The Last Chapter

by Robert Lawson

rats were a menace, you could hear them between the double skins of the nissen huts, I had one on my bed one night and I didn’t know how to move in case it ran up the bed. They were water rats so they were big, it got so bad that the C.O. stopped any passes and said he wanted them smoked out. On the Saturday we stuck smoke bombs down holes that were so big they looked like rabbit holes. We lined up either side of the other holes and waited, out they came in their dozens we were all armed with big sticks and quite a few were killed, but a lot got away. Then the C.O. offered 3d (old money) for every tail we brought to him.

  One weekend we were in Innerskillen and decided to have a photo taken of the four of us in a group, it was an excellent picture. I had a copy of it for years, we were 19yrs old except Taffy, who was a couple of years older. Years later when Geordie started to visit us in Gorsey Lane, he asked me could he borrow it, I lent it to him and never got it back. I remember Corporal Humphries saying he could colour the photos up and we let him take them, except mine, I’m sure they never got them back.

  Innerskillen was a small town we tried to go to each weekend, there was a little café there that used to do good fry ups, and we looked forward to that.

  There wasn’t much for entertainment in the camp, unless you went to the N.A.A.F.I to listen to music, play darts, play draughts there wasn’t much more to do. Cigarettes, chocolates, sweets etc. we got on a ration card but I don’t recall drinking beer, we may have done but I don’t remember.

  We were very fit by this time, I know I was, early to bed early to rise, assault courses, route marches etc. if it was done properly you’ve got to be fit. After we had done training for 3 months we were sent home on leave. We had trained with the Durhams a famously hard regiment so before we left camp we were transferred to different regiments. Me, Geordie, Taffy and Harry Brown were put into another tough mob The Green Howards. On our way home on the ferry (Larne to Stransaer) one of the lads was showing an engagement ring off for his girlfriend, later on he mislaid it and we all helped him to look for it. Then Jones the Welshman pulled me over and told me he’d found it, I said “Good you’d better give it to him” he said he wasn’t going to. I said “If you don’t give him that rig, I’ll tell him you’ve got it”. He still hadn’t told him when we got off the ferry, we then boarded a train for Carlisle where we would go our separate ways. We got there and I found Jones and told him to give the lad his ring back he still said No, I went and found the lad and told him about the ring he was made up. When we got outside, Jones had left on his way to Wales, we informed the Military Police and they intercepted him at a station further down the line. I never knew if the lad got his ring back, because I never saw him again, If I hadn’t have given Jones so much time to do the right thing I may have found out whether he got it or not. The leave was a long one 19 days to be precise and I enjoyed it.

  In the meantime my mother’s brother had conned my parents into giving their house up and going to live in his house in Colmore Road, Broadway, Norris Green, so they were living there when I got home. He had promised to sign the house over to my parents if they agreed to move in, but he never did. My mother had passed their house over to her sister, Aunty Nellie, so it was a case of putting up with it.

  I spent some of that leave with Bobby Hoyland and we drank a lot, I think it was on this leave that I met Jean Kelly, the daughter of some friends of my parents who they drank with in the Broadway Hotel. We got on alright but didn’t see too much of each other for long, due to being in the forces.

  After the leave we had to report to Bridlington on the Yorkshire Coast, when we paraded, the C.S.M asked for all marksmen to fall out on the left, something told me to stay put, so I didn’t move. If I had moved I may not be here to tell this story. They were looking for snipers, it’s a short life span for snipers.

  We were going abroad but didn’t know where, we landed up at Greenock Docks Glasgow by train from Bridlington. “The Tegalberg” was the ship we were going out on, the conditions were terrible it had been a Norwegian cattle ship that had been converted to a troop ship, from what I could see there hadn’t been much converting done. We were put way down in the bowels of the ship to sleep in hammocks, on tables, on the floor, anywhere. My mates and myself were lucky, we got a hammock each, and they needed to get used to as well. Being during war years, we were in Convoy with a couple of battle ships, a couple of destroyers and an aircraft carrier right in the centre. Being my first time out of the UK, I was amazed how you could not see any land at all, whichever way you looked. Then we got to the Med and saw Gibraltar for the first time, a wonderful sight with white cottages dotted all around the coast. We seen parts of North Africa and eventually stopped at Port Said in Egypt, they wouldn’t let us go ashore but what they called bum boats came alongside and threw a rope up to with a basket on the end. If we wanted anything we would put money in the basket and shout down for fruit, dates and other things like handbags, wallets etc, one box of dates was walking with maggots, we threw them back at them. Now and then the Arabs tried climbing the ships ropes to get on board to knock something off, if we caught them half way up we’d pelt them with rotten potatoes, tomatoes and anything else we could lay our hands on.

  From Port Said we went into the Suez Canal which is 100 miles long, the kids used to stand on the banks and wave and shout to us, some used to stand weeing and were made up when we laughed at them. Then into the Red Sea which borders Saudi Arabia, then into the Gulf of Aden then into the Indian Ocean, which was it, for probably more than 10 days without seeing land.

  Where we were, down below in the bowels of the ship, we were crammed like sardines with one flight of steps for access. It didn’t’ t help, therefore, when it came over the blower that there was a Japanese submarine in the area, I often wonder how we would have made it out if we had have been hit.

  We arrived in Bombay at the beginning of January 1945, it had taken a month to get here, and it was like being in another world. Bombay was teeming with people and rickshaws, tongas everywhere you looked, everyone wanted to sell you something. One young lad had a tray full of rings and other trinkets, he offered me a ring for a cigarette, I gave him the cigarette and you couldn’t see him for dust. How he managed to run with a tray around his neck, beat me there were so many people around he knew how to weave in and out. Later on a man approached me and Taffy Hixson, he wanted to take wax out of our ears, before I knew what was happening he had put this thing down my ear and got wax out. Because he’d done that, he wanted paying for it, he followed us everywhere we went and we ended up in a park where he ended up in some bushes after Taffy had chucked him there. We walked down to pier on the waterfront, there was a man inscribing rings, bracelets and other jewellery. Taffy had a pocket watch that belonged to his dad which had been down the mines in Wales and Taffy had it when he flew once in the R.A.F. This man used a small punch and hammer to inscribe R.J.L. on my ring and D.G. Hixson on Taffys watch for free. This happened close to the “Gateway to India” monument, all this in a day in Bombay.

  We were moved by train to a transit camp called Kalyan not too far from Bombay, It was under canvas and Geordie, Taffy, Harry Brown and me managed to get together. We had to go for our meals in a big marquee, but we had a short walk from the canteen to the marquee. During one meal time I was walking across when a sky hawk swished over my shoulder and pinched my meat. That happened to somebody every day while we were there. The heat was stifling and everyone was sweating a lot. We were herded together and issued with jungle greens, bush hats, 50 rounds of ammunition, all set for Burma. Then someone said, “Some Officer was looking for volunteers for the Royal Signals”. I found out who he was and asked him could we volunteer, when he asked me what intake number I was, he said our intake wasn’t on his list. I explained to him that we had done a full radio course in the RAF and it seemed a pity to waste experience, after some thought, he gave me 4 forms to fill in, I went back to our tent and told the others.
A little problem was, although Taffy and Harry had been in the Air Force, they hadn’t done any signalling, so when we filled in the forms, we told them the type of radios we’d worked with and how many words a minute we could do. With us getting the forms late we were top of the list and we had not problems in the interviews. So when we later lined up in jungle greens etc, the N.C.O shouted “When I call your name fall in on the left” He called our names and we were told we were going to a place called MHOW a royal signals training camp.

  It was a good distance away from Kalyan, probably about 2 days run on a train, they went so slow you could run with them for a while. MHOW was a nice camp, clean and tidy and very orderly, Geordie and me were put on a shortened course because of our speed on Morse, and Taffy went with the beginners. Harry Brown never made it to MHOW he took bad on the day we were leaving Kalyan and we never saw him again.

  The course started and once again we were doing about 6 hours a day at the code, we used to pair off, sending and receiving to each other. The procedure for sending messages