Danny
Your reminiscences are a delight!
I read your 'Military life on the Malabar coast of India in WWII' (Search box top right of this Forum... p2, post 25 on) in which you treat us to an evocative insight into your wartime love life! My only quibble is the absence of a further post from you... you can't leave us hanging! How did you handle it? What did she say to you? How did you get-on thereon? And... where is the picture of you... obviously quite handsome or this beauty wouldn't have gone for you? (I'm sure that, even if you don't have a scanner, your daughter will oblige (?)... I'd welcome shots of you (and the two squadrons) to enhance your tales!)
Re my mother... Yes she was in the Womens' Auxiliary Corps India (WACI). You recall that she was the daughter of someone serving in the Indian Army Ordnance Corps, having transferred from the Royal Field Artillery in the 1920s. The WACI were like the ATS back in the UK, doing office work and running canteens etc (although, unlike the ATS didn't man searchlights or AA guns). In fact if you had been to Ranchi, you might have encountered my mother in the Officers' shop, which she ran. She was also at Quetta (where the photo was taken) doing clerical work while living with the family. She had recently left school, which was at Ooty Hill Station. She got commissioned and later was one of the first to go through the WACI Staff College at Quetta, after which she was a Captain and a PA to General in Delhi.
I asked her about Anglo Indians being in the WACI and she was puzzled. She said she recalls only one, otherwise the women were all British colonialists. Yes, I understand there was a stigma against the (mixed-race) Anglo Indians, and certainly officers would be very discreet if they had one such as a girlfriend. Different for the ORs, some of whom did marry and, no doubt, had rather better-looking children than they otherwise might expect to have had. When I see my mother next, I'll ask her about what she was wearing in the photo, and show her your post. The things on her shoulders are surely epaulet sleeves, probably saying 'WACI'.
Yes, she was a good-looker, and my father, having a lifetime affinity to such women, grabbed her when 84 were at Quetta, waiting for the first Vengeances to arrive from America. He did get engaged to her in 1944, after the squadron had been withdrawn from the Burma Front. But they didn't marry until 1948, when my father felt a bit more secure about his future, having gained a permanent commission in the RAF (after being RAFVR). By then he had also been to RAF Staff College, complete with promotion to substantive Sqn Ldr. The delay to the marriage didn't go down too well, of course; my mother taking a job as an air stewardess with British European Airways, to induce a 'concentration of mind' on my father's part! I think part of the final deal was that she had to give up smoking, but it all came together in the end!
Ah... yes I'm 62. I noticed I didn't have an age credited to me, but could find no way to add one. I would add a mugshot too, but as someone once observed, having met me only after hearing my voice on the phone... I don't look as polished as I sound! Too many years being 'arty' and 'outdoor' bohemian!
