My parents were living in Dodoma, some sixty miles away. Today Dodoma is the capital of the United Republic of Tanzania, but back then it was a railway junction with a few dirt roads.

My mother was from an aristocratic family that had spent more than 200 years in the Indian Raj. It was the usual practice for the men to return to their estates in England to find a wife. The women would take the arduous sea voyage back to the ‘Motherland’ to have their babies, but not in my mother’s case, she was born in India.

My father had more humble beginnings; his mother was a cook in a big house and father a carpenter who had served in the Royal Flying Corp during the Great War. After being called up in World War Two, dad rose through the ranks from a private and left as a major in charge of a town in defeated German. How this improbable pair met will be explained later.

After driving along a dirt road to Kongwa and depositing my mother at the hospital, he promptly returned to Dodoma. The Monsoon rains had just started, leaving the once dry riverbeds impassable.

As to be expected, I was a difficult birth. The use of forceps failed and only succeeded in giving me a permanent scar on my head. Later I used to boast that this was caused by a fight with a tiger, there are no tigers in Africa. Eventually I was delivered by caesarean section. At this point, I was a strange colour of blue and needed a blood transfusion. I think it appropriate to mention that my blood type, like my nature, is B positive.

Some days later my father and siblings came to visit. They had managed the treacherous river crossings (there were no bridges) to see the new addition to the family, only to be disappointed. At once, my brother and sister wanted to swap me for the healthier-looking baby in the next cot. Due to the popularity of the A. A. Milne’s nursery rhyme ‘Buckingham Palace’ my brother and sister wanted to call me Christopher Robin. I was given the name Christopher, luckily not Robin, and I never went down with Alice.

A lorry-load of rather drunken men just happened to be passing, they jumped out and started to push us out of the ditch. I was only a couple of months or so old and looking up from my gin box, I could see their faces through the wet windscreen. I know it is hard to believe, but this was my very first memory. My father thanked them with a contribution to their drinking fund and we continued our journey to family friends who just happened to be one of those white plantation owners.

The next morning our hosts told us of a similar crash that had occurred a week earlier. A white couple had been stuck in the very same ditch – instead of being rescued they were murdered.

Sadly, we found out later that the village chief of the men who had rescued us was also killed. We suspected it might have been for their compassionate action in helping us.

The following day in the departure lounge of Nairobi Airport, you would have observed the very sad sight of my siblings being handed over to a stewardess and put on a plane for England. They were to be picked up by my father’s sister, Eva and her husband Allen.  My siblings did come back for short periods but spent most of their schooling in England. My sister Toni finished her education at Kenya High School for Girls and my brother Trevor returned to Africa after completing his exams. Except for a few occasions, I lived my life as an only child.

On the long drive back to Dodoma, my father found himself behind a lorry that was churning up a large dust cloud. Mile after mile he could not overtake as he couldn’t see what was ahead. These lorries usually had a boy on top whose job was to signal when it was clear for a following vehicle to pass, but in this case, he was asleep. After an hour, my father became impatient and decided to overtake, he entered the blinding dust and then he had second thoughts. Just as we had returned to our side of the road a bus rushed by. He came to a halt, shaken by the close encounter with death. If there were any gin bottles under my cushion, I’m sure he would have drunk it.

When walking back to your car at night from the Dodoma country club, you would feel and hear scorpions being trampled beneath your feet. One night my mother left the club early after a row with my father and walked along the tree-lined path towards the car park. A cackle (group) of hyenas started to surround her, she didn’t notice them at first and when she did, she let loose a venomous rage which had been reserved for my father. The hyenas were no match for her wrath and they duly scattered. It was lucky my father was absent.

There was an incident at this very same club when a man committed suicide. He hung himself from one of the trees, the next morning they only found the upper torso, as the hyenas could not reach that high.

When I was a little older, at another club in another country, my parents didn’t have an ayah (nanny) to look after me. So, they went to the club and locked me in the car – I was supposed to cross my legs and sleep. Childcare officers would have had a field day. After about an hour, the reason for locking the doors was obvious, as lions would wander amongst the cars.

One drunken night, my young parents along with some other miscreants decided on a drive up to the ‘Tank’ for a swim, this is where the water supply for the community was located. On the way, a couple of lion cubs were illuminated by the headlights. The ladies of the party got out of the car and picked them up, my father suddenly had a sobering thought – where you see lion cubs, their mother is usually a few paw prints away. He hastily shepherded the ladies back into the car just in time.

Then the strangest thing happened, he was seconded to an animal transport regiment in India. He was put on the next eastbound convoy which had to navigate through the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean. He later told me that he witnessed several ships in the convoy being torpedoed.

The regiment consisted of 900 camels and 400 bullocks, officers were expected to ride horses, but due to a shortage they were given bicycles instead. The soldiers came from all over India and spoke many languages. This is where my father excelled, within a year he was speaking six different languages or dialects.

They eventually gave him a horse and this is how he met my mother. She was sitting on a garden swing and saw him ride by. On the next pass, he was sitting astride the horse backwards, I suppose it is one way to attract a girl’s attention.

My mother’s father was a colonel in an artillery regiment based in southern India. He also owned a carpet factory and shops, his company provided carpets for the Viceroy’s official residence. Her mother was of Irish Catholic stock and my mother was born in Bangalore. One of seven children, six girls and a boy.

Vincent, her brother joined the army and was sent to Singapore, unfortunately the island city surrendered to the Japanese and he was taken prisoner. Vincent spent the war as a POW working on the ‘Death Railway’ in Burma, he survived and when liberated was nothing more than skin and bone.

Peggy, the youngest sibling, contracted polio and for safety reasons, my mum was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Ootacamund, at the tender age of three. Known as Snooty Ooty and due to its pleasant climate, it was used by the British as a summer retreat, where her parents had a bungalow. Later mum returned to Bangalore and went to Bishop Cotton School for Girls. She had a place reserved for her at Cambridge University but was unable to attend due to the war.

She sometimes sang at the Bangalore Club. Being an attractive young lady, the young officers chatted and danced with her, all except one – my father. This intrigued her, little did she know he was shy and could not dance.

Their courtship involved riding, driving a horse and trap (a two-wheeled carriage) to the club and cinema. After a week, the 23-year-old lieutenant proposed to the 18-year-old colonel’s daughter.

For my grandfather (the colonel) – having six daughters – this was all too familiar territory. Any young officer who had his disapproval was transferred to other parts of India. However, my dad was made of sterner stuff, on being informed of a pending transfer, he brought the wedding forward and within three weeks of their meeting, they were married.

On the insistence of my mother, he was persuaded to shave off his moustache for the wedding. The result was a white patch on a tanned
face in all the wedding photographs. My father was known as John or Johnnie, this was common with a surname like Walker and when the priest asked my mother to take Albert William for her lawful wedded
husband, she cried out, “who the hell is Albert William?”

Spending your honeymoon in a tent surrounded by the whole regiment was not a great start. The best man used to ride his motorcycle unannounced into their tent before the morning parade

All officers and their wives – in this case just the one wife – were obliged to eat at the mess with the colonel, this was too much for my mother and after a couple of months she went off to join the navy.

]]> http://kongwa2london.com/anecdotes/5-indian-detour-married-life/feed/ 0 http://kongwa2london.com/anecdotes/6-indian-detour-womens-royal-indian-navy-wrin/ http://kongwa2london.com/anecdotes/6-indian-detour-womens-royal-indian-navy-wrin/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2015 23:00:49 +0000 http://kongwa2london.com/?p=102 […]]]> Mum moved to Bombay, now Mumbai, as a cipher operator with the Women’s Royal Indian Naval Service. Three things of interest happened to her there. Firstly, she was chosen for a newsreel, “A Day in the Life of a Wrin”, her father was very proud of her. Secondly, she took part in a parade where Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command, took the salute. A photograph was published in all the newspapers. Lastly and unfortunately, she fell off a tank – she was pregnant at the time and didn’t know it. She was given leave to recover from the miscarriage.

In April 1944, my mother witnessed the ship SS Fort Stikine catching fire and exploded. The debris set fire to other ships and the docks, about a thousand people lost their lives.

In May 1945, she remembers deciphering a message declaring Victory in Europe. My father was then ordered to return to the UK and my mother accompanied him. Many years later she informed us that she might not have been handed her discharge papers from the navy. What is the penalty for being absent without leave for over 60 years?

Weeks later, after a journey through the Mediterranean Sea, mum and dad arrived in Southampton and took the train to London.

The city was full of people who spoke with a cockney accent, just like the ones she had seen in English movies back in India. She thought they were comedy voices, not realising this is how they really talked.

While my father was arranging transport for their luggage, my mother took out a cigarette and not having any matches, she asked a passing gentleman for a light, he picked up speed and said, “not today thank you”. Unbeknown to my mum, this was the classic line delivered by prostitutes to solicit customers.

At the beginning of the war, Nana (my paternal grandmother) lived in Woolwich, next to the Royal Arsenal (armaments factory). In 1940, my father moved her out and sent her to live with his sister in Yorkshire. A week after Nana vacated her house, it was bombed. It wasn’t personal as the whole street was obliterated.

Just a little note about my grandmother. Nana and my grandfather planned to emigrate to the United States, they had arranged to sail from Southampton. Before they were to travel, she had a disturbing dream and made the decision not to go. It was April 1912 and the ship, RMS Titanic.

Mum went up to the industrial city of Bradford in Yorkshire to stay with her mother-in-law and Eva, her sister-in-law.

Eva’s husband Allen was in the Navy assigned to an LCT (landing craft tank), he had taken part in the D-Day landings prior to that ‘Operation Torch’ in North Africa, ‘Operation Husky’ in Sicily and later, one in Burma. Anyone would think the Royal Navy only had one landing craft.

Taking his young bride to see Britain and meet his family was a complete culture shock to her.

Meanwhile to make things worse, my dad was transferred to Germany. In India, he was assigned to an animal transport regiment; in their wisdom they posted him to a mechanised transport regiment, one drawback, he couldn’t drive. Being an officer, he rectified this quite sharply and gave himself a licence. It was 30-plus years before he was forced to take a driving test.

One night after an evening of drinking, my father found himself on the wrong side of a river to his billet. There was a bridge, but it had been bombed and only a single ice-covered girder straddled the river. He traversed the narrow obstacle and lived to do something more stupid another day.

Being apt at languages, he learnt German and for his efforts, the army made him a town major within the British Zone of the occupying forces. Coincidentally, he had been posted to a town near his uncle’s wife’s family.

At this point an explanation is needed: my dad’s uncle Joe worked for a bank and was assigned to a branch in pre-war Germany. He was an active socialist and made his views known by regularly denouncing the Nazi regime from a soap box, this is where he met his like-minded German wife. Just a few months before the outbreak of the war, the Gestapo raided his house, luckily, they had been tipped off and fled to England the day before.

Restrictions came in another shape; my sister Toni being born. My father was demobbed and moved the family down to London. The following year, my brother Trevor was added to the family.

Food was short and one day my father returned from work to find my mother crying, she didn’t have a meal for him. He took two slices of bread, then sprinkled salt and pepper on them and they dined.

Not too long after, my father won £400 on the ‘Football Pools’. The first items they bought were two bicycles and some furniture. This was a turning point in their lives and for the yet-to-be-conceived me.

Post-war Britain was no place for his wife compared to being brought up in a
house full of servants and an exciting social life in India. So, he applied to join the Colonial Office; he was accepted and was on the next boat to Tanganyika. Mum and siblings followed on by air in a Hermes Speedbird to Nairobi and then on to Dar es Salaam.

My siblings had failed to swap me for the healthier looking baby at the hospital, or maybe they had as I grew up to be six foot two and they were, well, let’s say I was head and possibly shoulders taller. They were safely at school in England and as I had previously said, my father was left to defend himself from the predatory women in Dodoma while my mother and I set forth.

We took the train to Dar es Salaam, then the M.V. Inchanga, a cargo
ship, along the coast stopping at Tanga and Mombasa before

crossing the Indian Ocean to Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). We visited Kandy (where the giant Buddhas are), I was a much smaller version. From Colombo, we travelled on to Madras (now Chennai) and then by train to Bangalore. Later, we visited Ooty where my mother bought a bicycle to ride about town with the baby in tow.

During the Great War, granddad and his older brother Arthur fought against the Turks on the Mesopotamian front (now Iraq). I don’t know a great deal more about Arthur, he did not marry and died in 1927, leaving granddad to take over the family business. There were also two sisters, Elizabeth and Ethel.

Elizabeth was an academic, she translated ancient Sanskrit, wrote books and was a senior member of the Jainism hierarchy. Elizabeth married but left her husband on their wedding night and travelled around Europe including pre-war Nazi Germany. She was a private secretary to a Maharaja who gifted a children’s bone china tea set to my mother for her birthday. She died in her bath and was cremated before any family members could reach her. There were fears that she may only have been meditating and had been burnt alive. In her will, she donated funds to establish a bird sanctuary.

Ethel was the youngest and was just as eccentric. She married, but her husband left her taking their two sons with him and emigrated to Australia. Ethel was a graphic artist and had worked for the Times of India. For a while she had a famous Indian dancer as a lover and continued to live in South India until her eighties.

My grandmother had died just before I was born. She had been separated from granddad for some years. Granddad had a new mistress of the house; it was not the best time to call.

My mother and I arrived to find there were too many sisters, literally two sisters confined to the guest house. Finding her return was not so welcoming, mum found alternative accommodation.

She hired an ayah from Nepal; mum seemed to have got two for the price of one as the ayah’s Gurkha husband was part of the package. All in all, I was well looked after.

On one occasion, she returned to find me being fed flying ants cooked in ghee; I was thoroughly enjoying it.

Another time, my mum was invited by friends to go to the races and this would involve staying overnight. The Gurkha, who was not much bigger than me, put his hand on his kukri (knife) and pledged to defend me to the death. With that, my mum felt reassured of my safe keeping, and off she went to the races.

While I was in India, I was fed buffalo milk. The buffalo was brought round and milked, that is what I call a doorstep delivery. One of my grandfather’s stories was while watching the milkman, the buffalo started to pee; the milkman wanting to make a few extra rupees moved the bucket to collect the urine. When he brought the bucket to the door, my granddad insisted the milkman drink his product.

One day, my mum and I went to a photographer’s studio in Bangalore to have our picture taken. After my mother had collected the prints, a full-size blow-up of my mother and I was placed in the window. Some 20 years later, on a return visit to Bangalore, that very same picture was still in the shop window.

After six months in India, it was time to leave. Mum sold her engagement ring to help buy tickets to England. Granddad saw us off from Bangalore airport and arranged for one of his business agents in Bombay to look after us.