Danny and a Mixed up Period.
When the Japanese war ended so abruptly, it had some strange consequences. There were a number of aircrew at sea coming out to start their tours in India. Now there was no need for them, and normally the obvious thing would be for them to stay on the ship as it turned round in Bombay and returned to the UK.
But these were not normal times. Every cubic inch of space on the troopers leaving for home was needed for the people going home on "demob"; the newcomers would have to disembark and take pot luck. Theirs was not an enviable situation.
The squadrons and units they were going out to join were now closing down and in many cases disbanding - they had no use for these "new boys". All the "kutcha" strips and camps would soon be abandoned and turned back to farmland and rice paddies, presumably by the original owners. The ones with paved runways often became the post-war regional airports.
Even the transit camps were bursting at the seams with homing troops waiting for "the boat". As it was practically impossible to find the newcomers a flying job, a short-term expedient (for NCO aircrew at least) was to misemploy them, on quite a large scale, as MT drivers, storemen and clerks, etc. (I believe the same idea was taken up in the UK).
The officers were more difficult to find slots for, essentially they were bundled into any corner which had room for them. My little corner did not escape. I suppose the idea was that we could give these latecomers some flying, even if it wasn't very much. The VV was simple enough for anyone to fly, even (as in one case I had) a chap who'd piled up 1,000 hours instructing on Tiger Moths in Canada, and not flown much else since his own training days.
All these supernumeraries ran my officer total up to more than a dozen, and some of them were senior to me. That left me in an anomalous position: W/Cdr Edmondes put in a call (w/t) to AHQ, Delhi; the CDRE "pull" worked its magic, with the result that I had the acting rank of Squadron Leader (and an extra Rs100 a month) for my last few weeks in post.
Accommodating all my new officers was no problem. It doesn't take the Army long to put up a few more of the tents in which we all lived. These were large and luxurious, with sand floors, mats and proper furniture. Pitched a hundred yards from the sea, they enjoyed all the sea breezes and were very pleasant to live in - in the dry season, that is !.
A ridiculous thing was that this idyllic life qualified us for a Hard Lying Allowance, an extra hundred rupees or so a month. Not only that, but I was also drawing Japanese Campaign Pay (another introduction late in the war), although the nearest Jap was two thousand miles away. Ironically, neither of these extras had been paid in the two years before, when I was living (relatively) rough, and on operations against the Japanese. Truly, there's no Justice !
Unfortunately, the first thing 225 Group knew about my acting "scraper" was when the signal was copied to them, and they reacted with the same indignation as had S/Ldr Lambert when the Dominion High Commissioners went over his head, and he had his NCO aircrew commissioned without reference to him. But three-stars trumps two-stars any day; Group had to accept it, but with bad grace. This (and another occasion in which I'd crossed swords with a W/Cdr on the Air Staff and come out on top) meant that I was not exactly their favourite Unit C.O. - this may explain a certain coolness between us later.
All sorts of things happened in those last six chaotic months before I came back home, and it's difficult to fit them into date order, so I'll tell you all about them in a series of individual stories and my general impressions (for what they're worth) of those times. More about this next time.
Goodnight, chaps,
Danny 42C.
Last edited by Danny42C; 14th Oct 2012 at 17:06.
Reason: Typo.