Two Years In Malaya.
With the prospect of impending war in 1938 the British Government introduced compulsory military service for young men of age 18. It was known as conscription and had been first introduced in the first World War when the flow of volunteers proved inadequate. After the Second World War conscription was continued, but the term of service was limited. When my turn came service was for two years and one might be sent to any of the trouble spots in the world, such as the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, or the Mau Mau uprisings in East Africa. Most of the U.K. conscripts (apart from specialists - doctors, dentists, etc.) were in the junior ranks as they didn't have time to get experience and promotion, and most of the regular career soldiers had been promoted, and only those recently enlisted would be working their way through the junior ranks. The non-U.K. troops (Gurkha, Malay, etc.) were volunteers who were making the army their career as were their British officers.
I became eighteen and subject to call-up in January of 1946 when I was a medical student at Oxford. I had to report to the local recruiting office, was given a medical exam and found fit for service. I was also given the option of delaying service until I had graduated as a doctor; I eagerly took this choice and returned to my studies. (It was government policy to encourage medical students to do this ever since the beginning of the Second World War so that there would be an adequate supply of new physicians being graduated each year.)
I graduated as a physician in January 1952 and did a six month surgical internship at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford and became engaged to Cynthia. At the end of that time, I felt it would be appropriate to do my required military service before getting married. Conscription had caught up with me. I don't remember being given any choice as to which service I would be in and I suppose the needs of the army were much greater than those of the navy or air force, so in July of 1952 I received a notice to report to Crookham Barracks near Aldershot along with a railway ticket to take me there. On arrival at the very small Crookham station I didn't know where to go but saw a sergeant from the R. A.M.C. (Royal Army Medical Corps). He was looking for people like me arriving on the train and he herded about a dozen of us young doctors into a large open truck which was provided with bench type seats and very soon we were driven past a sentry and into Crookham barracks. We were shown round the officers' mess and assigned beds in rooms with four to six occupants and told when dinner was. Other recruits trickled in and eventually there were about forty of us, all relatively newly qualified physicians. There was a billiard table and some of us passed the time paying snooker.
Next day after breakfast we were formed up into three ranks by an amiable sergeant major who told us what was to happen, and was obviously well used to coping with the awkwardness of doctors, having taught this basic training many times before. He called us "Sir" as befitted our status as officers. ("Your gaiters are on back to front and your belt is on upside down, Mr. Jones, Sir!") We were to have two weeks there with the weekend off, but first things first and we were marched off to get uniforms. We were each issued with two set of battledress blouses, trousers and boots, a pair of gaiters and a belt. We were then given a clothing allowance and had to buy from various military outfitters, who suddenly appeared at the camp, khaki shirts and ties and a cap. We also had to acquire cloth stars to show our rank for we were all starting as lieutenants and would be automatically promoted to captain at the end of a year. The stars were sewn onto our uniforms for us and we were allotted batmen (servants) to clean and polish our boots and belts.
The two week course was a very brief introduction to army organisation. We were officially signed in, photographed and given army identity cards and an army number. We then had rapid instruction in how to pay the troops, map reading, how to site an aid post and a casualty reception post under battle conditions, and a bit of drill. For those of us like me who had been in the cadet corps in school this was mostly easy, for the others it was a new world. At the end of the first week we were given TABT shots which some what disabled us from enjoying weekend leave. I headed off to visit Cynthia in Oxford.
The next two weeks we were at the Millbank Military Hospital (located on The Embankment in London and very near the Tate gallery which I visited in the lunch hours). This was a purely academic course of lectures on military medicine particularly atomic chemical and biological warfare and tropical diseases. We received an excellent tropical diseases textbook produced by the army. Once more I had a weekend visit to Cynthia, which made a delightful break.
The final two weeks of the course were spent at the Army School of Hygiene in Mytchet, near Aldershot. There we learnt about toilets, and assured that a bore-hole latrine dug to a depth of twenty feet would last two men indefinitely. I wondered if anybody had put this to the test. We also learnt how to purify water, and how to avoid dysentery by insisting on sanitary behaviour in cookhouses such as hand washing and eliminating flies. We also learnt how to transport casualties over rough terrain and rivers, (you can make a raft from the canvas roof of a large truck by folding straw inside) set up an aid post and use radios for communication. We were also shown the sorts of ambulances which were available (converted jeeps and larger vehicles which would carry four stretchers or a lot of walking wounded).
So that was it and we were sent on leave for two weeks while our postings were arranged, and then for those of us going overseas there was embarkation leave. Actually I was supposed to go to Bermuda, but this was changed to Malaya after a few days, to my extreme disappointment, as we thought Cynthia could join me in Bermuda. During the leave period I visited my parents in Prestbury near Macclesfield and of course Cynthia. During this time she managed to procure for me an officer's service dress uniform, which had been used by one of the ex-service men who were students with her. We bought the appropriate RAMC buttons and badges (the donor had been in the Reconnaissance Corps) which she sewed on for me so that I looked rather splendid all dressed up.
I had a final visit to my parents and got all my luggage together (we were advised to bring medical textbooks). Then I had a final visit to Cynthia. She saw me off at the railway station and almost as in a movie my last view of her as I leaned out of the carriage window was suddenly obliterated by a cloud of steam and smoke. When it cleared we had left the station far behind. It was a tearful parting and we wondered if we would ever see each other again.
The Outward Voyage.
I left Crookham barracks in an army truck with a number of other doctors and supplied with a sandwich lunch. At Crookham station we were loaded onto a troop train bound for Liverpool and the journey took most of the day as the train had the lowest priority and had to wait for local and express trains to pass. The train pulled into a station at the Liverpool docks and we eventually got aboard the troopship "Lancashire". This was a somewhat elderly hired vessel with a civilian crew. The ordinary seamen were mostly lascars (East Indian seamen) and there was a permanent military presence aboard with a military commander, a doctor and nurse who ran the sick bay, and some military police.
There were four of us doctors in a cabin on the promenade deck with a window to the outside. I think there were about 1,000 soldiers on board - replacements for various arms of the services, soldiers returning from leave and a few families going out with their husbands. Some were going to the Canal Zone of Egypt, some to Malaya, and some to Hong Kong or Korea. Most of the troops were of course privates and NCOs. They had their quarters in the lower areas of the ship which consisted of large spaces with triple bunks stacked closely together. The officers were treated well and the menu was good with quite a lot of Indian food.
There was a significant delay before we left the dock. We heard that the ship was overloaded with too many people on board We had to wait until an official turned up who could certify that it was all right for the ship to sail despite the excess of people. The ship sailed from Liverpool in the evening and, when I awoke the next morning, we were in the Firth of Clyde where more troops were brought aboard by lighter from Glasgow. We then departed for the open seas and shortly thereafter had a lifeboat drill. One elderly officer said the most important thing to take in the lifeboat was a hat so one could avoid sunstroke!
By the time we reached the Bay of Biscay there was a raging storm with heavy seas breaking right over the bow and the ship just holding her own against the wind. I felt very nauseated and spent a lot of time on deck in the shelter of a small partition. I had no idea whether the ship could cope with these conditions or whether it would break up. It was certainly very old and we wouldn't stand much of a chance in the lifeboats. The troop decks were indescribable with soldiers lying on their bunks vomiting on those below! I was glad that I was a privileged passenger in the first class area.
We finally reached Gibraltar on a rather wet but warmish afternoon and were allowed ashore for a few hours, being transported by lighters. I found unrationed candy there and promptly bought some. It was a Cadbury's Dairy Milk Selection in a rather nice tin Ashore as well as us were troops from a French troopship. They were being taken to French IndoChina to fight the Viet Min. We really just had time to walk along the harbour front looking at the shops and people and enjoying walking on dry land again.
The trip through the Mediterranean was very pleasant and calm and it gradually got warmer as we approached Alexandria. I mentioned to one of the regular officers that it was getting warm and I might put on shorts the next day. He was quite flabbergasted. We would be told when it was appropriate to wear shorts and then everyone would do so at the same time. It wouldn't do for some to be in shorts and not others. Indeed one day a notice went up to say that the next day we would wear tropical dress and so it was.
The first signs of approaching land were the Arab dhows and then the sea changed to a murky brown as we encountered the water coming from the Nile. In Alexandria we could not leave the ship. Some troops disembarked and a conjuror came aboard - the Gulley-Gulley man, an Arab who produced live chicks seemingly out thin air. In the midst of all this some Arab youths on the dock started to throw rocks at the port side of the vessel. Our starboard side was tied to the dock for embarkation and the port side was some twenty or thirty yards across the water to the dock where the rocks were being thrown. Our own troops enthusiastically threw rocks and anything else they could find. Very soon after that the port side of the ship was put out of bounds and the excitement rapidly ceased.
We left Alexandria that same evening and sailed slowly down the Suez canal. We could see palm trees and the occasional Arab with a donkey cart or camel or truck on the road which ran alongside the canal. The Sweetwater Canal also ran alongside although we couldn't see it. It carried fresh water and was reputed to be an excellent source of bilharzia. When I got up the next morning we had entered the Red Sea and I could see the town of Suez astern. The Red Sea trip took about three days and the sun beat down fiercely. The troop decks were impossibly hot and half the troops were brought up to sleep on deck each night. The view was of rough dry reddish hills on each side - totally inhospitable. Someone said that Mt. Ararat lay somewhere behind the hills on the East side.
I was appointed ventilation officer at this time and it was my job to take the wet and dry bulb temperatures on the troop decks. I did this each day and duly recorded them in a book. These readings indicated that conditions were too hot for people. When I pointed this out I was thanked for my efforts and told to keep recording daily but actually nothing would change whatever the readings!
During this time we doctors were all assigned large groups of soldiers and told to give a lecture on venereal disease and its prevention. What can one say apart from the obvious of not being exposed and if there are symptoms getting treatment.
During the voyage games were traditional to long journeys at that time. Bingo (called housey-housey) was popular. Deck quoits were available for the officers in first class. In the evening there was "horse racing" in which quite large cut out wooden horses, about a foot high were moved over a green baize course according to the roll of a dice (or maybe two dice). Money was wagered on the outcome.
Our next stop was Aden, then still a British colony. We had about half a day ashore and some of us took a taxi to see elaborate water channels and cisterns built probably two thousand years ago and allegedly by King Solomon in a time when it still rained there. There had been no rain for a long, long time. It was a very hot and dry place.
The next part of the trip across the Indian Ocean to Colombo was by far the best. We all had our sea legs. Each day was warm and sunny with a light breeze. The sea was a delightful blue and one could sit on deck and watch shoals of flying fish appear out of a billow and skim for hundreds of feet, their shiny wet bodies sparkling in the sun. I could have gone on in that manner for a long time, lulled by the gentle roll of the ship.
We reached Colombo as the sun was going down and it was soon dark. As far as I could see, the centre of the city had fine white government buildings with wide streets and palm trees. A group of us took a taxi to the Gall Face Bay Hotel (recommended by old timers) for a sumptuous meal served by waiters in oriental dress and turbans and bare feet, and then it was back to the boat, which sailed that night.
A couple of days later we awoke to hear the anchor chain going down and we were just outside Singapore harbour awaiting a berth and close to a couple small deserted islands covered with lush jungle. The weather was now hot and humid and there was a smell that could have been rotting vegetation. During the morning various small boats came alongside with orders for various officers as to where we were to go. Our group was to go to a barracks in Singapore for further training. We came into dock about the middle of the day and watched anxiously to make sure our luggage of tin trunks got off the boat. It was a couple of days before Xmas. We had been at sea a month and had had a very enjoyable voyage.
Singapore.
At that time Singapore was a British Crown colony and administratively separate from the mainland Malayan peninsula. The population was almost all Cantonese speaking Chinese with a handful of British. The mainland consisted of a federation of native states each ruled by a local Malayan prince (Sultan) and his council, all under British supervision by an advisor known as a Resident. The majority of the population was Malayan and nominally Muslim. There was a large population of ex-patriate Cantonese speaking Chinese who ran most of the businesses and were much more enterprising than the local Malays who were rather lackadaisical and happy to just relax in the sun, but who resented the prosperity and power of the Chinese. There was a significant population of Tamils from southern India who were mostly employed as manual labourers and a small population of British who had the senior administrative positions in the civil service, police etc. and who ran the large rubber and pineapple plantations and the tin mines. There were a few Indian professionals, particularly doctors. There was also a very small population of Sakai, original inhabitants who had been driven into the deep jungle and lived primitively in small scattered tribes.
There were really four languages spoken and notices and names of towns and the writing on cereal packages and cans involved English, Malay (with an Arabic script), Chinese and Tamil. Currency was the Straits Dollar worth then about two English shillings or 20 cents Canadian. Singapore and the Malayan states each had their own name on the postage stamps sold in that area.
In Singapore we were taken to rather fine officers' quarters in a building constructed before the war and which was used by the Japanese and then handed back undamaged at the end of the war. My bed was like a four poster with metal rods at the corners with the tops of these being joined by other metal rods. A mosquito net was attached to the top corners and was long enough to tuck in around the mattress. This type of mosquito net was standard throughout my time in Malaya so that one could be totally mosquito free at night.
We were given a further money allowance to buy tropical uniforms in Jungle Green which were quickly made by roadside tailors. We were also told to buy medal ribbons for by being in the theatre of operations we were automatically awarded the General Service Medal with a "Malayan" clasp. Each day after that we were transported by small boat to Blakang Mati island where we had a further course of tropical medicine and were taken to the Tan Tock Sang civilian hospital to see cases of leishmaniasis, leprosy, and other tropical diseases. The whole thing was very relaxed as part of the reason we were there was to allow us to acclimatise to the tropical heat (much more sweating and drinking of fluids than we were used to). The air felt quite heavy to breathe with the almost 100% humidity and one expected one's shirt to be wet with sweat by the middle of the morning even if one was just sitting down.
Singapore was fun to explore. There was central area of fine white buildings around a large grassy area where cricket was played. There were Government buildings, a fine cathedral and the quite spectacular Raffles Hotel fronted by fan palms which I had never seen before. There many small Chinese shops with all sorts of dried meats and fish and local fruit and vegetables and all sorts of exotic smells. The city streets had open drains running along between the road and the sidewalk. The very heavy rains which fell almost every day in the late afternoon must have contributed to public health a great deal by washing debris away and keeping the streets clean.
A river ran through the middle of the city and on this were moored numerous sampans with a large population living on them. There were dance halls called "Worlds" -e.g. Happy World. There was a dance floor surrounded by small tables and one could order a beer (Anchor or Tiger brand) and along side the dance floor were seated a row of girls who would dance with one. You bought a ten cent ticket and presented it to the taxi dancer of your choice and it was good for one dance. There were areas of the city posted with notices saying that the area was out of bounds to troops. We presumed that these alleys contained opium dens and other sites of iniquity.
At the end of this time we were posted to 16th. Field Ambulance just outside Kuala Lumpur. We went overnight and each of us had a first class sleeper in a four bed compartment with air conditioning. We were each issued with a revolver and 12 rounds of .38 ammunition. The train was a civilian one although a lot troops were aboard. In front of the engine were three trucks full of dirt to take the force of the explosion in case there was a mine on the track. If there was, the train would have to stop and it would be likely that it would be attacked by an ambush party.
We arrived in K.L without incident and were taken by truck to 16 Fd. Amb.. There we were accommodated in palm leaf thatched huts (atap bashas in the vernacular). We were there to await postings and in the meantime we had a chance to fire the infantry weapons - Bren gun, Sten gun, rifle and revolver. We were also told that a jungle patrol would be organised so that we could experience things first hand.. This did not fill us with enthusiasm and the event never took place before I was posted to the 1st. Malay Regiment in Muar (Bandar Maharani).
K.L. was a very attractive city. Like Singapore it had a spacious grassy padang in the centre surrounded by palm trees and the Government buildings were airy and uncrowded. The railway station was most attractive and looked like a palace. There were typical western style stores as well as Chinese and Malay stores catering to the natives.
I left one morning with my luggage, a revolver and instructions to take the train from K.L. to Seremban and then change to another train which would take me to Muar. On arrival in Seremban I found there was no train to Muar. The RTO (Railway Transport Officer) told me that the track had been blown up in 1941 when the Japs invaded and there had been no trains since then! The RTO however phoned 1 Malay and they sent a Jeep for me. The journey there was across flat country with numerous small rivers each of which was bridged by a temporary structure -1 presume a legacy of the same war with the Japanese.
At 1 Malay I found I was temporarily replacing a doctor who was going with a party to Borneo to recruit Dyak natives as trackers. I had been studying the Malay language since I had left England where I had obtained an appropriate handbook, so I was rather pleased to be in a milieu where I could practice some simple phrases. I was given a clerk who spoke Malay and English. The Malay language is very simple in that there are no tenses in the verbs - "mana pergi?" - where go?; "apa sakit?" - how sick?, "ada chaching" - are there worms?, "mana sakit?" - where sick? etc.. Plurals were made by just repeating the noun, although some were idiosyncratic,- "mata" = eye, "mata mata" = eyes literally but is used to mean police. The Malay soldiers addressed me as "Tuan" (Sir).
There were a mixture of English and Malay officers who made me very welcome. The regiment was nominally Moslem so Friday was the day of rest and alcohol was banned. However the officers, both English and Malay, managed to have a supply of drink in the Mess.
I was rapidly appointed messing officer for the Officers' Mess. At that time in the British army many officers' messes particularly those involved with native troops were not provided with army food, since the food provided for the troops was appropriate to their ethnic needs and not usually appreciated by the European officers. It would have been too labour intensive to supply these small quantities of ordinary army rations. Instead each officer was given a daily food allowance of money added to his pay and the officers in the mess would then pool funds to buy food which the cooks would them cook. Often the doctor does this job as he is in the base more than anyone else. So each morning I would take a Jeep with a bilingual driver and go down to the local market. I would often buy a supply of fresh fish (ikan merah - red fish was a favourite and very tasty). I would also buy vegetables, bread, etc.. Fresh milk was not available as the ambient temperature was too hot for cows and we used evaporated or condensed milk. There was a lot of very tasty and cheap local fruit - bananas, rambutans, lichees, pineapples, etc.
I should perhaps comment on whom we were fighting. The enemy were Chinese Communists who were trying to disrupt the country by terrorist acts. They had previously murdered the Governor General and numerous British planters and Malay rubber tappers. The British army was trying to eliminate these groups and as well as using personnel from the U.K. had Malay, Gurkha, Fijian and East African soldiers in place.
The origins of these problems went back to WW2. In 1941 the Japanese invaded and rapidly overran Malaya and Singapore. When the British saw that they were going to be rapidly defeated they organised a small number of British to remain active and form a guerrilla force behind the Japanese lines. They recruited a number of Chinese residents who were only to glad to fight the Japanese since Japan had been fighting China for a number of years. The groups were quite successful at living in the jungle and harassing the Japanese. When the war ended and the Japanese surrendered these guerrilla groups were disbanded. However they had hidden caches of arms in the jungle the result of airdrops during the war.
When the Emergency started at about the same time as the Chinese rose against the French in French Indo-China (i.e. Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos) groups of Chinese took to the jungle. These were often the same groups that had fought the Japanese and they knew where the arms dumps were and were well experienced in jungle warfare. One of the British leaders was Spencer Chapman who was quite successful. After the war he wrote a book about his exploits - "The Jungle Is Neutral" - concerning his experiences with the guerrillas during WWII. This was really required reading for those of us about to enter the jungle. He described vividly how to survive in the jungle and where he operated in Malaya with a lot of factual detail.
One day I was out visiting an outlying company with another officer in an armoured scout car and as were driving round a corner came upon a number of trees that had been felled across the road. The other officer was driving the vehicle and I was sitting with my head out of the top of the vehicle with two Bren machine guns mounted in front of me. These were controlled by bicycle handle bars. Movement of the bars turned the guns and raised and lowered them and the brake levers were attached to the triggers. I didn't know what to do, but my colleague said it was an ambush and to sight my guns up the side of the hill to our right. Nothing happened and I assume the terrorists left when they saw they were up against an armoured car. A few minutes later an armoured personnel carrier came along and disgorged a party of local armed police who soon cleared the road.
While I was in Muar the Governor General, General Sir Gerald Templar, visited the battalion and the officers entertained him to lunch and we were all introduced. I was impressed that he seemed intelligent and was interested to listen to what people had to say. As messing officer I had to produce special food and made a journey to Malacca to the Cold Storage store there. This involved taking the ferry (a sort of motorised barge one drove on and off, which took a dozen or so vehicles and many pedestrians pushing hand carts) North over the Muar river and as military we got priority over the other trucks and carts that were also crossing.
I really enjoyed my time with 1 Malay and I was learning the language fast.. I even started to learn the Arabic script that was used to write Malay (I had fun decoding advertisements and finding that the toothpaste advertisement was for Kolynos brand, etc..). When my time as a locum was nearly up I wrote to the Medical director and said that I was learning Malay and suggested I be posted to another Malay Regiment. Presumably as a result of this I was posted to the 2/7 Gurkhas in Kuala Pilah where Gurkhali would be spoken!
Kuala Pilah.
When my time at Muar ended I was taken by Jeep to Seremban - 17 Div. HQ -where I had lunch and was then picked up in a small track by the outgoing doctor from the Gurkhas. On the way to Kuala Pilah we ran into a violent rainstorm with high winds and a lot of rain fell in a few minutes so that the road became flooded and we in the track got soaked as the rain came in through the open sides. We had to wait a few minutes for the flood to dissipate and we arrived at my new home cold and wet.
The outgoing doctor, Peter, had a year of service to do and he was being posted to Dehra Dun in India to medically examine new recruits for the Gurkhas at the recruiting centre. He took me out to a local Chinese restaurant in Kuala Pilah and told me a bit about what I was taking over. He was to stay a couple of days with me. He showed me the M.I. (Medical Inspection) room which was a tent with an electric wire strung across the roof from which dangled a bulb and a table and chair and a stretcher with a blanket on it. I very soon found out that vicious, biting red ants regularly marched along the electric cable and dropped onto the table where I was writing. I solved this by wiping the wire with phenol (carbolic acid) which seemed to discourage the attackers.
I should perhaps mention the insects. There were a lot of them and many varieties. The spotted mosquitoes were particularly vicious though they didn't carry malaria. There were very large borer beetles which were able to rapidly and noisily drill into wood to make a burrow. There were spectacular butterflies, numerous types of ant and huge furry spiders.
I was issued with a rifle and 50 rounds of ammunition and that afternoon we both went in a scout car to visit an outlying company. I took the gunner position and Peter was radio operator and we had a Gurkha driver. We turned off onto a laterite (a mixture of red sand and shale) road which was wet from a recent downpour and as we crested a rise the vehicle skidded and was obviously going off the road into the ditch. I didn't know whether to try and jump out before we crashed or stay in and get my head down inside the vehicle -1 obviously didn't have much chance if I left my head and shoulders protruding from the vehicle if we rolled. I got my head down and hung on inside the vehicle which did indeed roll over and land almost upside down. While we were rolling a heavy metal shutter closed above my head. It would have decapitated me if I had not hunkered down inside the vehicle.
When we came to a stop we had to try and extract ourselves and open an emergency door in the lower part of one side of the car, which was now over our heads. We did indeed scramble out and then pulled out the driver who was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound which must have happened when his head hit some metal protrusion. I flagged down a passing civilian track filled with Chinese and waving my rifle demanded to be taken to the nearest army location, leaving Peter with the driver. I did arrive at the Gurkha company we were supposed to visit and found the commander who organised a track with a patrol of soldiers. When we got back to the wreck Peter and the driver had gone. I learnt later that an ambulance from the local rubber company had evacuated them.
In the meantime the company commander radioed for help to Battalion H.Q. and eventually the MTO (motor transport officer) came out with a tow truck and after a bit of manoeuvring managed to winch the armoured car the right way up and then he and I were towed back to Kuala Pilah in it. I was really stiff the next day in all the muscles I "had used in hanging on while we crashed.
The Gurkha infantry battalion that I had joined was typical of many at that time. There was a H.Q. often in a village or small town, with the medical, transport and signals services organised from there. Then the four infantry companies would be deployed some distance away in the jungle and from there they would send out patrols. Each company consisted of about 100 men under a major or captain and divided into three platoons each under a lieutenant. A platoon had 3 sections of 7 or 8 riflemen and one Bren Gunner. When a party went out into the jungle they tended to follow old trails whether animal or human, otherwise they had to slowly hack a path through the jungle. It was important to stay in single file and spread out so that if ambushed not everyone would be hit at once. It was essential also never to return the way one had come. The terrorists would know the trail had been used recently and would lie in wait in case the patrol came back.
When we were in the jungle we wore special heavy duty cotton trousers and shirts that didn't tear too easily and boots like running shoes with an extension that went about a third of the way up the leg so that one could tuck in the trouser bottom. This helped keep out leeches. We also had floppy hats. Everything was jungle green in colour.
The jungle itself was quite dark because of the canopy of trees and at ground level one could not see far because of the thick brush. Everything was hot and damp and drippy. In places there was elephant grass which was some six or seven feet high and very coarse. The edges of the leaves were very sharp and one could easily cut oneself if one brushed by the plants. In the jungle as elsewhere it was very hot and we needed to drink a lot of water. We used to fill our water bottles from a stream and then put in a sterilising tablet and wait half an hour for it to work. The water tasted of chlorine, but seemed safe.
As well as jungle we were often in the rubber plantations which went on for miles. They were quite eerie in that the trees were planted in exact rows in two directions. At one moment one could see a long way up the row, and the next the trees were all in the way as one moved about. The trees were also in diagonal rows and it was quite dark with all the foliage.
I was anxious about being ambushed when out in the jungle and this did not settle until I had a dream about being ambushed as we turned a corner on a trail. One day when in the jungle we came to that same corner and nothing happened. After that I didn't worry for some reason.
In Kuala Pilah the officers had taken over the local Government Rest House (hotel) and the troops were in tents or palm leaf shelters. Sick and injured men would be transported to me in Kuala Pilah or I would go out to them. A number of men were brought in semi-conscious with very high fevers and I assumed they had malaria. They were dehydrated as almost all the casualties were and I used to give them all a pint of normal saline intravenously. I gave the suspected malaria cases i.v. quinine which seemed to work miraculously and then continued with oral medication. All of us were taking paludrine daily as an anti-malarial, but it was not totally effective as resistant strains of malaria were appearing and later we changed to mepacrine with better results. I had an ambulance and at that time also a Jeep at my disposal. I would send hospital cases to the Military Hospital near K.L. at Kinrara. I was once again Messing Officer.
Being responsible for the hygiene of the troops I would go out and visit the various outlying companies in an armoured scout car or in another vehicle with a scout car escort. At the companies I would check on the cleanliness of the kitchen, the latrines, water supply and the washing facilities - dysentery being one of the big problems as there were no refrigerators and flies were everywhere. Everyone had dysentery at some time and usually several times.
The Gurkhas were volunteer soldiers from Nepal. There was a long tradition of being mercenary soldiers in that country. The men were all short and stocky with very strong legs and arms. They had lived in the Himalayan hills and were used to carrying heavy loads up and down the mountain trails. They were brown skinned and had straight black hair and round faces. At first I could not distinguish one from another, but after a while without any reason I found I could sort out who was who and I found I was looking for different distinguishing features other than eye and hair colour and complexion. Each regiment tended to recruit from one particular geographical area, so only a few tribes were involved in each regiment and as a result there were only a few surnames coupled with a small variety of first names. Many men had the same names and were often known by the last four digits of their army number.
The Gurkha regiments were part of the old Indian army which was established in the early nineteenth century when many regiments of native troops were raised and commanded by a mix of British and native officers (Bengal Lancers, Skinner's Horse, Sikhs). When British rule in India ended in 1948 the Indian army troops became the armies of India and Pakistan and the British officers were found jobs in the British army or else retired. However the Gurkhas were mercenaries from the independent state of Nepal. There were at the time of partition, I think, ten or twelve of these regiments with two battalions each. It was decided that the British would take four or five and India the remainder, the British officers being replaced by Indian and the British officers of these regiments joining the regiments that the British retained. The British got the 7th.Gurkhas and I think 2nd and 10th. and possibly the 12th.. In my time some of these were in Malaya and some in Hong Kong. All the personnel of the Gurkha regiments were regular professional soldiers rather than conscripts as I was. This made the morale high as people were doing what they wanted to do. All except the most junior officers were veterans of WW2 and they had fought with Gurkha regiments in North Africa, Italy and Burma and also in Malaya before the defeat there. One of the officers had been wounded in the leg at Cassino and won a DSO. He still had a bit of a limp. Another showed me the scar where a bullet had gone through his tin hat and grazed his scalp. One had been captured at the fall of Malaya in 1941 and had spent the rest of the war in Changi POW camp. I think in my time there were only two British officers who had been too young to be in the war.
The native Gurkha officers had their own mess and were known as King's (or Queen's) Gurkha officers. They only commanded in the Gurkha regiments and would not be transferred to British regiments partly because they only spoke Gurkhali. The senior Gurkha officer was known as the Gurkha major. Terms from the old Indian army turned up from time to time - naik for corporal, havildar for sergeant, daftar for office.
Most of the officers were Gurkhas so that there were only about fifteen British officers in the British officers mess. This made us into a sort of family and often there would be only two or three in camp at a time. There were the C.O. - a It.colonel, the 2 i/c, - a major, five company commanders, - majors or captains, and a quartermaster, a motor transport officer, an adjutant, an intelligence officer, and a doctor. There was also one 2nd. It. just out from Sandhurst who led a platoon. A regular army battalion would have forty to fifty officers in the mess.
The language was Gurkhali, related to Hindi, but with a lot of different words and it was highly inflected with numerous tenses, and conjugations. I had an interpreter clerk when I was seeing patients and I learned by rote various phrases (How are you sick? Where is the pain?) without knowing where one word stopped and the next began and then slowly over a period of months my vocabulary grew and I could create my own sentences and became quite fluent in the subjects that were important. The script used in writing Gurkhali was Hindi, however the army used English lettering to write the language since it was already familiar to rhe British officers and almost all the recruits were ilh'terate and could learn any set of characters with equal ease or difficulty. It was interesting that some of the words obviously had a Greek origin and I assume these words arrived when Alexander the Great was in the region. The men addressed the officers as "sahib".
The battalion was the 2/7 Gurkha Rifles and as a "Rifle" regiment the soldiers were entitled to wear a green beret (like the commandos) rather than the navy blue beret worn by most of the rest of the army. I liked the idea and got myself a green beret from the Quartermaster to which I affixed an RAMC badge and wore it whenever I was in a vehicle and felt rather dashing! The officers of the regiment wore black Sam Browne belts when in base camp and I followed suit, wearing the brown Sam Browne belt that had been my father's in WW1. I am sure I was the only doctor in Malaya wearing a Sam Browne and green beret!
The "Rifle" regiments had many traditions. The troops never "sloped" arms, but carried their rifles at the "trail". They presented arms from the "order arms" position rather than the "slope". A bayonet was called a sword. The regiment was also associated with one of the Scottish regiments and had a pipe and drum band. The Gurkha troops carried a kukri on their belts and had a tradition of great loyalty and bravery.
My pay was much improved by being in Malaya. As well as my basic daily pay of about $3, there was extra pay for being overseas and about $2 per day for being with the Gurkhas and a messing allowance on top of that. Later in my service I received a letter from the Pay Corps to say that I had been overpaid. I had been receiving Gurkha service pay at the rate for regular officers and the rate for conscripts was only 75 cents a day. My pay was therefore to be docked until I had repaid the excess. It just happened that an officer in the Pay Corps was staying in our mess for a couple of days as a guest and I asked him what to do. He said I should write and say the money was already spent and that repaying it would cause undue hardship. It worked and I never heard any more about the problem, although from then on my pay was of course cut.
All the officers including myself had a personal servant or batman. He would wake me in the morning with a cup of tea and a banana. He would see to my laundry, make my bed, bring hot water for shaving, get my rifle and ammunition from the armoury when needed, clean the rifle, and accompany me when I went into the jungle.
Because the middle of the day became so hot, when we were in camp we would get up at 6-30 a.m. and work from 7 a.m. to 9 or 9-30 a.m. and then have breakfast and then return to work. Lunch was around 12-30 p.m. and dinner around 7 p.m.. One had a cup of tea in the afternoon if one wished and the staff in my medical inspection room seemed to be always making tea and presenting me with a tin mug of "char".
Shortly before I arrived in Kuala Pilah, helicopters, flown by the RAF and later by the Navy as well, had been introduced into the area. The first helicopters were quite small and could take one passenger sitting next to the pilot. As a passenger one sat next to the pilot in the bubble at the front of theplane and had a fantastic wide angle view. A man-sized basket was mounted across the fuselage behind the cockpit and a stretcher case could be carried in this. Later the navy flew quite large machines with two pilots in the cockpit and a cabin that could hold half a dozen people and a couple of stretchers. These were wonderful improvements for evacuating the wounded from the jungle - previously the wounded had to be carried out and this could take several days with much deterioration or death.
My initiation into flying was when I was detailed to be flown into the jungle to assess the health of one of our patrols who had very bad foot ulcerations due to fungus infections after walking through swamp for a number of days. I had them flown out. As well I was asked to look at a band of Sakai and recommend what to do with them. They seemed reasonably fit and I advised the civil administrator who was with me to just leave them to get on with their lives.
A number of the men had their families with them in Malaya and they were living in a camp in Sungei Besi near K.L. where the troops were the S.A.S. Our battalion was to move there eventually. A measles epidemic developed amongst these families and I was sent over there to sort things out as it was felt that the M.O. of the S. A.S. was too busy and couldn't speak any Gurkhali. It was an interesting trip and I found a lot of very sick women and children, since measles was not endemic in Nepal and they had little natural resistance. I examined any individual who was ill and eventually arranged for the Military Hospital to put up an extra ward in the shape of a hospital tent and admit the sickest and there were quite a number.
Mail from home was a very important ingredient in keeping up morale and the post office made it easier to mail letters since the postage for "Forces Mail" was very low. Cynthia and my family and I wrote regularly and Cynthia periodically sent photos and books as well as letters, all of which were very welcome and reassured one that there was indeed another world out there.
Bentong.
After a few months we were told that we would be moving to a new area. This was done quite frequently so that the troops did not become stale and so that the enemy would be facing new people. We had to pack up all our equipment and clean up the camp before we went. On the day in question we were all in a long convoy over many miles of road and the journey took all day. We each had a pack of food provided carefully packed in ant proof foil which included two pieces of toilet paper!
By this time General Templar and his advisors had produced a plan to end the war. They realised that the guerrillas were kept going by supplies from Chinese villages either because the villagers were sympathetic (known as the Min Yuen organisation) or were threatened. What ever the reason, it was felt that the guerrillas would have a lot of difficulties if they lost their support. So a number of villages were closed down and the population settled in a new area far from the active terrorist areas. Other villages were ringed with barbed wire and patrolled and storage of rice was prohibited - people could only store enough rice for their immediate needs and had to buy small quantities frequently. This policy had a very powerful effect depriving the guerrillas of much needed supplies.
We arrived in Bentong - which lay over the first range of mountains to the East of K.L. - and I found that I was inheriting a wing of the civilian hospital and my unit was called a Casualty Reception Station (CRS) staffed by a section of RAMC troops from 16 Fd.Amb. They acted as medical orderlies and there were also three drivers for the ambulances - all of them under a sergeant. These were all conscripted U.K. troops.
The battalion was taking over from a regiment of the Kings African Rifles from Kenya who were returning home after their tour of duty in Malaya. The Officers' Mess was once again in the local Rest House. There was running water and bathtubs, but no hot water. However it did have a concrete pad marked out as a badminton court and many of us sent to K.L. for badminton racquets. In contrast to the Gurkhas the men of the K.A R. were very tall and black with curly hair and they called their officers "Bwana". I inherited a few of their men in the hospital and they would greet me in the morning with "Jambo Bwana!" They were convalescent and I was able to discharge them in the first couple of weeks so they could catch the boat home.
The organisation was much the same as in Kuala Pilah with the four rifle companies dispersed at the edges of the jungle.
Two British Red Cross nurses were stationed in Bentong and they would go out to the local villages (mostly Chinese) and give what treatment they could to the local population. It was one of my jobs to go out with them to show our good intentions and help with the clinic they ran. Actually the cases were very obvious, - large abscesses that I drained, coughs for which I handed out linctus, rashes, mostly fungal, which I painted with vivid crimson Castellani's paint, and infants with rashes and diarrhoea. I rather enjoyed these outings. The nurses said that they never looked around as they drove and never reported any terrorist activity. In return they were never threatened.
We had quite a number of casualties during this time and I wrote an account of dealing with one of them - a gunshot wound of the head - which is amongst my papers. I found the man unconscious and had to remove some broken bits of skull to relieve the pressure due to bleeding. I then flew with him by helicopter to the hospital. The C.O. of the Military Hospital phoned the C.O. of the battalion to say I had done well. I got a "Mention in Despatches" award after I had left the army and perhaps this action contributed to the award.
Mention in despatches - Captain G.A. Renwick, M.D. 1917.
On one occasion I was travelling with the quartermaster in a truck escorted by a scout car. We had been to visit an outlying company and were returning to Bentong. The truck we were in broke down and the scout car could not get through to base on the radio, so we managed to squeeze our driver into the scout car and the quartermaster and I said we would wait in the jungle edge until a rescue party came. It just happened that this location was exactly where Spencer Chapman and his party used to ambush the Japanese. There was a sharp bend in the road which was overlooked by a bank about thirty feet high covered with bush. The QM and I went up onto the top of the bank and there we found a fairly well used trail. I was afraid this was an enemy trail. The QM had no experience of the jungle so I had him go into the jungle beside the trail keeping a lookout one way and I did the same in the opposite direction. We were just armed with rifles and I was not sure how we would cope if the Chinese came along. If we shot at them would they flee because they thought it was an ambush or would they overwhelm us. Eventually it got dark and we could not be seen, so the worries were over, apart from the bugs. At last a convoy arrived with a tow-truck and we were glad to get back to Bentong.
Bentong seemed to be a very unhealthy area and I had many cases of malaria and also leptospirosis, scrub typhus, dysentery and skin problems. Because of the number of malaria cases the malaria preventative was changed from Paludrine to Mepacrine (this latter was used during WW 2 in the tropics). A physician came out from an army Public Health unit and taught me to do thick films of blood to diagnose malaria. I had previously being doing ordinary blood smears and it is hard to see the parasites on these.
Although we were only about 50 miles from K.L. the road there was very winding and treacherous as it snaked over the 4,000 ft. mountain range and was prone to ambushes. So a convoy was run to KL most mornings and a return one that evening. I evacuated cases I could not handle by ambulance with the convoy. If I had an urgent case, particularly wounded men, I could get a helicopter to evacuate them and the helicopter would usually arrive within half an hour.
After I had been in Bentong a while I developed a very irritating case of prickly heat which presented as a most itchy raised red rash over most of my body. I felt quite ill with it and eventually went with the convoy to K.L. to get some medical advice. The advice was that I should take some leave and go up to Eraser's Hill just North of K.L. where it would be cool at some 5,000 feet. This was arranged quite soon and I went on the convoy to 16 Fd.Amb for a night. It was wonderful to have a warm shower, my first for many weeks. At Eraser's Hill I stayed in a.bungalow with another officer and it was indeed very pleasant. We even needed a fire in the evening and my rash cleared up quickly and never returned for the rest of my time in Malaya.
One of the bonuses of running the hospital was that there were two clay tennis courts in front, where the Bentong tennis club played. I became an honorary member and was even invited to represent the club against a neighbouring village, which was a nice thought although in the event I could not get away.
In the autumn of 1953 we were again moved, but this time to our base camp at Sungei Besi, just to the South of K.L. where the men's families were housed.
Sungei Besi.
Sungei Besi camp was not part of a village as had been the previous locations and here people lived in palm leaf huts (bashas) or tents. I had a tent on a platform of paving stones. This was standard army issue with two stout vertical poles and there was a horizontal pole across their tops. There were two layers of canvas and the walls could be pulled back in the day for light and air. I enjoyed the tent and I had a desk so that I could write in the fresh air. I had a single encounter with a snake in that tent. One evening I was sitting in the tent at my desk. The canvas walls were closed and I had the electric light on. I noticed a movement along the margin where the front wall met the roof. There was a five foot long snake gliding along (it was later identified as a very poisonous krait). I grabbed a long stick which I had ready for such an emergency and whacked the snake on the back repeatedly, working up towards its head until it was dead. I threw the corpse outside and when I went out in the morning to look at it, I found that it had been reduced to a skeleton by the ants.
I had a small clinic for seeing the men and half a dozen beds and then another clinic where I saw women and children of the Gurkha families. The officers' mess was in a basha. The water supply was from a nearby lake and the water was pumped through a filter and then into a water tank quite high up and then piped to various parts of the camp. Bleaching powder was tipped into the storage tank daily. It was still only cold showers until the Spring of 1954 when suddenly the Royal Engineers installed a heater so that we could have hot showers - bliss! As usual the infantry companies were located in or at the edge of the jungle. I seem to remember many times receiving a signal asking me to pick up a casualty at a certain map reference. I would take an ambulance and an armoured car escort, pick up the man at the specified place and then take him back to camp for treatment or if necessary take him straight to the Military Hospital at Kinrara, near K.L..
On one occasion I visited one of our companies in a jungle camp. I had to give a number of injections and was busy boiling up the syringes in a rectangular steriliser, which I was heating over a couple of pieces of "meta" - solid fuel tablets. The divisional general arrived to see what it was like at the 'sharp end1. He spotted me squatting down and said: "Hello, doc, why don't you have an electric steriliser?" I didn't know how to explain we didn't have electricity in the jungle without making him look like an idiot.
I used to enjoy seeing the families and supervising the midwifery. I had a Gurkha nurse-midwife and also a member of the (British) Women's Voluntary Services and a Tamil sweeper staffing the unit and half a dozen beds. Apart from the pregnancies the commonest problems were gastro-intestinal and very commonly due to worms of one sort or another.
Shortly after we arrived at Sungei Besi all our units returned to base for re-training and other troops relieved them in the jungle. This was reciprocated at Xmas when the Gurkhas and Malay regiments tried to give the U.K. troops a break. Equipment was reviewed and replaced if necessary, some basic training was done. There were inter company soccer games. I tried to review any medical problems and made sure everyone's immunisation shots were up to date. We also had the mass mini x-ray unit come to identify any TB cases. The Gurkhas had little immunity to this disease and we always found some newly infected individuals. They were treated in hospital and then discharged home.
The big festival of Dashera was celebrated at this time. This was really a sacrifice to the gods and a blessing of the weapons of war. A square are was marked off and representative items of the various weapons were piled up - Bren guns, sten guns and mortars. Then some goats were beheaded and some ducks and finally an ox was decapitated and the blood spread around the weapons. The officers in their best clothes sat in a stand to watch the proceedings, which were carried out quite solemnly.
During this time I had to condemn some rusty cans of milk and the form required that I certify whether the food was either "unfit for human consumption" or "unfit for issue to troops" - a difficult decision and one I solved by crossing out the or and making the result unfit for both categories. I wrote a paragraph about this for the "Peripatetic Correspondent" page of The Lancet ( a British medial magazine). They did indeed publish it and the result is among my collected papers.
One interesting thing I noticed while here was the fact that as we were just about on the equator, for part of the year the sun seemed to go from left to right as it seemed to cross the sky to the South and for the rest of the year the reverse was the case and the sun seemed to traverse the Northern sky.
Early on in 1954 I found myself quite ill one morning with a high fever, headache, and muscle aches. I had myself driven to the local military hospital and was admitted to the Officers' ward. I was semi-comatose for some 24 hours and after that my fever subsided. Numerous blood tests were done but no diagnosis was made. Leptospirosis was suspected at the beginning but there was no evidence of this. It was a pleasant surprise to find I had met one of the nurses on the ward previously as a nurse in Manchester when we were both students. I was discharged after a week feeling quite well.
Around the same time a soldier was brought in quite comatose with signs of meningism. I sent him to hospital and he died there of Japanese B encephalitis, a mosquito borne disease. We had no more cases of that disease.
In the Spring of the year I had some leave and flew to Australia to visit my relatives. I flew one evening by DCS to Singapore. I had previously seen this flight go over our camp each day at the same time and so I was able to watch for a fine view of the camp and take some photos. In Singapore I was lodged in the Raffles Hotel for the night. Next morning I flew by DC7, a four engine propeller plane, to Sydney. We stopped in Jakarta for lunch and Darwin for supper. There we were each given a room so that we could have a shower. In the evening we departed for Sydney and after flying all night reached there at about 9 a.m. with a spectacular view of the harbour and bridge from the air. I was met by relatives in Sydney and driven to Botany Bay and a couple of other viewpoints and then just before lunch I took off for Brisbane where I was met by my aunt Mill. I spent a few days there meeting Uncle Bill who lived with Mill and cousins Bob and his family and Peggy Moody (aunt Eva's daughter) and her family. Bob and his wife were both G.P.s and had a medical office built onto their house which I thought was a very convenient idea except that you could never get away from being on call unless you physically went away.
Later I took the bus to Toowoomba to stay with Aunts Jessie and Tibbie and to meet Aunt Dorothy and family including cousin Jim. Jessie took me on a day long bus trip into the interior (?Bunya Mountains) and to local point of interest - Picnic Point, Toowoomba Grammar School. My father had some money deposited with a savings bank and I took out some money from there to pay my way.
Later I returned to Brisbane and Auntie Mill. At the weekend Bob Miller and his family took me to Surfer"s Paradise where Bob's wife Allison's parents had a cabin and I swam in the Pacific which was very calm that day. On another day Mill took me to the Tambourine Mountains -a nature reserve just North of the Queensland border on the coast. Aunt Eve took me to a nearby park at Mount Cootah.
Finally I flew back to Sydney and stayed first with Betty Moodie Barnett (twin sister of Peggy) and her family and they drove me around Sydney and we had a swim in the harbour inside a shark proof cage. I then went to stay with cousin Colin Frazer and his family and during that time I took the bus to the harbour and climbed up the staircase inside one of the towers of the bridge. There was a very fine view. I spent my last day with Uncle Clen's wife Beryl who took me on a cruise of the harbour. Finally I had dinner with uncle Clen (who looked very like me) and his wife before flying off in the evening, with a stunning view of the city lights in the dark I then retraced my steps through Singapore and back to camp.
Sometime in the Spring of 1954 The French fighting in Viet Nam were defeated and this was marked by the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the Viet Min. There was anxiety amongst the British high command that the Chinese would sweep down through Thailand and into Malaya. All the battalion troops in the jungle were suddenly returned to base and we were put on two hours notice to move out and a large convoy of trucks stood ready to take us to the Malay-Thailand frontier which we were to have to defend. Fortunately nothing came of this and we were stood down after a couple of days, and life returned to normal.
Around this time the CO of 1/7 Gurkhas was killed in an ambush. He was being driven in a jeep by his driver and escorted by an armoured car. They came under fire as they turned a corner on the mountain road. The driver was killed instantly, the CO managed to get under the jeep and start shooting with his carbine. The ambush party managed to shoot away the radio aerial and controls for the Bren gun mounted on top of the armoured car. I don't know what happened after that but the CO was killed and the ambush party took the weapons, uniforms and papers. A party of officers from the 2/7 Gurkhas went to the funeral at the military cemetery.
A couple of days before I was due to leave the regiment a special party was held for me and attended by the British and Gurkha officers and their families. There was a display of dancing by children arid men (women did not dance) and special curries and beer and rum. I was presented with a special kukri with a scabbard decorated with silver and silk and the regimental badge was mounted on the top of the scabbard. I was garlanded with flowers (hibiscus and gardenias) and the children sang a special song. There was a long speech by the senior Gurkha officer (in Gurkhali) part of which said: "...in the night and in the day whether tired or hungry, he cared for officer or man, for woman or child. We present this kukri as a mark of our gratitude and also in the hope that it may remind you of us sometimes."
Some months before I was due to go home one of the troopships had a fire on board and had to be abandoned in the Mediterranean. After that everyone was flown to the U.K. by one of two charter companies. I was to fly with Airwork, and my heavy luggage was snipped by sea.
I took the overnight train to Singapore and went to a transit camp and had the day in Singapore where I bought some souvenirs and where I also went to a Forces swimming pool which was very enjoyable in the hot sun. Next morning dressed in civilian clothes we were put on the plane (a Hermes with 4 propellers) at Changi military airport. They tried to start the plane but there were problems and so we were de-planed and told to come back the next day. I returned to the swimming pool. Next day there was more success and we just got off the ground at the end of the runway and flew to Rangoon for lunch, where we saw only the airport. We spent that night at the Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta. I made a mistake here. I had always made it a rule never to drink unboiled or sterilised water. At dinner I was very thirsty and drank some of the water provided on the table, thinking it should be safe. I paid for this with severe diarrhoea soon after I got back home.
In the morning a friend and I just had time for a quick walk round some of the streets which were just as dirty as legend had it and full of people living on the street. There were beggars of all descriptions - some having terrible deformities. We were then whisked off to DumDum airport thence flew all day to Karachi where we arrived just after lunch. We had time to explore the city. A doctor travelling with me joined in getting the driver of a motor trishaw to give us a tour.
Next day we had lunch in Bahrein at the airport. The country seemed to consist of a large expanse of sand. It was so hot that the horizon seemed to shimmer. There were sheikhs sitting at the next table who didn't seem to know what to make of our party. We spent the night in Nicosia in Cyprus. We stayed in a small private hotel and had time for a walk round the town which was typically Greek. There were a lot of British troops there -1 think to keep the peace between the Greeks and Turks. On the last day we had lunch in Rome and finally reached the U.K.. There was a small cheer as we crossed the South coast with its white cliffs. We landed at Blackbushe airport (near Aldershot) in the rain at dusk and were quickly through customs who did not seem very interested. Then we took an army bus into London.
We spent the night at a transit camp in central London in an unused underground station (much noise from the passing trains) and I phoned home and Cynthia to announce my arrival. Then I had a little walk on the nearby streets. It seemed very strange yet familiar to be back in the U.K. - cold and wet and everything grimy from the coal smoke. Next day I took the train to the barracks at Crookham (wearing my service dress, medal ribbon and Sam Browne belt), was formally discharged from the army, and given a first class ticket to Macclesfield. It was with mounting excitement that I headed North to find Cynthia on the platform to greet me and my parents close behind. It was good to be home again.
Gordon J. Renwick.
4 November 2001.
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