William (Bill) Stanier’s unfinished memoires

CHAPTER 1

What little I have learned of my family begins with John Stanier. He married Sarah Smout on the 4th June 1755 and had six children, John, William, Edward, Richard, Francis and Allan. Allan was born on the 10th July 1770. He married Anne Steel on the 19th October, 1800, producing five children, Alan, Mary, Richard, Francis and Edward. Edward, my great grandfather, was born on the 21st February, 1819. He married and had six children, John Thomas, Edward, William, Allan, Elizabeth and Eliza. He died in 1866, not long after losing £300, his life savings, in the failure of the Ruffords Bank at Stourbridge. When the affairs were wound up he received 1.5% of his capital namely £4,10s,0d. His widow was left with several young children to struggle along as best she could. She worked herself and sent the children out to work as early as possible. His son, my Grandfather, Allan Stanier, had been born only four years earlier in 1862.

Four years after my Great Grandfather’s death, my Grandfather, Allan, was employed illegally at the age of eight, by a chain maker. He used to tell me how he would climb up inside the chimney and hang there until the school inspector had gone away. Somehow or other he survived the period of acute poverty and eventually became an apprentice along with his brother William at the Red House glassworks, then owned by a Mr. Philip Pargeter. His father, Edward, had been a glass cutter and it may have been indirectly due to this connection with the glass trade that he obtained the apprenticeship. William and he worked together showing considerable skill until William was "drawn out" by the Glassmakers Society on the grounds that the system they were working under was calculated to prevent the employment of a full "chair". Shortly afterwards the factory was taken over by a Mr. Frederick Stuart. Allan’s skill was extraordinary and he had the distinction of becoming the youngest ‘Gaffer’ i.e. the head of a team of glass workers, in the trade. For someone who had received no education and was unable even to write his own name this was quite an achievement. However, he had the ability to mentally handle figures and solve numerical problems with extraordinary ease.

He had become a very well paid craftsman. He married Annie Susan Self and by her he had two sons and four daughters, Charles David, Fred, Floss, Ida, Gertrude and May. His first wife died when my father, Charles David, was about 17 years old. Shortly afterwards he married a Helen Self, who I believe was a cousin of his late wife, and had another daughter, Margaret. He retired after 53 years’ service with Messrs Stuart and Sons, who, very generously, gave him a pension in recognition of his contribution to the success of the Firm. He died in 1946 at the age of 84, having been bedridden for two years and blind for more than ten years.

My father, Charles David Stanier, was born on the 17th April 1886. At the age of 17 years and 4 months on the 11th August 1903, with the consent of his father, my father became "an apprentice to William Henry Stuart and Robert Stuart for 3 years and 8 months to learn the art of glass blowing". His "Indenture" stated that "he was to be paid 7 shillings and 4 pence a week" rising to "10 shillings and 1 penny plus 11 pence a move". A move was a period of work, normally 6 hours, of which there were 8 in the week, the glassblower working 6 hours on and 6 hours off, for 4 days a week.

A fully fledged glassblower at 21 years, he displayed a high degree of skill and in a very short time he became, as his father before him, the youngest "gaffer" in the district. He married my mother Gladys Freestone in August of 1911 and Charles my eldest brother was born in 1912, followed by Fred eighteen months later in 1914. I was born one of twins, at 10.15pm on the 20th November, 1919, at No 4, John Street, Wordsley, Staffs, and my twin brother, Allen, arrived 45 minutes later at 11.30pm, only to die a fortnight later.

A story my mother used to tell is that of my father carrying us, one on each arm, into my brothers’ bedroom and asking which one each would choose. ‘Charlie’ pointed to Allen, whilst Fred who had a deep voice growled,’ I’ll have that one with the big head’. I was the one with the big head. ‘Charlie’ unfortunately lost his life in a tragic accident when I was 10 months old and was buried on what would have been his 7th birthday. Strangely, although I have no memory of ‘Charlie’ or my twin who was christened Allen, I have been conscious of missing them, and fervently wishing that I had been able to know them.

It is very probable that my brother was given the duty of looking after his baby brother and keeping him out of scrapes, and apart from a few in which he himself was implicated, this he did. The responsibility for looking after me must have imprinted itself into his personality for I am sure that if I needed help at any time he would give it were he able to do so. We have got along with each other so well that I find it beyond my comprehension how brothers can fall out with each other irreconcilably.

The accident which robbed me of my eldest brother Charlie, so far as I understand, came about as follows. Charlie and Fred had been sent as usual to Sunday-School, but like most little boys, they decided to explore pastures new. The local canal side, with the coal carrying longboats moored along the towpath, was a very powerful magnet. These longboats were often tied up in such a way as to let the boat, with a push, swing away from the side, a fascinating operation very tempting to little boys. On pushing out one of these boats Charlie lost his balance, fell into the water and was probably trapped on the bottom by the boat swinging back. After trying without success to reach his brother, Fred ran along the canal towpath and asked for help from an adult, but was ignored or disbelieved, and when Charlie was eventually recovered he had drowned. It was said that Fred was found in a state of shock and terror under a hedge, but this must be subject to doubt for he remembered Charlie’s body lying in a nearby house.

My memory of my early life is almost nil with very hazy images floating around my mind with no idea as to their chronological order. One is of sitting on the kerbstone in front of my house, which I remember as a bay fronted one with an entry to the right of the bay, with a boy from next door whose name I recall as Billy Hill. We were drawing in the dust which the rain had deposited in the gutter when a man, whom I imagine was his father, pulled him to his feet and led him, by his ear, into his house.

Shortly afterwards the greengrocer arrived in the street selling his vegetables from a four wheeled flat cart pulled by a fine dray horse. This horse had, what seemed to me, huge feet with fetlocks of long white hair. The greengrocer rang a big hand- bell and then shouted "Garden peas grown in a field". I recall also the milkman coming down the street and my mother coming out with a jug to buy some. He sold his milk from a two wheeled trap and his horse was not so heavy. The milk was in two large churns with lids loosely placed over the measuring ladles which hung inside from the rim. The milkman also sold eggs from crates kept at the front of the trap. The garden at the back of the house had a narrow strip of grass between the fence and the path running alongside the kitchen, scullery, and a roofed midden. The midden was used to hold all the household rubbish such as kitchen waste and cinders from the fire. I vaguely remember a man shovelling out and loading this refuse into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it away down the entry.

My father was very keen on boxing and did his best to interest me in the noble art. On at least one occasion he put boxing gloves on me and kneeling on the grass with his hands held behind his back invited me to hit his face. By ducking and weaving from side to side he avoided my gloves and I still remember the feeling of frustration I had.

I was five years old when, with a boy who lived in the same street, I was playing by a brook which ran through some allotments and we saw some rows of mature garden peas in one of them. The temptation was too great and we settled down to taste some of them. Unfortunately we had picked on an allotment which was cultivated by a local policeman who caught us in this wicked act. My mother was horrified and spent some time trying to contact my father to tell him that I had been taken to the local Police Station. He happened to be socialising with a Justice of the Peace who, I was told much later, roared with laughter at the thought of two five year old lads being charged and asked that the situation be left with him to sort out. Many years later I was told that the policeman was ridiculed by many locals to such an extent that he was very shortly afterwards transferred from the district.

At the far end of the garden there was a broken down boundary wall and what remained of an old pigsty, in which, I believe, my father had housed a pig during the first world war. In the middle of the garden was a shed in which my parents kept chickens to supply the household eggs. It was into this shed that my brother and I retreated, in some haste, when, in the course of coaching me in the art of throwing, he managed to put a potato through our crusty neighbour’s window. We sat on the chickens’ perch in silence and almost afraid to breathe until the hubbub outside had subsided.

I have a hazy memory of being chased by my brother down the garden and miscalculating my speed and ability to turn the corner into the kitchen, with the result I crashed into the corner of the wall splitting open my forehead; I bear the scar still. It was round about this time that I was introduced by my father to that loathsome liquid, cod-liver oil, and to a less unpleasant one that went by the name of ‘Parrish’s chemical food’. Both Mother and Father attempted to shovel a desert spoon of each of these revolting substances down my throat each day in the sure belief that they would make me grow up strong and healthy. However, I could never hold down the raw cod-liver oil and eventually it was dished up to me in the form of cod-liver oil and malt, just a little less awful. Perhaps my reasonably good health over the years can be attributed to these daily tortures. Over the boundary wall was a derelict patch of ground which was used at one time by one or more of the local glassworks to tip cinders and clinkers from the furnaces. It was known locally as the "donkey pitch." At the one end there was a fairly level area on which we played football; at the other end were hummocks of cinders almost hidden by tall weeds among which we played Cowboys and Indians with gangs of kids from the neighbourhood. It was here that at the age of seven I lost four of my front teeth; I have been obliged to wear dentures ever since. Two groups of us were throwing clinkers at each other and I was protecting myself with a cane bath chair from the hail of missiles. Stupidly I looked around my bath chair just as a missile I failed to see came over and hit me in the mouth.

I would have been about six years old when my father bought a house in Alwen Street which stood at the opposite side of the "donkey pitch". It was a detached house with a brick built garage at the side and behind it was, what seemed to me at the time, a large garden with apple trees and a greenhouse. The garden was at a lower level than a pound of the canal which lay the other side of a tall wall at the end of the garden, a wall which I had great difficulty in scaling. The canal pound was shaped like a horseshoe with the main canal passage running along one side and with a warehouse filling the inside of the shoe. In the main stream and alongside the warehouse there was a lock where I often played and begged a ride on a longboat from one of the bargees. I had to be very careful because most of the boats were coal carriers and my parents, who would have disapproved of this activity, might have wondered how I could have got so dirty. There were two sunken and rotting longboats in the pound and I remember summer days when I lay face down looking into the water and watching, with the sun warming my back, at shoals of small fish flashing about the ribs of these derelicts, and occasionally an eel wiggling among the mud.

Our home in John Street had been a rented one and I felt very proud of our new home. For one thing it had a real bathroom. Previously I had been washed in the "copper" which was a large copper bowl, about 3 feet in both diameter and depth, used to boil clothes, etc. It was set in brickwork with a chimney and a fire grate under the bowl and it had to be filled by hand. I enjoyed that copper and can remember an occasion when I had to keep moving my feet because the fire underneath had not been raked out early enough for the heat in the grate to have cooled enough. But a little boy could brag about a real bathroom, it was special, as was the garage, even though I cannot recall it ever holding a car.

Each year a travelling fair came to the "donkey pitch" and I can recall holding the hand of my father whilst watching a great big black man, dressed in leopard skin with a feather headgear which might have been the envy of an Indian chief, putting torches of fire into his mouth. He called himself Prince Amba Gasha and he must have caused me to be very excited because my parents teased me about my response to Prince Amba Gasha for many years afterwards.

I was sent to Brook Street, our local County School, which made such an impression on me, that the only thing I remember about the school was being given two pieces of cardboard in which holes had been punched, a boot lace, and instructed in the art of tying up ones shoes. I could not have been a very attentive pupil because it must have been 15 years later that I learned how to tie a bow. However, a School Report in my possession states that I was lacking in energy but had a good standard in all subjects and, my position in the class of 34, was 4th. That School Report was signed by M. Abberley, Head Teacher. I remember, in the playground outside the school, challenging a ringleader, a lad with red hair, and ending up with a bleeding nose. This was very probably one of the best lessons I learned there: avoid challenging someone bigger than yourself!

I still recall with wonder the magic of the glassworks where my father worked. It was approached through an open yard in which were large wooden barrels into which the finished glass was packed, and other ones filled with red lead oxide some of which was spread over the soil. Dominating the yard stood the tall brick-built bottle-necked structure of the glasshouse itself. A brick tunnel with wooden doors at each end projected into the yard to form the entrance. The pull of the furnace produced a draught so strong that one would be blown over had the doors at each end not created a trap to the draught. Negotiating this was an exhilarating experience, but even this palled against the wonderland that lay on the other side of the doors. The dark interior was lit by the yellow glow from the mouths of the glass pots, heated by a central furnace burning behind a ring of wall into which the pots were set. Smoke from this furnace could be seen rising from inside the ring, up through the opening at the top of the outer structure inside which I stood. Built into, or against this outer structure were other smaller furnaces, called Glory Holes, belching out smoke and flames. They were used, in the main, for softening articles which were not completely finished. Others were called Lehrs and these were used for annealing the finished glasses.

To stand in this place, with workmen swinging the orange globes of molten glass within inches of my face, and feel the warmth of them whilst watching my father shear away the top of a wine glass with a pair of scissors (shears), was sheer magic for me. Also, the names of equipment used by the workers was a joy to my ears: ‘Pig’, for a heavy lump of cast iron placed just before the glowing pot mouth and with grooves in which the blowing irons were rotated; ‘Ferret’, for a simple rod of iron used to remove the clay collar which restricted the mouth of the pot and reduced the heat loss; ‘Gadget’, for a rod which clamped onto the foot of a wineglass; ‘Tools’, for a steel straight bladed pincer, and ‘Woods’, for a similar article but with wooden arms. To ask for the ‘Tools’ meant only that particular one tool and not one of the many others.

Occasionally, my father would gather some molten metal (glass) and let it drip into a bucket of cold water, making what was known as Prince Rupert’s Drops. These had an explosive property if the thin tail was broken, releasing the surface tension. He would let me have one, and I had great fun asking acquaintances to take one, offering the full rounded end for them to hold before I broke the tail. It felt almost like having an electric shock but most recipients took it in good fun.

My father would often cook a lamb chop by placing it on the steel plate which lay in front of the glowing pot mouth, and I still treasure the memory of being given a thick slice of bread which he had dipped into the hot fat and juices which ran from it. The bone from the chop was kept for our cat "Tiddles". It would always meet my father, after each ‘Move,’ at the canal bridge about 1/4 mile from our home. Once given the bone, Tiddles would lead the way home, his tail rigidly pointed to the sky.

My brother had passed the Staffordshire Minor ‘D’ Scholarship, the examination for entry to the local "King Edward the Sixth" Grammar School, and had been a pupil there for three or four years when my father decided that I should go there also. I cannot recall sitting for the examination, but, if I did, I failed, for my father paid for me to attend. My termly reports were not very encouraging and it says much for my father’s tolerance in keeping me there. I did not enjoy the school very much and seemed to end up with the poorest teachers it employed. However, I managed to get reasonable marks in Art, Woodwork, and English, and unreasonable ones in almost everything else. I did manage on one occasion to excel without undue effort. I had received the bottom copy of the duplicated examination questions for Trigonometry and during the exam became aware that the back of the paper had been placed upon a different duplicated pile of paper. I could not decipher the marks which had transferred from the pile but discovered, later on, that all became clear on viewing them through a mirror. In fact, I had discovered the questions paper for the Geography examination the following day. In that paper I did reasonably well but had I had more time I might have made a few pennies out of it by selling the information to fellow sufferers.

I had outstanding talent in larking about, but I only collected marks on my backside for this. At one time only one other boy in the school had more canings than me, so it was not unusual for me to be standing outside the headmaster’s study after morning assembly. Only one of these occasions afforded me any satisfaction. I was charged with carving my name into the wooden door of one of the B Block toilets and, on my denial, was sent to gaze and reflect upon my wrongdoing. I found the name Stanier cut deeply into the wood but its initial was not W, but F, that of my elder brother. On my return to the Headmaster he demanded that I should fetch my brother to be caned, only to be gleefully told that I could not do that because he had left the school last term.

The School was divided into ‘Houses’ which competed with each other. They were named after districts around the school and I was placed into ‘Brierley House’. Brierley had been trying to win the annual steeplechase and, despite my protests, I had been put into the group of pupils training for this purpose. Long distance running was my pet hate. Therefore it was inevitable that I would do anything to avoid it. My bicycle was left just over the brow of the hill leading from the start line, and I would ride around the course until the bend before the end. Then I would run in with some of the genuine chasers. Unfortunately, my times were being recorded and, as a result, I found myself included in the House team. When the great day arrived there were too many stewards scattered around the course for me to use my cycle. I had to run every inch of the way. Out of 48 runners I came 47th and the last man in had a bandaged knee. But my exhausted condition created some compassion in the heart of the Headmaster who patted me on the back and said "Well run, my boy".

By this time the family had moved from Alwen Street and had acquired a sweet, tobacco, and fishing tackle shop in Lower High Street, Stourbridge. My father, because of chronic ill health, had been obliged to give up his job; the changes of temperature, from being near the furnace to going outside, had exacerbated his health problem. However, after a relatively short time as a shopkeeper he obtained a position as an instructor of glassmaking in the local Stourbridge School of Art, where more tolerable conditions had been created which were not so harmful to his health. My mother then kept the shop open, with the help of my brother when he was not at school and, occasionally, with my help also. Despite the very great mixture of brands of tobacco and cigarettes, sweets and chocolate, I learnt very quickly the site of, and the price of each item, and I could have picked up most of them blindfolded.

One of the customers, whom, I believe, was a pipeline layer for the local gas company, regularly came in for an ounce of ‘pigtail twist’, a speciality which looked very much like tar impregnated rope. One day he noticed that I was suffering from warts on my hand and he announced that he could charm them away if I wished. Not wishing to offend a valued customer by letting him see that I believed it a load of nonsense, I agreed to let him have a go. He took my hand in his and rubbed the warts with the palm of his other hand. Letting go of my hand he said "They will be gone in a day or so". How many days it took I do not know, but one morning I awoke to find my hand absolutely clear of warts.

One day my Mother was sitting in the back room from where she could keep an eye on the shop through a mirror, when she saw a little boy who lived next door come in. He looked around, quickly took off the lid from a glass jar of sweets, plunged in his arm and fled with a handful of sweets. The next time he came into the shop my mother told him she would like to tell him a story. "One day there was a little boy who wanted a sweet" she began, and proceeded to describe his actions as she had seen them, intending to finish by telling him that the little boy had left the shop but had walked straight into the arms of a policeman. Before she was able to finish, the toddler looked straight at her and cried " Ya, you silly bugger, that was me". Recounting this gave my mother enormous pleasure for the rest of her life. One affair gave my mother no pleasure at all. It concerned the Caley Chocolate Co. They introduced to confectionary shops a perforated board which had hidden in the perforations different coloured balls. The customer paid a penny to push, with a bradawl type of tool, through a paper covering, one of the balls. A yellow one gave the customer a penny chocolate, a silver one a two-penny chocolate, and a gold one a three-penny chocolate. All went well until a visit by a couple of detectives resulted in my mother being charged and convicted of "keeping a gambling house". Caley’s paid for the defence and costs involved, but, for the rest of her life, mother deeply resented being branded a criminal.

Our shop was almost next door to the Grammar School and, whilst still a pupil there, I happened to overstay my lunch hour through getting engrossed in a particularly interesting comic. On being questioned as to my late arrival in the classroom I made the excuse "Sorry Sir, I missed the bus". The subsequent sniggers from the class very nearly gave the game away.

"Ishman" was the nickname of our Latin teacher. He was partially deaf, wore a hearing aid and mumbled his way through his lessons. One day he had spent most of his time for the lesson writing on the blackboard mumbling away with his back to the class. In a fit of bravado and with a voice loud enough to reach all the class I said "Ishman, you are an old fool". He turned around and asked "what did you say boy", "I wondered what the Latin on the board was, Sir", I said. "That shows you have not been paying attention so take two periods of work detention for not paying attention and two of conduct detention for telling lies, now do not say a thing like that again, Boy". This same master was one day taking a class in a classroom heated by an old coal burning stove and a boy named Wilkes, whose chief claim to fame lay in having had a trial with the Aston Villa football team, dropped into the stove a few blank cartridges. A short time later these began exploding and the class fell about laughing when "Ishman" tore out his hearing aid and began to examine it rather anxiously.

The Reverend John Horner, with a goatee beard, was my Maths teacher. One afternoon after struggling with our unruly class, he set to punish us by locking us in our classroom and giving the key to the Caretaker with instructions to let us out at 5pm. The only opening in the window was very high in the wall and we had to put the desks on each other to reach it. I had wriggled halfway through when the caretaker saw me. He fetched a ladder and tried to push me back as the boys inside were doing their best to push me out, but the danger of the window being broken softened his resolve and he unlocked the door.

The living conditions at the shop were far from ideal and were getting my mother down. She was very unhappy and making life impossible for all of us. So, in 1934 my father bought a semi-detached house which had been built on the land of a large demolished manor-type house. My brother and my mother created a garden from ground which had been the manor’s stable block. It had all the properties of richly manured compost and the resultant garden was so colourful the people stopped to peer over the wall at the bottom of it. I thought it was ideal, bar one drawback: I now had to walk some distance to school instead of being next door to it.

Eventually, the Headmaster wrote on my final School Report "Please take this boy away from school and make him work". My father then asked me what I wanted to do and, I suggested that I could get a place in a design studio at one of the Kidderminster carpet factories. At this time my father was teaching glassmaking at the Stourbridge School of Art and he felt that it would be sensible for me to have some art training before I set out in that field. So I became a pupil at the Art School, which, fortunately, was almost at the bottom of the road in which we now lived.

From day one I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I positively revelled in the variety of the work. At the end of the first term I was awarded a free studentship which pleased me greatly because I had been feeling guilty about wasting my father’s money at the Grammar School. I was introduced to Pottery, Sculpture, Metalwork, Glassmaking and Cutting, Fabric printing and Dyeing, Engineering Drawing, Perspective and an approach to learning which was foreign to anything I had experienced before. At the end of the first year I applied for entry to the Royal College of Art and, in the January of 1939, travelled to London to sit the entrance examination at the College. The examination was a very strange one to me, it consisted of two questions which I remember clearly, they were "make an imaginary drawing" and "make an abstract drawing". At that time I hardly knew what an abstract drawing was, but I had to do something, so I drew a bird with another one superimposed on it at an angle. Then I filled in the odd shapes that the crossing lines made in colour, and prayed. The imaginative drawing eventually ended up as several veil-tailed fish, chasing each other around within a circle. As I was applying for a place in the Design School to study industrial design, specializing in Glass, I felt it was necessary to associate the drawings with this field. This I did by stating that the abstract drawing was suitable for enamelled decoration and, the imaginative one for wheel engraved decoration. Then I returned home with the sinking feeling that once again I would be a disappointment to my father.

When the letter from the Ministry of Education arrived with the entrance examination result, my father slowly read it and, with no change of expression, said "Mucked it up again". Then he handed it to me with a smile he was unable to hide, and I knew that I had passed, but I did not know, until I read it, that I had been awarded one of only twelve Royal Scholarships tenable for three years. This meant that I would receive £100 each year, enough to cover my expenses and no longer be a burden to my parents. To say that I was over the moon would be an understatement; it was something I hadn’t dared to hope for and I could hardly believe it was true.

That summer I was invited by Keith Coleborn, the Head of the School of Art to join him and Mr. Pezare, known only as Pez, his Deputy, on a trip to Greece. The object of the trip was to study Architecture and I was very excited at the thought of seeing first-hand these magnificent historical buildings, buildings which I knew only from photographs. Also, it was my first time out of England and to venture overseas at that time was, for a working class boy, very thrilling. Keith had a very comfortable Renault convertible. It was not a big car, but it was sufficient for us to stretch our legs and take the luggage. Not that the latter could be classified as excessive. Pez had his guitar, which he played well, and I had a mouth organ, which I played indifferently. While Keith drove the car we sat perched on the back playing "South of the Border down Mexico way", until I lost my breath or Pez’s fingers were sore.

We took the Dover to Calais ferry and the Arras, Metz route to Strasburg. At Strasburg we joined the queue of cars waiting to cross the frontier. All except ours were German ones and, to a verbose Frenchman there, it was a source of wonder why we were "going into that accursed country. You must be mad" he said. I began to think he was right when we were treated with contempt by the arrogant German guards who spit on our passports before returning them to us. From Strasburg we went via Freiburg to Basle. A few miles out of Freiburg and driving in the dark we had a moment of panic when a large black car with a D prominently displayed by the number plate drove in front and waved us down. Thinking it was the German Police we were very surprised to see a very lovely young lady get out and come over to us. She said she had noticed our ‘GB’ Plate and wondered if we would like any help to get through the German side of the border. Pez turned on his charm and assured her (having learned that the D was actually Dk for Denmark), that he would be delighted to avail himself of her assistance. When we next saw this lovely creature we had gone through the frontier and she had just arrived on the German side.

We then went from Basle to Lucern to Altdorf (The home of William Tell) and to the Gottard Pass, where we met an Englishman, by the monument, who was making for home as quickly as he could. One would have thought that the Germans were just over the hill with bayonets fixed, he seemed almost scared to death.

Some of the roads in Switzerland seemed to be hanging to the sides of the mountains without physical support, even the road builders appeared to be taking their lives in their hands as they carried rocks to the edge of sheer drops. On one occasion Keith failed to notice a warning notice of road working. We careered round a corner scattering the road menders, who shook their fists at us, probably damaging the new partly laid road over which we shot, whilst regaling them with the strains of South of the Border. Perhaps it was just as well that we could not understand the language. We certainly did not stop to learn more about what had been shouted out.

Somewhere along the line we came across the Rhone glacier, the beginning of the river Rhone, and I was very surprised at this huge mass of beautifully coloured ice. I had always thought of ice as colourless, but the aquamarines, blues, greens, violets etc., in fact the whole spectrum, came across as a dazzling kaleidoscopic wonder. Making for the Italian border we passed through Biasca, and I seem to remember a place called Bellinzona where we sampled the Chianti and were assured by the locals that there would be no war. Then on to Lugano, I think, or was it Varese, where we crossed into Italy making for Milano. We had not gone very far, certainly not more than six or seven miles, when motorcycle Police came roaring alongside and made us pull in to the side. They explained that the frontier should have been closed before we were allowed through and they would appreciate it if we turned round pronto and went back into Switzerland. They were big fellows and looked as if they would like any opportunity to demonstrate their strength, so, we agreed, and like V.I.Ps we were accompanied back to the frontier with Police outriders.

It took us two days to get to Paris via Lausanne and Dijon and after too short a look around, we made tracks for home. When we got to Le Havre one would have thought that war had been declared and shipping requisitioned for troops, because no ferry would take the car. So we went on to Dieppe only to suffer the same fate there. At Boulogne we were lucky, but even from here we were subject to a total blackout on the crossing. It was a strange experience to be without light, but one which was to become commonplace before very long.

My entry, as a bona fide Art Student to the Royal College of Art, was delayed for a month by the outbreak of the Second World War. Whilst kicking my heels at home I met a young lady who often came into the shop to talk with my Mother. She was adopted and used to fantasize about her parents. She would imagine that her mother was a queen or a duchess and she might have been a princess or some other powerful creature. Attractive and vivacious, she only imagined happy beginnings and was always full of chatter. I found her pleasant company, and I recall walking with her over the Clent Hills one late evening, and being almost bewitched by her incredible imagination, though it may have been a brilliant full moon which contributed to the feeling. It was some time after the war when I met her again in London, I could see no sign of the gay and lively creature I knew before. Instead I found her a rather dull and boring person pretending to be socially superior than was warranted. I was very disappointed, though by then I had met the lady who was later to become my wife; perhaps I was making a comparison.

Eventually, I received my call up papers and promptly applied for deferment for the purpose of completing my training. I was allowed a temporary deferment of 3 months.

A friend of mine, Jack Downing, had been a student at the College from the previous September, and was looking for someone to share his digs, the cost of which he was finding too much on his own. He had a very pleasant ground floor flat in Redcliffe Gardens, London, SW7. It had two single beds, two arm chairs, and a tiny area along the corridor outside as a kitchen. I was more than pleased to share his burden, and for 17 shillings and 6 pence, had somewhere to live, with breakfasts provided. Also, it was within reasonable walking distance from the College, and as we were expected to sign in before 9.15 am, this was an important consideration.

Shortly after I had settled into the flat, my brother, who had managed to get a spot of leave, decided to visit me with a couple of our friends. They came in an old banger, the sight of which would draw the attention of any policeman. It did. They were stopped and accused of breaking the blackout. All cars had to fit covers over the headlights to prevent any light being seen from the air. This they had done but on protesting their innocence, the constable pointed to the top of buildings in front of them which were showing every sign of being floodlit. They were lucky, for after adjusting the light covers they were let off with just a warning, and they were able to arrive laughing their heads off in relief.

The entrance to the College lay in Exhibition Road and served also as a side entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The ‘Signing-In Book’ was in the care of a College servant whose main responsibility appeared to be drawing a line under the last signature at exactly 9.15 by the entrance clock. Mr. Farthing, or ‘Old Farthing’ as he was affectionately known, took this duty very seriously, and there developed a sort of competition among the students as to who could deflect his attention long enough to squeeze their name above the line without him knowing. This signing-in was a pointless procedure if it was intended to show that the student was working in the College, because it was possible to walk through the College, into the Museum, and out into Cromwell Road. I estimated that almost half of the students did just that. Unless I wanted to do any work in the Museum, I took this route, ending up back at my digs where I could work in peace, or in the Students’ Common Room, which was sited in Queens Gate. Within a very short time my table tennis had greatly improved.

My financial condition at this time was, to me, a particularly comfortable one, and, compared with many of the other students’, an enviable one. I could afford to eat out in the West End once a week and pay my turn with friends without having to economize for the rest of the week. On one such visit to the West End with three others, we patronized a rather splendid restaurant known as Princes. We had previously had a few drinks in the ‘Redcliffe’, a public house near my digs. One of us, an Asian called ‘Ahmed, had been affected by the drink and, though not totally drunk, was definitely in the state known as ‘happy’. Ahmed was impressed by the bowls of peanuts provided on each table by the restaurant management. So much so that he went from table to table tipping the peanuts into the huge pockets his raincoat had on its inside. Not once did any of the waiters remonstrate with him, but I imagine they would have been glad to see the back of us. He must have collected enough food to last him a long time.

Having had nearly all of my schooling at a ‘boys only’ establishment and not having had a sister, I was totally out of my depth in my dealings with the female students. I had seen, waiting in the lunch queue in the students’ common room, a small very attractive looking girl, and thought how nice it would be to take her out for a meal, or a drink, or both, one evening. It took an enormous amount of courage to introduce myself to her and ask if she would like to come out with me, and I couldn’t believe my luck when she said "Yes". I remember we went somewhere in Soho to a little Greek restaurant and afterwards back to my digs for coffee. However, before I had time to drink coffee, she leaned forward in the chair and said something that is burned into my memory, "Well, am I going to be seduced or not?". I cannot remember much after that, apart from feeling that my tie was about to strangle me and that I had to get her out quickly. How I have since regretted not being a man of the world at that time.

Anxiety about the war spoilt much of my enjoyment as it became increasingly clear that any chance of an extension of my deferment was very small indeed. Early in the New Year I was called before another tribunal, the chairman of which was the image of Colonel Blimp. After a brief discussion of my background and training he declared that I was ideal material for the Royal Engineers. I was therefore recommended for that branch of the Armed Forces.

Some weeks later I received my calling up papers which instructed me to report to the Infantry Training Centre at Blandford in Dorset, and contained the necessary travel permits. On the train were a number of Londoners, among the motley crew travelling to the West Country, unmistakable by the Cockney accents and their cheeky humour. There were all sorts represented, from barrow boys and bricklayers to lawyers and accountants. The conversation was restrained, clean and respectable but one could feel the underlying tension that existed underneath.

Arriving at Blandford Station we were loaded, ‘embussed’ as the military insisted, into lorries for the journey to the Training Camp, and from that moment these respectable people became a bunch of foul mouthed louts. Until then I had not realised what an innocent I was. This transformation shocked me and I was never really comfortable with this extension of their vocabulary.

We were lined up outside a hut bearing the title ‘Office’ and called forward, one at a time, to supply information about ourselves, to a pleasant sergeant charged with recording our religion, our schooling, date of birth, etc.,. ‘Atheist’ I replied to his query about my religion. ‘That will have to be C. of E.’ he replied and entered those initials on the form. ‘School’?, he asked, ‘Yes’, I said. ‘Look lad, I haven’t got all day, what sort of school did you go to? ‘A Public School’ I said. Without any hesitation he wrote across the form ‘Recommended for a Commission’. There was no enquiry as to the standard of education I had achieved, or whether I had been thrown out of the school. It seemed to be a belief that all Public School pupils would, naturally, make good Officers even if they were stupid. Only later, after my experiences with Officers, did I realise how widespread this belief must have been.

The preliminaries over, we were marched to our huts, shown our beds, marched to the quartermaster’s store where we had thrown at us a mass of clothing and equipment, with which we had to struggle back to the hut. Then a lecture on jumping to it when given an order, ending with permission to spend the evening in the town if we wished. As this was about two miles away I lost the inclination to explore and chose to have a beer in the NAAFI. That night, after ‘Lights Out’ two of my huts inmates rolled in drunk, absolutely plastered, and rather than find the lavatory, relieved themselves by their beds on the barrack floor. The ensuing bedlam must have woken everyone within the whole of the camp, and I suffered acute anxiety at the thought of what I had joined.

The next few weeks were spent on drilling on the barrack square (square bashing), and ‘exercises’, most of which meant crawling along on one’s stomach through brambles or barbed wire, usually in mud. ‘Bren’ gun stripping was another pleasure we had, but diminished somewhat by repetition. However it was something I found easy and I enjoyed showing others in my platoon.

At this time I was wearing the white hat band of the Officer Training Corps but I felt uncomfortable shouting out at ‘the men’ and could not come to terms with the bullying and degradation of the conscripts by most of the ‘N.C.O.s’. This was highlighted by the treatment of the ‘‘Awkward Squad’, which was made up of men who had difficulty in co-ordination of their limbs and muscles. For example, the difficulty may have resulted in a man moving his left arm forward at the same time as his left leg, or being unable to catch his rifle when ordered to ‘slope arms’. These poor fellows were subjected to a barrage of insults and vilification by most of the drill sergeants, frequently being kept on the ‘square’ for long periods after the others had been dismissed. One such display so incensed me that I strongly remonstrated with the offending sergeant, using expressions ‘unbecoming for an officer and gentleman’. The episode brought me ‘on report’ before the Commanding Officer, and my recommendation for a Commission was withdrawn. The white band was taken off my hat and I became one of ‘The Men’. A few days later I was made a Lance Corporal.

The next few months were spent in training, i.e., periods of pain, discomfort, and soul destroying boredom. So it as with relief that we heard we were about to be posted to our Regiment. As the Blandford Training Centre was that of the Essex Regiment we expected to be joining that, so it came as a complete surprise to find ourselves put into tents, in the grounds of Weeting Hall near Brandon, and told that we were now enrolled in the Cambridgeshire Regiment. This was the 1st Battalion with Lt- Col G. G. Carpenter, D.S.O. as it’s Commanding Officer, who with the rest of his Officers ‘roughed it’ in the stately Weeden Hall while the men were ‘comfortably’ bedded down in tents! It was this gentleman who was convinced that the Germans would launch an airborne attack at 4 am and therefore it would not be sensible for any of the men to undress for sleep, they must be so attired as to be immediately battle ready at any time of night or morning.

Within three days of this madness I reported to the M.O. (Medical Officer) with very painful feet, and on removing my boots and socks, white sponge like lumps revealed themselves. He ordered me to sit with my feet in the sun for the next two days, along with the others from my platoon and I heard that there was a hell of a row between the doctor and the Commanding Officer about this action. The doctor must have been the victor because thereafter we were allowed to remove our boots at night. I was never able to find out if that rule, about keeping ones boots on, had been observed by the Officers in the Hall, but I doubt very much if it was.

On the 1st July, 1940 the 1st Battalion moved to the Norfolk coast guarding a line from Palling to Bacton. Sea Palling consisted of so few houses as to hardly warrant a name, so once again we were obliged to live in tents. As I recall the weather was mainly dry and moderately sunny and the boredom was regularly relieved by the aerial dogfights between Spitfires and Junkers which took place almost every day. Whilst watching the drama one day a clip from a machine gun hit me on my shoulder, but, although it stung me, didn’t do me any harm.

The sergeant in charge of our platoon was a very small wiry man, who had been a bus conductor at Newmarket, and who had the manner of a little yapping terrier. It was inevitable that whenever he was within earshot the cry ‘move along the car there’ came from someone. His attempts to establish his authority almost always fell apart, and he would get red in the face and bluster away, while the platoon teased him unmercifully.

Snaith, an ex-fairground worker, was not at all amenable to discipline, and could not see the point in cleaning his rifle and bayonet every day. Sergeant Kemp, for that was his name, insisted on inspecting Pte Snaith’s bayonet and, pulling it from its scabbard, pointed to the film of rust to which the sea air had contributed. As if on a given signal all surrounding soldiers pulled out their bayonets, ringing the sergeant with them and pointing out that they were all alike. ‘Put them back, put them back’ the sergeant squeaked in obvious alarm, much to the amusement of the platoon.

Pte Snaith had been a travelling fairground worker and he had tremendous physical strength. On one occasion when we were at Weedon Hall a tree had fallen across a cart track and we were told to move it out of the way. Four or five of us struggled with the trunk, managing to shift it a foot at a time. Snaith lifted one end on to his shoulder and literally walked with it to the side of the track. He was a very capable character and he probably made a very good soldier but he kicked hard against discipline and showed his contempt for spit and polish on every occasion. It was possible that the sergeant, in an effort to prevent Pte Snaith from infecting the rest of us with his philosophy, made him his personal runner and Snaith, always willing to avoid the normal chores was happy, in the beginning, to serve him in that role. However the constant complaining and pompous attitude of the sergeant reduced his happiness to anger. One night walking the cliff top he had had enough and, during a bout of yapping from the sergeant, he caught him by the collar of his uniform and, lifting him clear of the ground, said ‘Another bloody squeak out of you and I’ll drop you over the edge’. The sergeant his legs kicking the air, was crying ‘Put me down, Put me down’. He was a frightened man, aware that the authority of his three stripes cut no ice with Pte Snaith.

Apart from the odd route march along the coast, most of our time was spent building camouflaged gun positions during the day and standing guard at night. The gun positions and the pill boxes were built in the sand dunes and the only way we could hold the sand from falling in on itself was to stuff it into sandbags and build the walling with those. We must have done a very good job because when King George VI was brought round to inspect the coastal defences he passed within six feet of our pillbox without noticing it. For a short time we were engaged in burying land mines and wiring them to each other. I had a friend by the name of Johnny Pike, who came from Dagenham where he had achieved a degree of fame as a racing cyclist. A strong well-built man, he had a gentle manner, and I was pleased that we had teamed up together instead of being lumbered with an uncouth character of which there were many in the platoon. Being with Johnny was quite a bonus for me for I found it almost impossible to remain awake at night, whereas, when on guard, he found it impossible to fall asleep. The sound of the waves was extremely somnolent and within minutes I could be curled up on the sand fast asleep. Never did Johnny fail to see the Officer on duty making his rounds and kick me awake before I was seen to be neglecting my duty. Only once was his kick not needed, that was when the sea was so rough that a large wave detonated one of the mines and prevented me from going back to sleep. We stayed chums until he died of beri-beri and dysentery in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Thailand.

Although the battalion was always on a state of alert it was not what I would term intense. There was one particular period which was definitely intense. It transpired that German soldiers had been seen packed into barges on the other side of the Channel and it was assumed that they were about to invade England. Naturally we were more than a little apprehensive for a few days. Then we were told that the R.A.F. had bombed and sunk many German barges about to attack our coast. How true the stories were we could only guess but it was a fact that shortly afterwards bodies of German soldiers were taken from the sea a few miles further down the coast.

Three or four of us volunteered to prime land mines as the Royal Engineers were engaged in some other activity, and the job would save us from excessive physical exercise planned for the platoon. We were impressed with the danger of trying to rush the operation, shown what to do and how to do it, then left under the cliff to get on with it. For three days we were left alone, enjoying the cushy number without a nagging sergeant to disturb us. To prime a land mine we had to pick a detonator, which looked like a 2 inch long silver tube about 3 inch diameter, out of a cardboard box, and push it very carefully into a hole through the middle of a lump of gelignite. This was then placed in the middle of 40 lbs of Ammonal, which had been packed into the metal casing of the mine. As the detonator could be set off with just the heat of one’s hand, or the friction of pushing it too quickly in to the gelignite, we were very careful to take our time instead of hurrying the process. Then along came a high ranking officer who raised hell about untrained infantry men doing the job that should be left to trained engineers. We were taken off the job and the Royal Engineers took over. A day or two later we learned that three men had been killed whilst priming land mines at this same spot. It seemed that familiarity had brought contempt with tragic consequences.

Our platoon Officer, Lieutenant Gates, was not a well-loved gentleman, in fact it would have been hard to hear a good word about him from any of us. He was tolerated because there was no alternative at the time. To say he had a short fuse was understating the fact, so I was not overjoyed when he informed me that for the next fortnight I was to be his runner and acting company clerk. But I was amply compensated a few nights later when I was sitting uncomfortably by his side in a wooden hut that was the Company office. The hut had a blanket hanging inside the doorway to prevent light shining out when anyone entered. Anyone about to enter would first knock on the door until called, then come through the door, closing it before passing round the blanket. On this particular night Pte Strachan was on guard outside. A knock came on the door and Gates barked ‘Come in!’. Strachan came in, managing to spear the blanket with the bayonet on his rifle. He then attempted to slope arms in order to salute, and drove the bayonet through the roof, pulled the rifle down to his right side and then saluted with his left hand. By this time the Lieutenant was almost purple. ‘Well, what is it?’ he yelled. ‘Ships lights out at sea, due East sir’ responded Strachan. ‘How the hell do you know they’re ships lights?’ snarled Gates. ‘Well! I didn’t expect to find a bloody taxi cruising around in the middle of the ocean, Sir’, replied Strachan! Somehow or other I managed to get out of the office before splitting my side, but poor old Strachan was given a spell of jankers, and spent a few hours scrubbing the mess room floor, claiming it was well worth it.

On one occasion my platoon was sent to relieve the guard at Marham aerodrome. This was for one day only but it was enough to make us feel very disgruntled. We arrived in time for breakfast and discovered that the airmen were having laid in front of them a wide choice of food including fried eggs, bacon, kidneys, beans, orange juice, porridge, corn flakes, tea and coffee, toast and marmalade etc., and this was served to them on clean white plates in a spotlessly clean canteen! Having had lumpy lukewarm porridge thrown into our mess cans every morning, followed by two slices of bread holding a slice of Spam, and having to eat it sitting on the sand, we couldn’t believe our luck! Then to cap it all we saw their sleeping quarters and, on each bed there were spotlessly clean white sheets! Something we had not seen since joining up. However a short time after this we watched a dog fight over the sea and we all cheered when one of the planes we thought was German went hurtling into the water. The following morning the body of a British airman was pulled from the water. Any envy we may have felt beforehand, rapidly melted away.

In November the Battalion was relieved and moved to an area around Wymondham, Norfolk., to begin again our so called ‘training’. Apart from a few sessions of target practice on the firing ranges at Thetford, the training seemed to consist of endless marches through some of the flattest and least interesting country it has been my misfortune to suffer. We did however catch a few tantalising glimpses of the town of Wymondham and, it seemed, to my eye, to be a very attractive looking place. Unfortunately the glimpses were all too brief and all too infrequent. One evening, whilst still serving in this area, my section was given the task of manning a pillbox which had been built very close to a crossroad. I was told that it had been put there to guard the crossroad and prevent the passage of any German motorised vehicles. As the country around was so flat and, the ground was so good and firm, I was unable to understand why the military mind was so confident that the Germans would keep to the road. However it was not always wise to question the wisdom of decisions made by one’s superior Officers so we entered into the spirit of the thing. I drew up a roster for the night’s guard-duty giving myself that from 8 o’clock until 10 o’clock and promptly curled up and went to sleep. At 8 o’clock I was shaken awake by Pte Pearson to whom I had given the 6 o’clock to 8 o’clock guard duty. Fastening up my uniform and putting on my equipment I staggered outside and leant against the blast wall of the pillbox until the waking up process had been completed. I walked to the crossroad and back a number of times, occasionally stopping to listen for the approach of the duty officer, and to peer into the darkness and mist. After a time my legs began to ache, my feet felt sore, and the weight of the loaded Bren Gun magazines in the pouches on my equipment was playing havoc with my shoulders. To take the weight off my feet I hoisted myself up to sit inside a gun bay which had been built sloping backwards. It was almost as good as sitting in an armchair. It was 4 o’clock when I woke up with shock at the time, but with a tremendous relief that the Duty Officer had been as conscientious in his duty as I had been in mine. Then I shook ‘Spud’ Murphy who was to follow me on watch and he sleepily asked what time it was. When I told him, he said ‘If it’s that bloody time, I’ve done my stint’ and tried to go back to sleep. Eventually the remaining time was shared equally among those still to do their watch. At reveille that morning they almost laughed themselves sick as they expressed their undying gratitude for my extremely kind consideration.

CHAPTER 2

In February the Battalion was moved north to be stationed at Galashiels. ‘A’ Company’s billet was an old wool mill which had stopped production some time earlier. It was a big dark grey building just outside the town and was sited between a stream and the road which had a tall granite wall built on the opposite side. The picture was quite a depressing one.

Inside the mill we found that nearly all the machinery had been removed and our platoon had been allocated a large area of wooden floor on which to make our bed and lay out our equipment. Unfortunately the floor had, over the years, been saturated with oil from the machines and this, plus our hobnailed boots, created the ideal conditions for skating. The chaos this created when the alarm sounded was, in retrospect, hilarious, but at the time it turned the air blue.

The army exercises at this station were a little more imaginative than those we had before, but they still required us to spend most of our time trudging over and around the mountains, and occasionally throwing ourselves on the very wet ground in front of an imaginary enemy.

We were issued with a triangular shaped length of canvas, a short stick and three hooks and, told that these constituted our individual tent or bivouac. In practice though, there was a snag which was highlighted on the very first occasion we had to use them. It was found that the hooks, which were intended to secure the canvas to the floor, would not hold in peat, nor would they penetrate granite. Luckily it was not raining or snowing, so we put on our gas capes and lay down wherever we could find a less wet position, away from the odd snow drift and draped the canvas over us. It was not a situation to please the troops and one which must have been communicated to our commanders because we were not called upon to repeat a similar exercise.

After duty we were not confined to our billet, but there was so little to do, other than walking into the town, and as we had done too much walking to enjoy it, we tended to spend our leisure playing cards or chess or reading. I had made the effort to go into town once, Johnny Pike, Ginger Eldridge and myself set off intending to enjoy the experience. We found just one dingy café and two pubs open and to crown it all, one of the two pubs had a notice at its entrance ‘Officers Only’. I doubt if the Officers were sensitive enough to realise the depth of resentment this sort of notice engendered. It made me feel very angry and I could well imagine some soldiers looking around for something to break up. We were thoroughly fed up, and the dark grey appearance of the town seemed to extend to the few girls who were hanging around the street lamps. They seemed a poor lot and our spirits were at rock bottom. Thereafter we spent our free time back in the billet.

Just before April the Quartermaster began to receive quantities of equipment and clothing. As the latter was khaki drill, it seemed certain that we were destined to be sent to the Far East. So it came as quite a surprise when my section was chosen to be one of those to make up the vanguard for the Battalion, on the move to its new quarters in and around Cannock, Staffs. I suspect that we were chosen because the Company Sergeant-Major knew it was near my home town, Stourbridge and guessed that I would find an opportunity to get away more easily from the vanguard conditions than I would when the Battalion arrived. How right he was.

We left by train at the end of February, very pleased to get away from Galashiels and the rest of the Battalion, if only for a few days. My memory is not very clear as to my movements after arriving at Cannock, but I think I had a billet at Hednesford before the rest of the Company came down.

At this time, my brother, who happened to be in the Royal Tank Regiment, chanced to have a spot of leave and, learning that I was at Cannock, decided to come and have a look at me. When he arrived I told him that I was free for the day and we both decided to try to see our parents.

Stourbridge was only 20 miles away but petrol was strictly rationed and there were very few private cars on the roads. A soldier’s method of moving around was to cadge a lift from an army driver or try thumbing a lift from one of the rare private cars that came along. That day we had no luck with the army transport but along came a lorry with a load of washed gravel and offered to give us a lift. There was no room in the cab, so we perched ourselves on the load of wet gravel. I cannot remember all the details of that journey but I couldn’t forget how cold it was and how both of us had to adjust our seats as the wet gravel slid away from under us, it was funny, uncomfortable, and alarming at the same time.

I was at Cannock, which was quite a nice town with plenty of life in it, for too short a time. My Company was moved to Armitage, a small village just a few miles away, where, it was probably thought by the powers that be, there would be nothing to take our minds off the training. For once they were right. Instead we were bored to tears.

At the beginning of May the Battalion moved camp to Arbury Park at Stockingford, and I found myself living in a tent once again. The weather at this time was warm and sunny, the ground was sandy and well drained, and had it not been for the fact that I was in the army, I could have thoroughly enjoyed myself here. As it was, this was my best station in the army.

I vividly recall walking only about a hundred yards from my tent one morning to a grassy bank where there appeared to be some rabbit holes and, being very surprised to find a large number of grass snakes, some curled up and some moving about in the warm sun, where I had expected to find rabbits. I had never seen more than one or two before and, to see such big ones, and so many in one place, was quite exciting.

When we first arrived at Arbury Park the A.T.S., were ensconced in the cookhouse. However they didn’t last long in that position. The first inspection by our Officers ended in a somewhat heated dispute between them and the Officer in charge of the A.T.S.. I had always imagined that women in a cookhouse would be more efficient than men, but the state of the equipment was positively disgusting. It looked as if it had not been cleaned since first being used. In one respect the outcome of the dispute was unfortunate because the women were withdrawn completely and our own cooks had the whole job of cleaning every one of the filthy pans. The grub afterwards was edible but in rather short supply, at least that’s how it seemed to us at the time though I expect that the physical exercises to which we were being subjected had a lot to do with it.

The insufficiency of food reminds me of one morning when we were about to begin one of the many route marches. Standing in columns of three just before setting off, we had our attention attracted by a smell of newly baked bread. It came from a van which had been stopped alongside the column. I managed to buy a small white loaf which was still hot from the ovens, and began to eat some of the crust. It was absolutely marvellous, one of the best meals I had ever had, even though it was eaten whilst on the march. There was of course the inevitable character asking ‘Where’s the bloody butter’, and in so doing lifting the spirits of us all.

Most of the marches began by taking a route through the village of Stockinford but the one to which I have just referred went in the opposite direction through the Park itself. One the way we passed a cottage which seemed to be a normal agricultural workers type and I was very surprised to learn that it was the birthplace of the writer George Elliot i.e. Mary Ann Evans. In a strange way the knowledge seemed to make the march far more agreeable.

Most of the marches were deadly boring and tiring, and I found it difficult sometimes to appreciate the beauty of the countryside through which we were moving. Aching legs and painful feet are not conducive to instant appreciation of aesthetics or, indeed, anything else for that matter. The weight of a haversack on the back and that of the rifle on the shoulder after about twenty miles helped to ensure that we made a very sorry sight at the end of most of the route marches.

I remember more than one occasion when we were dragging ourselves back to the camp and passing the terraced houses of Stockinford just before entering the Park through its elegant wrought iron gates. A number of housewives stood outside their homes by the small gates dotted along the stretch of walling which separated them from the road and soothed us with their verbal sympathy. They also, in particularly colourful language, loudly abused the Officers who had often joined the column only a couple of miles earlier and who were then strutting out in front to show how easy it all was. We liked those ladies.

Life was not all route marches, there was the occasional lecture, usually given by an Officer, but sometimes by a soldier with a keen interest or hobby he was willing to share with the rest of us. There were also a few more academic subjects and I remember joining a small group hoping to learn German. The Sergeant Tutor was very good but after a few weeks, just as we were getting started, he was transferred to some other unit. The Battalion Headquarters Staff felt it would be good for moral and make a change from the usual tedium if we put on a Tattoo. Well! It made a change. We still had the usual drill but we did it in bits of sacking with cardboard hats on, but we were able to lie about in the sun more often. It is the luxury of resting in the sun or shade, as we wished, that I remember most. However it was, I believe, a great success and it raised enough money, c £500, to endow a cot in the Nuneaton Hospital. The German Airmen were very active whilst we were at this station and the towns of Coventry and Nuneaton were frequently under attack. We lay in our tents at night listening to the drone of the enemy planes, the thump of the exploding bombs, and the whistle of shrapnel from the anti-aircraft shells. Far too much of the latter fell among us and there were few nights when we weren’t sitting up in our tents with our tin hats on. One tent was torn by a falling fragment but luckily no one was injured. It was quite exciting but it made for a very bleary eyed lot of soldiers on parade the next morning. Training at this station included the movement of troops over long distances and we enjoyed trips to Yorkshire and to Wales. The visit to Wales I can hardly remember, but that to Yorkshire was almost unforgettable. The kindness of the people and their generosity was so different from those in the south, that it is almost hard to believe there could be such a difference. Everywhere we stopped, even if it was only for a few minutes, people would come out to offer us tea and cakes, or milk and even sandwiches from their meagre rations. It was given so generously that it seemed almost rude to refuse any of it. Also, as most of our exercises took place over the moors it seemed incredible that so many people seemed to materialise in such an open landscape.

In September 1941 the Battalion marched away from Arbury Park and to Wittington Barracks at Lichfield. This was my first real glimpse of the kind of accommodation provided for the Regular Army and I was not very impressed. Brick built blocks of accommodation with concrete staircases and bare walls with lockers standing against them, and little else, ranged around a very large square of tarmac. The Officers were in their element, now was the opportunity to smarten up these conscripts, and they certainly made an effort. We were drilled on that square of tarmac until there wasn’t a square inch of it that my feet had not touched. Then on top of all that, the Lt Colonel in command of the Battalion decided that we should prove ourselves capable of covering 30 miles a day in full equipment, for three days. The routine rigidly adopted for a route march was to march for 50 minutes and have a ten minute rest. Unfortunately for me, I discovered early on that the first ten minute break was fine, but when I stood up to begin the next 50 minutes my feet were terribly painful. The pain lessened as I walked but it meant that for the whole of each day I had to remain on my feet or suffer excruciating pain after every rest period. I can still remember eating my meals standing up whilst everyone else was sitting or lying stretched out on the ground, and I remember little else but the condition of my feet. We stayed at Lichfield for about six weeks before the Battalion entrained, on the 27th October, for Liverpool. Arriving at Liverpool we were marched along the dock until we were stopped by a large liner and subjected to the army’s usual roll call and inspection. After this we were shepherded up the gangways on to the decks of ‘H.M.S. Orcades’. This ship was a very solid one with a riveted hull as against the, then modern, welded one. Even the handrail around the decks was made from huge pieces of mahogany which had a polish made by the people who over the years had leaned over it. It was only one of the convoy of ships conveying the 18th Division, of which the 1st Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment was part. Once on ship we were directed to the ‘Galley’ for a meal and we were astounded to find on each table a large bag of sugar, and at the end of each table an equally large number of oranges. As sugar was in very short supply in England and the maternity hospitals were said to be desperately short of oranges, this abundance seemed to us to be almost criminal and it should have been unloaded onto the dock.

It was on the 30th October 1941 when we set to sea with no idea where we were heading but apprehensive about the possibility of the ship being torpedoed. The second day out we were told we should be going to Nova Scotia. Few of us knew where it was exactly but we knew that it meant a journey across the Atlantic where a hell of a lot of ships had been sunk. We were escorted by four destroyers and they seemed, to my eyes, to be much too far away for comfort. The weather was very dull and damp and the ocean a choppy grey mass. Not very interesting except for our supporting escort, about a dozen dolphins who looped alongside for most of the journey like a lot of children skipping along.

Halfway across the water we awoke one morning to find a large number of warships seemingly taking the place of the four destroyers which had hitherto been our sole guardians. They turned out to be a large squadron of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet which took us into Halifax on the 8th November. We disembarked from the Orcades only to immediately embark on the S.S. America. This liner was, before the war, America’s crack liner and evidence of its former glory was plain to see almost everywhere one looked. However, it had been commandeered by the U.S. Navy and partly converted for war service. At this time the U.S. was not officially involved in the war, but it was obvious to us that a secret deal had been concluded and the U.S. was very likely to signal its intention to enter on the side of the Allies as soon as it found an excuse to do so. Naturally, while they were thought to be uncommitted, it was unlikely that the German submarines would torpedo their ships, and much of our tension was reduced by the knowledge.

We headed south and as we did so we examined this luxury liner of which the American sailors seemed so proud. It was a welded ship and, compared with the Orcades, it seemed quite tinny, but the decorations in the ship’s theatre stank of wealth. The draperies felt and looked rich and the wall decorations seemed to have used more gold leaf than was decent. Although a lot had been stripped out there was plenty of wood panelling left to stimulate the imagination as to how it must have looked before it had been torn apart. One particularly fascinating feature on this ship was the dining room created for feeding the troops. Running from one end to the other were tables about chest high with a conspicuous absence of chairs. At meal times we stood at the table and the food was dished out to us from huge containers pulled from the Galley by the cooks’ helpers. The ventilation of this large room seemed to be almost non-existent, a fact made progressively clear to us all as we entered the warmer climes. Then we dined wearing only shorts. One began to perspire on descending the companionway and the pores were in full flow by the time the food came. Sweat dripped off the nose and chins and streamed off the elbows leaving the floor wet and as slippery as a skating rink. However, the food was excellent and there was plenty of it. After the austerity of England, many of us were aggrieved by the profligate attitude of the cooks. They seemed to bring from the cold rooms far more food than was necessary and then tipping all that was left onto the waste piled high on the stern. Whole baskets, which measured about 3 feet high and with a similar diameter, of cooked chickens were thrown away. The wasteful attitude of the cooks extended throughout the U.S. crew. They seemed to use a handkerchief only once and then throw it away onto the pile of waste. I remember one of them coming from the engine room with an oil stain on his immaculate white slacks, changing into new ones and throwing the stained ones away. There was really no excuse for such behaviour because the ships laundry was very good and very quick. I collected almost a kit-bag full of dirty handkerchiefs from the refuse pile and took them to the laundry. They were ready for collection the following morning, all clean and beautifully pressed. This was a service available to all at no charge. As the pile of refuse on the stern was tipped into the sea at dusk each day, one can get an idea of the scale of the wastefulness.

As we sailed down the American coast the weather became warmer and there was much competition for a place on the decks both day and night. The sun deck, as one might have guessed, was reserved for the Officers and the inevitable ‘Officers Only’ notice was posted at the bottom of the companionway. Smoking was permitted during the day on deck but, because of very strict blackout rules, was not allowed at night. The blackout led to a few soldiers, who were sick of the crush on the lower decks, finding a place to sleep on the ‘Officers Only’ patch. Most of the Officers had enough sense to turn a blind eye to this breaking of the rule during the hours of darkness but one pompous ass couldn’t stand it being broken. He stormed onto the deck demanding all other ranks leave immediately and shone a torch about to identify them. When his torch was whipped out of his hand and thrown overboard with the threat that he would follow it should he be so foolish to repeat such a stupid act, he withdrew somewhat rapidly. We anchored off Trinidad for two days, but our hope of getting ashore turned out to be a false one. When we sailed on we were told that we were destined for India and I for one was looking forward to a lengthy stay in that country. The sea was becoming very interesting with many different fishes about us and the sight of the flying-fish skimming across the water was quite exciting. One morning we discovered a few on the lower deck and before throwing them back we were able to have a good look at them. Rarely did they fly so high above the water and we were told that only when being chased did they reach such heights.

Half way across the south Atlantic there was a change in the attitude of the U.S. crew who had been extremely easy-going about the ship’s drill, and their call to action stations was taken at walking pace. Suddenly they were moving everywhere at the double with a very serious approach to their work. We learned that the invincible U.S. Naval Base in the Pacific, ‘Pearl Harbour’, had been attacked by the Japanese and the Pacific Fleet almost annihilated. They were now in the war themselves and overnight their attention was focused on the sea looking for any sign of a submarine. This knowledge was also somewhat upsetting for us because up to then we were secure in the belief that no German submarine would attack an American ship. In the days that followed we examined every inch of that water but there were only two real alarms. Both turned out to be false, but they managed to churn one’s stomach up. The first one kept us standing for what seemed to be the whole of the afternoon waiting to jump into the lifeboats. On the second one, the U.S. crew test-fired the gun which had been installed on a construction, welded on to what I understood to be the poop deck. The result of the firing was a buckling of the construction and the dislodging of a bulkhead door. It was obviously felt prudent to avoid testing that gun again.

We arrived at Cape Town on the 9th December in glorious weather to be met by a crowd of South Africans anxious to show us the sights and give us a good time while we were there. Johnny Pike and I were collected by an evidently wealthy lady. We were invited into her car by a black chauffeur, who was given instructions periodically as to where we were to be taken to see some place of interest or view. Then back to her home for refreshments, and what a home! It was situated in a suburb overlooking the town, in a leafy street with a few similar sized homes. Beautifully furnished without a sign of dust anywhere and the timber well-polished; it seemed to fit her perfectly. To say that we were entertained effortlessly by her would be accurate. She rang a small hand-bell and instantly a young black maid came in, was given a few instructions and left. For the next few minutes we were quizzed about our home and backgrounds and our impressions of Cape Town. Then the little hand-bell was tinkled once again and back came the maid with a trolley loaded with cream cakes and such like. I felt that it was a show put on to let us know how marvellous life in South Africa could be. Instead it made us both feel uncomfortable and we were glad to get away at the first opportunity.

Strolling about Cape Town was very nice after so long aboard the ship, but everywhere we went, toilets, pubs, restaurants, even shops, displayed ‘Blankes Only’ signs. They made us feel ashamed to be white. We met up with a group of Argyle Highlanders and went into a pub for a drink. They had already had a few and when we became aware that we had entered a blacks only bar, they were disinclined to leave. The blacks in the bar must have guessed what would happen because they quickly left after we had gone in. The Argyles shouted out their orders but the barman, who was standing by the whites only bar, which was separated from the blacks by a wall which ended at the counter, behind which he served both sides. The waiter totally ignored them. When he was loudly abused he came along to say that he would not serve us from that side of the wall. That was where he made his mistake. One of the Argyles shot out his arm, grabbed him by the neck and shouted ‘You’ll serve us now or I’ll break your bloody neck’. Let go, he backed into the white bar and repeated that he would not serve us in that bar. After that all hell broke loose. Chairs were thrown about and smashed, broken bottles littered the place, and Johnny and I quickly pushed our way through the melee and left very smartly, just in time. As we ran away from the fracas a couple of police vans came tearing up the road to stop outside the pub. We didn’t wait to see what happened after that. We stayed in Cape Town for only four days, I enjoyed all four of them and I was sorry to leave, for it would have been nice to spend the rest of the war pretending to guard the Cape.

Once again aboard the S.S. America, we moved up the African coast, into the Indian Ocean and eventually into Bombay Harbour. This was a hive of activity with the U.S. ships being manoeuvred into the berths by tugs, supply transports loading and unloading and many launches moving across the harbour. After a while, our ship was secure at the dockside and we leaned on the handrail watching our supplies being unloaded. The Indian labourers below began begging for rupees and cigarettes and, when someone obliged by throwing a cigarette down onto the dock, a scrum of brown naked bodies was created as vicious as any seen on a rugby field. I am ashamed to say that I enjoyed very much the entertainment they afforded me for an hour or so, before we were allowed off the ship. With the callousness of youth, I refused to be affected by the stark picture of poverty that was displayed.

CHAPTER 3

Bombay was a fascinating place to visit. Three friends and I went sightseeing, ‘Ginger’ Eldridge and Johnny Pike I remember, the fourth member of the quartet I cannot recall. We watched spellbound the work being done on the erection of a bank in the city centre. The scaffolding was made of bamboo tied together with liana, and it waved, twisted and swayed its way across the bank’s façade without a perpendicular to be seen. The native labourers were passing stones, which looked similar to Portland Stone, from one to the next one up with a rhythmical movement as they chanted a rather mournful song. The whole of the scaffolding was moving with them and looked as though it might collapse at any moment.

We could have watched them for a long time had it not been for the attentions of the professional beggars. They were impossible to dislodge without the use of our canes on them. It was not a pleasant thing to do to anyone with disabilities and it made one feel sick to realise that the missing limbs, blindness and deformities had been, in some cases, deliberately created solely for the purpose of begging.

Having got away from the clutches of the beggars we hired a couple of rickshaws. Johnny and I succumbed to the entreaties of a thin brown skeleton of a man who looked too weak to lift the shafts, let alone pull two of us about the city. How wrong we were, he cheerfully trotted along, sometimes taking his hand off the shaft to point out some item of interest, and trying in Pidgin English to explain what it was all about. Unfortunately, he used too much Pidgin and too little English, but at least through his efforts we saw a lot more of Bombay than we could have done on foot. We paid him only a little more than he had asked, but he thanked us as if we had given him all the gold in Fort Knox.

Early the following morning we were marched off the ship and onto a train. There was no platform as there is in England, and we climbed up steps to get into the carriage. What seats there were had no upholstery whatever, they were just slats of wood which had been polished by countless backsides over the years. We were too many for the number of seats, so we took turns to sit on our kit-bags in the corridor.

After leaving Bombay the countryside seemed to be, generally, a sandy dried-up plain with an odd isolated shed to relieve the boredom. We stopped at only two stations, to pick up water I think, and at these there seemed to be only three or four buildings. One of the stops was in the early morning and I still have a picture in my mind of natives huddled under their rags by the side of the track, trying to keep warm and poking just a hand out of the rags to plead for just an Anna, and probably hoping for a Rupee. We weren’t very warm in the train, even with the heat turned on, so one can imagine how those poor wretches felt.

We steamed into Ahmednagar on New Year’s Eve and were quickly installed in Keren Lines. This was a very military camp with Indian servants doing most of the Officers’ dirty work. The huts were open all round, with screens, made with interwoven strips of palm leaves, which we could drop to keep out the wind or the sun. Our beds were similar to the usual camp bed, canvas stitched over a couple of poles.

The first night we just dropped our kit on the floor, pulled a blanket over us and went to sleep. The following morning one of our party woke up to a shock, only the metal parts of his equipment lay on the floor. Everything else had disappeared, eaten, we were told, by termites during the night. Afterwards we were careful to hang our gear well away from the floor.

The Cookhouse was sited just at the end of our hut and there was no mess-room available. Consequently, when the bugler sounded ‘Come to the cookhouse door,’ we picked up our mess tins and did just that. All straight forward you would think, but it had a snag. The snag was the presence of Kite Hawks, at least that was what they were called at first. The plan was that we pick up our food in our mess tins and take it back to the hut to eat it. Nothing wrong with that. The trouble came when having had our bacon and egg with probably fried bread tipped into our tins, we turned for home as it were. In a journey of only a few yards one could be totally deprived of one’s breakfast by a mass of diving and thieving birds. Those birds were called a variety of names, few of which were flattering.

Although there was a little training during the day, often we would have most of it free to walk out. A few took the opportunity to visit the native quarter where they bought souvenirs or spent some time hidden away with one of the purchasable ladies thereabouts. The latter spent the day chewing Betel Nut and spitting out the blood red spittle on the floor. Even had my need of their services been great, I feel that the sight of this habit alone would have put me off.

During the two weeks we stayed at this station the weather was clear, sunny, and incredibly hot. Our outfits were the usual tropical ones with pith helmets, and we found them comfortable. The main reason for them being pleasant to wear lay less with the clothes than with the weather itself. It was so dry that after a bout of square bashing we couldn’t show a drop of perspiration between us. It was this, as much as anything, that prompted Johnny and me to walk off one day to have a look at a burial tower we could just see in the distance. Despite the heat we managed to reach it without needing to empty all our water bottles down our throats.

It was made of a material, we thought, similar to concrete. Later we were told it was made of mud. A round construction of, at a guess, about 8 yards diameter, it had a flight of steps climbing round the outside to the roof, which was concave in shape. There appeared to be no one about so we climbed the steps to the top where we found a few white bones scattered about. There was a door at the base and a narrow gap nearby which served, we thought, as a window and means of ventilation. Peering through it we could see all sorts of statues and a variety of furniture piled in there.

Back at our hut we asked if anyone knew anything about it and one of the permanent Indian staff told us. Apparently the dead bodies were taken and put on the roof, where the vultures soon made a meal of them, leaving the bones which were then picked up by the keeper and burned. The keeper, he said, would have been inside the tower while we were there, but we saw nothing of him. The stuff inside the tower was left by the deceased, but we couldn’t make out why it was, or what happened to it. It all added to the interest of the walk and we thoroughly enjoyed being able to walk in that temperature without getting drenched in perspiration.

After a couple of weeks at Ahmednagar we found ourselves returning by the same transport by which we had arrived and re embarking on the S.S. America which had been berthed in Bombay all the time we had been away. I imagine that our trip away was just to get us out of the way while the ship was restocked, but we were back on board and sailing away again by the 17th February. This time we were told that we were going to strengthen the garrison at Singapore, the defences of which were said to be impregnable, but we might be subjected to attack from Japanese planes as we negotiated the Strait of Malacca. Fortunately, we were not attacked and we reached Singapore safely on the 29th January 1942. The activity on the docks was frenetic, absolute confusion, Civilians arriving in cars and leaving them where they stopped, R.A.F. personnel trying to keep in some sort of order, Police and Army yelling at each other contradicting orders, and the Malay Dockers having great difficulty in trying to clear space for the supplies being swung down from the ships’ cranes. It was a scene of almost complete chaos, through which we had to pass to climb on to our transport. As we moved down one gangway we were puzzled why R.A.F. personnel appeared to be embarking by another one, especially as we had been told that the Island was a little short of air cover. The civilians, consisting almost entirely of women and children, seemed desperate to get aboard, pushing and scrambling their way to the gangways like people demented.

Eventually we climbed on our lorries and were driven through the streets of Singapore and a warm steamy atmosphere that soaked us in perspiration, before we arrived at a tented site prepared for us in the Ketong area. We were only there for two days but that was enough to give us a little idea of the situation. Japanese bombers, 27 at a time, in three groups of 9, dropped their loads on the city twice each day without meeting any opposition from R.A.F. planes. Even the anti-aircraft fire seemed weak and uncoordinated.

Our next move was to a position behind the R.A.F. station at Seleter where we dug a few holes among the palms, and wondered what was in store for us. The platoon ran out of tea whilst we were here, and a Corporal Morris and I were sent into Singapore to buy some. We had a good look around, at what bit of the city we could, in the short time we had available, and ran into a spot of excitement we could have done without. The Japs came over and picked our bit of the city to blow up. After the first couple of thumps we dived into a big drainage ditch, and I put my hands over my ears as the bombs exploded around us. One was close enough to send a shower of dirt over us and it seemed to lift the ground under me. For a short time I could hardly hear anything and, it would not be an exaggeration to say that we bought the tea and scuttled back to Seleter before those planes got back to their base.

We were living under canvas by a native village created by the native followers of the R.A.F., and we were as curious about the natives as they were about us. Their washing and cooking methods seemed quaint at first, the bucket and ladle for washing and the small pottery charcoal burner for cooking, appeared so primitive. Although we moved on to the Aerodrome on the second day, we had sampled their cooking and it was a lot better than that of our own cooks.

It was never clear to me why we had been moved on to the Aerodrome, but I assumed that it was for the purpose of preventing the Japanese landing from the Malayan mainland. Had they done so, there was little we could have done to stop them. We had no armoured vehicles, only three Bren Guns and one anti-tank rifle. So we made the most of what we had got, which was a store of New Zealand tins of lambs tongues and a quantity of condensed milk, which we had found hidden behind a roll of fire hose in a cupboard at the end of one of the huts. Before all these delicacies could be finished off, we were on the move again. The Japanese had conquered the mainland and now had a substantial hold on the Island around the causeway.

We dug in by the Thompson and Braddell roads on the 11th February and we were soon coming under attack from the air and sniper fire. The Company was hidden in a wooded area, alongside what might have been an R.A.F. station. There were a number of huts built on the sides of the hills, and to give warning of any Japanese moving up under cover of these, my Section was sent to a forward position across the valley, where we found a slit trench that some other obliging souls had dug.

We were not very concerned because we were told the Suffolk Regiment were holding a line in front of us. So it came as a shock the following morning when machine guns each side of us began firing into the wood. We watched a Captain run out of the wood shouting ‘Stop we’re British,’ believing that the Suffolks were doing the firing, before he was killed. Cpl ‘Plummy’ Baker said ‘Stay where you are, I’m going after those buggers,’. I asked him to take grenades but he wanted his rifle and away he crawled, round the bushes, pushing it along in front of himself. Shortly afterwards we heard a short burst and guessed that he had been hit, and when we, rather stupidly, rushed to find him, he had pulled himself along towards us by lying on his back, pushing with one leg and pulling on the grass with his hands. He had been hit by three bullets in the groin and was in a lot of pain.

There must have been some confusion as to the whereabouts of the Japanese back at the Company lines because I watched, helplessly, a member of my platoon crawl around a small hillock, as if using it as cover, before he was killed by a bullet in his back.

Our position was not sustainable, but to get back to the Company we had a stretch of completely open ground to cover, in the middle of which was a ditch with three rolls of Dannert wire strung along it, and a similar amount strung along the front of the wood. There was nothing to do but make a dash for it, and pray. It would be a slow dash because we had ‘Plummy’ to carry, slung in a blanket. Off we took, and a Cpl. Morris and I threw ourselves on the wire and the others carried ‘Plummy’ over us, then we dashed and did the same thing to the wire in front of the wood. I still recall the feeling of having someone stand on my face and pressing one of the barbs into the back of my neck.

Not one of us was hit and much of the reason for this was the action of an Officer, who most of us had thought was a bit of a ‘twerp’. He was leaning against the trunk of a tree, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, taking pot-shots every time he thought the Jap gunners were raising their heads. I’m sure in my own mind that I owe my life to that man. We got Plummy on to a stretcher and I moistened his lips with water before the stretcher-bearers came and took him away. Later we heard that he had died.

Although we were hidden under woodland trees it was clear that the Japs knew where we were and had decided to leave us and move past us towards Singapore City. So A Company was pulled back to positions along Adam Rd. When moving back we were attacked by the Jap planes with anti-personnel fire bombs. These threw up a sticky black substance which ignited and was very difficult to extinguish. I collected a splash of the stuff but luckily I was passing an area of loose sand at the time and, by diving into the sand, was able to get rid of it.

My Section was placed, to the right of Battalion Headquarters, under a hut built on the side of a hill. Inside the hut, which we believed had been an R.A.F. Officers’ Club, we found a bar with some unopened bottles of wine, spirits and liqueurs. It seemed foolish to leave them there, but if we had been seen with them, there might have been trouble, so we filled our water bottles with them. Once again we set to and dug a slit trench, not an easy task with the hut floor only about 4 feet from the ground on the one side and a few inches on the other. Higher up the hill a substantial fire bay had been built in front of the Platoon H.Q. trench, and a few yards higher than that there was another smaller trench. We were flanked by D Company on the left and B and C Companies on our right.

Although we were aware of Jap activity in front of us, we saw nothing and we were only occasionally subjected to sniper fire. That night we weren’t allowed to sleep, the Japs started yelling and throwing Jumping Jacks and fire crackers at us in the hope that we would fire at them and give away our positions. We didn’t because I think we were too scared. Over the hill to our right the sky was lit with the fires and there was the sound of a very fierce battle taking place. The machine guns only stopped for a second or so for reloading and the rifle fire sounded like a scream in between grenade explosions. I was glad I was not there and very apprehensive about the battle moving in my direction.

Towards dawn the sounds died away and a little later we heard that the Japs had thrown hundreds of men in a frontal attack on B Company, only to lose most of them when D Company saturated the front with fire from the right. We guessed it was our turn next, so when, in the middle of the morning, the mortars started landing about us, we were as taut as violin strings. Our meals had to come from Battalion H.Q. and a courageous Scot wriggled his way across the valley pulling a couple of hay boxes filled with hot food along with him. He was exhausted by the time he got to us and passed the boxes over to ‘Snowy’ Baines, our Quartermaster Sergeant, at the Company H.Q. It took courage to do that through a mortar attack, and when an Officer from the small trench nearer the top of the hill shouted ‘Sergeant Baines, will you send my food up please’ he was met by the response of ‘If you want your bloody food you come and get it’. This was an Officer who whilst in England had stalked about with a couple of revolvers poking from his highly polished Sam Brown harness bragging about what he would do to the enemy when he got into action. He couldn’t have been very hungry because he stayed in his trench and went without food.

The Japs could not make a frontal attack on our position without sustaining very heavy casualties so they kept switching their attention to positions they thought were lightly manned ones along our front. Very rarely did we get a glimpse of them, but smoke from the trees, followed by a shell exploding among our lines, told us where they were.

During the afternoon the activity heated up in more ways than one. The Japs set fire to the grass in front of us and the wind was towards us, then an incendiary hit the hut above us setting it on fire. We stuck in our slit trench for as long as we could but it was obvious to me that we had very little time left to get out. There was a passageway cut out of the hillside alongside the length of the hut and it seemed to be the best way to go. We could have got out more easily on the other side but that was too open to view with no cover. Army strategy decreed that we should leave in twos and threes, never together. I decided otherwise, believing that any Jap gunner was unlikely to have lined up on the passageway where there had been no activity all day.

I gave the order and helped to bundle my section out of the trench only to watch with horror the bank being cut away just behind them as they ran along. When I went myself I didn’t look to see if the bank was having the same attention, but instead I dived down at the end of the path into a safer place, only to find myself smeared with the blood and brains of some poor chap who lay nearby, having been caught by a mortar. By wriggling along like a snake I reached a deep malarial drain where I felt a little less vulnerable.

A soldier lying back against the slope of the drain side asked me if I had any water he could have and, without thinking, I offered him my water bottle which, incidentally, had had the sun on it for a long time. He tipped it up and gasped for air ‘Christ! what the bloody hell is that?’ he asked, still holding on to the bottle. He was not of my Company and I wondered what he was doing in the drain. He told me that he had lost the use of his legs suddenly when crossing the drain on his way back with his unit. There appeared to be no visible injury on him and I didn’t move him to search for any, because I was still too scared to take my eyes away from the Jap front, and I thought it better that he was a case for the medical boys.

There were five or six others who were wounded and, I think there were a couple of dead, in addition to my Section who were spread along the drain but I was not in the right state of mind, at the time, to count them. The bullets were swishing over our heads and we pressed ourselves flat on the sides of the drain. Soaking with sweat and frightened, I was wondering how I was going to get out of the situation when I became aware that the firing seemed, suddenly, to be reduced. When it had almost ceased I looked around and was surprised to see a few men walking about at Battalion H.Q.. Then came an order to stay where we were and, shortly after that, we learned that all the Allied forces had capitulated.

During the period we waited, wondering what was about to happen to us, because the Japanese had not before taken prisoners, Pte Stallibras, who never stopped talking, was shot through the neck, and the Jap who had shot him rushed over and bandaged him up. It seemed that he had been late in getting the cease fire order and tried to make things right. ‘Well! that should stop the sod yapping’, someone said, but the wound was not that serious, and the yapping continued unabated.

Having no stretcher, on which to carry the soldier with no use in his legs, we ripped off a door from the nearest hut and put the poor chap on that. Not perfect and difficult to carry but it was better than nothing. In the late afternoon we were surrounded by a number of scruffy looking individuals who were festooned with grenades and machine gun ammunition belts, and who didn’t try to hide their contempt for us. We were shepherded down the bank and across to Battalion H.Q. where we deposited the temporary stretcher and its patient before being corralled in a tennis court which was surrounded by a high wire fence.

Our captors then mounted a machine gun at each corner of the tennis court outside the wire. I’m sure that there wasn’t a single soldier who didn’t think ‘Ah well, this is it’, but as the time passed by, without the Japs making any move, the tension lifted. The oppressive noise had stopped except for a very occasional explosion, the daylight had gone and only three oil pressure lamps were providing enough light for the Japs to keep an eye on us.

I sat with my back against the wire smoking a cigarette. I very clearly remember the trees above flickering with the fire-flies, the glowing cigarettes, the murmur of conversation and, the incredible feeling of peace that came over me. After the noise and tension of the days earlier, I was, at last, able to relax and I fell asleep.

The following morning a few of us were picked out by the Jap guards and pushed and prodded to some buckets which we had to pick up. Then we were taken a little way down the slope to a trickle of water which seemed to come from a spring much higher up the hill and made to fill the buckets with it. This was to be drinking water for the 509 prisoners in the tennis court, who were without any, having been divested of their equipment, including their water bottles, before entering the wire cage. I was very pleased to be able to do this, but I felt a little squeamish, when I noticed a corpse lying in the water a little further up the hill. One of our party pointed this out to a Jap and was hit across the face for his trouble. It was a forerunner of things to come.

The Officers were taken away from us and taken into the nearby house which, judging from the activity going on there, was being used as a local headquarters by the Japs.

When they came back we were arranged in our units, as far as that was possible, and counted. Then we were informed that we should be marching under control of the Officers, probably without any Japanese accompanying us, first thing in the morning. Our destination was to be Roberts Hospital at Changi. There was no food for us when we woke up, but we did get a drink of water before setting off, on what turned out to be a very interesting excursion.

We set off smartly enough but the lack of food and water soon began to wear us down, and the column of prisoners began to be stretched out a very long way. I suppose that I was about half way down the column when I came abreast a factory where a prisoner was handing some boxes through a window. They were full of biscuits and we were able to satisfy our hunger. Then about a mile further on there was a pile of pineapples stacked at the side of the road in the style of a potato clamp. These also were raided and we walked on with pineapple juice dripping from our chins, unaware of what that juice could do to one’s mouth. But not for long, our lips and tongues began cracking and stinging, leaving our mouths very sore indeed. The experience has put me off raw pineapple ever since, tinned I like, but the thought of the raw fruit reminds me, too clearly, of that occasion and I leave it alone.

I believe we had to cover about twelve miles before arriving in the Roberts Hospital compound, totally exhausted and anxious to find a place where we could lie down and rest. Whilst on the march, One of our group had kicked a wallet lying in the road, which he found on examination, to be full of very good jewellery. It had, very probably, been dropped by one of the many fleeing civilians, on their way to the docks. He was urged to sell a piece and buy some food for himself, but he intended to keep it until he got home, when he thought he would be rich, and so he refused.

We were shown where to put our belongings before being called to the food queue. The meal consisted of a cupful of rice with a meat stew poured over it. The stew looked watery but it tasted very nice, and before I had eaten mine, the queue had formed again for any second helpings that might be available. Thereafter, I adopted the system of collecting my meal and returning to the tail of the queue to eat it.

Once again we were living in a tent, but the weather was marvellous and we had no work to do. Much of our time was spent playing chess or cards or just strolling about the area. In many ways it was a perfect way to live and it was spoilt only by the thought that we were prisoners. Rarely did we see a Jap soldier but there were some very disturbing rumours circulating in the camp about their actions elsewhere on the island. Those that we did see were usually by the gate spanning the main road to the Hospital buildings, bartering for wrist watches or some other item they were short of.

I had two very pleasant surprises at this place. First I had a visit from someone who had been a friend of mine at Stourbridge, and with whom I had spent hours playing table tennis. He always beat me, but as he seemed to beat everyone else I was not particularly mortified. He was Geoff Adams whose father was a well-known butcher. He was an Officer, in the Engineers I think, and he invited me to his tent for a drink and a meal. What the drink was, or what the meal consisted of I cannot recall, but we had a very agreeable time recounting our adventures since leaving England.

The second surprise was being addressed by a soldier, whom I didn’t recognise, by, ‘Hallo Corporal, how you doing?’ It was a moment or two before I realised who he was, but when he added ‘Have you got any more of that poison?, I knew. He was the man who had lost the use of his legs and had been in the malarial drain. It seems that a bullet had nicked his spine and fractured a bone causing his paralysis. The doctors at the Hospital, he said, had given him some form of harness which was holding his bone properly while it healed.

We guessed our holiday camp was too good to last and after a few weeks we were again on the march, this time with Japanese guards shouting at us almost every yard of the way. ‘Curra Bugero’ was the commonest vociferation, often accompanied by a vicious dig with a rifle. Luckily for us they had no bayonets fixed, because I am sure they would not have hesitated to use them. After a longer march than the previous one, we arrived at River Valley camp in Singapore City. We had been fed, and given plenty of water to drink on this march, so although we were tired, we were not exhausted as we had been before.

River Valley camp consisted of about ten long huts built on a patch of soil bounded on one side by a tidal river and a wire fence round the others. There was a bridge crossing the river and another camp, the Havelock Road Camp, lay on the other side. The huts had open sides and looked very much like the long market stalls one sees in some English towns. We slept on the counters. I heard that a boy with whom I had associated back at home was in the Havelock Road camp. His name was ‘Billy’ Foley. We were not able to move freely from one side of the river to the other, but there were working parties whose duties took them into the other camp. Through these we had a modicum of communication and this resulted in Billy and me talking to each other across the river.

He told me how, when he was sheltering behind a wall, a piece of shrapnel had cut across his shoulder. He was still bandaged up but it didn’t appear to restrict his movements. In fact the bandage came off a few days later and his shoulder, apart from a red angry looking weal, looked as good as new. However a few months later I learned that he had died of Beri-beri, a vitamin B deficiency complaint which could have been cured in a couple of days by a few spoonsful of rice polishings. The Japanese had huge quantities of the stuff which they refused to give to the prisoners despite having no use for it themselves.

The first time I went out on a working party was not a pleasant experience. We saw sights that gave us a clue as to the sadistic nature of the Japanese army. The Chinese had been collected by the Japs and subjected to revolting brutality. There were dead Chinese still lying about, and hanging from trees and shop signs, with unmistakable signs of being savagely beaten and bayoneted. We saw some tied against tree trunks, still alive, but covered with knife or bayonet wounds, being laughed at and tormented by exultant Jap soldiers. There was nothing we could do to stop them, but if our thoughts could have killed, those soldiers would surely have dropped dead.

Our job on this working party was to carry bags of rice from a warehouse, known as a Godown, and put them on a lorry which was to take them to our cookhouse. The rice we had been eating was of a poor small size grain but reasonably palatable, so we were surprised to find that this new rice was the best long grain Javanese rice, and we could not understand this change of heart by the Japs. It was not easy work and, having sweated out the drink we had had in camp, we were glad to get back to replenish ourselves. Liquid was something we could hardly get enough of, despite the fact we were working in a very wet atmosphere.

The day afterwards the cooks dished up the new rice and we understood the change of heart. It had been limed to keep it in good condition but, unfortunately, the liming had been somewhat overdone, with the result that, when cooked, it smelt revolting. The Japs wouldn’t have eaten it so they gave it to us. I discovered that it was palatable if I held my nose while I was eating it.

Whilst I was at River Valley I was called upon to help in treating a large number of soldiers who had contracted a complaint known as Tinea. It was a painful disease which resulted in the groin and scrotum becoming raw and sticky and a swelling of the testicles to an incredible size. It created much amusement, for those who were free of it, because the only treatment we had available was to paint the affected area with formaldehyde. The cool liquid at first was soothing, but a short time after being applied this stung very much, and a common sight was to see the patients, who normally walked with their legs apart as far as they could, relaxing and sighing with relief as the liquid was put on. Then ‘oohing’, swearing and vigorously fanning their groin with a hat or anything else which happened to be available as it began to sting. It was an entertainment in itself, for the unaffected, to listen to the colourful comments and expressive language used by the patients on these occasions.

The camp, after rain, became a skating rink of mud and although it dried out quickly in the sun it remained wet and slippery inside the huts. We were always dirty with flaking mud from the feet to the knee and with only a standpipe to serve all the camp there was little we could do to get clean. The river, being tidal, was bordered by banks of slimy mud and only when the tide was in was it possible to reach without getting an extra layer of mud. Far too often we were out at work when the tide was in, and so we were not able to use the river to wash ourselves.

I hadn’t realised, until we had been at this camp a few days, how absorbing a game of five stones or pontoon could be. Groups of prisoners could be seen, on the occasions when we were not called out to work, playing one or other of these games completely oblivious of any patrolling guard, and often getting a beating for not standing and bowing to the Oriental gentleman. These guards took a delight in any excuse to beat a prisoner and I was fortunate, whilst in that camp, to avoid being beaten by one of them. It was, and still is, a source of wonder to me that the guards tolerated the singing that emanated from the huts once the light had gone. Perhaps it was the harmony the groups of singers achieved, for some of them were very good, or perhaps it was the degree of relief it gave to their own boredom.

Rumours began to circulate that we were going to be shipped to Japan to work in the mines and factories, and few of us were looking forward to such a move. Luckily that was not to be, we were to remain this side of the water.

CHAPTER 4

In December I was again in the vanguard. We were to go up through Malaya to prepare a camp for the rest of the River Valley inmates who would be following us. Where exactly, we were left to guess. It was my first experience of travel seen from the comfort of a steel railway wagon. I suppose there must have been about twenty of us to each truck because I remember having enough room to stretch out my legs when I went to sleep. At first the Jap guards insisted that we kept the doors closed until the train stopped, but we had hardly crossed the Causeway before this rule was relaxed. It was just as well it was, because the heat build-up in the wagon was terrible and one or two prisoners, in other wagons, had passed out because of it. Afterwards it was quite pleasant to sit in the open doorway and see the country pass by.

Our guards also seemed to relax and became almost human. For instance, they didn’t object when we asked if we could get boiling water from the engine, and on one or two occasions they actually helped in the exercise. It was rather fun to make tea, by holding a tin with the leaves in under a pipe, which couldn’t make up its mind whether to supply water or steam.

The countryside up through Malaya was beautiful and at times simply breathtakingly so. The railway track clung to the side of mountains, and we had the pleasure of looking out over the top of the deep green jungle, with an occasional sparkling waterfall penetrating the leafy blanket, or out to the shimmering sea and golden coastline.

One snag was the irregularity of our food. We had to wait for the train to stop for an hour or so before the guards would allow the cooks to build a fire, to cook the stew and rice. However, most of us had a little money, and along the track there were a few enterprising natives, who tempted us with all manner of fruit and delicious little cakes. They miraculously materialised whenever the train came to a halt. Until then I had believed that all bananas were much the same, but they came with little ones, big ones, yellow ones, pink ones, thin ones and fat ones. We could buy a huge bunch for a single rupee, about 6p in modern money.

When we were on the move the problem of relieving ourselves could be, and often was, embarrassing. Urinating, one might think, would not have been difficult, whereas the difficulty in balancing on the edge of a door opening, which is rocking from side to side, to empty ones bowel might, more easily, be appreciated. But even here one never knew when we were about to pass a native village. When this occurred, the sight of a pale backside passing by brought screams from the native girls. We never knew if they were screams of fright, delight, amusement, or amazement. However, to urinate we stood at side of the door opening, often for very long periods. For some reason, although one might be desperate to empty ones bladder, nothing came for ages. I have often wondered why that was so, but I know that at the time it was quite distressing.

No one seemed to be aware of crossing any national border but we, eventually, arrived at a large rail marshalling yard in Thailand called Nong Pladuk. Here we climbed out of the wagons and were marched to the nearby camp in which there were a few skinny looking Aussies. They had prepared a meal for us and the sight of it gave us the reason for their skinniness. The amount of rice was very small, and the stew looked like water with a little marrow, or simailar vegetable, floating in it. It was that or nothing, so we ate it, but its taste matched its appearance.

As soon as we had eaten we were once more on the march. The guards were new ones and they were determined to see that no one lagged behind. We were in paddy field country which stretched out on each side of the dry dusty road. It was flat, shining and uninteresting, with very few trees to relieve the scene. We passed through the village of Bampong, where, it seemed, a Company of Jap soldiers were billeted. As we moved through the main street we were being spat at by hideous looking Oriental prostitutes who had, we learned later, been imported solely for the pleasure of the Jap soldiers. I think they took out their spleen on us because they wouldn’t dare to do so with their Jap bosses.

Later the terrain began to change into a more wooded rolling one and having passed by another P.O.W. Camp we came upon a river. Across the river lay Chunki, another P.O.W. camp, which served as a hospital camp for P.O.W.s. It looked quite pleasant, but we hadn’t the opportunity of examining the conditions, because having crossed the river we had to push on past Chunki and into the jungle. It was not the type of jungle portrayed in most films but was like a dense English wood with much taller trees, a floor deep with mosses, and a sort of creeper growing through the foliage above. How far we walked I don’t know, but I do know that I felt out on my feet, and was getting to the stage of not caring what happened to me. There were many behind me who had already reached that stage and were being viciously beaten by the guards for not keeping up.

Then, suddenly, we broke out of the gloom of the jungle to be confronted by one of the most exquisite views imaginable. Stretching out before us was an Anglo American tobacco plantation, with its pale green and beige four feet tall tobacco crop, stretching across the valley. A wide river to our left, and a golden beach within a curve of the river which, itself, seemed to be outdoing the bright blue of the sky, and on the opposite bank a couple of elephants with a troop of monkeys enjoying the water, their trumpeting and chattering floating across this gentle valley to us. Behind it all was a dark rich green blanket of jungle.

The track we were now on was sandy and dry. A hut we passed was full of bunches of golden tobacco leaves drying and on trestles outside in the sun, many leaves, looking black and shiny, were being sprinkled with a dark liquid from a watering can.

Having staggered past the plantation it was not long before we came upon a couple of huts, each roughly thirty yards long, and were told that this is where we were to stay. It was in a small clearing, capable of holding about eight more huts, and building them was to be our job. The cooks rustled up some rice and stew which we ate in the dark, because of the difficulties they had in building their field kitchen. Then to sleep. At least that was the intention, but a lizard, which we were later told was noted for stealing eggs, insisted in yelling at us his cry ‘Tucooh’, until, as if on a given signal, about a dozen blokes sat up and shouted back ‘And fuck you too’. The Japs must have wondered why most of us were suddenly laughing ourselves sick, but they didn’t come to investigate.

The following day we were taught the ways to build an attap and bamboo dwelling. The bamboo, attap and thonging, was brought into the clearing by Thai natives, I think from the river. The position of the uprights was determined by the Japanese engineers and we dug them in. Then we fastened to those on the outside, at the top, about eight feet from the ground, longer lengths of bamboo, horizontally, to form the roof supports. This we repeated on the uprights along the inside of the emerging hut, but this time, at about nine feet six inches from the ground. Bamboo about seventeen feet long was strapped across the structure to the uprights, and after the addition of a few diagonal struts we had a rigid basic support, on which to put the pitched roof. The bamboo rafters were set at about two feet apart, and to these we tied the attap, which is made out of palm leaves slit down the woody centre stem. Starting at the eaves each half leaf was tied by the stem across the rafters in a similar manner to tiles on a European dwelling. Then to complete the job we erected platforms of split bamboo on each side of a central gangway running the length of the hut.

The Japanese Engineers seemed to use the word ‘Speedo’ throughout the day, and the huts were completed after two or three weeks. It was a job I had enjoyed doing. Although it meant working in the sun all day, it was not very physical and I got some pleasure in seeing the finished article. The new camp was called Wun Lung, the name of the small native village on the bank of the river, no more than five hundred yards from us.

The village had a roofed area about 30 feet square which the women used to cook beneath. Small pot-bellied pigs, and brightly coloured bantam like chickens wandered about the earthenware charcoal burners, and in and out of the small family dwellings dotted around. The whole scene appeared primitive, but those women produced some delicious little cakes and savouries which they sold to those of us who could find the money.

The covered area was also used by the men of the village for games and sporting activities. Thai boxing was one of the popular sports. It is quite legal to use both hands and feet in this sport, and the youth of the village were incredibly agile in the use of their feet. A few of the prisoners sparred with the Thais, with the honours going to the Thais on most occasions. Unfortunately, a sparring ended in tragedy and brought much of the fraternisation to an end. An Argyle had been boxing for short time when he landed a heavy punch to the Thai’s solar plexus and the Thai youth collapsed and died shortly after. It may be that the punch was not the reason for his death, but it caused a lot of fuss and ill feeling. We were never so welcome in the village thereafter.

The Japanese guards had a novel way of catching fish from the river. By enlisting our help they could land a huge haul without using specialist equipment, or expending any of their energy. Their method was to throw into the river, well upstream, a hand grenade. We would them space ourselves out across the river, wait for the bloated fish to float down to us, and sling them on to the bank. They were all sizes, some were very big and these were the ones the guards coveted most. A few of the smaller ones were often left and these we carted back to our cooks. We took the view that, when it came to food, every little counted.

The activity in the river was useful in another way. We found that the river was full of small fishes not unlike our native sticklebacks. Those of us who were suffering with small tropical sores were soon made aware of their presence. They seemed to home in on any dead or decaying flesh, and one would feel a stinging sensation around the sores within a few seconds of getting in the water. It could be quite painful as these fishes fought and jockeyed to get a bit of the action. It was a treatment that cleaned out the holes in the flesh more efficiently than any other we had available, and I have no doubt that they were responsible for preventing many of the sores turning into hateful tropical ulcers.

In our circumstances, time had little meaning, so it came as quite a surprise to be told that the following day was Christmas Day. The Japanese were allowing us the day off, and they would be giving us chickens for Xmas dinner. We were very excited. Xmas morning dawned and the cooks had devised a sauce of Chilli and tomato puree to put on our usual tasteless breakfast boiled rice. Where they found the puree was a mystery, but it helped the rice down, even if it did burn the inside of our mouths. They excelled themselves, for we had a choice of drink, the usual weak tea or, for a change, equally weak ersatz coffee. By toasting cooked rice slowly until it was almost black, and then grinding it down, they had made the coffee from the grounds. Had there been milk or sugar, or both, to put in the drinks, we might well have felt it was Xmas. Still it was nice to relax and lie about, waiting for Xmas dinner. When the time came there was one chicken between four men, but the chickens were not the usual ones to which we were accustomed. Some might have been as big as a pigeon but most were even smaller. It was such a ludicrous situation that, instead of creating anger, it became the source of great amusement. In fact it was so funny that, in some way, it very greatly helped to make it a memorable Xmas.

The tobacco plantation came in very useful when we devised a means of producing a respectable cigarette tobacco. The leaves when dry were too brittle to roll into a cigarette and wetting them turned them overnight into a tube of mould. The workers on the plantation were seen to put out the leaves in the sun and water them three or four times a day. We copied them but our leaves still turned mouldy. Then, someone, more observant than the rest of us, noticed that the workers drew their liquid from a tank that was used to boil the water with a few tobacco leaves. We tried using the same technique. The resultant liquid was brown and it had a slightly sticky quality. By using this it turned the leaves dark brown, they didn’t go mouldy and they became much less brittle. Even so they were not easy to cut into thin strips suitable to make smoke-able tobacco, and we were running out of suggestions to achieve a decent smoke. Rolling them into cigars was a skill no one really achieved, and the attempts only succeeded in filling one’s mouth with bits or strips of the leaf. The solution to our problem came through a length of rope. It was found that by rolling the leaves up into a log of tobacco and tying the log together with the rope by winding it round and round until all the tobacco was hidden within the coil, it was possible to compress it by wetting and drying the rope. The end result was a hard twist like lump which could be sliced fairly easily and, by rubbing in one’s hand, turned into a respectable cigarette tobacco. The trouble was that, shortly after our discovery, we were moved up the line, away from the plantation, and only on rare occasions were we able to come by any more leaves.

When we were joined by the main body of P.O.W.s, from the River Valley camp, we began the work for which we had been brought to Thailand. This was to build a railway, intended to carry supplies, for the Japanese Army, through the mountains and jungle of Thailand, to Moulmein in Burma. The Japanese Engineers intended that this should be achieved in record time and, as we were the instruments to be used, they made sure that we were not idle. They pushed and bullied us from the time we left the camp until we returned later in the day. The only words they seemed to use were ‘Currah, Bugerro and Speedo’, words that expressed their meaning fairly clearly.

Each morning, after breakfast, we paraded for roll call. Invariably this turned into a pushing and screaming session by the Japanese, who were convinced that we were trying to hide the fact that someone had escaped during the night. When they were satisfied, we were marched off to collect our tools for the day, spades, picks, shovels and coolie type carrying baskets. Then to the rail track where the Japanese would have marked the cubic volume measurement of embankment we had to fill before being allowed ‘home’. In the early stages of this work we were finding it possible to get back by around about 5 pm, but very stealthily the Japs increased the volume we had to fill, until we weren’t able to get back before dark.

The unhappy choice of working tool often resulted in a very hard day’s work and sometimes a painful beating. Consequently, we tried to assess the condition of the terrain, and scramble for the tool we hoped to be using during the day. If the soil being removed to the embankment was soft and moist we struggled for a spade, because it would be easy to fill the carrying baskets. If the ground was hard and stony we jockeyed to get the baskets because, it would take a long time to fill them and the carrier had a rest. It took a couple of months for the Japs to realise that some of us were getting a little rest during the working day. Then if the soil was soft, they increased the number of basket carriers to each spade, if hard, the picks and spades were increased. Then, if anyone was seen to be resting they were punched, kicked, or thoroughly beaten up, depending upon which guard was dishing out the punishment.

The Japanese often sent small parties of prisoners into the jungle to collect dead dried branches of wood to use on their cookhouse fires. Sometimes they would be with a guard and sometimes they would be on their own. Why they bothered to send a guard at all I never could understand, there was no way we could escape. We could never have maintained ourselves.

The common belief that the jungle is full of edible fruits and vegetables may be true, but we rarely came across any that didn’t owe their existence to the care of a village native. That is why, when in charge of a wood gathering squad, I was surprised to come across a tree, similar in shape to a sycamore, bearing what looked like our English Victoria plums. They were beautiful to look at. The floor was covered by them and our first impulse was to collect some for eating, but I noticed that none appeared to have been pecked by the birds. Some had started to rot but there was no sign of any being touched by animals. I shouted a warning not to eat any until we had checked with the village natives, because I suspected that they might be poisonous. Others had come to that conclusion also and, although they filled containers they carried with them in order to take them back to camp, no-one even bit into a fruit. It was just as well because we were shown the effect of eating one by a display given by a native who rolled on the floor grimacing and holding his stomach as if in intense agony. One of our doctors suggested that it would be a nice expression of our admiration of the Japanese altruistic nature if we presented the fruit to them.

As the embankment progressed we had further to walk each day until, eventually, we met up with a working party which had started a lot further up the jungle. They had been clearing the way through the jungle and still had some huge trees to remove. A day or two later we moved to a camp near the town Kanchanburi, pronounced Kanburi, and began the same work all over again.

Our treatment by the guards at the previous camp had deteriorated, and one was lucky to get through a single day without being thumped with a rifle butt, or really beaten up. At the new camp the Japs were much less ill tempered, and allowed anyone feeling ill to rest. We had a lot of sick, and some of these were allowed to remain in camp at the, so called, ‘hospital’. This was a completely empty hut built a little way away from the others. Ninety percent of the sickness was the result of poor nutrition. Our food rarely changed from about a cupful of rice with a similar quantity of, what our cooks euphemistically called, stew. This was made of very few vegetables such as marrow, sweet potato and spinach, plus the water in which they were cooked. Breakfast, lunch, and evening meal were all the same, and the shortage of vitamin B began to reveal itself by the number of P.O.W.s falling sick.

Naturally skinny fellows began to put on weight, complain of breathlessness and lack of energy. That was our introduction to Beri-beri, a complaint which caused the body to fill with water, and literally drown, unless the vitamin B deficiency was corrected. Too often it was not, yet just a little Marmite, or a spoonful of rice polishings with each meal would cure a patient within a few days. The Japanese had large quantities of rice polishings for which they had no regard or actual use, but they refused to issue any to us, with the result that many a poor luckless character ended up being buried under the embankment.

Then the white-head pimples many P.O.W.s, had on their legs turned into small sores which refused to heal. Instead, most of them persisted in weeping and slowly increasing in size to become embryo tropical ulcers. The diet of rice, rice, and more rice, with very little else, was multiplying the cases of Beri-beri at an alarming rate ,and the number of deaths were both depressing and frightening Then a small group of Australians caught a monkey, and before one could say ‘Jack Robinson’ it was in the cooking pot and being eaten.

A large troop of monkeys had been leaping about above us for a long time but they were not easily caught. That was until a rubber planter told us how the Malay animal traders sometimes caught them. A coconut was obtained and a hole cut in it. Cutting through the hard shell without tools, other than an army dinner knife, was a triumph of perseverance, but a hole, probably a little bigger than an inch in diameter, was achieved. Then a pebble was put inside it and left on the ground beneath the troop. Monkeys, very much like people, are extremely inquisitive and couldn’t rest without examining this object. They would pick it up and shake it, and after a little time, one of them, more adventurous than the others, would put his hand inside. After waiting long enough for him to find and grab the pebble we would run to him. Reluctant to let go of the pebble, he was unable to pull his hand out to escape and the weight of the coconut anchored him to the spot. By this method we caught many of these animals, which probably reduced the death rate of the prisoners in our camp.

However, all was not plain sailing and we came unstuck in a very unexpected manner. We had caught three or four monkeys and were carrying them back to camp, as we had done before, but instead of the Thais smiling at us as they had before, they now seemed very angry. We hadn’t been back in camp for long when the Japanese guard sent for the senior British Officer. It seemed that in our ignorance we had killed a monkey which the priests held in high regard. It was a light grey colour compared with the usual dusty brown colour and, they were not at all pleased about it being killed. The upshot of it all was that we had to appease them in the time honoured way of helping to fill the temple coffers. I cannot remember the sum involved but I know that we were very careful afterwards to look out for any other odd coloured monkey.

For a while we worked on a cutting, through rock. The vegetation around was rather nice, being thinner and lighter than we had experienced before, probably because of the shallow subsoil. Our job was to cut holes in the rock to take the explosives, and after the blasting to clear away the debris. The Jap engineers put in the dynamite, and did the tamping down before detonating it. They must have enjoyed this job because they became almost human and relaxed during this period. We were very near to the small town and the natives, who often showed up with baskets of fruit and small cakes, seemed to be on very good terms with the guards. They in turn would, occasionally, go into the town, and leave us alone, sometimes for as much as an hour. On such occasions there seemed no end to the rude and ribald comments made on their purpose for leaving us to look after ourselves.

It was at this cutting that we saw, one afternoon, a Thai shouting and running, from the brushwood further along the track. He was waving a machete in his hand, and appeared to do a dance by the side of the track, swinging the machete about. Later, on our way back we passed this spot and found a huge snake, minus its head lying there. A Jap interpreter in the camp was said to have told a group of P.O.W.s, that the snake, which was extremely venomous, had chased the Thai and he had cut off its head, which because of the danger from its venom, he had taken away to bury.

Lt Tenai, a Japanese interpreter, who claimed he had studied at Cambridge, spent much of his time chatting to prisoners, and he asked me what I did before the war. I told him, but when I asked him what he had studied at Cambridge he seemed not to hear. He was very interested in flower arrangement and he had a beautifully illustrated book on the subject. Perhaps it was because of my art training, but he seemed to spend a lot of time explaining the arrangements to me, and discussing their merits and their faults. His English was flawless, and he struck me as a gentle sympathetic character. I enjoyed the breaks from work his chats enabled me to take. Then one day, in the middle of an aesthetic interpretation of one of the illustrations, a big bull frog in a muddy puddle caught his attention. Bending, he picked it up, and with a penknife he cut along its limbs and stomach and peeled away its skin whilst it was still alive. He obviously enjoyed doing this and it highlighted the enigmatic character of the Japanese. Normally had I seen anyone killing a frog I would have taken little notice, because some were big enough to cook, and the meat was very edible. But the contrast between his love of beauty and his cruelty was quite impossible to understand.

One day, while still in this area, I was pushing through some shrubs following our Quarter Master Sergeant, ‘Snowy’ Baines, when he stopped and pointing to a leaf asked ‘Ever seen one of those before?’. I began to think the sun had got to him, there appeared to be nothing else but leaves to see. But then, when he touched a leaf it walked into a matchbox he held in front of it. I had never seen a leaf insect before and, had I not seen it myself, I would not have believed it. It was a perfectly fashioned leaf which walked on two slightly torn segments by the stem. There were plenty of stick insects about, if one looked hard enough to find them, but this leaf could easily be missed even if one looked hard at it.

Hundreds of Tamils were being driven, just like cattle, past us through the clearings, and along the track which was taking shape very quickly. They were getting worse treatment from their guards than we had ever had. It was clear that many of these Indians were suffering from the advanced stages of dysentery and could hardly move along. Some didn’t, and when they fell, it was more than likely that, instead of being left to die, they would be bayoneted to death. There was nothing we could do to stop it, because any protest to their guards could have made things even worse. I, for one, was not anxious to find out what the Jap reaction would have been to such a protest. In the past such a protest usually ended up with the protester getting the same treatment.

P.O.W.s from camps further up the line were sometimes sent down with messages, or orders, to our Officers, and we got what news we could about friends, from whom we had been separated. I learned that Johnny Pike was in the first camp past ours and was sick with dysentery, but I was not very concerned because he was a well built and physically fit character.

The guards began to be changed about every couple of weeks and their attitude towards us seemed to change each time. Unfortunately, it rarely changed for the better and we were in dread of the weeks the Korean guards took over. The Japanese could be nasty, but the Koreans were particularly vicious and sadistic. They only seemed happy when inflicting pain. On one occasion, for some misdemeanour, of which I was completely unaware, I was made to squat down with a spade handle behind my knees, and hold a heavy rock in my arms. Any attempt to put it down would have brought a beating likely to put me in hospital for a time. It seemed like hours, that I stuck the pain, before the guard was changed and the new one let me free. I was given a bit of rest, but I walked with my knees bent for the rest of the day.

We gave nicknames to some of the guards, usually those who stood out as extraordinarily nasty. One was known as ‘Gloves’ because if he was seen donning white gloves he was about to beat up some poor sod. Another one was known as ‘The Face’. He spent the day glowering at everyone, until he was about to flog someone with the buckle end of his belt. Then he would grin like a Cheshire cat. The Beard, Shoes, and the Fox are others that came to mind.

Our treatment was getting worse day by day, and reports of atrocities being perpetrated around us at other camps, didn’t help. Along with most of the others I was beginning to feel desperate. Then, out of the blue we were told that we were going back to Chunki. Remembering what it looked like, when we had passed through it on our way to build the huts at Wun Lung, I couldn’t believe my good luck.

It turned out to be less nice than I had imagined it would be, but we were not there for long before moving on to Nong Pladuk. The short time we spent in Chunki was quite unpleasant. The food was better than that we had been getting, and there was enough of it, but the sights around were often enough to turn ones stomach. Tropical ulcers abounded, some stretching from the knee to the ankle, revealing the shin bone, proud of the rolled back skin on each side. P.O.W.s, learning to walk with the help of roughly made crutches, after having their legs amputated, most from the knee. Others with arms in slings and heads bandaged, mostly through accidents and beatings. Chunki being the base hospital, this sort of sight was to be expected, but it came as a shock to see a leg thrown out of a window opening, on to others that had been removed earlier in the day.

We were glad to get to Nong Pladuk. I guess the camp held about 1000 to 1200 prisoners, and was used principally as a reservoir of workers to send out as, and when, needed. There was no great volume of work there, which needed every prisoner to toil every minute of the day. Consequently, the sick were not pushed out to work, and were allowed to rest in the hospital huts, of which there were two. Another hut was solely for the use of the Officers, who were not forced to go out to work, and who, with a few exceptions, chose to stay in the camp. In many ways they had a harder time than the rest of us. They passed orders to us, having received them from the Japanese. Some of the Japanese orders were such as to demand their rejection by the British Officers, and then they would be slapped about by the Japanese in front of us all. On some occasions they would give orders which we would only obey with very great reluctance, and they would then be abused greatly by us.

Their chosen inactivity only increased their boredom and a few of them jumped at the opportunity to have a game of chess with anyone willing to give them a game. I was always willing to play with anyone, even Officers, most of whom I held in some disdain. They seemed to be, generally, selfish and arrogant. Some took advantage of their position to deprive others of their right. A reason for my view was illustrated at Nong Pladuk when a soldier was very ill with dry Beri-beri, and an appeal was sent out for anyone who might have any Marmite, to give some to save this poor fellows life. No Marmite was offered, but a week or so after the soldier’s death, an Officer, who I regret to say was from my Battalion, was seen with a large jar of Marmite on his table. To be fair, I have to say that there were a few Officers who acted honourably.

The guards, who for most of the time were in full view of the guard room, seemed not to relax unless they were inside a hut, and out of sight of their commanders, then a few would chat away like long lost friends. It was clear that they were terrified of their Officers. If, by any chance, one of them was showing his photographs to prisoners, (a common ploy to show his friendliness) and one of his Officers was seen coming towards the hut, he would immediately put on a show of anger and stamp away towards him and rigidly salute.

The Japanese paid all the P.O.W.s, who were sent out on working parties 10 cents each day. This money was doled out, less a small contribution each of us made to buy food and medicines for the hospital, by our own Officers each month. There was, therefore, a very good reason to try to get on the working parties when the conditions thereon were not unpleasant. As Nong Pladuk was a large and busy marshalling yard, a lot of the Jap army supplies were loaded there. Most of us, whenever an opportunity to sabotage these presented itself, took it, if it could be done without detection. One method was used for many weeks to deprive the Jap transport of petrol.

Our job was to transfer drums of petrol from one goods train to another one which was going to the limit of the track. The trucks were brought forward one at a time for emptying and the drums were rolled out to the ground, and over to the other train for loading. A large nail which was driven through, or drilled through, a hard piece of wood and backed to prevent it being knocked back, was hidden in the dust at the side of the track where the drums were dropped out. The resulting puncture in the drum could hardly be seen and only very rarely was any liquid petrol visible. When full the Japs would close the doors and padlock them. The trucks were metal ones which got very hot during the day building pressure in the drums, and very cold at night pulling air in to replace the petrol blown out during the day. We had reports filtering down from the forward camps that the Japs were puzzled as to the way some of their petrol was being stolen because the padlocks were still intact.

On one occasion I nearly came unstuck. I had been working in a Godown, Warehouse, moving stuff about as directed when I found myself alone, the guard having decided to take a stroll around the other warehouses. A lot of the stuff was surveying equipment and, picking up a theodolite, I went outside and dropped it into a well. Incidentally, the wells were not deep ones as in England, but like a walled-in pond. On my way back the guard saw me and demanded to know where I had been. There were no latrines for our use and, when taken short, we used to walk along the bank of a paddy and squat over the mud. I told him that was where I had been, whereupon he demanded that I show him. I decided to brazen it out, and set out along a bank looking for a heap as evidence. The gods were kind, for I hadn’t gone very far before there, on the mud, rested a steaming pile left by someone from another working party. ‘OK’ said the guard, waving me back to work. Panic over, but for a good hour later my legs had difficulty in holding me up.

There was a very great mixture of materials in the Godowns, and we were tempted to purloin some of them. A snag was the searches of our bags and pockets, which took place as we were leaving, and again when entering the camp. Stolen items were passed from one to another as the guard moved along, but this ploy was not always successful. The offender, in whose possession the stolen article was found, would almost invariably be stood up by the guard house and given a wicked beating in front of the whole camp.

The doctors at the hospital were bemoaning the lack of vitamin A in the diet and asked the Japanese to let them have some red palm oil, just for the hospital patients. They were refused. Each working party took its own tea making equipment with it; this was a square oil can which measured about 20 inches high and 12 inches square, in which the water was boiled. As luck would have it, the red palm oil, which we found in a warehouse, was in an identical can. A Scot had walked through a search with a can on his shoulder, so I took a chance on repeating it. We smoked the bottom half of the can to resemble the tea can and, with my knees knocking, I held it on my shoulder while the guard frisked my body before moving on. It was no light weight, and my shoulder was hurting like the very devil before we got away, and it was dropped at the hospital. When the doctor asked if I could get another the following day, I’m afraid I suggested, somewhat rudely, that he take my place and get it himself.

For quite a time I was lucky to keep a job that I’d been given, that of sharpening Japanese saws. It was done in a hut only about 200 yards from the main entrance to the camp alongside the guardroom. Although I have called it a hut it was really just a roof held up at each corner. Under this roof I spent some of the more tranquil hours of my imprisonment. With a triangular file I had to sharpen each tooth of the saws, which were held in between a couple of short planks, which in turn, slotted into a sort of trestle. There were only two of us doing this work and our guard was one of the easy-going types. So long as we looked as if we were working he couldn’t have cared less. Also, whenever we asked if we could sit down for a rest, he was happy for us to do so, and he would always make a brew of tea to share with us. His tea was much stronger than that we had from our own cooks. Incidentally, the Japanese saws were the reverse of our European ones, being wider at the end further from the handle.

Shading the roof was a broad leafed tree which was bearing long dark seed pods, of the sort, as a child, I used to buy in a bag of sherbet, and known by me as locust beans. Both of us collected a lot of these and took them back to our hut where they were much appreciated. Less appreciatively received were some other seed pods that we found growing on a shrub nearby. These were long, shiny black, and tubular. We found, inside, the seeds packed very much like Roundtree fruit gums, but in a slightly glutinous brown liquid. The seeds were too hard to eat, but the liquid was sweet tasting, and the guard assured us that they were safe to eat by sucking one himself. So we offered them around. How were we to know that they were a powerful laxative. Someone said it was cascara, but I think that is extracted from some sort of bark. It was the second time we had been caught. Some months earlier when working on the rail track, we found hanging on small trees, some pods similar to broad bean pods, the beans looked the same so we boiled them and ate them. They tasted bitter, and we spent more time at the latrines than we might have been expected to do, under normal circumstances. Caster Oil seeds they were supposed to be.

We finally sharpened the last saw in the consignment and returned to normal duties. I was very fond of a game of chess, and there were not enough chess sets in the camp to enable me to get the number of games I would have wished for. It seemed obvious that I had to get a set or produce one somehow or other. There was little chance of getting on: those who had them were not inclined to let them go. So I made a set. It was a strange looking chess set but the pieces were quite distinguishable. They took me a long time to make; the available tools were not the usual ones to be seen in a carpenter’s workshop. In fact there were only two, a bricklayers lining up pin, and a bodkin. The pin was sharpened into a creditable knife by rubbing it on a small piece of carborundum stone, and apart from being used to cut wood for the set, it later became useful as a razor. The bodkin was used to dig and drill holes in the wood to make a crude sort of joint. That chess set was a source of pleasure to me for the rest of my confinement of more than three years.

Indian Officers played chess with me on a number of occasions and, so far as I can recall, the honours went his way on most of those. It was he who fixed me a game with an American who gave me a new slant on the game, because not once did he look at the board. He lay on his bunk looking up at the roof, and telling me his move after I had told him mine. This gave me a great advantage which seemed to be unassailable, so imagine my chagrin when I was beaten easily every game. For some time I felt that I was a very poor player to be beaten in that fashion. Then the Indian Officer told me that my opponent had been the Philadelphia Chess Champion and, in so doing, gave me some of my pride back.

From about the third week of being a prisoner I had diarrhoea for nearly the whole of the three and a half years imprisonment. I had reported sick in the hope of the doctors having a cure, and in fact, one of them came close to one, He starved me for nearly a week, being allowed only to drink. The drink was called tea but was really boiled water priding itself on having smelled a tea leaf somewhere along the way. Then I was allowed one spoonful of rice a day for two days, followed by two spoons full, with a little beef tea to flavour it for the rest of the week. I had told the doctor that I didn’t think he would cure me, because I had been suffering too long. He bet me a cigarette that he would cure me, and that I wouldn’t be back for a month. I was cured of diarrhoea, sure enough, but for only a few days and I took his cigarette with some regret.

During a repeat of the treatment I was kept in the hospital, probably to ensure that I would not be tempted to eat non prescribed food. My bed was a space on the floor with a blanket to lie on, but my condition obliged me to leave it very frequently, both day and night, and stagger to the latrines which had been dug well away from the huts. A framework of bamboo enabled one to sit above the very deep hole without the danger of falling in it. The stench was appalling, despite the surface around the hole being sliced away and thrown in every day to cover the heaving mass of maggots, some of which worked their way to the surface through the surrounding sand. A trail of testimony to those with dysentery who were unable to make it, led from the hospital, and made me, at night, take a very circuitous route to get there.

There was no lighting and I just got used to feeling my way about. One night I returned from a visit to the latrine and lay back on my bed, only to leap up in fright as I felt a sharp pain in my back. I could not see what it was that had bitten me, and was extremely panicky about the possibility of it being a poisonous snake. As quickly as I was able I rushed to the night orderly, who had a hurricane lamp and asked him to examine my back for signs of the two pronged punctures left by the fangs of a poisonous snake. He couldn’t see anything but thought it wise to bring his lamp to have a look at my bed space. Gingerly lifting my blanket he revealed a small grey scorpion on which I must have lain. Taking off his slipper he smacked it down on the animal, spreading it over my blanket which I had to wash the following morning. The poison stayed in my back for weeks afterwards, and often when moving in an unusual position, it would be released stinging me all over again. Later I was told that the sting of the grey scorpion was much more virulent than that of the bigger black one. It was a fact I was not prepared to test when, digging a lump of soil from a dried and cracked water course, I uncovered a big black armour plated female scorpion surrounded by a mass of smaller ones. She looked particularly menacing and venomous waving her sting above her.

Along with some blokes from my Battalion, I was assigned to a rail way maintenance gang. Our job was to keep the rails secured to the sleepers, and clear of obstructions. Also to manhandle, back on to the rails, any trucks which may have slipped off. Occasionally the job was arduous because of the Japs urgent need to keep the trains moving, but for most of the time it was a leisurely walk along the track to knock in a few dogs, a sort of hook headed nail. However, we were called out one night to a derailment. The weather was cold and it was raining. We could only see where we were walking, with the aid of torches made with coconut fibre soaked in oil, by looking for the reflection on the sleepers. When we reached the derailed trucks, we had to loosen the couplings which had twisted and locked together. I was given a sledge- hammer with which to strike a chisel being held in long tongs by a Jap soldier. After a few strikes, an impatient Jap engineer took the hammer from me, as if to show me how to do it. Had I stayed where I was, when he swung the hammer back, my ribs would have been broken. I stepped back out of the way, unaware that we were on a bridge, and fell.

In the short time I was falling, my mind was asking ‘is it water, soft soil, rock, sloping, or flat?’. Then I landed, on my back, thinking ‘I’m all right?’, but when I went to sit up I only succeeded in tipping myself on my left side. The torches suddenly lined the bridge edge, and my fellow P.O.W.s, slithered down the embankment to help me up to the track. My shoulder was not in its usual position; instead it stuck out in front of me with my arm dangling uselessly from it.

Much to my surprise, the Japanese were most solicitous and anxious to get me back, to their doctors for treatment without delay. I had heard tales about the Jap doctors, and their rough handling of their own men, so I asked if I could see my own doctor. They agreed and brought up an engine, with tender, to take me back to Nong Pladuk. All the way back the driver consoled me with ‘Japan doctor No 1, England doctor No 2’. I walked into our hospital and was told by an orderly to lie down on a stretcher, which I did. I cannot tell how long I lay there, but four hours had passed between the accident and the time I was examined by Doctor Major Smythe. My arm, by now, was aching and swollen, and I was rather apprehensive that I would have it fixed without anaesthetics. I need not have worried. The stretcher was put on a couple of wooden crates and I was told to climb on it. With a little difficulty, that is what I did. Suddenly a pad was put over my face and a voice said ‘Breath deeply sonny’. ‘Who the hell does he think he’s calling sonny?’, was my immediate thought, but, gratefully, I breathed deeply. Later when I awoke in ‘the ward’, i.e. on a blanket on the floor of a hut, I learned that he was a Doctor Tomlinson, who had had a practice in Harley Street. My arm seemed to be in much the same place as it had been before the accident, but it had been placed in a sling. A Dutch doctor, with a white goatee beard, told me to lie still and not move my arm. He then said that Major Smythe had done a fine job on me, but I had received treatment that I might have had in the 18th Century, and I must remember that the breaks were unsupported. Up until then I had thought I had merely dislocated my shoulder.

A day or two later during a roll call, a lorry backed into a guy rope holding up a tall flagpole causing the pole to break. The top part of the pole fell down and the ball at its top hit one of the P.O.W.s, on his head. He was brought in to the hospital but his skull had been crushed, and he died shortly afterwards. During this excitement another lad had been operated on for appendicitis and was coming round from the ether, somewhat drunk. His speech was hilarious and we were laughing at him, until we saw the other lad being carried away for burial. The solemnity of the occasion was lost on him however, and he started to laugh, then putting his hand to his stomach said ‘Ooh, mustn’t laugh, mustn’t laugh’. We couldn’t prevent ourselves from laughing.

When still lying in hospital I was told that my group were going back up the track, and I was very disappointed not to be going with them. A month or so later I was thankful that my arm had been broken, when we heard that they had been caught in a cholera epidemic and well over half had died. At much the same time I was told that Johnny Pike had contracted Beri-beri and dysentery, and had died. That combination was nearly always fatal because to cure the Beri-beri the patient had to be well fed with plenty of vitamin B, and to cure the dysentery he had to be deprived of food, conflicting treatment.

After about three weeks keeping my arm in the sling, the Doc.’ told an orderly to take it off and asked me to wiggle my fingers, and lift my hand, which I did. He then gave me a first class ticking off for not doing what I had been told to do. Moving it told him that I had not kept it still, as instructed to do. However, when he asked me to lift my elbow I couldn’t do so, it felt quite dead. My anxiety must have been visible, because he grinned, and gently lifted my arm, and immediately I was able to move it myself, not much, but enough to give me heart.

Because my arm was thought to be too weak for me to join a working party, I was kept in camp, and employed doing the duties of a medical orderly. There were a lot of Beri-beri cases, few of whom realised how ill they were, or how little could be done for them. The food stayed much the same as before, boiled rice and weak vegetable stew. We tried to correct their shortage of vitamins by feeding them, whenever possible, the polishings from rice, which the Japanese at this Camp were happy to let us have. It was a brown powder, rich in vitamin B, but it tasted revolting and many of the patients refused to eat it. There were also many of the patients suffering from tropical ulcers, revolting sores which would not dry up and spread, mainly on the legs, from the knee downwards, often reaching the ankle. My main jobs were to empty bed pans, dish out the food, and treat the ulcers by painting them with Carbolic and wiping down the sore with Pot’ Permang’, solution.

It was during this period that I had an experience that I hope never to repeat. I had been tipping the contents of bedpans into the trench latrine and was returning to the hospital ward when, just as I reached the wooden bottom step at the entrance to the ward, everything went black. I groped for the hand rail and rubbed my eyes, thinking that something must have been thrown into them, but they didn’t sting, as one would expect them to if that were the case. As the truth of my situation hit me I could only half believe that it could happen to me, and I remember striking my temples with the ball of my thumbs in the hope of knocking together what must have broken apart.

When it really dawned upon me that I had gone blind, I shouted for help, scared to take a step without guidance. The first response to my call was not what I needed, I was terrified at the thought of being blind, and to be told to ‘Stop acting silly buggers’ increased the feeling of horrendous isolation that I had. Eventually, they took me seriously and I was helped up the steps and to a bed space. My legs had turned to jelly and I was trembling all over uncontrollably. A blanket was wrapped around me and a doctor came and examined me, I could feel his hands pulling down my cheeks and I was lifted up onto a chair where he tested my reflexes, after which I was told to rest. I was still suffering from ‘the runs’ and had to call on the services of the other orderlies to provide me with a bedpan. It was the first time I had used one myself, and not being able to see it created difficulties I would never have imagined. Fortunately, when I requested someone to guide me to the latrine and back, he was very willing and helpful to do so, despite being called upon to do so very frequently.

The doctor, on his next visit, told me that I was ‘suffering from a deficiency of vitamin A’. I was lucky that he had come by some red palm oil which was rich in that vitamin and, with luck, I should not be permanently blind, but I should not expect to have my sight completely restored. I didn’t tell him that the oil was probably some that I had pinched from the Japs. The red palm oil was revolting; it was administered in a dessert spoon which was also used to shovel the rice into my mouth. I was reminded of my father giving me cod liver oil in such a spoon, and having to be fed by someone made me feel like a baby, helpless. How long I was blind it is difficult to remember but I think it must have been about three days. It is very hard to assess the passage of time when you have no light to guide you, and the ward was fairly noisy with lots of movement day and night. My sight came back as quickly as it went but the doctor was proved right insofar that, every so often I had partial blackouts in one or the other eye. These, usually, only lasted a few minutes and affected just the area of focus. Luckily there has always been one eye I could see with. Even now, after so many years I cannot feel free of the possibility of a black out in an eye.

CHAPTER 5

Occasionally we had some luck with food. Before my accident, my working party passed an abattoir. A tree outside was host to an incredible number of vultures which bent down the branches almost to breaking point. A Thai came out with a barrow load of entrails and other offal, and had hardly turned his back before there was a mass of fighting vultures just outside the entrance. Thais, it seemed, did not approve of eating the offal from animals, so they threw it away, to the vultures who had no such inhibitions. Reporting this back to the cooks resulted in a load of offal being given to us by the Thais. But, after a couple of months, or thereabouts, seeing that we came to no harm, they started charging for the stuff. However, it was cheap, and although it was not much when spread out among everyone, it had some nourishment.

On another occasion the Japs dropped off some sacks of dried dahl peas, believing they held rice, and within minutes they had been emptied and the peas hidden. Had the Japs returned for them on discovering their mistake they would have been given the sacks with a few grains of rice in them.

One of the Beri-beri sufferers to come into the hospital was the soldier who had found the wallet of jewellery, when marching to the Roberts Hospital from Singapore. He was as thin as a rake, weak and in considerable pain. His complaint was known to us as Dry Beri-beri, and I thought it much worse than the normal Beri-beri. His friends urged him to let them sell some of his jewellery to buy food to cure him, but he refused, still determined to be rich when he got home. One small piece of jewellery would have kept him in eggs for weeks, more than enough to cure him easily. When, after a few days he died, his hoard just disappeared. One of his friends, or one of the orderlies, ensured that they would not go the same way.

One of my patients, an Australian, had a massive ulcer from knee to ankle, his shinbone showing through the peeled back colourful rotten flesh. ‘Paddy’ Smythe, the senior surgeon, decided to amputate, and I was asked to prepare him for the operation. His response to this was a determined ‘He’s not taking my bloody leg off’. Smythe feared gangrene setting in and put the pressure on, but he wouldn’t give in. I believed I could keep the ulcer clean and prevent it from spreading further, if the Aussie could stand the treatment. He said he could, so I asked to be given the chance to look after him. ‘Paddy’ agreed, so two or three times a day I put carbolic acid on the ulcer and carefully removed, with a brush and a solution of potassium permanganate, any loosened dead flesh. Then I put up a drip arrangement of the solution to keep the ulcer continually and partially washed. The pain must have been searing during the time I was brushing the ulcer down, after the carbolic had done its work, but only once did I hear him cry out, in all the time I spent with him. He was a very determined and brave man, intent on going back to Australia with two good legs. I still get pleasure from recalling that, when I eventually left him at Nong Pladuc, his ulcer was only half the size it had been.

The conditions in the camp were deteriorating and a new Japanese Camp Commander did nothing to help matters. He seemed determined to make our lives a misery. The food was, if anything, in shorter supply than it had been. The playing of musical instruments was forbidden. The shop, from which one could buy bananas, eggs, sugar and tobacco, if one was lucky enough to have any money, was only open during the morning, when most of the men were out on working parties.

Then he ordered that anyone having a pet must destroy it. The Dutch prisoners were very fond of eating dogs, in fact, I had thoroughly enjoyed a feast to which I had been invited before being told it was dog. It was widely believed that the ban on pets came about by the Commander losing his dog to the Dutch boiling tins.

Prisoners pets ranged from three or four cats, a half dozen dogs, numerous lizards of all colours and sizes, mice, birds, and even snakes and scorpions. How the dog owners fed their pets I shall never know, or understand why they didn’t eat the food themselves. They were, however, very reluctant to destroy their pets, and after the order, tended to let them free, and pretend they didn’t belong to them. The Commander was infuriated and gave his guards the order to bayonet any they saw in the camp. We were entertained for about a week by the guards having a lunge at empty space as the dogs leapt out of the way. They were eventually eliminated, but not by the guards bayonets, but, I believe, by the Dutch cooks. One pet was a match for anyone. It was a Mynah bird which was content to ride about the camp on its owners shoulder, even during roll calls. This was too much for the Japs. They were not going to allow this prisoner disobey the rule and keep a pet. He, in turn, said he couldn’t catch it. They, therefore, would show him, before the assembled P.O.W.s, how to do it, and then, presumably, kill it in front of them. First they tried to grab it, but it just flew on to another soldier, then another and another, making the Japs look very helpless, and the rest of us very amused.

Our laughing, which the Japs couldn’t stand, incensed them to a fury, and they vented this by beating a few of us with anything in their hand. The Mynah stood on its owners head undeterred by the havoc it was causing. Then up stomped a pompous little Jap Officer with a sword big enough to trip up anyone within a yard of him. He stood with his feet apart in front of the bird, determined to end this feathered insubordination and withdrew the sword. We all held our breath, fearful for the bird’s owner as the sword was drawn back for the stroke. The aim was made at the bird, but as the blade swished over the owners head the bird jumped clear before settling back on his perch. After a number of repeats, with exactly the same result, the Japs gave up before losing any more face, and we went back to our huts with our ribs aching through laughing so much.

By the boundary fence of the Nong Pladuk camp I found a small tree with seed pods similar to those of the laburnum tree. The ground below it was covered in brilliantly coloured seeds which had been jettisoned by the tree and the pods remaining were all about to open. Each seed was the size of a small pea and similar in shape to a lupin seed. They looked as if they had been dipped in a black lacquer, and then turned over and dipped into a vermilion lacquer. There was no blending of the colours into each other. They made a brilliant display, and I suddenly hit upon the idea of making a bracelet or a necklace with them. Accordingly, I gathered a quantity and took them back to my bed space. I had to drill each of the seeds, and it wasn’t long before I learned I’d got quite a job on my hands. They were as hard as stone. I asked throughout the camp if anyone had a drill small enough to only allow a thread to pass through the hole, but without success. Eventually I shaped and sharpened the point of a needle into an angled chisel, and drove the other end into a narrow bottle cork. By spinning the cork between my thumb and first finger of my right hand, and holding a seed between my thumb and first and second fingers of my left hand, I was able to gently push the chisel end of the needle against the seed. It was a slow job and the most I managed to drill in one day was only five. After drilling enough seeds I had to thread them, and somehow hold the threads together if I was to make a bracelet. The plastic from a toothbrush handle, drilled every eighth of an inch across its width, satisfactorily did the job, and the ends from a broken hair comb were used to fashion a clasp. By no stretch of the imagination could the operation of the clasp be considered adequate but the bracelet looked brilliant and attractive. It was certainly attractive enough to attract offers from a number of prisoners to purchase it.

It was a practice of mine, every morning when I awoke, to press my thumb on my ankle to see if there was any sign of the dreaded Beri-beri. Probable evidence of the sickness would be seen if my thumb left a depression where it had been pressed. Almost every day we buried a victim of this vitamin deficiency, and the hospital was taking in more and more sufferers, as the conditions and shortages in the camp worsened. Nevertheless it came as a shock to me when, one day, I found my thumb leaving the dreaded dent. I had no money to buy extra food, but I knew that, without it, I might be joining the others who had been carried out of the camp.

I had held on to a writing case my mother had given to me just before leaving home. There had been plenty of times I could have sold it but it was the only material link with home I had left. Now there was no one in the camp who would wish to buy such an article, except some Australians, who rumour had it, had dealings with the natives outside the camp. How they did, I resolved to find out, so I enlisted the help of the Aussi whose ulcer I was treating. He introduced me to one of his countrymen who showed me the way to get out of the camp avoiding the guards.

Following his instructions, I reached the native huts, despite the night being particularly dark, to find the chief native waiting to receive any prisoner who might turn up. We sat crossed legged facing each other and I showed him the writing case. He put 10 dollars, which we knew as ‘tikels’, on the floor between us. I shook my head and he added another 5 to the 10. When I shook my head again he shook his, as if he was not going to pay any extra for the case. Although I was desperate for the money, I took a chance in calling his bluff by picking up the case and starting to get up. He touched my shoulder and added another 5, making 20 in all. We made the exchange and he saw me back to the camp. From then on I ate eggs, one for breakfast, one for lunch and one for an evening meal. They were swallowed raw and tasted revolting. The chickens had obviously been fed on fish and the flavour took a lot of stomaching. But it was that or ‘staying in a foreign field’, and I had no intention of allowing that to happen. The eggs cost 5 cents each, and the Beri-beri had cleared up, before I had eaten 20 eggs, at the cost of one dollar. Had I not noticed my ankle as soon as I did, the cost may have been considerably higher. As it was, I had 19 dollars in hand as an insurance against the future.

We began to hear rumours of the Allies bombing in Korea and elsewhere, and there was tenseness in the Japanese that hadn’t been noticeable before. Their tempers were shorter, and they marched through the hospital picking out patients they thought were fit enough to work. Some they picked were clearly too weak to do more than reach the work site, and others had to cover for them. They examined me and found me fit for work, as I had been for some time.

For days my working party was employed in carrying the railway sleepers, from a store of them near the camp, to flat topped trucks, on which we stacked them, ready to be taken up country. Only two prisoners were allowed to a sleeper. They were very heavy and we had no padding on our shoulders. By the middle of the day we all had bleeding shoulders but the Japs would not allow us to rest. ‘Yasume Nei’ ( No rest) they shouted. Only once can I remember the guards forgetting to drive us on. It happened when, picking up a sleeper, a couple of prisoners found a snake coiled up in between the sleepers below. It was multi-coloured coloured with a body of triangular section. There had been a lot of snakes found among the sleepers, but this one created quite a stir. The natives retired in double quick time and the guards kept their distance. An ex-postman from Carlisle, Jimmy Hill made a loop with string and slipping it over the head of the snake pulled it tight. Lifting it up it seemed to measure about two feet long, not very awesome, but as Jimmy carried it towards the Japs, the natives backed away with obvious alarm. We were told that it was very venomous and could also move very quickly. They, it seemed, wanted a good start should Jimmy let it go. I seem to remember that it was chopped into little pieces before the string was let go. It was here that ,on my way back to the camp, sore, very tired and dispirited, I was very moved to be offered by a skinny, rag covered native Thai, a small dried fish. His need was probably as great as mine, but he was obviously sorry to see me in such a state and this was his way of showing it

When I was told that I should be joining a party returning to Singapore, despite the rumours of that city being without food, I was relieved. Conditions at Nong Pladuc were now quite bad and a deep feeling of depression had spread throughout the camp. A couple of days before we were due to leave we were subjected to a spot of excitement by courtesy of our air force. The camp was sited alongside the rail marshalling yard, the operation of which must have displeased our military chiefs, because they bombed it, one of the bombs landing in the camp. The prisoners ran into the woods at the rear of the camp accompanied by one of the guards. We called him Churchill but I never understood why this was so. He was a harmless character and one of the few we could reason with, though not always with the required result. The bombing over we returned to our huts, but Churchill became a victim of the Japanese disciplinary system. Although we became subject to the Japanese desire for revenge and received many more cuffs than usual, Churchill, for running away out of the danger, was beaten unmercifully. In the course of the beating he lost the use of one eye and had an arm broken. He was the only Jap for whom I ever felt sorry.

The journey back to Singapore took five days. This time we enjoyed the travel much less than we had previously. There were too many sick and the occasional delay for burying someone was disheartening. Also the state of the rubber plantations we passed had deteriorated; many of them had been destroyed, why I could not understand. There was a general air of decay which we had not noticed on our journey up Malaya. It is possible that it was a result of Japanese plundering. The camp we moved into was almost next door, as it were, to Singapore’s main amusement park, Happy World. From here we worked, mainly, on the Docks.

When I had been allocated my bed space, a sack of peppercorns had been found further along the hut which nobody was keen to have, so I put it under my bed. I knew what I might do with it, but was not sure how to go about it. I needed something with which to grind the corns to the point where they might be used to sprinkle over food. Luck was with me. I found, on a tour of the camp, a hard concrete gutter drain about 18 inches long, and a straight sided bottle. By pressing the corns in the drain with the bottle I was able to crush them into small particles, which by scraping across the drain could be reduced to powder. Then by another bit of luck I came by a ladies silk stocking. It was ideal to separate the powder from the rest of the particles.

When I had a jam jar full of pepper I toured the camp each week selling a teaspoonful for five cents a time. It was very popular and, apart from putting a little money in my pocket, it was often exchanged for a cup of hot sweet milky coffee, or a small rice jam tea cake, which had been made, usually by an Aussi, elsewhere in the camp.

The working parties were usually about 20 strong, and were used, mainly, for loading and unloading the ships. The cargoes were very mixed ones, rice, copra, peas, drums of oil of all sorts, cases of tinned food most of which had been taken over from Godowns throughout the South East. Much of the stuff was very attractive to our sticky fingers, and the Dock Police were well aware of this. Often at the end of the day we were searched very thoroughly by them, and then searched again by the camp guards on our return. Not always though, especially if the cargo was an undesirable one. Then they assumed that it was something we wouldn’t steal. This is where they came unstuck.

It became the practice to hide, somewhere on the docks, anything we wanted to steal. Then we could take a chance, when working on an undesirable cargo, to pick up the hidden loot and hope that the police and guards would not search us.

Working down in the hold of a cargo ship, in tropical conditions, could sap one’s energy within an hour, depending on the cargo. It became the practice to relieve those in the hold fairly frequently because of this, and when they came up they often brought something desirable with them. One desirable cargo consisted of tins of ‘Klim’. It was an American dried milk product, and one which soon found itself being carried back to camp. My party was searched at the dock gate by one of the dock police, but his attitude was one of couldn’t care less, and although he found a tin he merely grunted and gave it back. At the camp we weren’t searched at all, but the following party were not so lucky. The guard, who found a tin, called on the help of his sergeant and another one of the guards. Between then they unearthed all the cans, but didn’t know what it was they held. The sergeant in charge of the working party, by gestures, led the Japanese to believe that it was teeth cleaning powder. They, in turn, believed it would be a fitting punishment for these thieving British to be made to eat it. Accordingly they produced a spoon for each prisoner and told them to eat it. They had not expected it to be eaten with such an expressions of pleasure, and it was not long before their suspicions were aroused. The Jap sergeant dipped a spoon into a tin and tasted the ‘tooth powder’. It produced an expression the exact opposite of that on the prisoners faces. ‘Currah, Bugero’ was accompanied by a series of blows to each of the prisoners. Up and down the line he ranted and vented his discomfiture for some time. He had been made a fool of in front of his own men, and this was the only way he could redeem himself. The news spread throughout every hut in almost no time at all, and pretending to scrub one’s teeth remained a gesture to humiliate the guards for a long time.

On another occasion I was working in the hold stacking boxes which we had carried from one end of the hold to the other. They felt as if they were filled with cans and we had visions of corned beef, ham, soups and other homely comforts, but, because of the attention of the guard we were unable to open a box. Every effort was made to distract him but he was intent on doing his job properly. Two or three times a box was ‘accidentally’ dropped, but they proved to be tougher to open than we had hoped. Eventually they were stacked almost to the roof of the hold, and a last minute attempt to break one open was made. A topmost case was pushed a little too far, and the furthest one fell from its heady position to the floor of the hold, breaking open. Success turned to disappointment when the contents were revealed. They were tins of Castrol grease.

One of the hardest jobs was to carry sacks of rice from the dock up the gangway and tip them into the hold. The Nips preferred to use us to do this, rather than to have them slung up to the hold by crane. If only one guard was in charge, there had to be two prisoners on deck above the hold to guide the sack carriers to the position it was to be dropped. Very often this was a job I managed to grab. Those in the hold would shout up to us to tell us where they wanted the next sack dropped, very often accompanying this with their opinions of the Nips. The two of us on deck were also in the habit of discussing their many shortcomings, always in language unsuitable for polite company. We knew there was no danger in this harmless letting off steam, because the Nips couldn’t understand a word we said, even if they suspected anything. Had they known, it would have been an extremely dangerous way of passing the time. So it came as a shock when after comparing the Nips, unfavourably, with the red arsed baboon, a American voice said ‘What the hell have you got to complain about, soldier, you’ve only got to work with the little bastards, but I’ve got to eat and sleep with them.’ It was the Nip guard, and I nearly passed out with the shock. Later he explained that he lived in America and had returned to Japan for a family bereavement, when the war started, and he was drafted in the Nippon Army. Thereafter I made an effort to test out the guards before uttering a single word of denigration.

After working for most of one day shifting boxes of machinery on to slings, we were tired, hungry and covered in mud, the latter produced by the clouds of dust from the boxes falling on our perspiration. Apart from periodically shouting ‘Speedo’ the guard was not interested in us anymore than we were in him. Then, at the back of one of the boxes, we found, wrapped in grease-proof paper, blocks of a brown substance measuring about 18 inches by 18 inches by 6 inches. It took some time to find out what it was, but when we did our tiredness fell away like magic. It was a sort of cooking chocolate, but it was so hard we couldn’t easily break it up. Then someone found a thick iron or steel spike, which we used to try and break up the block. We managed to chisel little pieces from it but we hadn’t the strength to drive the spike far enough into the block. So picking up the block we carried it to the part of the hold which the Nip was standing above. Without moving his position he couldn’t see what we were doing, so while the others worked where he could see them, we fixed the spike firmly between a couple of the boxes. Then by lifting the block and smashing it down hard on to the spike, we managed to split it into pieces small enough to smuggle out of the docks. It may not have been up to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk standard, but it was nectar, pure and simple, to me.

As time went by it was becoming clear to us all that food was getting short, our rations were gradually getting less. Even the guards were buying food from outside the camp. Also the Beri-beri cases were increasing, even though they had been fewer since returning to Singapore. There were fewer working parties, and those that did go out said the amount of work was very little. Having less to do, we spent our time playing cards or chess, or simply walking about the camp hoping to find something edible. The only edible thing I found was weeds growing in the malarial drain than ran through the camp. I boiled them and ate them as one would eat cabbage, in the hope that the awful bitter green stuff would help me to get rid of the sores on my legs which were not drying up.

Then, out of the blue, the news came that we were going to Japan. The thought of going there was very disturbing. I didn’t like the idea at all, but there was nothing I could do about it. Sure enough, a day or two later we were marched down to the docks, and packed into the hold of a ship which had been converted with bamboo into three decks connected by vertical ladders. How many of us were put into the hold I cannot recall, only that there was hardly any room to move, and that within an hour of the Nips putting the hold covers on, prisoners began passing out with the heat and lack of air. Only when we had been at sea for a time were the covers lifted and the unconscious prisoners lifted out onto the deck. The rest of us had to stay where we were.

At first we were not allowed on deck to relieve ourselves, buckets were thrown to us for that use. These, when full, had to be carried up the ladders and passed out to be emptied over the side of the ship. It was a difficult procedure and it was almost impossible to negotiate the ladders without spilling some of the contents. The stench in the hold became almost intolerable. A mixture of sweat, urine, and suppurating ulcers plus the mass of unwashed bodies, and vomit, caused further unconscious bodies. Most of these had to be manhandled up the ladders, to be brought into the fresh air of the deck. It was obviously a situation that could not continue without many prisoners dying.

A British Officer remonstrated with the crew and was smacked across his face a number of times by the Nippon Officer, who seemed to be in charge. His argument nevertheless had an effect. We were allowed to sit out on the deck for much of the day, but had to return to the hold at night.

A cage like structure had been built to the outside of the ships rail towards the stern of the ship, and by using this to relieve ourselves, we were able to do so without fouling the ship itself. The cage was never vacant. With so many men suffering with dysentery, there was always a queue lined up waiting to use it.

On the horizon we could see three other ships moving in the same direction, and we guessed that they, along with ourselves, were part of a convoy. Early in the voyage we were close to land on the port side, which we assumed to be the Coast of Malaya, but it was not long before we had left that behind. There were some alarms by the Japanese crew, about aircraft in the area. We didn’t see any, but they caused us to be hurried down the hold and battened down each time. However, I think it was during the third night that we became aware of unusual activity up above, then a number of very heavy thuds, followed by an increase in the engine noise.

Although the cover was taken off us in the early morning it was after midday before we were allowed out on deck. The crew seemed to be taking a greater interest in the sea about us, and when we asked one crew member where the other ships had gone he threw up his hands and said ‘Boom, Boom’. We took this to mean that they had been sunk. Although this was welcome news to us it was also a little frightening. We felt that our chances of reaching dry land had somewhat reduced odds.

I believe there were six or seven burials at sea, there could have been many more but I had no desire to keep a tally. The situation was depressing enough as it was, leaving in our minds the question, which one of us next? The unlucky soldiers were rolled in a blanket, the padre held a short service and as the bearers held on to the blanket the thin, skeleton like bodies were tipped up and slipped out of the blanket into the sea. Had the voyage been much longer than it was, the deaths would have greatly increased. Fortunately we steamed into the port of Saigon before many more of the seriously sick gave up the struggle.

CHAPTER 6

We marched off the docks, wending our way between the large warehouses, and into the Jean Eudel camp nearby. Here we were welcomed by other British prisoners, who appeared to us to be grossly overweight. All of them, without exception, were well built. The huts into which we were to be housed had two, and in some instances three tiered sleeping platforms. The vertical bamboo ladders lashed to each platform were not very easy to use, and the one I had to use to reach my bed was as difficult as any. Its rungs of bamboo had a disconcerting habit of spinning round whenever one put one’s foot on it. Most of us, having been allocated our bed space, took the opportunity to stretch out and relax, while waiting for the cooks to prepare our meal. Then a joker, as we thought, came along shouting ‘come and get your fried egg and green peas’. He was assailed by ‘What, no roast beef?’ Where’s the bacon?’ or ‘That’ll be the day’ etc. I could hardly believe my eyes, and felt like pinching myself, when I reached the serving point. There, in front of me, were rows of genuine fried eggs, one per person. Further along the queue past the eggs was rice, good rice cooked properly, and beyond that, thick dahl pea soup. If this had been their usual diet it was little wonder that the prisoners in Saigon looked fat to us. We had seen each other getting very skinny without fully realising we were as bad as we actually were. So, when we saw prisoners who were normally nourished, we saw them as being fat.

I cannot recall the length of time I was at this camp, nor can I remember whether I ever left the camp on a working party. I do, however, remember the interminable roll calls that the Nips held. They could rarely count us and come up with the right number first time. They fed us well, compared to the way we had been fed, and for that I was thankful.

In the middle of the parade ground there was a single water tap, and more often than not, nearby a heap of mouldering and stinking food mixed with other debris from around the camp. It was the only water available for the prisoners to drink, or to wash out their mess tins. Because we were often given, at this camp, more rice than we had ever had elsewhere, there was always some thrown away. After the midday meal the effort to get near the tap always put me off, and often I would have a game of chess before walking over with my mess tin. By then the crush had sorted itself out and I could take my time cleaning my tin.

The system had worked very well until one particular day when I had almost finished cleaning my tin a ‘Currah, Bugero’, turned me round. Immediately I was punched and kicked by a little irate Nip, who continued shouting ‘Bugero’ at me between each assault. My offence, it seemed, was that I had not saluted him. The fact that I had my back to him and was not aware of his approach was not relevant. A group of prisoners at the edge of the square watching his performance didn’t help. He was intent on putting up a good show. I was made to salute British fashion a number of times, afterwards bowing to him long enough to make my back ache. In a last gesture of his superiority, he kicked my tin into the heap of putrefying food before walking away.

Eventually, I was included in a group of prisoners who left Saigon for Cap St Jac. Here the Japanese were building an aerodrome and we were to help in its maintenance and extension. The Japanese airmen were a friendly bunch who were as curious about us as we were about them. Occasionally they would get impatient when their instructions were misunderstood, but we were not touched physically, apart from the odd push out of the way. They also had us eating in their mess hut. It was interesting how they altered their eating habits after watching us. At the beginning they held their bowls of rice up to their mouths and, with their chopsticks, scraped the rice into them. Within days of seeing us eat with our spoons, they too had spoons and were eating as we were.

The first day out on the job we were told what was to be done and left to get on with it. We had to clear an area of ground to the side of the end of the runway, and dig a drainage trench in it. The conditions were good and I think we all enjoyed the freedom to work at a reasonable pace. The following couple of days started the same way, but before long we were to find out that the conditions were not as ideal as we would have wished. We had to cut down a small deciduous tree that was in the way. It would have been about 15 feet high with large and plentiful foliage, which, in the process of chopping it down, bare to our waists, we had ignored. Then without warning we were covered by a downpour of red ants. They bitterly resented being thrown out of their home and showed it by biting and stinging. We tried desperately to brush the creatures off each other but it took longer than we might have anticipated. We spent the rest of the day with our bodies stinging, from their acid, while we continued to brush the ants, which had been scattered over the ground, from our feet and ankles. We learned, later, to examine the leaves for signs of the stitched bags of leaves these ants created for their colonies.

A day later there was a thicket of bamboo to clear away. We could see no sign of ants or indeed anything else of which to be aware. The bamboo had to be dug out, almost cane by cane (though to call a stem 4 to 5 inches thick a cane, doesn’t somehow seem right). We had been struggling with the clump for a couple of hours or so when, a small Krait, i.e. a venomous snake, dropped from somewhere in the loosened stems and landed on my shoulder. I was not immediately aware of what it was, but the others shouted a warning to stand still, saying what it was. To say I was scared would be an understatement. It seemed an eternity before I felt it move, then it slid off my shoulder and dropped to the ground. It was a miracle my toes remained attached to my feet, for when it touched the ground it was chopped into little pieces by nearly all the spades of the working party. It was only a little snake, not much bigger than a big earthworm, but I was told that it was probably the most venomous one in French Indo-China. For almost the remainder of the day I had to sit down, the tension having drained me of any energy I might have had.

The aerodrome was not in constant use by Japanese planes and we had the impression that it was being kept in good order solely as an emergency aerodrome. Whenever a plane landed the pilots living on the ‘drome always rushed over to it and chattered away excitedly, like a troop of monkeys. It seemed they were desperate for news. Because the runway was not in continuous use, it was not uncommon to see animals wandering across it. They constituted a serious hazard for a plane landing, and whenever there was one about to land, the Nips would try to chase them away. Water buffalo were not easy to move, and more often than not, they would be shot, the Nips shouting ‘Johnny fesh’ as they did so. It was then our job to drag the body away from the runway. The weight of these animals came as a surprise at first, and it took a whole gang of us to shift it. With experience we developed a system with rope, whereby we could all add our weight to the task.

Luckily for us the Japanese were not interested in keeping the meat for themselves, and as a result we were able to live on beef steak, steak and kidney, beef tea and other by-products of our windfalls. The Nips thought it fair that we should go without our ration of rice during these periods. We thought, having had only that for so long they could put it where the monkey puts his nuts, because we wouldn’t miss it, but after a week eating only buffalo I could hardly look at meat without longing for a bowl of rice. This diet, like it or not, began to build up our physique until we began to look like normal human beings.

For some time we were engaged in building a road through some dense woodland, much of which contained clumps of bamboo. There was an area of grass about the size of a couple of bowling greens stretching from our road to the edge of the wood. On this particular occasion the Nips had called ‘Jasume’ i.e. ‘Rest’, and five or six of us had gone to the edge of the wood to rest in the cool and drink tea. We hadn’t been there many minutes, when a fellow who was late coming down the road for his rest, stopped in front of us. With a look of amazement on his face he pointed, down the road which was shielded from us by the trees, and said ‘Bears’. Not one of us moved, convinced he was pulling our legs, but when he swore he was not joking we got to our feet and had a look. Sure enough there were a couple of bears by a clump of bamboo. They had found a colony of bees and were scraping out the comb, which was dripping with honey, and eating it. They stayed there in a cloud of bees for quite a long time, and as the Nips were as interested as we were, they didn’t set us back to work until the bears had had their fill and ambled off. It was noticeable that, until then, we had each held tightly on to our picks and spades.

On our way back to camp one evening we saw a thin column of large ants stretching from the wood on the one side of the road into the wood at the other. As many of the ants in that part of the world seemed to bite without provocation we all strode over well clear of them. Imagine our surprise the following morning to see a narrow road crossing the one we had made and a wide column of ants moving along it. They had eaten every bit of vegetation in their path. To avoid going the same way as the vegetation we all took a run and a jump over them.

My next move was to a small camp of not more than six huts plus a separate one for the Japanese Officer and his guards. The working parties were small groups having very mixed tasks. By not being picked for a working party it was possible for a prisoner to find himself stuck in the camp for days, if he was fortunate or unfortunate depending on his point of view. The jobs were rarely interesting ones, nearly always they were simple labouring jobs such as picking up litter from around some Japanese compound or digging holes in some pointless position. At least that is how it seemed to me, until I found myself occupying one of the holes during a raid by American Grummer dive bombers. What they were diving on I never found out, but while they did so, I found their attention not at all to my liking. The hole had a comforting quality about it.

I hadn’t got rid of the small sores which were mainly on my legs, despite scrubbing them every evening with a brush, frequently until I caused them to bleed. The M.O. had very little medicine with which to treat us, so little, in fact, that many prisoners thought it a waste of time reporting sick. I was getting quite concerned about the reluctance of the sores to dry up, despite the effort I was making to keep them clean. So I was ready to try anything. I reported sick. Again the Gods were with me. The doctor had managed to come by a small quantity of M & B. ( May and Baker) sulphonamide tablets. These were a new miracle drug. Our doctors at that time were unaware of the existence of the new treatments with Penicillin. Where he got them from he was keeping to himself, but his anxiety that no mention of them should be made outside his sick bay, within the hearing of any Japanese, gave me a pretty good idea. He hadn’t enough to let me have the proper dose, which was, I think, eight tablets a day for at least four days. He gave me one day’s dose which I spread over three days. But the treatment worked and the sores were clean with dry scabs covering them by day four.

Then one night I felt very cold and sick, and by the morning I was shaking uncontrollably. I remember making the effort to get to the latrines, which had been dug behind the hut fronting the one I was in, and falling on the floor just outside the door of my hut. After that I could not remember anything until I became conscious again, two days later in the sick bay. I was told that shortly after being taken to the sick bay, a Nip Officer stormed through the camp ordering everybody out on a working party. The doctor pointed out that I couldn’t be moved and I was, in fact, delirious, whereupon the Nip ordered that I should be carried out to work. Only the intervention of another Nip officer stopped the order being carried out. Luckily I was unaware of all this going on. It seems that I had had a bout of Dengue Fever which is similar to Malaria, but much more virulent. Fortunately, it’s not chronic like malaria is. It’s a fact that, I had been in some of the worst camps for malaria, sleeping without any mosquito net, without ever catching malaria. Others would come into those camps and within a few days would be shaking with fever. So perhaps it was only fair that I should have caught Dengue Fever.

The only redeeming feature of this camp that I can remember was the sweet perfume that saturated the air in and around it. This came from a huge creeper which almost obliterated its support, a mature tree about the size of a mature sycamore. It was covered in blossom, which blanketed the tree in much the same manner as that of the Russian Vine does. It probably was a Thunbergia Grandiflora Fragrans, but my horticultural knowledge at that time was too limited to be sure.

My next move took me to the Cavalry Camp at Saigon. How I got there I cannot remember. It is unlikely that the Nips would waste their transport on us, so it is very probable that we had to walk to it. This was a purpose-built barracks for the French Cavalry in Indo-China, and very nice it was, compared to the bug infested hovels we had become used to. The housing was all brick built with dormitories above the living quarters, but for us there was no distinction. My sleeping place was where I also ate and played. Between the housing blocks were spacious lawns criss-crossed with connecting paths, lined with trees. The whole area had a feel of the colonial splendour one might have expected from the French. For some time we had been hearing so called ‘News’, the title all rumours came under. If one heard a particular piece of news from ‘a very good source’, it would soon be contradicted by the next piece to be believed. Nevertheless an excitement was building about the state of the war, and one day I was invited by a friend to listen to a radio. He swore that the war was as good as over and the news was being repeated very frequently. I was more than a little worried by the invitation. It was not possible to forget that three prisoners in Thailand who had been caught operating a radio had been beaten to death in front of the whole camp at Bampong. The radio had been built from odd scraps of wire and equipment purloined when working in the godowns. It was hidden inside an old concertina which was still playable, but decrepit enough to dissuade any Nip from coveting it. The power was taken from the mains electricity by means of the light socket. I was given an ear-piece to hold and through a lot of crackling I heard that General McArther was travelling in a white plane to Manilla. What that meant I hadn’t a clue, but I was assured by the others, who had been monitoring the news that it meant the war was as good as over. A change in the attitude of the Nips gave me cause for hope, and when we were issued with new clothing, the first we had had in three years, I was convinced that, if the war was not already ended, it was not far off. I was given a new pair of British tropical shorts designed to fold down to below the knee for protection against mosquito bites. We called them Bombay bloomers. Also I got a French Naval Jacket. The latter item of clothing was to involve me in some serious trouble a few days after receiving it.

Although very reluctantly, the Japanese admitted that the war was over, they nevertheless held on to control of the camp. No longer did they insist on being saluted, nor did they attempt to strike anyone, but our own Officers asked that we should not do anything to insult or humiliate them and cause trouble. The Nips still mounted the guard and kept their discipline, but their arrogance had gone, and they walked the camp with heads bowed avoiding eye contact with the prisoners. The excitement was intense. We didn’t know what was to happen next; even the Officers were in the dark. They were waiting for the top brass to sort things out and tell them what was happening. We had so many questions and no answers. That was until a plane flew low over the camp scattering leaflets addressed to us. It also dropped packets of Senior Service and Players cigarettes which were very much appreciated. Up till then we had smoked a coarse black native tobacco which, I think, the natives were glad to be rid of. Some idea of its quality may be assessed by the fact that it was known throughout the camps as Hag’s Bush. To smoke a Virginia tobacco was luxury beyond belief. We were warned by the leaflets not to eat a big meal. Instead we were to rest as much as we could and eat small snacks throughout the day. Nothing was said about the intake of alcohol, so some bright spark, from the group I was with, slipped out and bought a bottle of rum. It was labelled rum on the bottle but I was suspicious of its contents. So much so that I refused to do more than drink about a quarter of an inch in an enamel mug. ‘Plug’ Lodge, Dick Lloyd and I were going out to have a meal at a restaurant so they also were careful not to have too much. As it was the little I had tasted was enough to make me a little dizzy. ‘Spud’ Murphy had intended to come with us but he found an occupation more to his liking. At the main gate the Japanese guard sat, like in a class at school, in the open fronted guardroom with the Officer, dwarfed by his own sword, sitting in front. Now we were the ones to receive the salute, and as we passed by, the whole guard would leap to their feet and stand to attention until we had passed. ‘Spud’ was delighted with this arrangement and walked back and forth in front of the guard until the Nip Officer tired of jumping up and down, decided to call it a day. Whereupon ‘Spud’, whose knowledge of Jap swear words was unsurpassed only by the Japs themselves, laid into the Officer until he again started his Jack in the Box antics. ‘Just thought I’d pay the buggers back for the times they made me do it’ ‘Spud’ said later, and I sympathised with him.

We found our restaurant not far from the barracks and the fact that I was still feeling a little dizzy could not prevent me appreciating a mixed grill of gargantuan proportion, and that is what we had. It was a magnificent meal, we weren’t sure what some of the meat was, but it tasted good enough for a king. Pleasantly replete, we walked back to camp but when we entered our room we were faced by a scene of devastation. Our clothes, what little we had, and blankets plus chess pieces and mess tins, were all over the place. There was vomit on the floor and lying on the table, fast asleep and snoring loudly was one of our group. Not very happy with this we tipped the body off the table. He hit the floor with quite a thud and continued to snore. It seems that after we left the barracks, the others finished off the ‘rum’ with devastating results. A couple tried to have a fight but neither could stand up for long, and Jimmy Pearson entertained the camp by hitting a dustbin lid, like a bowl, round the camp with a piece of iron railing. Although it might have been entertaining as a spectacle I was very annoyed, but thankful I’d not been around during the chaos.

‘Plug’ Lodge and I had met a French couple when we first came to Saigon, where and how I can no longer remember, but we had been given an invitation to visit and have a drink with them when the war ended. They had what they called a flat above some shops near the docks, and we set out to find it. On the way we passed through a very pleasant park where a demonstration by the Annamese was taking place. They seemed very good natured, and as we moved through them, they grinned and slapped us on the back saying ‘England O.K.’. At the same time they were holding banners calling for the death of the French. They all appeared to be very happy and enjoying the occasion. We found the flat above the shops, which were empty of any goods. It was a big flat, with rooms leading from a wide central entrance hall. On ringing the bell we were welcomed like old friends and ushered into a living room, overlooking the road in front of the shops. They had two children, a boy and a girl, who, I would have thought, had not reached teenage. ‘Plug’ and I, after introductions, had been given a beer, but we had hardly started to drink it when we heard some gun fire. Then there was a sound like mortars. I couldn’t see anything through the window, so I opened it and stuck my head out to look along the road. As I did so, the brickwork at the side of the window spattered dust as it was hit by a bullet; I withdrew my head in double quick time. Then we heard the windows below breaking, followed a little later by hammering on the entrance door. ‘Plug’ and I thought that we might be able, as ex-prisoners and English, to convince whoever was there that we were alone. So the French family went into a bedroom and locked themselves in. We went towards the front door, but a couple of shots splintered through the door, and we flattened ourselves against the wall each side of the hall, scared stiff that more shots might be on their way. The door was being hit with something heavy to break it open, and, when it broke open, we were confronted with a crowd of natives, one of whom stuck a revolver in my stomach. I remember thinking that I was about to be killed after only two days of freedom. Fortunately for me, instead of pulling the trigger he pushed me to the stairs and kicked me down them. On the way down the natives were aiming blows at me despite my cry of ‘I’m an Englishman’. When I got to the bottom I was able to work my way under the stairway so that the mob could only come at me from the front. By using my feet as well as my hands I was able to even the odds a little. Only a little because they were armed with sticks, which a few used as spears, but I felt that I stood a chance of getting out of the situation in one piece. That was all I felt until I came to.

CHAPTER 7

How long I had been unconscious I had no idea, but it was long enough for the mob to put some handcuffs on me. My head was swimming and I was bemused. I must have been hit with a missile of something pretty solid, probably a chunk of wood. As I was prodded to my feet I became aware of ‘Plug’ being led away, with a rope around his neck, over the debris from the shops and smashed glass of the windows, then into the street. He was surrounded by six or seven Annamese who seemed to be giving him a rough time. However, I had my own problems. I was being punched, pushed, yelled at, and also propelled into the street. The street was a rather nice one, wide with trees each side and broad pavements. As I was noticed, by the natives, being pushed along in the middle of the street, they ran towards me to deliver a punch, a kick, or a dig with a cane. I was frightened, apprehensive, angry and helpless. Then I saw a group from my battalion strolling on the pavement. When I shouted to them they came over and remonstrated with my captors. Although they would not set me free they agreed to take me, accompanied by my friends, before their chief.

The demonstration had developed from what had seemed to be a happy and high spirited gathering into an un-nerving, very serious, and vicious war by the Annamese against the French. There was the rattle of machine guns and the thump of mortars, yet, strangely, the natives and ex-prisoners were ambling about as if nothing was happening. As we crossed over a crossroads which machine guns had been firing down, the firing stopped to let us by. The situation was so unreal I almost wondered if I was dreaming it all.

Eventually we reached a large building, just inside the entrance of what seemed to be a park, and were made to wait in the entrance hall. It had the aura of a municipal office, an impression strengthened by the sight of a large desk with filing cabinets nearby in the room we were taken. At the desk sat a man with a straggly black beard who began to speak in French, a language I should have learned at school. Getting nowhere with it he changed to English. ‘How do I know you are English? You were found in a French house and you are wearing a French Naval jacket’. By now I was out of the danger zone, I was surrounded with friends, and I had regained a little courage. So, having explained how I had come to be there, I demanded that he take off my handcuffs, in unmistakably strong English. He leaned back in his chair looking at us for, what seemed to me, a very long time. Then he said something to one of his men which resulted in a lot of arm waving and jabbering. Turning back to me he said ‘We cannot take off the handcuffs here, the Officer who put them on you has the key and he is still on duty, I will arrange for you to be taken somewhere they can be removed’. We were then waved away into the care of a gaunt looking character who took us back onto the street. Almost immediately, I was attacked by the onlookers who, seeing me in the handcuffs and wearing the confounded French Naval jacket, assumed I was one of their enemy. Someone had the sense to hide the ‘cuffs with a handkerchief and I had no more trouble until we reached our destination. It was the gaol.

The courtyard of the gaol was smeared with blood and there were some bodies, presumably French ones, which looked as if they might have had their throats cut. Our guide took us to a fat sweating individual, one of the gaol warders who picked from a shelf a large bunch of keys. Each one was tried on my cuffs without success. He then picked another bunch with exactly the same result. He was about halfway through the third one before those wicked handcuffs fell off me. The relief was immeasurable. They had been on me for only about three hours, but it felt like three days. We were taken back to the Rebels H.Q., presumably to report what our guide thought was a successful operation. The bearded gentleman, who I was told later, was a Mr. Ho Chi Min, was now very solicitous, and insisted that we should be taken back to the Cavalry Barracks with a guide, who would see that we came to no harm. The guide was about the same age as we were and he spoke very good English. On the way we quizzed him about the uprising, and he told us, with some passion, that the Annamese were oppressed by the French before the war. They were, he said, taxed when they planted tobacco, when they harvested it, and when they sold it, but the French paid no taxes at all when they grew tobacco. Now was the best time to fight, before the French could come back, and impose their will again on the Annamese. Then, as if to excuse the treatment I had received, he said ‘We have no fight with the British, after all we Annamese are a gentle race’. I was covered in cuts and bruises that had been inflicted by his so called gentle race, and I wondered what I would have been like if they hadn’t been quite so gentle.

Back in the Barracks I went to the sick bay to get the cuts treated, to stop them turning septic, and while I was there I was told that ‘Plug’ was in one of the beds suffering with severe concussion. No one knew how he had got that way and, when I asked if I could see him, I was asked to let him rest. My cuts and bruises were painted with the doctors’ stock in trade, mercurochrome, a red liquid which sealed the wounds but made me look like a Red Indian.

Walking back to my room I was surprised to meet, walking down the central path between the barrack blocks, the French family we had tried to protect. They seemed horrified by my appearance and I had to tell them what had happened to me since we last saw each other. They, it seemed, within minutes of going into the bedroom, had been rescued by a group of Dutch soldiers who had commandeered a lorry and toured the area picking up any French people they could find. Seeing this family, they had drawn the lorry under the window and helped them through it, and on to the lorry. They then drove them to the security of the barracks.

We were all getting restless and wondering if we would be left waiting very long before being taken home. Our Officers appeared to know nothing, despite their use of radio receivers and transmitters taken from the Japanese. Then out of the blue, in more ways than one, came a high ranking Royal Air Force Officer. He had the air of authority and, though I didn’t see it, I was told that he accepted the Japanese Commander’s sword away in a fairly brusque and insulting fashion. He walked about the camp giving cheering comments to all of us, ‘Just a little patience, Not much longer now, we’ll soon have you away, Don’t get despondent only a day or two and you will start moving’. Although we were desperately full of hope I doubt if more than one in five believed him.

Very close to the mess-room there were a number of concrete water containers which the Annamese used to wash the French Cavalrymen’s clothes. We knew them as Dhobie Ghats, a name that was borrowed from India. Each was fed from a tap and after we had eaten we would swill out our mess tins at this place. The Japanese also used this facility but imagine my surprise one morning when I saw in front of me a Jap I’d met once before. We had met at the Jean Eudell camp in Saigon and he had humiliated me when I was about to clean my mess tin. Although, after sampling the sadistic brutality of the Jap soldier for three years, and I had no love for any of the Japanese, I could not hurt one who had not hurt me. But this one had hurt me.

When I shouted at him he turned round, in much the same way that I must have done when he shouted at me. After a slight pause, recognition changed to a look of fear, and, when I slapped his face, this previously arrogant specimen from Japan began shaking with terror. I kept him there bowing and saluting to me in as identical a fashion as he had made me do to him. Then I made it clear that he should not use the Dhobie Ghat any more, he should use only the swill area, to which the Japs had relegated all the native servants. This was probably the unkindest cut of all because, to the Nipponese, losing face put them to the bottom of the pile, as it were. Afterwards I had very mixed feelings about what I had done. There was no euphoria, perhaps a little satisfaction, and a strong feeling of justice, but I doubt if I would have repeated the action.

At last the day came when all the sick, including those who had any limb amputated, were loaded on to a mixture of transport and taken away to the airport. The rest of us tried to relax and act normally, but I couldn’t keep my mind on anything. I tried playing chess but neither of us could concentrate. We were all wondering who would be in the next party to leave. When the transport returned the following morning and the names of the first batch of troops to leave were read out, my heart sank. I was full of anger at the injustice of the selection, by means of where one’s surname came in the letters of the alphabet. It was a system which never seemed to be applied if there was some revolting duty to be undertaken. Fortunately my anger with the injustice didn’t last long, because the transport returned a couple of hours later and I was included in the party to be taken to the aerodrome.

This was the first time that I had been in a plane and I was a little nervous. The plane was a Dacota which had, so I was told, a very good record of safety. It had a wide body with a frontal shape curved like the toe of a ski. Inside there was a bench along each side and we sat closely side by side, nervously grinning at the others on the opposite bench. The vibration before take-off rather surprised me, and as we raced towards the end of the runway I held my breath, scared that we should not lift off. When we did lift off, I was absolutely unaware that we had done so. The pilot seemed to be very young and confident, and his handling of the plane very competent; if anything it was a bit too cocky for my liking. Certainly he had little regard for some fishermen in the Gulf of Siam. In showing off his skill he flew very low over a fishing boat. The fishermen threw themselves into the sea just before it was blown over on to its side. He, along with some of the others, thought it was very amusing. We landed at Bangkok aerodrome and were allowed out to stretch our legs, while the engineers checked the engines and put in fuel. The reception area was a hell of a long way away and we had too little time to investigate it, which was a little disappointing. However, we were more anxious to move nearer home and we climbed back into the plane cheerfully. In the time we had been on the aerodrome there had been a build-up of cloud, Cumulonimbus, or cu’nim’ as the pilot called it. ‘It may cause a little turbulence as we get over the mountains’ he announced airily. The man was a prince of understatement. We were thrown about in that plane like the ping-pong balls at a bingo session. Even during the smooth periods our stomachs were occasionally thrown up into our throats as the plane dropped like a stone. After a time the pilot told us he would have to go higher and try to get above the turbulence. At first I felt rather cold and regretted the tropical gear I was wearing, but soon began to feel warm and comfortable. The pilot saw two or three of the blokes falling asleep and put the plane into a sharp stomach-turning descent. We had been, so he said, feeling the effects of a shortage of oxygen because of the altitude. I have to say that I found it a very pleasant feeling. Less pleasant was the fact that we had to return to Bangkok and wait until there was a change in the weather. The period between then and the next flight is a complete blank in my mind, whether we set off again the same day or whether we stayed until the next day I do not know. What I do know is that the trip was very rough and we didn’t reach Rangoon Airport.

Whether something had been broken on the plane, or whether we had run out of fuel, I never learned, but the pilot ditched us in a paddy field. We were made to sit hugging our knees facing the rear, with our backs against the knees of the chap behind. There was a hell of a crash as the undercarriage was torn away, and we then skittered over the paddy before coming to a rather violent stop in a heap of bodies. To say we were very shaken would be a gross understatement, but only one fellow was hurt with a broken ankle. We were two fields away from the airport runway.

We were all taken to the Alexander Hospital in Rangoon and given some garments they called pyjamas. These caused much merriment. The trousers had waistbands suitable for any sumo wrestler. One had to pull the waist forward with the left hand, then putting the right hand beneath the left arm, pull the band over to one’s right as the left hand pulled the surplus fabric to the left and tucked it in. I was having a stroll, thus attired, along a veranda that evening quietly enjoying a smoke, when an Australian voice said ‘Hallo Corp., don’t ya know me’, I was about to say ‘No I’m sorry I don’t’ when he rolled up his voluminous pyjama trousers and showed me his leg. I knew him; I had left him in hospital at Nong Pladuk having treated an appalling ulcer on his leg for a long time. He was anxious that I should see what it was like. He had a small sore left which he said was clearing up very quickly. The odds on us meeting again must have been tremendous and I got quite a kick out of seeing him again.

Walking through the wards I was a little surprised to see so few of the soldiers who had left on the earlier planes. They were the ones who had lost limbs as a result of the war or a gangrenous ulcer. We had heard the pilot of one of the planes complaining, over the radio, about the awful turbulence he was encountering, and doubting that the plane could take much more battering. At that time we were returning to Bangkok because we had met it also. It was later rumoured that those soldiers were all killed when their plane crashed in the mountains. After suffering for four years at the hands of the Japanese it was cruelly unjust if the rumour was true.

We were not allowed to walk into Rangoon city. There was some unrest there, we were told. Remembering the last spot of unrest I’d seen, I didn’t bother to argue. We kept to the grounds of the hospital which was totally in the control of the military, a fact that created a degree of friction between the N.C.O.s, with highly polished boots and immaculately blanco’d belts, and the ex-prisoners who were determined to avoid being sucked in to their orbit. To illustrate the point, we had, for three years, toiled in some of the worst malaria infested areas with no protection against the mosquito and now we felt that to use Bombay Bloomers was like shutting the stable door after the horse had gone. A sergeant major of the spit and polish brigade, on seeing a group of us ambling across his beloved parade ground without our Bombay bloomers let down, decided to give us a taste of his discipline. ‘You men’ he bellowed ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going? Come here! Why haven’t you let down your shorts?’ The replies rather shook him, they ranged from ‘Oh Sergeant Major you are a one’ to ‘Why don’t you bugger off you silly sod’. He waved his swagger stick and strode towards us, obviously with the aim of taking our names to report us for insubordination. His determination weakened when one of the group, a little angrier than the rest of us, walked towards him threatening to ram his stick up his backside if he didn’t clear off. He chose to clear off, which I thought was a sensible decision.

We all thought that we should be flying home, having been flown from Saigon to Rangoon, but we were loaded into buses and taken through the city to the docks. It was a bit like a Cooks Tour with the driver pointing out places of interest, but I can still remember the feeling I had of ‘For god’s sake, cut the cackle and let’s get home’. The ship into which we were herded was called the Chitral, and it seemed to be crewed almost entirely by lascars whose English was almost non-existent. The standard of food dished up to us was really first class and we were encouraged to eat what we could. There was no work to do, and as far as I remember, the only duties we were called upon to observe were, to keep our sleeping areas clean and tidy, and collect new issues of clothing. To relieve the boredom, aspiring comics were encouraged to perform for us, and there was plenty of talent displayed in the occasional theatrical show organised. That was one of the surprises I had, some of the turns were really first class and professional.

We sailed down the Mouth of the Irrawaddy into the Bay of Bengal, across to the island of Ceylon and into its port Colombo. The view as we entered the port was absolutely breath-taking. The sea was as blue as the sky, brightly coloured launches moving across the harbour trailed white streamers behind them, the coastline was shimmering with flags and streamers on the ships being loaded and unloaded and the sun seemed to be bouncing like tinsel off the waves. We were to be allowed to go ashore for the day and I was very excited at the prospect. Docking seemed to take an eternity, but eventually we scrambled down the gangways and made our way into the town. Here and there, amongst the open fronted shops, were the more sedate edifices of western banks, mercantile offices, etc., almost unnoticed behind the bustle of bicycles cars, rickshaws, and the natives. The shops were absorbing, being not just retailers but manufacturers also. There were tinsmiths, silversmiths, cobblers, saddlers, gunsmiths, all working in full view of the customers, many of whom chewed that hateful betel nut and spat out the red, blood like, spittle over the pavements. Rather battered taxis waited to take those of us who wished to have a look outside the town on a tour of the immediate countryside. Three of us elected to do so and had a glimpse of the good life the British colonial administrators enjoyed. They had a club house in the hills that must have cost a fortune to build. Surrounded with lawns and flowering trees it looked like the exclusive place it was. The vegetation around the whole of our tour was rich dark and luscious. Had I not been dying to get home, I could happily have stayed there for a very long time.

From Colombo we sailed across the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Aden, docking at Aden for a few hours. It was a bare empty sort of place, and I was glad when we moved on up the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Suez. Then up through the Suez Canal to Port Said and into the Mediterranean Sea. I had gone to sleep at Port Said and didn’t awake until we were well into the Med’. Then the sight that met me was almost unbelievable. There was not a ripple, apart from that caused by the passage of the ship, to be seen anywhere on the water. The surface heaved as one would expect from a sea of oil. It was quite uncanny.

We dropped anchor at Gibraltar for a few hours to enable some ship’s Officers to nip ashore in a launch. Why they went was not divulged to us, but we resented the ship being delayed. A few hours later, I think, there would have been many who wished the ship had been delayed for much longer. We had sailed into the Atlantic and up into the Bay of Biscay. No longer was the sea so smooth. Huge waves were smashing into the ship which was pitching and rolling in an alarming fashion. Even the Lascars were being sick in the gutters. Most of the others were trying to lie still in their bunks or heaving their stomachs up in the lavatories. Over the Tannoy, the Captain, with a perverted sense of humour, explained that things would get worse before they got better. When I was in my teens, I would feel sick when standing on a floating jetty or sitting in a rowing boat inside a harbour and when I left Liverpool three years earlier, I was not looking forward to the sea voyage at all. As things turned out the sea was never very rough and, as the time passed, I became less anxious about being sick. But now I felt marvellous. I stood, at the prow of the ship, leaning against the wind and getting drenched, with the spray shooting into the air each time the ship sliced through a large wave. The exhilaration was tremendous. Never before had I been so envied by so many of my friends, the majority of whom professed to be wishing they were dead before dashing to the ships rail.

Ever since our release the radio had, on a number of occasions, stressed the severe rationing in Britain, and we thought that all food was in short supply. Therefore, it seemed prudent to me to purchase as much tinned food from the ship’s general stores as possible. Having done so, I obtained another kitbag and filled it with tins, the majority of which were tins of sardines. There seemed to be a shortage of other tinned foods.

We docked at Southampton but before the ship had been secured we were waiting with our gear ready to get off. It was the 28th October 1945. I had been away for four years less two days. It seemed an eternity before I was able to struggle off the ship with my two kitbags, but when I did I was not free. There were questions to answer, medicals to undergo, teeth to be checked and eyes to be examined. My eyes were a source of excruciating delay. The optician who examined me was intrigued by the scarring of my retina by vitamin deficiency. Not only did he spend a lot of time shining his little lamp into my eyes, he invited every other optician in the district to do the same. At one time there must have been 7 or 8 waiting in a queue to see this phenomenon. Even after their interest was sated, I still had to wait. The protracted examination of my eyes had put me to the back of the queue waiting for travel warrants.

The only train I could find that was going anywhere near Birmingham was also going near everywhere else as well. Four years earlier I had travelled on slow trains but they were a little selective as to where they stopped. Not so this one! By the time I reached Birmingham there had been a few hours of darkness and there was no passenger train going to Stourbridge again that day. The guard giving me that information, on learning that I had been a Jap prisoner, put me, along with three others, into the guards van of a mail train which was going to Stourbridge Junction. I still had to get to Stourbridge Town. Luckily, the Motor as it was called, a single carriage shuttle was still operating, and I boarded it full of excitement at the prospect of being at home in a matter of minutes. Putting the tin laden kitbag over my shoulder and dragging the other beside me I left the Town Station and made my way towards home. After about four or five hundred yards I reached the bridge over the railway that I had to cross to get home. I was breathing very heavily with the effort and excitement and my heart was thumping away like a steam-hammer. I stopped, put the kit-bags down, and sat on them, waiting for my heart to settle down before I had a heart attack. After a few minutes a gentleman stopped by and asked if I was all right. ‘Yes’ I said ‘I’ve just been taking a rest’. ‘Let me give you a hand’ he said, catching hold of the kitbag with the tins and failing to lift it off the ground. I gave him the other kitbag to carry, and he found that heavy enough. I was supposed to be under nourished, weak and frail, but of the two of us I was a tower of strength. He very kindly walked with me to my home at the top of the hill before dropping the bag and wishing me well. The door was opened almost before I had finished knocking and I was confronted by a roomful of family, friends and neighbours.

They had been celebrating my homecoming long before I had got to Birmingham and silly grins abounded. My answer to their food shortage, the tins of sardines, had most of them holding their sides with laughter. Before leaving Saigon the Japanese gave each of us a postcard on which we could send a message home providing no mention was made of the war ending. I wrote mine on the 21st August 1945. In an attempt to let them know that I knew the war was over it read “Put faggots in oven to keep warm. Tell Dad to get the ‘L’ plates ready”. Later, when the guests had left, my mother put in front of me the meal I had facetiously asked to be kept warm for me whilst I was still in Saigon. It was a huge meal of home-made faggots and I began to get an idea of why they laughed at my sardines.

I have some documents to prove that for the next four months I was on repatriation leave, having been granted extensions of leave every four weeks. It is possible that my leave lasted much longer, but I cannot remember. During this time I learned to drive my father’s Morris 12 and with Fred, my brother, examined the mechanics of it in almost every way possible. It says a lot for the tolerance of my father that he not only permitted us to take much of it apart, but he willingly forked out the money when we told him that odd items needed replacing.

There were few new cars available to buy and second-hand ones fetched very good prices at the local €auctions, but they were always cheaper than those on offer at €the local garages. It was inevitable therefore that as soon €as I had a driving licence I should visit a car auction to find myself a vehicle. An auction was held on a patch of €waste land near to a carpet factory at Kidderminster, and €Fred and I looked over a number of cars, most of which would have been too dear for my pocket. However, we found a 1927 €bull nosed Morris, one with a dicky seat and real leather upholstery. I remember the price I paid for it, and it was well within my limit, though I was not very anxious to part with the £27, 10 shillings. I was very proud of my acquisition and greatly enjoyed showing it off especially to my little nieces who were intrigued by their ability to climb into the dicky from the cab itself. By no figment of imagination could it be classed as nippy, but its long stroke engine, once up to speed, kept it bowling along with no effort at all.

By this time my Father had bought a new car. It was an Austin Somerset, a smart shiny saloon, known throughout the family as the "Don’t touch". Unfortunately, compared with this, my €pride and joy was not very greatly loved by my mother. She insisted that it should not be parked outside her house, so after a brief honeymoon with it I returned it to the auction. Had I kept it over the years my assets would now be considerably more than they are.

I resumed my studies at the Royal College of Art in January 1946 having been fortunate in finding a place to live. It was not a palace and having been a victim of the bombing during the war could hardly be called habitable. A group of students had discovered it in Pembroke Road, Earls Court. It had no front €door, most of the windows had been blown out, the gas and €electricity services had been disconnected and the floors €were covered in broken glass and other detritus mixed with rubbish left by tramps who had used it to give them some €cover from the elements. When I arrived most of the hard work €had been done and the services had been reconnected, but I €was able to help in some of the glazing.

The group consisted of a sculptor, George Fullard., a fabric printer, Les Duxbury., a bookbinder, Erica Duxbury, his wife, an engraver, Andy Charlton, a sculptor, Ernie Adsetts, a painter whose name I have forgotten, and an actress, "Korky" Corcoron, and me. We had our own room or rooms and paid according to the square footage of them. My room was on the ground floor with tall windows looking out onto the garden, and a dumb-waiter down to the kitchen. Furniture at that €time was in short supply but I got hold of a table and chair and some boxes. Then on a mooch around Tottenham Road, in one of the shops selling war surplus items, I €found some units which put together made quite a respectable spring mattress. Some fabric and a handful of tacks helped to complete the furnishing and provide me with a useful bedsit and studio. €

During the time I had been a prisoner my brother had married Barbara Pugh who had a sister, Monica. I had met Monica very briefly before leaving England and I liked what I saw. She was now my Sister in Law and I was unsure what my approach should be. However, I need not have worried because we seemed to get along very well, but it took a full five years before she consented to throw in her lot with me. €

During this period as a student I was working mostly at my flat from early evening until late at night. With no interruptions or noise it was easier to concentrate than it was at College and as a result I managed to get quite a lot done. However, it was usual to report to the Professor fairly regularly for what was known as a criticism. Professor Tristrom, Professor Emeritus, was the one I had to see. I made a point of seeing him every month and every month I took with me the same glass vase to discuss. Every month I received the same criticism and thanks for seeing him. He was the perfect absent minded Professor with his mind only on his study of Indian Art for which he was highly respected.

At this time after the war, The Glass Department at the College consisted of one treadle operated engraving machine placed in a small room situated alongside the College Stained-Glass studio. This was housed in a temporary building, which we were led to understand had been erected at the end of the Crimea war. Being so close to the studio gave me the opportunity to try out my hand at building up a stained glass window. I thoroughly enjoyed this craft and I think that had I been a better artist I would have adopted it as my chief interest. However, I was surrounded by students who could draw better than me with their eyes shut, so I stuck to my own craft where my weakness would not be so evident. One of these students by the name of Partridge was absolutely brilliant and he produced an enormous quantity of work but he never found the time to attend a criticism. At his Final Diploma Show he asked the Professor for a testimonial and €despite the obviously high standard of his work on display he was refused with the words " I do not know you, this is the first time I have seen you, how can I give you a testimonial". The lack of a testimonial seemingly did him little harm, for the last time I heard of him he was the Art Director for the Readers Digest in London.

The method of making a stained glass window consisted of cutting out the shape of glass required and painting €details on it with oxides. The glass had then to be fired in a furnace to fix the details permanently. The pieces were then slid into a H section length of lead which was then €soldered together. Unfortunately for the students there was no furnace suitable at the College and the glass had to be €taken to a place in the East End for this part of the €programme. The Gloucester Road tube station was the nearest one to our studio and my method was to pack the glass very €carefully into a box to avoid getting the oxide rubbed off, and carry the box to the station very carefully in front of €me. After a few trips which had been negotiated without €mishap I was suddenly confronted by a portly looking gent of Jewish appearance wearing a black lace waistcoat over his €paunch who demanded to know what I had in the box. After €asking what the bloody hell had it got to do with him he flashed a card, which was clearly marked Metropolitan Police, and asked again what was in the box. My truthful answer "a stained glass window" brought the response. "Now don’t be bloody funny". I assured him that I was not being bloody funny and opened the box to show him and explain what all the little pieces of glass were. He was quite amused and apologized for holding me up and explained that they were trying to discover the method by which linen was being stolen from one of the local hospitals. €

The student Common Room was sited just a few yards €from my studio and often during the day I would be challenged €to a game of table tennis. I became quite good at it and as a €result spent more time playing than working at College. A €consequence of this was I spent more time working in my digs €often until the early hours and on one or two occasions €throughout the night. My work at College was almost entirely €spent in the V & A Museum making sketches of ornament or €objects which I felt could be used in the designing I was €engaged with at the time. It was a goldmine of material for €developing ideas and I made the most of it, especially when my mind was bereft of them. €

Lunch in the College Common Room was very good €value for money, and the cook managed to produce a good €variety of dishes, so I very rarely missed eating there. The €teatime or early evening meal was not so good and very often €consisted of bread and cheese with an apple, cake with bread €and butter, or toast and beans accompanied with tea or cocoa. €As a result this was a meal which could be passed up without €feeling deprived and then I would get something to eat from a €bakers near Earls Court, which was near my digs. This system €was very satisfactory regarding, avoiding the need to cook €food and, persuading me back to digs earlier than I would otherwise have managed. €

My digs in the winter of 1947 became less inviting than they had been earlier and I was obliged to both work and play at the College. The winter was very cold and a severe shortage of heating fuel made my digs almost uninhabitable. The electric fire had insufficient power to €colour the element, and every attempt to light the gas fire €ended with a little pop as the match was applied. Luckily the College heating was supplied by the Ministry of Works, which €was responsible for heating the adjoining V & A, Natural €History, and Science Museums. It was therefore, a godsend for €us frozen students, and during this long cold spell I worked €in my warm studio until very late at night, before trudging €along the Cromwell Road back to my cold room in Pembroke €Road. A number of students stayed and slept in the College or €Common Room rather than freeze in their digs. €

The coal and coke, which was used to fire the Museum heating boilers, was kept in a sort of yard just behind the Science Museum, and the huge piles of fuel were a temptation €to some of the students. Outside the entrance to the Common €Room I saw a small metal store in which cans of petrol had €been stored at one time. It was made of sheet steel and had a €sloping roof, a door at the front, one shelf and gauze €ventilators at each side. It must have stood there for some €time because it was rusty and very dirty. About 4 feet high, 2 feet across and about 18 inches deep, it made, when laid on its back, a suitable container for carrying coke. €

While Andy Charlton kept a look-out for the Museum guards, Ernest Adsetts helped me to carry the store and fill it with coke. We had to carry it for about a mile and half back to our digs, and, in an effort to avoid any awkward questions, we walked the back streets. Imagine our chagrin, when turning a corner, to be confronted by a policeman who demanded to know what we had in the box. Told it was coke he instructed us to put it down and open it up. With trembling knees we did as told and inwardly prayed. He stirred around the coke with his truncheon obviously looking for stolen property we may have hidden under the coke. It took some time because coke is not the easiest material to stir around and he had to scrape away at the surface like mad. It never seemed to enter his head that the stolen property was the coke itself, or if it did, he must have taken pity on a couple of frozen students. Apparently satisfied, he wished us €"good evening" and strode off. That night we had a nice warm room for the first time in weeks, and a good laugh for full measure. €

Before the war the College had a football team but those sorts of activity had lapsed and the new students were of a very different attitude from those before the war. Most of the students after the war were six years older than the previous ones and were intent on obtaining their degree as soon as possible. Because of this it was some time before anyone thought of raising a team, and challenging other London Colleges to a game. I was dragged into a group of ex-service characters to form a committee to raise money to provide football strip, money to pay for transport, and €refreshments for visiting teams. As the College sports €facilities were at Colliers Wood it was essential we could €raise enough cash to pay the rail fare for our team. The Registrar, a Mr. Sandilands, was approached with our begging-bowl and he generously responded with enough cash to provide two sets of strip. Then we organized a Ball in the Common €Room sending invitations to as many Colleges as we could. I offered to run the bar and help in the decoration of the €hall. To hide the unsightly ceiling, we managed to borrow from an army unit, which was stationed in the grounds of €Imperial College, a huge quantity of camouflage netting. The €walls were hidden behind large sheets of newsprint upon which €the whole College football team was depicted in huge cartoons. They were drawn by Jimmy Paterson, a very talented artist and comic who became Principal of Bideford School of Art. €

I managed to get, on a sale or return basis from an off-licence, a large quantity and variety of booze which I stacked on and under some dining tables, putting more tables around to form a barrier, and from which to serve the drinks. €The Ball was due to start at 8pm and for the first hour or so had drawn in very few customers. Had it stayed like that we might have had difficulty in covering the expenses but it €started filling up and after 10pm when the pubs closed there €was an avalanche of students. The entrance was like a rugby scrum with many of the visitors trying very hard to get in without paying. I don’t think many managed it. A high percentage of them were already sozzled and it would have been kind to have refused them anymore drink when they staggered to the bar. However the object of the exercise was €to make money and kindness was a secondary consideration. So, when they ordered a cherry brandy they were given a very small quantity of port and charged for the brandy. They were shockingly overcharged if they were drunk and only partly overcharged if they weren’t. Despite being ripped off in this fashion everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and our Ball was the talk of the town for some time afterwards. A common question was ‘When is the next dance being organized’, €and I’m sure that it was not asked so as to avoid being around at that time.

The gate money was considerably more than we had dared to hope for, the exact sum I cannot recall, but I do remember that the profit from the bar was over £40, which was a very tidy sum in 1947. We were able to cover all the expenses of the Football Club during my time as a student. I shall never forget the first match in which I played. Our opponents were the Royal College of Mines and the game had hardly begun when I was a little too late running down the right wing to receive a pass from the centre. Their outside left got there first and belted that ball as hard as he could. Unluckily my face was in the way and thereafter for€the rest of the match I was a no more than a spectator on the pitch. €

Another pleasant memory of that year is that €of the College Rag. A lot of the students had got themselves togged up in Victorian clothes, and had obtained an old €carriage, minus the horse. False beards and moustaches abounded under the bowlers and toppers and the odd crinoline which seemed to be dotted here and there. The carriage was propelled and dragged along manually, two ropes being attached to the shafts to allow more students to take the €strain. The cavalcade set off down Queens Gate and along the Cromwell Road to South Kensington Tube Station. Here it blocked the roads to such an extent that traffic was brought to a halt, much to the annoyance of the drivers, and a lone Bobby who tried very hard to control the situation. However, when he realized that things were beyond his control, he called up reinforcements, consisting of three cars with about 10 or 11 policemen, who turned out and covered the approach roads. Their aim was to prevent the cavalcade repeating any manoeuvre and, by so doing, freeing the traffic from the jam. €This they managed to do, but not without a few lost tempers, and very heavy threats to throw the lot of us in the cooler.

The Final Examination for me was held in May 1947. €All the Design students had to display their work, within allotted spaces provided in the Indian Galleries, Queens Gate. These were glass roofed exhibition areas, superb for €displaying art work. Unfortunately, May that year was a real scorcher and, even with the roof lights fully open, the greenhouse effect couldn’t be avoided. We toiled with our shirts soaked with perspiration, trying like mad to avoid staining the paper work as the sweat ran down our arms while we were trying to pin it up in the display. Nevertheless, most of us managed to complete the work before the time of judgement. The judging panel was made up of the Principal, Robin Darwin, who incidentally was the grandson of Sir Charles Darwin, of ‘The Origin of the Species’ fame, and the College Professors. This impressive group swept into the Galleries as we were being swept out. €

It was now a case of waiting for the posting of the results, and as this was not expected for a few days most of the Final Year students went on the spree. I can’t remember what I did, but I expect I would have gone home to Stourbridge to see Monica. When the results were published I was delighted to find myself top of the Design School List.

Convocation Day was a lovely summer’s day, sunny but not too hot. My parents came to see me receive my degree and although I felt a little ridiculous wearing a cap and gown with hood, the pleasure on both their faces made the exercise well worth it. They had, I think, despaired of ever seeing me achieve something they thought worthwhile. While the official photographs were being taken their faces were a picture, smiles from ear to ear. I was enormously relieved that I hadn’t let them down. I was also wondering what was likely to happen next.

Then out of the blue the Principal informed me that I had been awarded the ‘ Designer of the Year Award’ by ‘The Federation of British Industries’. This was to be for the purpose of travel to, and in, Scandinavia to investigate glass designing there. It took some believing that this was happening to me, but letters from Sir Charles Tennyson, and Dr. B. J. A. Bard., President and Secretary respectively of the F.B.I., proved to me I was not dreaming it. €

I set out for Sweden on the 12th December, 1947, and boarded the Swedish Line ship, the Britannica I think its name was, at Tilbury. We were pulled into the middle of the channel by a tug and I stood at the rail watching the lights of Tilbury getting smaller and dimmer, thinking to myself that I was not good enough a swimmer to make the shore should the need arise. The thought was probably generated by my awareness of a large unlit ship coming towards us from a tangent. It seemed to me that it was bound to collide with us unless there was a change of direction, but I thought that, as none of the crew were panicking, all must be well. Letting my attention wander elsewhere, because of my belief that these mariners must know what they were doing, could have been my undoing. When I turned back to look at this dark hulk again I found it still bearing down on us, and hurriedly moved away to the other side off the ship. Within a few seconds there was a mighty crash which rolled the ships apart, only to crash again as they rolled back. The hand rail upon which I had been leaning was smashed into firewood, and then all hell was let loose. Bells, sirens, hooters and searchlights were all operating in no time at all. A pilot boat tore towards us from the port with a diver aboard. Arriving at our side he examined the damage below the water line and presumably gave the thumbs up for the ship to make the journey, because less than an hour later we were on our way. I was travelling steerage and vividly remember my fear that the damaged plates might give way under the pounding a rather wild sea was giving them. €

It was a great relief to tie up at Gotebury in the early morning of the 12th December in bright but thin sunshine. The dock was teeming with reporters trying to get €in early with a story of the accident. Waiting also was the Rektor, Ake Huldt of the Slojdforeningen Skola, to take me to the School and introduce me to the students who were to look after me during my stay. €

They didn’t waste any time in beginning to take charge of me and that very night I was taken into the city to see a much admired custom of the Swedes. It was the Lucia candlelight procession. To me it seemed like a carnival queen procession with the queen wearing a crown of lighted candles and the floats trying to outdo each other with the number of candles they could keep alight. Crowds lined the route and everyone seemed to be happy and friendly €

When I first arrived, the School of Art was a hive of activity, with the students busily making toys and Xmas knick-knacks. One of the latter productions intrigued me very €much. It consisted of a propeller, made of brass foil, balanced on a sharp point, and with wires of various lengths hanging from the tips of each of the blades. On the end of the wires was a small sphere, which, on the rotating propeller, touched a tiny bell, of which there was one to each wire. Lighting a small candle below the propeller caused it to rotate, and the spheres to hit the bells. The resultant tinkling was delightful. €

The School was opened to the public a few days before Xmas. People eagerly pushed through the doors in order to buy all the work of the students. Within an hour everything was sold. I couldn’t help comparing the attitude of the Swedish authorities with that of the English, who would have thrown up their hands in horror at the thought of a student making any money on their premises. The Swedes, very sensibly in my view, thought about the percentage of the sales they took, to help finance purchase of the materials for the use by the students. €

One of my first impressions of Sweden was that of an excessive emphasis on cleanliness. It was not an accurate one. The impression was made by the custom of using white paper, in place of tablecloths, upon the tables in every restaurant. It meant that after each customer had finished a meal the table covering could be changed at little cost to the restaurant. In England paper was not in such abundant supply, in fact almost everything was still subject to rationing, whereas Sweden had avoided being drawn into active participation in the war and was not so short of food and materials. I still remember the surprise I felt on seeing both cheese and milk freely available.

I had only used a hat when made to do so by the army. It was a relief to discard it, but the Swedes were puzzled by my reluctance to put one on my head. They never failed to tell me that I would suffer with madness through having my brain frozen. Whether I did or not, I cannot tell, but I did see many Swedes acting in a very crazy manner. At the time Sweden had very severe rationing of alcohol. It could only be purchased once a month from state distribution shops. The €quantity per citizen was equivalent to a bottle of whisky, or thereabouts. I recall getting a bottle of Benedictine with my ration ticket. The only other way of getting a drink of alcohol was to order a meal in a restaurant which would entitle one to fifteen millilitres of wine. It was not possible to get a drink by ordering just a biscuit; the meal had to be a full course one. The cost of a meal rather limited the intake of alcohol for all but the incredibly rich. The day of the ration distribution I saw a great number of Swedes lying in drunken stupors all over the place, it seemed that they were not capable of showing any restraint as soon as a drink passed their lips. Numbers of ambulances toured the city picking them up. They might otherwise have frozen to death. €

The Swedes were a very polite people in so far as a daily greeting or thanks were involved. A greeting was always accompanied with a click of the heels and a slight bow. An evening out, with a friend, at a party, or just a social evening, was always followed up, the next day, with a bunch €of flowers to the host with a note saying thank you for yesterday. However, the politeness took a hell of a tumble at every bus or tram stop. Instead of the orderly queue one would have expected in England, a scrum developed and the devil take the hindmost with ladies elbowed out of the way without apology or concern. €

The students at the Slojdforeningen were very anxious to practice their English, and it became almost impossible for me to pick up any Swedish. If I asked for €anything in Swedish, by using a phrase book, the answer €always came back in English. I had to ask, deliberately, what €the Swedish was. Despite this problem, I did manage to get €some of the students to coach me in the pronunciation of some €words, and after some time, I felt confident enough to try €out my Swedish in shops and restaurants, etc. This usually ended in the use of elaborate sign language and putting up €with the wrong dish from the one I had intended to order. €However, with time, the students assured me that I was €pronouncing the words very well, and certainly I was not €having the embarrassing confrontations in the coffee shops €that I had previously suffered. Although my vocabulary was very limited, my confidence started to grow in leaps and €bounds. It was so good that, on one occasion, when I had lost my bearings, having been aimlessly walking about the city for a long time, I very confidently approached a gentleman and €said " Forlat me, Vill ne visa me vagen till Vasa Gatam", i.e. €’Excuse me, would you show me the way to Vasa street?’. The Swede smiled and in faultless Oxford English said "Certainly old chap, if you take the first turning on the right and then . . . ‘, etc., etc.,. I hardly knew whether to thank him or kick his shins. €

Rektor Ake Huldt was very kind to me and took endless€trouble to arrange visits to museums and glassworks for me. One of the visits was to Kosta where Ernest Adsetts, my old college friend who helped me carry a load of stolen coke back to our digs in Pembroke Road, Earls Court, during the bitterly cold winter of 1947, was employed as a glass designer. He invited me to his home and his Swedish wife Stina. As we drove over frozen earth roads through forests of Spruce, I lamented the lack of variety such as one finds in England. A more boring landscape it would be difficult to find, and I was pleased when we arrived at his home. His house was a wooden construction with windows which were double glazed and two deep, with white crystals, probably moisture absorbing, resting in the spaces between. His wife, Stina, welcomed me effusively and kissed Ernest as if he had been away for months instead of that morning. €

After leaving Ernest and Stina, I, in turn, visited the following glass works:

– Kosta, where the Director, Herr Rosen €entertained me,

– Strombergshyttan, where the Director, Herr Stromberg was a Jack of all Trades, Director, Artist, Buyer, Sales Manager, etc.,

– Orrefors, where I was met by the Managing Director, Herr Beyer, and was introduced to a huge team of famous artists and designers. Herr Bayer’s salesman looked after me for an hour or so in the evening, and I remember him as a very pleasant fellow who made very good coffee, but who had a vehemently anti-socialist attitude. After lunch with Mr. Beyer and his family the following day, I caught the train to the – €

– Gullaskrufts factory where I met the M.D., Herr Stanberg, who, speaking no English, must have been as frustrated as I was trying to communicate.

Then I went back to Orrefors where I met Edward Hald, who was very proud of his Royal Designer for Industry Certificate from the Royal Society for Art, and who insisted I had a sherry with him while he found it for me to see. It was at Orrefors that evening that I was introduced to an old custom, which I hope has now died out. I had been taken to a film show in the village hall. It was something of a special treat for the children of the village and the place was packed. The temperature in the hall changed from very cold to very hot in a very short time, and as it did so the stench of unwashed bodies became choking. My host realizing that I was very aware of the intensity of the odour explained that many parents, at the start of winter, covered the €children in fat, sewed them into their underclothes and that was how they stayed until spring. No wonder that they stank. €

On the 23rd December at the unholy hour of 7.30am, I caught the train which was to take me to the town of Emmaboda, which is situated in the south of the country and is convenient for visiting the factories and the glass museum at Vaxya. The train was referred to as an express, but that was the only description which might have endowed it with a touch of glamour. The seats were wooden, the passengers seemed to have brought all their pets and chickens with them, and when some left at a station, they were quickly replaced by others holding similar livestock. I had caught the train at 7.3O am and arrived at my destination at 1.3Opm. Six hours on the wooden seats made me very appreciative of the taxi which met me for the final journey to my hotel. It was really a cross between a boarding house and hotel and was situated way out in the country. The daughter of the owner, luckily for me, spoke very good English and enjoyed herself instructing me in the correct manner of eating Swedish food and the composition of some of the dishes, which were unusual to an English palate. The country around was fairly flat and covered with conifers and lakes. The latter were, at that time, just sheets of ice which were occasionally used by trucks as shortcuts. I found it exciting to walk across a lake but it €as an excitement which soon lost its appeal and I preferred to clamber through the forest instead. Whilst in this area I found a number of visits had been arranged for me. I stayed at Kosta for a couple of days with the Director, then visits to the Glass Institute and the Museum at Vaxja, a small factory at Strombershytan, before returning to Gothenburg. €

On March 2nd I took the Gote Express to Stockholm arriving shortly after midday. I was met by one of €the Konstfackskolan students, Miss Gunnilla Lagerbielke who fixed a room for me at the Hotel Regent before taking me along to meet the Principal Dr Ake Stavenow. After a short interview I was taken for a very nice meal by Gunnilla, the School footing the bill. I met Dr Ake Stavenow again the following day and he introduced me to Miss Lillimore€Mannerheim who also took me out to lunch, once again the School paying the bill. Lillamor Mannerheim was the granddaughter of a Finnish general. General Mannerheim achieved fame during Finland’s war with Russia when he set up the Finnish defences known as the Mannerheim Line. She was a very tough looking character with the broad facial features one often associates with a Slav. However she was one of the kindest people it has been my privilege to know. She took me under her wing, as it were, introducing me to the other students, showing me the best restaurants, walking round the city with me and pointing out the places of interest. She also took me to her home, well outside the city, at a place called Junkers. Her father, Baron Mannerheim, had settled there after being exiled from Finland when the Russians invaded the country. It was there that I met her brother, Carl, a very pleasant young man who was anxious to visit England. In fact, he came to England and stayed with my parents who derived a lot of pleasure taking him around the places of interest. I remember how fascinated he was with the houses, each being a separate small box with its own garden, unlike the blocks of centrally heated apartments with which he was accustomed; he thought our British houses were wonderful. €

Stockholm was a fascinating city. It had a well-preserved old city, surrounded by the new one. Part was on a high level and was reached by lift, the Katarina Hissen, a wonderful structure which stood out from the cliff-like face for all to see operating. The streets in the old city were so €narrow that one felt able to touch both sides at the same €time, while the shadows cast by the buildings onto the cobbled pavements created a strong sense of the past. All in all, Stockholm was a tourists paradise with its small islands, each with its own museum, at least that was what it seemed like to me at the time.

CHAPTER 8

Many of the students of the Slojdforeningen Skola had arranged a holiday in the north of the country at a place called Llungdalen where I was told there was excellent skiing. Knowing that I would be on my own during the holiday, they invited me to join them, brushing aside my protestations that I had never worn a ski shoe and would be a liability for them. So, on the 8th April we took the 9 pm train to the North. I cannot remember the time we arrived on the following day Saturday but I will never forget the bus ride from the station. It took four and a half hours of slithering about over cart tracks covered in snow and ice to reach our pensionate. A meal had been prepared for us, and very nice it was, but we were all extremely tired. Most of us chucked our luggage down, lay down beside it and slept until 6 pm when dinner was served. The building we were in was wooden throughout and the men slept in one room, the girls in another. The bunks were arranged around the walls of the room and a large stove stood in the middle. This was an ingenious affair. It consisted of a steel fire box of generous proportions with four steel tube flues leading to a slightly smaller steel box above, repeating the pattern to three more boxes before ending at the chimney to the outside. A few logs in the firebox heated the whole of the construction, a fact we all greatly appreciated. The bunks themselves were not so blessed. This was Lapland country, and the Laps, for whom the bunks had been designed, are noted for their small stature. How small became evident when we were obliged to sleep with our feet poking out of the bed for a foot or so.

After dinner which took place at 6 o’clock we all moved to a large spare room which had an open log fire in the corner. Here I was introduced to Swedish style dancing which took place to the sound of very badly scratched gramophone records. The girls had the strength of Amasons and tossed me around as if I was a feather pillow. In a very short time I was thoroughly winded, soaked in perspiration and ready for sleep. It was then I discovered how small my bunk was.

The following morning I tried skiing for the first time on the gentle slopes around the house. It was a pleasant surprise to find it easier than ice skating, even if the skis did do what they were not supposed to do, eventually dumping me in the snow and twisting my knee and ankle. However, I was still able that night to enjoy fascinating views over the Fjell (mountain) in beautiful clear moonlight before turning in.

The next two days I spent inside the house because my knee was painful. It was just coincidental that the house was nice and warm, the weather was very dull with frequent snowfalls, the food was simply delicious and I happened to have a very interesting book to read.

After a snowfall of about 15cms during the night I felt the conditions were just about right for another attempt at skiing and I enjoyed a fairly long trek with a group of students who were out for the day. As I had lent my thermos and brandy flask to someone I felt it prudent not to stay with the group for the whole day so I returned for lunch. For only the second effort at the sport I felt I had done very well and looked forward to the following day to polish it up.

I joined the main group aiming for the top of the fjell and when we reached it I was very pleased with myself even though I felt extremely tired. The sun was strong and warm so it seemed ideal, when they settled themselves down to drink and eat their sandwiches, to snatch a photograph of the group. Accordingly I found a place to put the camera and set the timing mechanism so I could include myself in the picture. After making sure that everyone was in focus I pressed the release and rushed back to sit by them. Unfortunately I sat down, much to everyone’s amusement, on some lichen which camouflaged the puddle on which it was floating. The resulting snap presented me with my arms taking my weight and a look of great surprise on my face. The sun was warm but that water was as cold as it possibly could be.

The journey back was wonderfully exhilarating despite a few upsets on the way down. Part of the route took us through a wood that seemed to have been terraced at one time, because frequently ones skis would have the toe on one mound and the heel on another before vibrating onto the next one. Then I unwittingly flew through the air for what seemed a long way when I shot over a bank of snow which I failed to notice, the sun making it difficult to see. My landing was not all it should have been, but much to my surprise and everyone else’s, I didn’t fall.

Having had the evening meal I was shoved, with others, onto a horse drawn sledge carrying a blazing torch at each corner. Some of the students also carried torches, and the reflections on the snow and ice looked wonderful. We were pulled around the tracks to the Village Hall where a dance was taking place. It could not have been a very striking affair for I have no memory of what I did there.

The snow the next day was very fast and ice had set on its surface. A trek through the woods was nerve racking as the snow made it difficult to turn and, on more than one occasion, I was obliged to sit on my skis or wrap myself round the trunk of a tree. Luckily I suffered no damage and was able to join the main party on an extended trip the following day. The experts with us blazed the trail and we followed their track in single file; at least that was the intention. Unfortunately the sun was brilliant, making it difficult to see the undulations in the snow, and we suddenly dropped about 2OO feet down a slope which was almost sheer. I fell at the bottom but suffered no damage. Others were not so lucky; two of them broke a ski, one twisted his leg, and one of the girls learned when she visited the doctor that she had broken a bone in her wrist.

That evening a masquerade had been organized which was good fun, but I remember how uncomfortable I was after a time. My artificial beard had been stuck on with ‘Klister’ which was a proprietary preparation for treating the surface of skis, no other adhesive being available. As it dried it pulled my skin so viciously I had to rush off to the bathroom and soak it off before it did me a permanent injury.

I was feeling in need of a rest the next morning so I stayed behind with a couple of the students, when the others set out. Of the two who stayed with me, one was the girl with the fractured wrist, and the other was a boy who claimed to be suffering with a severe cold. Mid way through the morning he decided to climb the hill near our house and bullied me to join him, promising that he would not take any risks if I agreed to do so. Walking sideways up a steep hill is not easy at any time but with skis it is a test of stamina. This is what we did, and having reached the top I thought we should descend along the gentle slopes to the side. However, he chided me for being timid and set off straight down the hill. I was undecided what to do when fate took a hand, I started to slip and despite sitting on the skis I continued to do so. There was nothing for it but to pray and let go. The acceleration was breath-taking and I was anticipating a very untidy pile up at the bottom, but I managed to stay upright even if it was somewhat unsteadily. My cup was full to overflowing when I found my companion ruefully picking himself up after an untidy pile up, the like of which I had been anticipating for myself.

After a couple of days taking things easily with an occasional practice session on the skis, it was time to leave. The experience had been one I never expected to have had, and I felt grateful to the students for making it possible. We packed and boarded the bus to the railway station at 3 pm. The sun was bright, strong, and very hot but it did not prevent a woman complaining about having the bus windows open. A barrage of Swedish swears words emanating from the student body resulted in the windows remaining open. On the train I had a sleeper, of which I took advantage almost immediately, but I must have been excited still, because I was unable to sleep. We arrived back in Stockholm at 9am.

From now on my attention was focussed on arrangements for the visit of Monica who was to be my future wife. I wanted to get as much sightseeing into her programme as was possible in her limited vacation time. As I was in Stockholm I enlisted the help of George Thomas who was studying at the Slojdforeningen Skola in Gothenberg. He met Monica at the boat and put her on the sleeper for Stockholm.

George, whose father was of Dutch ancestry and whose mother was Javanese, had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Thailand. Although he was very good looking, the darkness of his skin, which was not as dark as that of the normal Javanese, set him apart from the Swedes, and subjected him to some racial discrimination. He had learnt his English from the Scots, Welsh, Aussies, Americans and the English prisoners working on the railway through the jungle. His use of swear words was fully representative of all these nationalities and I prayed that he would not exercise them in front of Monica, for he had no inhibitions in doing so when I had been with him. In fact he seemed to take a delight in using them at the top of his voice in restaurants, shops and public transport whenever he was talking to me. I pretended he was nothing to do with me. Fortunately when Monica arrived she said he had been the perfect gentleman and she could not recall a single oath from him.

A day or two after returning from the skiing holiday I decided, somewhat optimistically, to investigate the possibility and ways and means of getting married in Sweden. I had got on good terms with the consul who had the job of dishing out instalments of my scholarship. Although I cannot recall exactly what he said I do remember that it would have not been profitable to pursue the idea. A visit to the English Church was interesting but it only endorsed the advice of the Consul. In the course of chatting with the Consul I happened to mention that the camera I had brought with me from home was one with continental fittings and I wondered if the customs would, on my going home, make me pay duty on it as I had no certificate of duty being paid. “There’s just that chance" he said. Then he suggested that I make a declaration which he would have documented for me to produce to the English customs. This I did and was asked to call back at the consulate at the weekend for a coffee. The coffee changed itself into an alcoholic drink when I got there and he and I enjoyed that and a lengthy chat about glass. Before I left he produced my declaration. It was a most impressive document with a great red wax seal of His Imperial Majesty’s Consulate. "Show them that" he said "it might do the trick". It looked like the sort of missive one ignored at ones peril, and I carried it back to my digs with as much care as I would have accorded to the Crown Jewels, putting it carefully away in anticipation of its future use.

I had been making arrangements to ensure that most of the travelling Monica and I would do, would be at night so the hours of daylight might be spent on sightseeing. This meant using sleepers on trains and ferries in order to see the sights without falling asleep during daylight. A note in my diary tells me that I ordered the rail and ferry tickets to Visby in Gotland on the 5th May for collection on the 19th. The Stadshotellet in Visby I booked for only the one night of May 2Oth. When Monica arrived at Stockholm we spent a few days exploring its places of interest. The museum of Skansen was particularly interesting as it was a collection of the housing throughout Swedish history. Each house was used in the manner of its time, with historical clothing, implements, and cooking, etc., all in operation. We viewed the palace in the park of Djurgarden, the ruins of Haga, rode on the Katerina Hissen, and made a point of eating at the Restaurant Pagod in Kungsgatan which, from its roof-terrace, one could look over the whole of the city. We had also, in the manner of most tourists, made a point of taking each other’s photographs in front of the Opera House, Concert Hall, House of Parliament, Royal Palace, and various statues, etc.. An eating place of particular interest which had been recommended to me by my fellow students was called the Gullden Fjadern. To reach the tables one had to walk down flights of wooden stairways to what might be described as a crypt. The furniture had a churchlike character to add to the atmosphere. It was my intention to introduce Monica to a real Smorgasbord, a type of hors d’oeuvres, which is a speciality of the Swedes but it was the first time I had ordered one in a high class restaurant. We had been given a large table but although I had some idea what to expect, I was astonished at the array of food, each in its own dish, which eventually covered the whole table. Even so there was very little that Monica fancied, the raw fish, mixture of sauces and decorated vegetables was not to her taste. However, I was not so inhibited and, intent on getting my money’s worth, enjoyed much of that displayed before me.

We took the night ferry to Gotland on the 20th May. It was called the Island of Roses and we expected, when we embarked at Visby, to see the place one mass of blossom and sweet with its perfume. It was not and we assumed correctly that it was too early in the season to enjoy these pleasures. After registering at the hotel we set off to look around Visby which is situated almost midway on the western side of the island. Almost everywhere the power and wealth of the early Vikings had left its mark. This port which we were told had been known as the Jewel of the North was now just a pretty and interesting tourists’ paradise enclosed within a defensive wall of impressive proportions along which, at almost regular intervals, stood well preserved forts. The streets were narrow and peppered with the ruins of large impressive churches. Beautiful houses and cottages stood behind walls and arches of stone with masses of flowers, which obviously matured before the roses, adorning them. We seemed to have almost too much to photograph.

The following day we decided to have a look at the beach. A couple of folks were sitting on a bench seat looking at the sea but apart from them we were totally alone. It was not altogether surprising, the wind was quite cold and the beach itself was quite unlike those at home to which we were accustomed. It seemed to be made of mud which was produced almost entirely with chalk, ie, white mud, and scattered in it were a few huge boulders of rock. That day we also discovered on the island a maze which may have been built with turves or cut out of the meadow centuries before. After walking the puzzle we climbed an overlooking hill and rested in warm sunshine before taking a photograph of it. That evening of the 22nd May saw us on the ferry and on our way to the train which would take us back to Stockholm. Using the sleepers made it possible for us to enjoy the whole of Monday the 23rd exploring more of Stockholm until it was time to take the train for Gothenburg.

We were joined in Gothenburg by George Thomas who had elected himself as our guide for the rest of the holiday. He seemed to know the city like the back of his hand and he really took us on a tour which lasted until the following Saturday when we embarked to return home. He encouraged us to do and see things we might otherwise not have done. For example we took a motor launch trip around the canals and the docks. The launch might more accurately be called a barge for it held, at a rough estimate, about 65 seats. Throughout the trip a running commentary on the places of interest and other things to note were shouted through a megaphone by a guide at the rear of the barge. Unfortunately it was all in Swedish but because George interpreted most of it for us we missed very little. He also took us to the top of a tower which had a walk around balcony in order we should see over the port and the wind was almost enough to blow us away. I have a vague memory that it belonged to the maritime museum which was a very impressive piece of architecture.

George came with us on the Saturday morning to see us off on the boat and I still have the picture in my mind of him waving to us as we pulled away from the dockside getting smaller and smaller. Although we were happy to be returning home I felt a little sad at leaving such a good friend behind. The trip home was notable for the calmness of the North Sea and the completely cloudless sky. Even Monica who was likely to feel sick before the boat left the dockside was able to walk around the deck in comfort. Nevertheless she played safe and rested in a deck chair for most of the sailing.

As expected the Customs Officer demanded to know if I had anything to declare and I told him that I had a bottle of Cointreau. He must have thought I had a shifty look about me because he made me open up my suitcase. My camera lay in full view and after a brief examination he asked me for the duty certificate. I offered him the Declaration with the seal of the British Consulate. He read it, put it down, looked at the camera, picked it up again, read it again scratching his head the while. He then took it with him to two more Officers who also read it with worried looks on their faces and seemed to be discussing it at length. The first Officer then came back to me and giving me the camera, told me, more or less, to clear off.

Back at home were a couple of letters waiting for me each offering me a job. The first one opened was from the Glass Manufacturers Federation in Portland Place suggesting that I may like to join their Exhibition team, and the second one was from the Principal of the Royal College of Art, Robin Darwin,. He offered me the post of Tutor in the Department of Industrial Glass. Although the R.C.A. job was for only two days per week the salary was as much as I would have expected for a full week. So I didn’t keep him waiting for my answer. It would enable me to do anything I wanted in the way of other part-time work, and I would only be living away from home for two nights each week. Normally the cost and difficulty in getting reasonable digs for one or two nights a week would have made me think twice, but my old College friends were still living in our old digs and were willing to put me up again. There were a few months before I was to start my job and I was asked by Mr. Will’ Stuart to work as the designer for Stuart Crystal. He seemed to spend most of his time taking photographs of the glass for publicity but he nevertheless took a keen interest in what I was doing. My contribution didn’t amount to much but he seemed very pleased with it, and it is a fact that it was still being marketed many years later. In January 1948 there was much rejoicing in the Stanier household when we learned that father had been honoured by being appointed " an Ordinary Member of the Civil Division of Our Most Excellent Order of the British Empire " i.e. he was given the M.B.E.. We all basked in his reflected glory and were very happy for him. He tended to play it down, but there was no mistaking that he was really pleased by it. After all he came from a very working class family with a father who could not write his name even by the time he died at the age of 84. He also had left school at the age of 11 to begin work as an errand boy. So it was quite an achievement and well deserved.

I actively joined the Staff of the Royal College of Art at the end of September 1949 and one of my first impressions was that of privilege accorded to the members of the teaching staff. My department was, more or less, sandwiched between the Silversmithing Department and the Sculpture School, each of which were served by extremely talented craftsmen. They were indispensable for the efficient running of these departments. Even so they were not allowed to be members of the Senior Common Room, this was for the tutorial staff only. It was the epitome of luxury and the food was absolutely first class. However the craftsmen were confined to a room bare of decoration and furnished with the type of tables and chairs one might expect to see in a poor church hall. The stupidity of this arrangement which reduced the contact between the tutors and craftsmen became evident to me as time went by but the Principal would not see it.

In the evenings found no pleasure in spending my time in the local pubs and although walking around the West End was interesting it was a mite too tiring to keep up for long. So I looked for something else and eventually contacted Keith Coleborn who had now the headship of the Bromley School of Art. He offered me the teaching post for the evening Pottery class. I accepted it and thereafter each week saw me at the Victoria Station round about 6pm waiting for the train to Bromley. The part-time teaching rate was very generous as it was paid per hour and the subject was one I thoroughly enjoyed especially as the part-time students were a delightful group of people who let me know how much they enjoyed the class. I always believed I was lucky and when I was offered extra part-time teaching of design classes at the Stourbridge School of Art I felt sure of it. My total earnings for the week were now sufficient to make me feel that I could ask Monica to marry me without the fear of asking her to join me in a life of near poverty. So I did, time after time, and eventually my persistence brought its rewards. We planned to have a Registry Office wedding to avoid any razzmatazz but it became obvious that our folks may feel hurt that we had not sealed our troth in church. So we decided to get married in church but it would be one in London where the number of sightseers would be minimal. In fact, apart from a few of my College friends the congregation would consist of only our immediate families. St Philips Church in the Earls Court Road stood opposite Pembroke Rd, the road in which I had my digs. On the morning of 4th Nov, 195O I walked to the church and took my place waiting for Monica to join me. She was terribly nervous and her Uncle, who was to give her away, gave her a ‘miniature’ of brandy to help calm her down. In trying to open it she managed to cut her finger with the metal foil with which it was sealed. This didn’t help and it says much for her courage that she got through the ceremony without mishap.

We retired to a local pub for a lunch with our families, a little sad that Monica’s sister and my brother had not been able to be with us. The difficulty of managing the journey with the little children with them was much too much to expect and we were sorry that we had, by marrying in London, deprived them of the opportunity. Our honeymoon was to have been at Brighton and when we set off in my little Morris Minor I intended to go there. However we were nearly half way along the Western Avenue on the way home before I realized which way I was going. Monica who is a home bird first class was quite happy to dismiss the Brighton idea and keep on going. We stopped at Woodstock but were not able to book a room for the night and were forced to move on to Shipston on Stour. Here, the George Hotel welcomed us with a lovely log fire, a superb meal with resident band, beautiful warm bedroom, and garaging for the car. The later was almost the most important because the weather was bitterly cold and, left out, the car could have been ruined. Although it was very cold, for that time of the year, the following day was very bright and sunny. We decided to take a mini tour of the area and have a look at the lovely Cotswold house Compton Wynyates. We came upon it from the top of the hill and the way it seemed to be nestling within its lovely grounds made a picture I shall never forget. Immediately on reaching home we called in on my brother Fred, Barbara and offsprings. They insisted on celebrating our marriage by joining with us for a dinner at a local roadhouse. The children, for whom the event was a novelty, behaved themselves incredibly well, and caused some amusement with their pleasure in receiving small spoons with which to eat ice cream.

Although I was starting my married life living in my Mother in Law’s home, it was my intention to have a house we could call our own as soon as possible. In the meantime I travelled to London from Beckman Rd, Pedmore, sometimes by car and sometimes by rail, depending on the state of the weather or the state of my car. The car I was using in the early part of 1951 was a Morris Minor which I had bought from a friend, and which , the first time I used it, managed to put a couple of piston rods through the side of the engine block. Since that catastrophe it had been very carefully maintained and I drove to London week after week confident as to its safety. However in February or March, after I had spent much of one weekend renewing the braking system with fresh fluid and cylinder rubbers, I set off very early the following morning. Approaching Stratford upon Avon I saw some headlights shining over the brow of a hill, so I flicked my own lights up and down to give the approaching vehicle a warning to keep on its own side. I was travelling a little over 6O miles an hour at the time I reached the brow of the hill, only to find, not one vehicle but two facing me, one overtaking the other. Believing that it would be preferable to hit the hedge than head on with the overtaking lorry I wrenched the wheel over to my left. Unfortunately the verge at this point was very deep and although my nearside rode up and over it the impact broke away the axle and made it impossible to steer the car. As the overtaking lorry passed by, my car was thrown back into the one being passed. This was carrying chassis and had girders projecting below the platform. I believe that these were responsible for saving my life, because they dug into the cars wings and probably had the effect of shock absorbers. When I climbed out of the wreckage my leg was cut by the broken spar of the steering wheel, and that was my only injury. The driver of the lorry as he climbed down from his cab was as white as a sheet of paper, and said ‘I felt sure that you would be dead’. When I looked at my car I almost wondered if I could really be alive, it was just a tangle of metal. The police took nearly half an hour to arrive and after they had taken a statement from the other driver they took me to the Stratford upon Avon Police Station for me to do likewise. Afterwards I had the problem of hitch hiking back to Stourbridge.

The wreckage was taken to a garage where it was made capable of being towed about three weeks later. My brother and I brought it back home, where, with the aid of pneumatic body straightening equipment borrowed from Monica’s brother, who was a garage manager and able to lay his hands on it, I was able bring the wreck back to something like a car again. It took about five weeks before it was capable of use, but I used it for another two years before swopping it for a van.

Sometime early in 1952 I bought at auction an extremely neglected property. It was situated on a corner plot which, in the time before the war, had been covered by large greenhouses. These had since fallen down and the ground was littered with broken glass, broken window frames, cast iron heating pipes and brick rubble from the collapsed roof of a huge water tank. The house had been built at the end of a row and was devoid of heating, bathroom or inside kitchen. There was a scullery, which had been used for a kitchen, and a lavatory in an outside building. The lavatory was very interesting. It consisted of a wooden bench with a hole in it and it was connected to the mains drainage without the usual flushing system. Instead it used a swivel bucket arrangement. The bucket when full would suddenly tip all the contents out with a thud into the sewer, a very disconcerting sound and performance when one was using it and not anticipating the operation. My father, from whom I had borrowed the money to buy the property, and who told me that he had himself coveted the place for some time, put me on to some builders he knew and had used satisfactorily. They were willing to make all the alterations I wanted. Because of the shortage of building materials we were restricted in what I wanted, but they seemed to get round many of the restrictions very cleverly and my only complaint was how slowly the work was proceeding. As the builders were a family concern, an elderly man and his two sons only, I suppose it was inevitable. The sons were not alike in any way, the youngest, Archie, was a big strong man who gave me the impression that he would be totally at home sitting in front of a pint of beer. The older one, George Edwards was smaller, more the technician than the labourer, and he was the one who did the quantity surveying, the ordering and the measuring out, etc.

They did have a few unexpected setbacks. For instance, while digging the foundations for a new wing they discovered it was sited over an old boiler-house. The boiler was eight feet down and had to come out. The foundation we had planned to be only two feet deep to solid ground now had to be eight feet to reach solid ground. There were delays caused by the tardiness of plumbers, civil engineers, electricians and materials deliverers, but despite all these the work was slowly getting done. In the meantime the ground had to be cleared to create a garden and I had three days clear each week in which to do it. It meant digging trenches, then raking the broken glass and other debris into them before digging new trenches in the cleared ground. The cast iron and bricks were stored in separate piles. It was hard and soul destroying work but there was a sense of satisfaction to see the cleared area slowly expanding.

My work at the College could not be considered arduous and I had too much time with which to do it. Consequently I looked around for ways to use the time profitably. Photography was a subject about which I was dismally ignorant and almost next door to my studio was the Photographic Department of the School of Ceramics. Craftsman in charge of it was an old man by the name of Richardson. He was brilliant at his job which was mainly producing transfers for firing onto ceramic vessels. When I asked if he would give me some tuition in printing and enlarging I was surprised how willingly he agreed to do so, and I wondered if he also felt that he had too much time on his hands. Having difficulty in walking restricted his supervision and he was obliged to issue instructions from a stool at the end of the darkroom, and receive verbal reports back from his students. I must have cost the Royal College a mint of money in wasted photographic paper due to misunderstanding of his instructions, but I did learn enough to begin and enjoy a hobby which was also of use in my work.

After submitting an estimate for equipping my department which was three times as high as I thought would be approved, I was astonished to have it accepted in full. The College was funded directly from the Ministry of Education and I suspect that no one bothered to question it. So I had a wonderful time searching for the very best in cutting lathes, intaglio lathes, sandblasting machines, enamelling kilns, benches and large lead lined sinks, etc. Installing them was not as simple as I thought it would be. The buildings were wooden, old, and had been erected, so we were told, during the Crimean War as temporary ones. The compressor for the sandblasting machine, I was told , would shake the place down if it were put upon the existing floor. The solution was to take away a large section of the floor and dig a pit in the soil below 6ft by 4ft by 3ft, fill it with concrete, sink into the concrete four long bolts, and when set, put the compressor on top. I had drawn up the plans showing where I wanted everything installed and then took the opportunity to have my summer vacation while the Ministry of Works did the work and sorted out the problems.

Monica prepared for my intention to own our own home by becoming pregnant and, on the 4th July, 1952, producing a beautiful son, whom we had christened Owen Robert. His arrival quickly made me aware of the advantages and disadvantages of living at Stourbridge and working in London. He seemed incapable of going to sleep and although Monica took the brunt of walking the bedroom, some of the burden fell on me. By working in London I was able to get, at least, two unbroken nights of sleep. Monica had no such respite. Despite this advantage I was always anxious to get back to Beckman Road to see my wife and our insomniac baby. About four months after the birth of our son Owen we were able to move into our new home in Lawn Street, Stourbridge. The place was not entirely completed but it was in a habitable condition, if only just. By dint of using all my free time on fixing things like the stove in a living room and a grill to allow warm air to circulate in an upstairs bedroom; digging a hole to break through to a sealed up cellar and building the steps and side walls to the new opening; putting down slabs to make paths etc., and then when the house was useable and habitable, starting on building a garage. For me this was an ambitious undertaking. I intended it to be a workshop in addition to garaging my car, so it had to be larger than the normal garage. Also, I had not much money to purchase the new the materials that I would have liked to have used. However, the site was littered with bricks from the collapsed roof of the huge water tank and those from the old outbuildings which had been demolished. Although they were covered in mortar this was of the old lime mortar variety. A sharp chopper used on the bricks was able to remove most of this and make them reusable. Week after week I spent nearly all my spare time sitting on a wooden box chipping away the mortar and putting the clean bricks to one side. Then when I thought that there were enough clean bricks, I cleared the site allocated for the garage, and after digging out for the foundations put in the concrete. Two days later I began the bricklaying. Having watched the builders I concentrated on the corners, making sure that they were absolutely square and vertical before filling in the walls between them. Because the bricks were not all whole, it was not possible to obtain a smart finish with them, so I purchased enough new bricks to build the door pillars which faced the front. Then I plastered over the outside walls to hide the brick mixture leaving only the smart new front pillars. The roof I built of wooden trusses and cement asbestos corrugated sheeting. At this time the danger of asbestos dust was unknown, and when the garage was completed I was quite proud of my building prowess.

Then the garden had to be created. Monica’s chief interest in life had, ever since she was a child, been that of gardening, and she put her mind to making a garden that most of the passers-by would appreciate. The heavy work was my duty and the placing of plants and shrubs was hers. How she managed to do so much to construct the garden whilst taking care of our baby son was, and still is, a wonder to me. All of this was my recreation after work at the College; at least that was what I told everyone. In fact I was finding the College a source of enjoyment, for the students were unwittingly teaching me far more than I was able to teach them. They were all very bright and creative and one couldn’t help some of their brightness rubbing off onto one. It was not only the extent of their creativeness but their fearlessness in investigating new techniques. Where most of the tutorial staff would spend considerable time in trying to evaluate a theoretical process, the students would charge into an exercise without hesitation.

One of my students, Geoff Baxter, was responsible for devising a decorating technique which has since become a widespread method of embellishment. He had seen fabric being printed through silk screens at the Textiles School and was of the opinion that glass could be similarly printed. This was one of the occasions where I was able to help, and by a few experiments into the glass enamels, silk screen gauge, and adhesives, he was able to screen decorations onto flat sheet glass. The glass was then placed onto metal moulds and gently heated until it softened and sank down to the shape of the mould, the enamel being melted onto the glass during this process. My Department was sited adjacent to the Silversmithing Department and students from each department would frequently use the facilities of the other. My knowledge of Silversmithing was extremely limited and I also took the chance to remedy my ignorance.

Philip Popham, the Tutor for that specialization had been a student at the College during the same time as I had been one. We had, consequently, a rapport between us as to how we could help each other and he was always willing to show me how to manipulate silver and use the equipment. The silversmith craftsman Tom Boucher, was however the more skilful of the two and it was a pleasure to have him coach me in the handling of the metal lathes. One of these was used for spinning sheet metal into shape. The sheet was squeezed tightly against the base of the mould and when it was spinning would be levered against the mould. Only a little could be done at a time after which the partly shaped sheet had to be softened by being brought to a red heat and plunging into water. This process would be repeated until the final shape was achieved. It was a potentially dangerous operation and had it not been for the knowledge and care in Tom Boucher’s guidance I could easily have been cut in two. The centring of the sheet was crucial because the speed of the spinning could otherwise have thrown it out, with dire consequences for the operator. He also taught me how to raise a shape by hammering the metal, a much safer method than the spinning, but considerably slower.

During the time Robin Darwin was the Principal the College was riding on the crest of the wave. All the publicity was glowing with tributes and manufacturers were easily coerced into supporting design projects being undertaken at the College. It was some time before I became aware of the strength of the influence exerted by the old school network within the College. Slowly I became aware that a disproportionate number of the teaching staff were Etonians Harrovians or from other similar Public Schools, and whenever a vacancy occurred it was nearly always filled by am Etonian.

One didn’t have to be particularly intelligent to assume that the Principal was educated at that school. Unfortunately this situation created an atmosphere of condescension towards the craftsmen and a snobbish attitude to design projects. A couple of examples will clarify this. A request from Buckingham Palace to have designed and made an electric heater for liquids which could remain on the table without cables waving around was passed to Professor Robert Gooden, of the School of Silversmithing . He designed an attractive looking stand on which to rest a kettle and asked our opinions of it. I said that I felt that the plug into the kettle was not what the Duke of Edinburgh wanted and perhaps an effort should be made to devise electrical contacts in the stand which made contact when the kettle was placed on it. My suggestion was rejected as being far too dangerous, but I have always felt that had it been made by an Etonian it would have been given a little more thought. It is consoling to me to know that cordless kettles are now so commonplace. The design also called for a warning light, and as the Professor wanted it to be operated on low voltage, a very small transformer was needed. I had bought from Woolworths a tiny one to use on my doorbell, and suggested that one of those would be very suitable. He threw up his hands with horror at the thought of a Woolworths article being part of his design going into the Palace and a day or two later a couple of technicians from General Electric Co brought in sheets of drawings for discussion. The result however was negative and after much beating of the breast I was asked to obtain one of the bell transformers for evaluation. The stand and kettle ended up at the palace with a Woolworth’s bell transformer inside it, but it had been a case of ‘where needs must, the devil drives’.

The students were not so timid. At about the same time, two of them were making a drum of reinforced material bound with steel bands and with a lid which could be bound firmly to the base. In the centre of the lid was provision for an explosive cartridge. At the top of the drum base a mould was inserted, then a sheet of silver placed over it, the lid then bolted down firmly over this. By striking the centre of the cartridge the silver sheet was pressed down into the mould by the resulting explosion. For the production of plates and some bowls it worked very well. Unfortunately the drum was not strong enough to stand up to the stresses of many explosions, but they had proved their point that the system would work. A fair amount of my time was spent organizing visits to exhibitions and glass factories for the students. It was very gratifying to find so many willing to take in students and show them the processes without expecting anything in return. Chance Bros at Oldbury, Birmingham, were very helpful and put up with two of my students for two weeks each. Pilkingtons at St Helens seemed to enjoy the company of students, and when I accompanied them I seemed to be given the V.I.P. treatment. Their work was outside my experiences and I was fascinated by all of it. To see thread being drawn from a furnace hardly bigger than a biscuit tin which was being fed by a few glass marbles, and then being wound upon a spinning drum to form glass fabric, was, to me, at that time, nothing short of a miracle. I also found the method of making plate glass, at that time, fascinating. To see huge ladles of molten glass being poured out, and then to see the same glass being bedded down into plaster of paris on a huge turntable, before being ground down to the right thickness by large spinning grindstones was an almost unbelievable revelation. It was a practice which has been almost relegated to oblivion by the advent of the ‘float glass’ method of production, a method which, although talked about, was a tightly guarded secret at that time.

Although some factories were not willing to look after students for longer than one day, there was not one unwilling to allow a visit. During a year I was able to fix up visits for the students to see mass production bottle making, tube and rod drawing, pressed glass in oven ware, sheet glass, mirror production, insulation glass, decorating glass, and blown lead glass, etc.. One visit in I found particularly interesting, and I made a point each year of going to it. It was the Fancy Goods Fair which was held at Blackpool. The Fair was quite extensive and the variety of artefacts was sufficient to hold my interest for the whole of the day. I used to travel up to Blackpool by car, and on one occasion had the fright of my life. The roads were dry but with a scattering of powdery snow being wafted about by the wind. The journey from Stourbridge to Stoke on Trent was completed in a good time, and when I came to a line of cars moving fairly slowly with the road clear in front I started to overtake them. When in the distance a lorry came round the corner towards me I put my foot on the brake with the intention of moving into the line, and nothing happened. The car didn’t slow down. I was on black ice. It was my first experience with it, and it scared the life out of me. As luck would have it the road was edged by an earthen bank. I drove into it and the car slowed down sufficiently for me to move over into the line of traffic, accompanied by a cacophony of motor horns played by equally scared drivers.

In I953 I was appointed as Head of Department of the Industrial Glass Department, the Principal and Governors of the College having been impressed by my work. Naturally I was pleased because it gave me a bit of status lift, but as it was only a titular promotion there was no material benefit. Nevertheless, I was pleased to think that my father would be pleased. I had, in the past, given him so many worries. London, in the fifties, was still suffering from the smoke of fires, and smog blanketed the city too frequently. From my studio looking out onto Queens Gate I had an early warning of the onset of smog by looking at the road lighting lamps across the road. They would change from white to orange and then red before disappearing altogether. If this began to happen on the day I was returning home to Stourbridge I would set off very early. Usually this meant reaching the end of Western Avenue, and out of the really thick stuff, by early afternoon. To negotiate that route when one left it too late was nerve racking and extremely exhausting, but I only got caught once, thanks to my early warning.

On the 1st April, 1955, my son Alan James was born at home. Our doctor, Stephen Mitchelson, was present and he told me later that he was very pleased with the way things had gone. I told him that he couldn’t be as pleased as me. It was about this time that our relationship changed from that of the doctor and patient to that of being friends. He would call round to discuss, among other things, a tape recorder he was thinking of buying, or to show off his new car and extol its virtues which were almost entirely about how fast it would go. I should have confined my interest to listening only, but on one occasion consented to accompany him in order to appreciate at first hand these virtues. He left me in no doubt, and in a state of absolute terror, as he hurtled along at 80 mph along streets suitable only for a horse and cart. He purchased his tape recorder. It was in sections which had to be put together and he wanted to house it in a small cabinet he had. However, although he was a very good doctor his ability as a cabinet maker was non-existent. Eventually I had the cabinet brought round and put into my garage where I modified it to house the sections.

A few days after he had taken it back he asked me to go along to his house to hear the tape recorder in action. He had recorded a number of organ recitals and, although it was not my kind of music, the quality of the recording was unmistakable. It so impressed me I ordered a similar one for myself. It was a Truvox Tape Deck and came in four sections. After constructing a box to hold these sections I fitted them all together and switched on the power. There was one heck of an explosion, the garage was filled with smoke and lots of small pieces of metal foil floated down to the floor. When I reported the mishap to Stephen he came round to commiserate and view the debris. He had also brought with him a large condenser as a temporary replacement for the one he had correctly assumed had blown up. Then he discovered that one of the plug connectors was damaged and had been the cause of the trouble. He put this right, the recorder worked properly, and I used it, getting a lot of pleasure from it, for the next 34 years. When I asked him how he had acquired his knowledge of electronics, he told me that he had worked on radar during the war. He certainly knew his way around electronics, even if he was a lousy cabinet maker.

On one of my visits to his home he offered me his unused greenhouse which was beginning to rust and which was covered in a green slime. I had made a lean-to greenhouse against a garden wall, and Monica and I had grown geraniums and dahlias in it. Monica sold these by putting them on a garden seat facing the road with a price tag for all to see. So I was pleased to take his greenhouse, clean it up and erect it on my land. Shortly afterwards during a gale, when the door to my leanto had been left open, the wind blew up the glass in the roof and brought it crashing to the ground. The doctor’s greenhouse was a godsend during the repairs. Often when I was away in London, my father would go to our house (which incidentally we had given the name ‘Resurgo’), in order to pick up our son Owen for a ride around in ‘Don’t Touch’. He always had a soft spot for the youngest of his grandchildren, and I think that he and my mother, not only enjoyed the contact with the children but, thought that taking then off for a while gave the mother a bit of a rest. After Alan was born, there was hardly a day he missed popping around to have a look at his newest grandson. Although Alan was a little on the young side to be away from his mother for long, father was obviously looking forward to the time he was old enough to be taken out, as had all the others in their time.

At College very little seemed to be happening. I was able to look after my students and have 9O% of my time free to mooch around the other departments. In the School of Silversmithing , Philip Popham was engaged on making a gift which he had designed, I think for the Duke of Edinburgh give to the Queen. It was a Silver Easter Egg and part of the decoration was a gold bass relief angel. Philip had modelled and cast the Angel himself. To insure against accidents he had cast a number of these with various degrees of success. Having picked out the ones he intended to use he was about to melt down the others when I begged him to let me have one of them. A brooch in my possession had been made from an oval and flat stone which had a part milky, part clear quality. It was a good one but it lacked interest, so I asked Philip to mount the gold casting onto the face of it. Monica now has a brooch with a gold Angel made for the Queen. Professor Dobson, the sculptor, rarely worked where one could see him. At least that is how it seemed to me, so when the famous sculptor Josef Epstein began to work on a large model of Christ, in the studio next to mine, I could hardly stay away. He was a small stocky man, nearly always smiling, and willing to give freely of his time to help and advise the students. Although he was an old man his strength was astonishing. I have seen him climbing a ladder to the head of his model with a lump of clay that I would have had difficulty in carrying.

The Painting School, despite being staffed by a number of very well-known and famous artists, was to me, very uninteresting. I could hardly ever appreciate the work that was being produced, and I had very little rapport with the painters. I found one, in particular, very irritating. He had a loud mouth which he used too much, especially when he was in the senior common room. His name was John Minton and after drinking a bottle of whisky on top of a handful of barbiturates he departed this world. Since then the monetary value of his work has soared dramatically, and I have been left wondering, if it would have done so had he been alive, or if my judgement was faulty.

The Fashion School was run by Jane Ironside, a lady I found to be quite formidable and unapproachable. As a result, I knew nothing of the processes and methods used therein. It was expected, however, that the tutorial staff of the College would attend the Annual Soirée arranged by the Fashion School for buyers and manufacturers, etc. The staffs were expected to circulate and make small talk with anyone looking lost or just alone. This meant holding a glass of wine, pretending to enjoy making small talk, and being called ‘darling’ by everyone, some of whom I just couldn’t stand. The whole set-up was unbelievably pretentious and the affectation in the voices and behaviour made me cringe.

Each year I suffered this punishment in the interest of the College. Professor Robert Baker of the School of Ceramics and his second in command, Peter O’Malley, were excellent potters, and dedicated researchers into both the art and the science of ceramics. Robert’s wife was a restorer of churches and Robert helped her considerably by producing floor tiles to match medieval ones which had been lost or hopelessly ruined. He was also the art director for the Royal Worcester Porcelain Co, but a more modest man it would have been difficult to find. He and I seemed to have a rapport, probably because neither of us had been to Eton, and we were both from the same part of the Midlands.

Peter O’Malley had been to Eton, but I think he may have been from a different mould from the others because it never showed, and we were able to get along harmoniously. As time went on, mooching about the College and the galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum seemed to occupy as much of my time as I spent with my students. Often I had the feeling that my Department could operate quite efficiently without me being there. There were the usual meetings for student assessments, academic board, and once a year the judging for the Final Examination. In addition I was often called back to London from my home at Stourbridge to help with some problem, or make some defence of my assessment of future expenditure, etc..

On the 5th January, 1956, I was called to a meeting at the College which I knew would not take much time, so I invited my brother and his wife and children to join Monica and me for the ride. The object was to let the children see a bit of London while we were all on holiday. Before setting out we had been to see my father who was ill with bronchitis. Gasping for air and coughing to clear his lungs, was how we saw him suffer almost once every year, and we all thought of him like the creaking gate which lasts for ever.

The weather was very misty all the way to London, and by the time my meeting was finished the mist had changed to fog. London fog at that time was capable of completely closing down the Capital. It had not reached that degree of intensity so we set off to see the sights. We saw very little. In fact the towers of Tower Bridge as we drove across it were entirely shrouded by the yellow choking cloud, and we had a journey of 125 miles in front of us to get home. Before conditions became too bad we managed to get out of the city and on the way home. The fog was very patchy, sometimes thin enough to travel at 30 miles an hour, and sometimes thick enough to bring us almost to a stop. Monica, Fred, and his wife Barbara took it in turns to walk, whenever necessary, along the side of the road with a torch to guide me. To come upon the rear lights of a car in front was an occasion for cheering, but to avoid shunting into it was no picnic. Despite these tribulations we managed to get back home safely, but considerably later than we had planned. We phoned my mother to ask how my father was faring, and was told that he was no better, but the fog was very thick and we should not try to make the journey there until the following morning. Monica and I went to see father early the next day and he was worse than I had seen him before. The doctor had been and had made arrangements for a nurse to visit and give him some injections.

I rang my brother to tell him that father seemed extremely ill, and worse than I had seen him before. He came as quickly as he could, but unfortunately only just in time to see father take his last gasp. Father was 69 years old and had only retired from his job as General Secretary of the Union of Flint Glassmakers just two weeks earlier. We all deeply regretted not making an attempt to brave the fog the previous night to see him before it was too late.

Father had always been there to offer advice and support, and now he was available for consultation no longer. The shock was enormous and I went about in a daze until well after the church burial service. The church was packed with his friends and collegues, plus folks from the various organisations with which he had been associated.

I vividly remember walking out after the service, with mother on my right arm and on Freds left, desperately trying to prevent myself breaking down in tears. The greatest support I had ever had had gone, but I couldn’t let him down by crying in front of all these people. It was fortunate that I was not called upon to say anything because the lump in my throat would have let me down. I believe I had never grown up until then, because the answer to any of my problems had always appeared to have rested with him. Now he had gone they rested totally with me and I wondered if my shoulders were broad enough for the burden.

CHAPTER 9

My brother and I spent as much time as we could with my mother immediately after father’s funeral, and Fred did his best to persuade her to go and live with him and Barbara. She was adamant about staying in her own house. My fathers Will had, in effect, left everything to Fred and me in trust for the benefit of Mother. The interest alone was enough to keep my mother relatively comfortable but she had been brought up as a young girl in very poor circumstances and, like my father, was careful not to waste anything. Much to my dismay this was taken to excess. In the coldest weather she would sit, wrapped around in blankets, in front of a few miserable embers in the fire grate, even though the coal shed was full of top quality coal. Finding her like this, I have made up the fire and made sure that the scuttle was full, only to learn later that she had carefully removed the coal I had put on the fire. She resented spending anything on herself, but would give anything away to someone who she thought needed it.

For some time afterwards my life seemed to follow a set pattern. On Monday I travelled by car when the weather was good, or train when it was not, to London, arriving shortly after 11 o’clock. I would then talk to the students for a couple of hours. Lunchtime was spent in the Senior Common Room on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Lunch frequently took an hour and a half, and sometimes longer if I became involved in discussions with senior teaching staff. Then back to the studio to tackle any problems which a student might have encountered. There was nearly always something. Fortunately, most of them were minor ones, but I felt obliged to stay with the student until they were solved. When they were, I tried to leave the student to finish the job on his or her own. I would go and work in my office, or visit other departments to see what they were engaged upon, in order to leave my students on their own.

At about 8pm I would walk back to my digs in Pembroke Road via Cromwell Road, and Earls Court Road. It was a long walk and often I would vary the route just to make a change. I would walk along Queens Gate to Kensington Gore, then along the park to Kensington High Street where the shop windows gave a modicum of interest. The prices in this part of the world ensured that I would remain only to find them of interest. From the High Street it was only a short walk to my digs in Pembroke Road. Back in my digs, sometime around 9pm, I would grab a bite to eat, before joining friends at the local pub. Unlike most of those I indulged in a single pint. Then back to my bed. After lunch on Thursdays I left, on most occasions, to set off for home. My job was becoming boring. Consequently I felt little desire to stay longer than was absolutely necessary. Also I had a family to which I was anxious to return.

My employment at the R.C.A., was on a five year contract. I had had it renewed on three occasions. As many staff seemed to leave at the end of their five years, I felt it would be expecting too much have mine renewed after fifteen. Also I was getting tired of the job. It was giving me less and less satisfaction, but I did have one job which interested me. This was planning the new department in the new College building which was being built in Kensington Gore, next to the Royal Albert Hall. I planned to have everything on the ground floor, to enable the easy storage of oil for the fuelling of the furnaces. Discussions with the architects and the Principal seemed to go along satisfactorily for many weeks. Then out of the blue they told me that my Department would be located on an upper floor. There was no reason given and I was not given the opportunity of arguing for my preferences. The Principal also introduced into the planning an old Etonian who claimed to be an expert in the manufacture of glass tableware. He clashed with me over the cost of using a large furnace, Glory Hole, opening. His argument was accepted by the Principal even though I had presented a paper by a leading expert in the field of furnace design which supported my contention that the cost would be almost insupportable. This situation made me feel that I was less in control of the Departmental decisions than I should be. Linked with my general boredom, this made me think of changing my job and getting out of London altogether. London no longer held the attraction for me as it had whilst I was a student. The question for me was ‘should I try for a place in a glass design studio, or should I apply for a teaching post for which I was qualified. As the number of designers needed in the tableware glass industry was very limited, and I was feeling in need of a change, I elected to aim for a post in the teaching field. Accordingly I began to send away for the application forms whenever I saw a likely post being advertised. All my colleagues I had asked for support by giving me a testimonial or acting as a referee did so very generously. In fact it was not until I had read the generous testimonials that I learned what a brilliant, responsible, and capable expert in the fields of glass design and post graduate education I was. However, it was not all the recipients of my completed applications who thought that I could be that good. Luckily some were persuaded that I maybe that clever and included me on their shortlist. As I was applying only for the posts of Principal or Vice Principal, this was some achievement. The number of times I was rejected says perhaps, something more about that achievement. Eventually I was appointed Head of the School of Art at Banbury, providing I could take up the post from the 1st of May. This was in 1961. Robin Darwin the Principal of the R.C.A. agreed that I should be allowed to break my contract so that I may do so. The School at Banbury was housed in the South Bar area of the town. At one time it must have been a lovely Georgian house, but over the years it had had so many alterations as to be almost unrecognisable as such. The place had been greatly abused through neglect and student vandalism and even the garden at the back, in which stood a magnificent mulberry tree, was feet high with rubbish. Broken milk bottles, discarded armatures, broken pottery, unused clay and plaster of paris, broken pieces of sculpture, etc., stuck out from the heap. At my interview, had it not been for the promise, by Mr. Chorlton the Oxfordshire Director of Education, of a new School of Art building, I would not have accepted the job. There was much to put right, inside the building as well as outside. It was obvious to me that the students had not been subject to any sort of control, and this had contributed to the debris over which I now presided. Almost the first thing I did, therefore, was to address the students as a body. Afterwards the Staff confided in me that I had managed to terrify the students enough to guarantee a change in their behaviour. And so it seemed, for their own common room by the end of the week had been cleared of graffiti and there was a semblance of order in place of the chaos which had been the norm before.

I had found a lovely old house in the High Street at Bloxham, about three miles from the School. It seemed ideal for the housing of my family, so I made an offer to the Estate Agent, and was delighted to have it accepted. But it was a full month before my home in Stourbridge was sold. During that time I was living in this large unfurnished empty rambling place, so it was no hardship for me to spend most of my time at work. During the month waiting for my family to join me I left the School late at night and returned early in the morning. I felt that everything was under control and little could go wrong. So it came as a shock to arrive one morning to find the Fire Brigade in attendance with hoses trailing into the building and water pouring down the staircase. The caretaker had, unthinkingly, left a pile of rubbish in his storeroom instead of putting it in a bin. It was unfortunate that he had swept up with the rubbish a lighted cigarette. Fortunately the damage was minimal.

The School’s allowance for a gardener was four hours a week. Just about enough to keep the garden at the front of the School tidy, but I had no gardener, so I advertised for one. There were a number of applicants, all of whom could see no difficulty in recreating the rear garden in the time allowed, except for one. He was a big man, a retired farmer, who was already doing a little gardening in the area. When I explained what needed doing he exploded, "What on four hours a week, you must be bloody joking, I should need at least thirty hours to clear that pile of rubbish.". That tied in with my own assessment, so I told him he had got the job, and I would try to get the County to find some extra hours. This they did, and I got a marvellous character join my staff. Jessie Upton, that was his name, was a very hardworking and likeable man who would turn his hand to anything. A derelict greenhouse was repaired. Drainage pipes were mended, path slabs re-laid and even a garden seat was made for the students to use. He was very observant and kept detailed diary of, for instance, the activities in a rookery at the end of his own garden. A diabetic, he eventually had to stop work. In some ways I was glad he left when he did because shortly afterwards two new classrooms were sited on his tidy garden and the beautiful mulberry tree was felled. He would have been very unhappy to have seen that go. I certainly was.

The space in the building was extremely limited and I wanted to introduce Photography to the curriculum. The only empty space was in the roof, access to which was difficult. In fact, to reach it one had to crawl beneath a massive wooden beam which must have been about 2 feet square. Once past it the space beyond was ideal to use as a darkroom, or a studio, though not simultaneously. Water, drainage and electricity were laid on and the County forked out the cash for me to buy cameras and miscellaneous photographic equipment. The teaching staff were, at first, very timid in their use of the camera for the furtherance of their own specializations. But after a little pressure from me, and incidentally the students, they took up the new subject with enthusiasm. The students thought it was quite a lark crawling under the massive beam and then working in the roof space. It was a very large area which, unknown to me, had a trapdoor with which one could reach the roof. The students discovered this exciting facility and enjoyed themselves, perched along the parapet, throwing paper darts and other missiles at the passers-by. That was until I found out about it. Messrs Welfords (Coal Merchants) had their business next door to the School. Miss Welford, an attractive, pleasant lady, looked after their Office, and always passed the time of day whenever we happened to arrive at the same time. I had never known her to come into the School of Art. It was, therefore a shock to be confronted in my Office by the lady telling me that one of my students had fallen through her ceiling. The large roof space it seemed was, in actuality, two roof spaces, that above the School and that above Messrs Welfords. Unfortunately the latter had no flooring and a student on a tour of discovery lost his footing and fell through the ceiling. The damage was very quickly put right and our contacts with our neighbours, who after a very short time saw the episode as a huge joke, remained harmonious.

After working for so long in London the pace of everything in Banbury seemed absolutely luxurious. I recall walking into the town to purchase materials for the School and entering an ironmonger’s shop with which we had arrangements for discounts. There were two assistants behind the counter; one was serving a customer who seemed to be recounting in great detail the events on his farm over the past few months. The other was, it seemed to me, doing a stocktaking of all the nuts and bolts etc. housed in boxes piled high in front of him. No attempt was made to ascertain the reason for my presence. Eventually the raconteur customer reached the end of history and wished both assistants goodbye. Not until he had passed through the door with a final ‘cheerio’ was I welcomed with a query as to my needs. Then I could find no fault in their treatment of me.

Apart from teaching Design, I enjoyed the craft of Pottery and wanted to take a class of part‑time students for this craft. The staff member who had been responsible for this side of the Schools work was adamant that it would not be possible to enrol enough students to establish another class. I disagreed and advertised a class to be held on Wednesday afternoons. Initially the enrolment was very poor but having committed myself I was not going to have the staff member say that he had told me so. So half way through the first afternoon with the class I produced a teapot with a cup for each student and ingredients for the tea. A few biscuits for those who wanted them added to the social touch. The following week a few more students enrolled and after the third week the class was full. Some of the ladies took over the task of organizing the afternoon break and an elderly gentleman made a point of supplying a few candies and chatting up the ladies. I was able to demonstrate how to throw a pot to each individual much more easily than if all the students were after my attention for the whole of the afternoon. This class went from strength to strength but I think the staff felt it was hitting below the belt to use such enrolment incentives.

The full‑time students were a very mixed bunch with a predominance of girls. All were serious to be successful in this their chosen field and they were a grand lot to teach. It was my choice to take them for Design and I was keen to introduce them to the technical developments in printing for both Textiles and Graphics. Unfortunately the Staff responsible for these subjects were not familiar with these developments and they claimed I was asking the students to run before they could walk. Luckily one of the students who had applied for a place in one of the London colleges was accepted, so she was told, because of her knowledge of the modern techniques. That was enough to convince my Staff and both of them attended technical training courses in both of these crafts. This was fortunate because the administration side of my job was taking up more and more time. I found myself leaving my students alone for long periods to deal with various problems. By putting two classes together with two teachers of whom I was one, it was possible for the odd administration duty to be tackled without leaving a class without a teacher. This was, after a time, the norm, and the classes seemed not to suffer from this arrangement.

Every member of staff was expected to spend time with a discipline chosen by the students. I involved myself with a group of lads who chose to build a canoe. Every Friday afternoon we used an old woodwork room to cut the timbers and make up the frames. They were the most enthusiastic bunch of lads one might imagine, and within a very short space of time they had the frames for three canoes. The original intention was to use the canoes on the local canal and for a few weeks this is what happened. But it was too tame for boys who were keen for adventure and when my brother arranged a canoeing holiday for boys from his school, we joined them. Hadnock Court near Monmouth sat on the banks of the river Wye, below Symonds Yat, and the meadow was the perfect campsite in which to pitch our tents. Fortunately the weather stayed fine for most of the time, only once were the boys drenched to the skin. Then a friendly laundry came to our rescue and dried all the soaked clothes. Although most of the time was spent on the river there were trips into Monmouth and Ross on Wye. A cinema at Monmouth was one attraction in the evening, and this was invariably followed by a visit to a fish and chip shop. Back in the camp we were all drawn like flies to the camp fire. The bravest raked out of the embers charcoal coated potatoes which they pretended to enjoy eating. I still have a film record of this annual event. It reminds me of very pleasant times which the students and I thoroughly enjoyed.

The new School of Art I had been promised ‘in two years’ seemed as far away as when I had been appointed. It was six years before there was any movement on this front. A likeable architect, Mr. Cottell, was assigned to investigate the needs of an Art School. Norman Pratt, the Principal of the Technical College, who had had an art training, and I began spending more and more time identifying what the future needs of the School were likely to be. Cottell would breeze into the School with huge sheets of plans and ask me to find any fault in them. Within weeks we had the general plan which was approved by us all. It was to be a large generally open plan with easily moved partitioning. Then came the bombshell, it was not approved by the County Architect. He wanted it sited further away from the road. Because the steepness of the ground, away from the road, ruled out the idea of a flat open-plan, the whole idea had to be reassessed. Cottell came up with a very clever plan. The studios were to be easily reached from circulation space which was sited along the split of the split level building. Virtually all I had to do was to decide what went where, and what services were needed for each studio.

Back at home in Bloxham my wife was finding the bell of the private school in the village extremely irritating. The sound seemed to bounce around from the walls of our garden. It also rang at intervals throughout the day. Jokingly she once said to one of the local ladies "I think they must ring it to tell the pupils when to pick up their knives and forks at lunchtime", "Oh no!" she replied "They have a hand-bell for that". The irritation reached such a pitch that it became clear that we could not remain living there much longer without my wife having a nervous breakdown. On our journeys round and about Banbury we saw a building site for sale. It was high above Banbury with views over countryside to Edge Hill about 11 miles away. We liked it and bought it. I designed a house and asked a very young ambitious decorator to build it. He did and made a very good job of it. Before it was completed my wife who felt very restricted because she had no personal transport fell ill with pneumonia. To help raise her spirits I bought a Reliant three wheeler for her. My elder boy, Owen, ran upstairs and asked her to look out of the window, and to this day, I am not sure, of the two, who was the more excited with the purchase. Her desire to try it out must have had some effect on the speed of her recovery because it seemed very soon afterwards she was nipping around in it. With the hood folded down the little car gave us the feeling of a sports car and encouraged us to explore the countryside around Banbury and further into the Cotswolds. We would frequently use it in preference to the faster and more spacious Bedford Dormabile that I used to get to work.

We then put our house in Bloxham up for sale. It sold very quickly, and we then moved into the house I had designed and had built at Overthorpe. It was only a mile from Banbury and just over the Oxfordshire boundary in Northamptonshire. Apart from the fact that the house pleased the family, the site was of great pleasure for me. To come back from a stressful day at School and sit in the garden looking out over eleven miles of countryside towards the fault at Edge Hill was very calming and the finest therapy. Eventually both my sons became pupils of the Magdalen College School at Brackley, which lay nine miles away. The nearest pickup point by the School bus was nearly a mile away from home. The little Reliant three-wheeler became almost indispensable for Monica. She used it for dropping off and picking up both the boys, leaving me free to get off to work without worrying about them. It also had qualities of which we were unaware when it was purchased. The lane to the bus pickup point was very narrow and had to have a couple of places for vehicles to pass each other. This was fine until one winter a very heavy fall of snow obliterated these places. Monica was using the lane when a large coal lorry confronted her and the crew refused to risk getting stuck in the ditch. She displayed a similar reluctance, whereupon they lifted the little three-wheeler to one side, drove the lorry past and then put Monica and the car back on the road. It was also a very fine car with which to learn to drive, as my eldest son Owen found out by driving up and down the driveway, coming to a halt only inches from the main roadway. As soon as he was 16 years old he acquired a three-wheeler of his own. It had an uncommon resemblance to a scorpion and was called a Messerschmitt. With seating for a passenger behind the driver it could not be considered the most comfortable of transports. Even so, he set off one day with a friend to drive to London, and much to my surprise he found his way around Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner without mishap. His own assessment of the trip may be deduced from the fact that it was a trip only attempted that once.

On our journeys to Banbury along the Stratford Road Monica and I had seen a much neglected building which had the appearance of having been a couple of one bedroomed cottages. It was strange because the roof seemed to be in quite a good condition but the windows had been boarded up and the boards themselves were rotten. A small sycamore tree was growing from a section of rain guttering. A reconnaissance revealed an unsafe ladder inside, standing on a soil floor, as the only means of reaching the floor above. Around was a jungle of vegetation through which we could not move. So what do we do? We fall in love with it. But it was not for sale, and for eight years we grieved that no‑one seemed to care what became of it. Then when we had built the house of our dreams, as it were, this derelict was put up for sale. We were put between the devil and the deep blue sea, but having, for so long, said what a pity it was being left to rot, we felt obliged to make a bid to buy it. The builder of our house had given an estimate of the cost of restoration and with this in mind we made an offer. It was accepted. Then the builder nearly doubled his first estimate. Reluctantly, we withdrew. A few months later Monica saw the property being advertised by another estate agent. It had not been sold. I put in an offer for it which was 25% less than my original one, and to my pleasant surprise it was accepted.

The architect I employed recommended using two civil engineers to resurrect the property. They had spent their time digging holes in roads, and little else. The willingness with which I accepted the brothers, for that is what they were, is still a source of wonder to me. However looking back at the result of their efforts I feel a great satisfaction and relief that I accepted them to do the work. The wreck was turned into a lovely home admired by both passers-by and our friends and visitors. Unfortunately, I had sold my other property with a promise to give vacant possession on a given date, having been assured by the architect that the new house would be completed by then. When it became evident that it would not be, I had to find temporary accommodation. This was like looking for gold nuggets in pea gravel and I was getting desperate. Then, out of the blue, a colleague who I learned had helped with a Catholic Housing scheme, offered the use of a small terraced house, which I gratefully accepted. We lived there for about six months, climbing over cases in which most of our possessions were contained, and living in the kitchen, the only warm place in the house. Eventually our new house was ready and we were able to move into it, but it was not completed. The ground floor was just a sheet of concrete. Luckily Monica saw an advert in the local paper advertising wooden blocks which had been taken up from what had been a lovely ballroom floor. They were cut from birds-eye maple, and I had a very satisfying time re‑laying them in my lounge where they looked beautiful. Some of the other floors had to be satisfied with vinyl covering. The dining room had, in the dim and distant past, been an underground room housing beer barrels, the house having been a public house in the 18th and early 19th Century. The roof was stone vaulted and a feature I was intent on preserving. However, the process of earthmoving from the walls of the house revealed this roof to the elements. Every time it rained the dining room was drenched. We had removed a thick clay covering to the roof, put there to keep out the rain. The dome had to be coated with concrete and then covered with a waterproof membrane. Eventually it was covered with a flat roof.

My son, Owen, and I built a double garage using some of the stone wall which was holding up the stone roof of the dining room. We spent hours chipping stone into shape using a masonry hammer, and carefully arranging them to fit together, before cementing them into the side walls. The effort was well worth it. We ended up with a truly superb garage and workshop. Monica meanwhile was planning the garden which, in a very short time, changed from a state between that of a refuse dump and a builder’s yard to a neat and orderly garden. Within a year it seemed to be a colourful, tasteful and well established plot, enough to bring general approval from our village and passers-by.

In December 81, I was admitted to the Horton General Hospital in Banbury. For some time I had been plagued with difficulty in urinating which had resulted in most nights being spent in trips to the toilet. My prostate gland, I was told, was restricting my bladders ability to empty itself. The restriction was to be surgically removed. No one explained to me the method to be used, and when I asked the anaesthetist just before he stuck a needle in my arm, he said " please count up to ten". When I awoke the deed had been done, I was still doped, dreamy and couldn’t care less what method had been used. The following day a number of get well cards were tossed onto my bed. One in particular stood out from the others. It was huge, and plastered across its front was a photograph, probably purloined from the Agriculture Dept, of a sheep being castrated. Above was best wishes from my Staff and inside all their signatures. The nurses took an interest in the cards to patients, and this one stood out like a sore thumb. In my letter of thanks to the Staff I could not help pointing out that their card had established, firmly, my place in the pecking order in the ward. In little more than a fortnight I felt fit to return to work. My doctor thought that would be unwise, and so I had what amounted to a holiday.

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