Danny reaches the end of the line.
At Howrah in the morning, nursing our swollen noses, we got back on the train to Asansol. Arriving there mid-morning, we found there was no way of contacting Madhaiganj, which they said was about twelve miles out.Wherever you de-trained in India, a truck from your unit must turn up at the railhead sooner or later. We settled down to wait for ours with tea, bread and fried eggs at "Wahid's" (the names that stay with you for a lifetime !)
An hour later our truck appeared on the daily mail and stores run. We chucked our kit in the back and climbed aboard. After bouncing along the glorifed bullock-cart tracks for half an hour, we turned into the camp entry road and caught a sight of the flight line. From the open back of the canvas-top we saw a number of big ugly things sitting on it. We had one or two of their airmen on board. The following dialogue ensued:
What on earth's that ?........I'ts a Vultee Vengeance, Sarge....... Eh?.......They're dive bombers.......Never heard of 'em !.......... (We knew nothing about dive bombers - neither did anyone else). We'd all seen film heroics with the US Navy doing its stuff, and everbody knew about the formidable "Stuka", but that was about all. Still we clung to our last faint hope:
What about the Spitfires we're supposed to be getting ? .........You've "had it", Sarge, there aren't any out here....... So what are we supposed to be flying ?......... Oh, Nohhh!
Oh, Yesss !......... Not for the first - or last time in the RAF, we'd been sold a pup (in fact the first Spitfires out there were Mk VIIIs which did not appear till the end of 1943). Was there ever any truth in the "Spitfire Wing" story ? - we'll never know now.
We'd no option but to make the best of our new situation. We dumped our kit in the Sergeants' mess basha, to receive a warm welcome. They took us under their wing straight away, gave us a drink (although I don't think the bar was supposed to open at lunchtimes); It didn't matter that we'd missed lunch, for we'd stuffed ourselves at "Wahid's". They showed us round the place (not that there was much of it), and took us across to the Flights to meet the Boss. We were on a Squadron now, and among friends ! It was a nice warm feeling - we were "home" at last, even though it wasn't quite where we expected to be. But it was the end of a line (for me) that had started in Padgate two years before.
From memory, I think the Boss was a Sqn. Ldr. Lambert, but things were in a state of flux. He never signed my log as, over the next few weeks, C.O.s came and went. Flight Commanders signed for the C.O.s in all the months until April, when it was signed by a Sqn.Ldr. A.M. Gill, who I know was 84 Sqdn. C.O. a bit later. Whatever, I was put in "A" Flight (Flt.Lt. R.C. Topley) to meet my fate.
Madhaiganj was just a name on the map, a small farming village like a million others in India. A local contractor had bulit a basha camp and carved out a single runway from farmland. Any necessary earth-moving had been carried out in the time-honoured way. The basic unit consists of a man, armed with a mattock or spade. I heard of, (but never saw), the supposed real "Indian Rope Trick": in which two men work with one spade, one digs it in, the other helps to pull it out with a rope on the bottom of the handle.
The spoil (20 - 30 lbs at a guess) is loaded into a shallow basket, this is lifted onto the head of one of the village women. She takes it to where it is wanted and dumps it, then goes back for a refill. Another man spreads it out. Multiply this by a hundred or two, add a "babu" to direct operations, and you've got it. He invariably wore a topee, much lighter in style than our derided "Bombay bowler": this served as his badge of authority, much like a "gaffer's" bowler at home.
It was an attactive sight to watch the women in their bright multi-coloured saris, like so many butterflies, moving in an endless chain hour after hour. One hoped that the "babu" had got the right plans. For there was a rumour that the specification for a runway stipulated the maximum permissable dip or rise along its length.
Unfortunately some contractors were supposed to have misread these maxima as mandatory features. And it was certainly true that many runways in West Bengal did have dips and humps along them. Asansol, in particular, had such a bad rise shortly after touchdown that they'd had to paint a warning and a white line across the runway (beyond which you were advised to land).
But Madhaiganj was pretty level. The only thing was that it wasn't paved, so there were clouds of dust in the dry season and it would be just a sea of mud in the Monsoon (but by then we'd be somewhere else).
Next time we'll discuss the inhabitants,
Goodnight, all.
Danny42C
Get yer 'air cut !
Last edited by Danny42C; 30th Apr 2012 at 22:45.
Reason: Add Title.