Our ship was essentially a troopship with dormitories rather than cabins. We were probably the only civilians travelling, apart from one or two officers' wives. We had the luxury of a superior cabin for four, with an upper and lower bunk on either side and a wash-basin between them, plus a porthole, which meant that we were above the waterline.
My mother and Shan were excused from further lifeboat drills, which meant that two unfortunate fellow passengers were designated to be in charge of Jenny and me on these twice-a-day occurrences. Mother had little time, what with her nursing duties, to bother herself very much about us, and besides, needed a certain amount of peace and quiet for her patient. I remember, for instance, being flung out my top bunk by a sudden ship's movement and cutting my scalp on the edge of the washbasin as I landed, with much screaming and blood for a little while – none of which can have been welcome at the time in the 'sick bay'. Consequently, Jenny and I had a wonderful time running wild. Our favourite game was to find the best new hiding places to ensure that when lifeboat drills were signalled we would be impossible to find by our mentors, and I can assure anyone who does not already know this that ships have endless possibilities in this regard. Looking back, I feel sorry for these two individuals, hitherto total strangers to each other, forced to stand side by side twice a day, clutching a wriggling seven year old and a wriggling five year old., plus respective survival kits. What must have been even worse for them was the fact that one was the wife of an Indian Army general while the other was a deserter on his way back to India for his court-martial!
At Bombay railway station it was hardly possible to see the platform, let alone the train, for what seemed to be thousands of rioters milling around, pushing into the train doors and windows and scrambling up the vertical sides of the carriages and onto the top of the train. A station official somehow cleared a way for us through the crowd and we and our trunks were inserted in our a quarters. Before shutting us in he gave us our instructions. On no account were we to let the tap water touch our lips: a crate of bottles of warm soda water was there for all drinking and teeth-cleaning purposes. On no account were we to unlock the door, except at stations where we were told our steward (here a smiling, salaaming turbaned gentlemen was pointed out to us) would duly appear with tin boxes containing our rations. Finally, on no account were we to open the windows, even the tiniest amount, no matter how stifling the heat, for reasons which soon became obvious.
We were relieved when the train set out from the station and thought that until the next station at least we would be free from the alarming activities of the crowds. On the contrary. In no time at all, to my horror, there appeared the grinning upside-down face of one of the many people lying spread-eagled on the roof, only a few inches away from me on the other side of the window pane, accompanied by a pair of skinny black arms and hands with strong bony fingers trying to find a chink to prise open. So it continued for the rest of the journey, with massed assaults on our doors and windows at stations, and people clinging to the exterior of the train between stations. I was terrified. Naturally, at that age, I understood nothing of the desperate need that compelled those people to behave in that way.
After what seemed like weeks rather than two and a half days, we arrived in Calcutta and were taken the few miles out to Budge Budge, which was situated on the Ganges Delta on the shores of the main distributary of the Ganges, the Hooghly River. I had always assumed that Budge Budge was a relatively recent settlement, its raison d'etre being the huge oil terminal for wartime oil supplied which throbbed day and night not far from our house. This impression appeared to be corroborated by the apocryphal story, which I completely accepted at the time, that the first oilman to arrive on the muddy river bank did so at monsoon time and had difficulty squelching his boots through mud, hence the pessimistic, onomatopoeic place name. However I have since found out that the original 18th century William Hickey mentioned it in his diaries and even lived there for a time, constructing a fine house for himself and his bibi, or live-in 'girlfriend'.
This was the place where we met up again with our father after a separation of nearly four years.
He had been stationed at Bhamo where, along with a few colleagues, his task had been the facilitation of information and supplies, via the Irrawaddy river and the Burma Road, between the Allies and 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell commanding Chiang Kai Shek's resistance army in SW China. When the Japanese troops swept into Burma they did so with such rapidity that Jack and friends found their retreat cut off. Pausing only to bury personal effects such as photographs of us, his watch and his beloved pipe (dug up and sent back to him some years after the war's end), he set out with his friends by truck along the rudimentary and dangerous Burma Road. A Burmese outrider went a few minutes ahead on horseback to scan the mountainous track ahead. After only a few miles shots rang out ahead and a riderless horse galloped back. There was no time to be lost. The truck was immediately abandoned and the group scrambled down the ravine as fast as possible. The Japanese search party failed to find them as they crouched in their various hiding places. After what seemed an eternity the soldiers reluctantly gave up the hunt and rejoined their colleagues in the invasion. Very soon after my father’s miraculous escape from capture the Japanese army controlled the whole of Burma.
My father and his companions were still, however, in a very dangerous position. It was unheard of, even for well-prepared cross country jungle expeditions, to arrive without losing members of the party to disease or other mishaps. Indeed, Stilwell's evacuation expedition is the only one known to have been accomplished without fatalities. As a result of their hasty abandonment of the lorry, the fugitives had no route to take. Support from the local Shan tribes en route would be uncertain. Not only were these local tribesmen ignorant of the issues involved, but they would be taking on an enormous personal risk to be discovered giving food and shelter to westerners so impossible to disguise as local farmers or peasants. Burma was not occupied Northern Europe, where bluff and evasion often proved effective. The problem was particularly severe in the case of a blue-eyed six-footer such as Father.
The problem with 'getting him out to India' was perhaps not fully understood from the London perspective. The so-called Chinese air force, run by the buccaneering and ambitious American, Chennault, was for political reasons not in full cooperation with Stilwell. The 'fly boys' (motto: 'God is my co-pilot') were very much individualists and their badly maintained and unpressurised small aircraft were only able to get over 'The Hump', the south east extension of the Himalayas, by skimming along valleys and squeezing between peaks. The air route over The Hump between Kunming and Assam in Northern India, with its 50% failure rate, is described by Barbara Tuchman in her 'Stilwell and the American Experience in China' as 'probably the most hazardous flight route in the world'. Luckily for my father he was still so weak and ill that he was completely unconcerned about the dangers implicit in the flight at the time, and just remembered vaguely admiring the skill of the pilot, climbing, swooping and weaving in between the towering mountain ranges. It was only afterwards when he knew more facts that fear set in retrospectively!
From Assam the rail connection with Calcutta was straightforward, so Father was soon able to continue his convalescence there. However, it was no time to relax, as at this late stage in the war the danger to India was greater than it had ever been. The Japanese were exerting enormous pressure on its eastern borders and in some areas were penetrating India itself. Calcutta, an important link in the allied supply chain, was not at all far from the Burmese border, hence my father's premature return to Budge Budge to oversee the oil supplies from the Hooghly River terminal was essential. In the emergency there was no chance for him to be invalided out. As a consequence, he never did recover fully from the trauma he had experienced in the jungle.
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