’s celebrations for the 50th year since it was founded.

 

There was also the chance to drive up to Mombasa and meet old friends.

 

We have spent the last two winters in Tanzania, and will be heading out there once again soon.  This time we will have my son and his two boys with us for the first two weeks.

 

We are often asked why we don’t retire in Tanzania.  One reason is we have Jillie and her family here in England, and there is plenty of things to do in the United Kingdom.  But we are able to avoid the winter in this part of the world.

 

We now have a total of seven grandchildren, Jillie’s two boys; Tina has two daughters and a son, while Alan has two sons.  The parents are convinced there will be no further additions.

 

Collectively they keep us busy and entertained.    

 

This winter’s outing to East Africa includes a bonus.  An old friend and former rally driver is putting on an event to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the original Coronation Safari.  This event, covering some 4000 kilometres will use the roads in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.  The cars have to be pre-1970 and the entry list includes both local and overseas stars, ready to take on the worst that the local roads can offer.

 

Lilian and I will be involved in the manning of controls during the event, and as a happy omen, the scrutinizing of the cars takes place on my 74th birthday. A chance to renew the acquaintance of rally crews, both local and international, met over the years.  Now that is what I call an impressive way to mark the occasion.

 

So far I have been involved in soldiering, aircraft and automotive design, teaching, organising and taking part in rallies, deep-sea fishing, exploring jungle rivers, and some course acting.  Fate might yet intervene and add lottery winner to the list.  Let us pray!  

 

 

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