Blacksheep (#10414),
..."
It was great fun" they all agreed - childhood makes fun of everything, does it not?...
Not only that, the "service brats" derived great benefit from the experience, at a time when their minds were most receptive. I bet the young Geriaviator, after chattering to "Pop" (their "Bearer") in Hindi for a few weeks, could confidently go shopping in the bazaar (and even translate for his parents - Mrs D. never forgot the occasion when a young American "service brat" of some 10 summers helped her out in a butcher's shop in Holland, where (exceptionally) no one spoke English).
And I always remember the priceless BBC newsreel scene where Joanna Lumley (as the daughter of a Ghurka officer a prize specimen of the breed) and a "Daughter of the Raj" to boot, made mincemeat of a hapless Government Minister over the question of Ghurka ex-servicemen's rights to residence here.
They came home more self-reliant and more self-confident than the generality of children (I saw that in my Mary), and when (as many would) they joined the Services themselves, it was not such an alien world as otherwise it may have been.
'''''''''''''''
Geriaviator,
I would have been wary of tapping the palm thatch to flush out tasty mortals for "Lithard", for you might have brought down something a foot long and with fearsome jaws and a million legs quite capable of taking
him on ! You say he came to your call, and no doubt you talked to him as you would later do to Abdul the Land-Crab in Aden. No worry about that, it's only when Lithard or Abdul started talking back to you that you realised that you had been out in the sun too long.
But they were happy days .........
Cheers both, Danny. s