Burma Star Association - B.C. Chapter
Harry Cullis
The star studded night skies were magnificent and encouraged me to find a star map and, for the first time, I saw the Southern Cross and a whole host of new constellations. Night watch on the Bridge became full of fascinating surprises: great shooting stars blazing across the starlit heaven and shoals of flying fish, flew airborne across the ship's bow.
Just when we thought we had evaded the German submarines they struck, and British
Destroyers and Corvettes materialised out of nowhere throwing depth charges
in all directions. The Navy was here and we were safe, thank goodness, and at
first not much else mattered. After the excitement was over we continued on
our way, only to find on arrival at Cape Town that our Supply Ship had been
sunk, and all our workshop machinery, drill presses and the like, all our repair
equipment, that we had spent weeks assembling and packing in England, all our
trucks including the station wagon I'd fitted out with top of the line Radar
testing equipment, had gone down. There we were, a Workshop Company with no
equipment. Our dismal plight was communicated to the War Office in London and
we were instructed to camp, sit tight, and await orders.
Things were not all bad for we were thankful that the Germans had sunk our equipment
and not us, and Cape Town was such a beautiful place to be marooned in, we could
not have chosen better.
The 95th Heavy Anti Aircraft R.E.M.E. Workshop was set up next door to a R.A.
Anti Aircraft Gunsite on the eastern outskirts of Calcutta, a twenty minute
drive from the main thoroughfare of Chowringhee. It was the Royal Artillery's
job to operate the gunsites and the Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineer's
job to look after the equipment. My job was to supervise the setting up, calibration,
and maintenance of Radar on this
gunsite and several others positioned in a semi circle round the eastern edge
of Calcutta, as a defence against a possible Japanese air attack.
The Japanese had advanced with amazing speed, capturing Singapore, racing up
through Burma, and fighting was now taking place at Imphal on the Assam -Burma
border. Yet the idea of Calcutta ever being bombed seemed impossible. Alas,
the impossible happened. We were sitting on the roof of the Officer's Mess at
the time, having a pleasant evening drink, when we saw a formation of aircraft
flying in from the east at about 10,000 ft. They were flying in perfect V formation
with a leader like a flock of Canada
Geese, and the sun was glinting on their fuselages. We wondered who they were
as we sipped our whiskies. We soon knew - bombs started falling. It was a formation
of Japanese bombers that had taken off from an aircraft carrier in the Bay of
Bengal, intent on bombing Calcutta.
Alas, in spite of all our efforts installing Radar on the Royal Artillery gunsites
, there was no early warning; their Radar sets were not even manned!! We could
not believe it. The dozen or more planes flew in perfect
formation over the centre of the city and dropped their bombs on the harbour,
sinking many ships. Only after the bombs had fallen did the sirens signal an
air raid warning. The people fled the city in droves and for weeks did not return.
Neither, thank goodness, did the Japanese. It was a timely but expensive warning
and the defences of Calcutta were quickly tightened up. They needed to be.
One of the gunsites I looked after was amongst paddy fields in the northeastern part of Calcutta near the main Dum Dum Airport. I remember vividly, driving there one misty morning and being scared out of my wits. We were driving by a burning Ghat, where the Hindus cremate their dead on tall piles of stacked cordwood, and we were watching with interest for a cremation was in process. One pile was blazing merrily when I saw the body on top slowly sit up. 'By God he's alive!", I exclaimed to my driver, who automatically stopped the car and we got out. "How could I scale the high wire fence?", I wondered.
Then I saw that the ropes used to tie the body down had burnt through and slowly realised, that the stomach muscles, contracting in the heat, had caused the upper body to rise. At least that was the final rational explanation of what happened. At the time it was an eerie and frightening sight with smoke and mist swirling around the many funeral pyres. The acrid smell of burning flesh was forever wafting across Calcutta but I never grew to accept it as normal.
I drove to the Gunsite, checked in with the Major in charge, and walked across
the catwalk to the Radar Receiver, stamping hard to drive off the snakes. You
could hear them plopping into the water below. I never did like working under
that Radar set. Arriving at this same Gunsite one day later I heard rifle shots
and found the 'Guard' had been called out and was firing at a huge python. The
python had been found curled up in a gun emplacement and the Captain there,
told me how he had gone in with a shovel to get the python out and had broken
the handle of the shovel in his frantic efforts to kill it. The more than ten
foot long python, thicker than my arm, had gone galloping out past him and set
the whole Battery in
disarray. The python was finally cornered and killed, riddled with bullets,
against the Armoury wall.
One morning, when I entered my office and sat in the office chair, I looked
down to see a cobra coiled round the chair leg with a gaping mouth aimed at
my thigh. I shot off that chair very fast and was outside in a second. Returning
later with reinforcements and a stout stick the cobra was killed. It was believed
that this snake had been hibernating in the sandbags placed round the office
block, been washed out by the monsoon
rains, and then crawled into the office for shelter.
1943 was the year of a severe famine in Bengal. Devastating floods had ruined
the crops and thousands of starving Indians descended on Calcutta. I was part
of an army task force that took possession of tons of rice stored in warehouses
on the docks by some Indian business types who, we were told, was hoarding rice
waiting for the price to rise. They were planning to sell the rice at a profit
and were not amused when we commandeered it. Kitchens were set up on Calcutta
streets and queues formed quickly, sometimes a mile
long and four abreast, where mothers with young babies, children, men and women
all old before their time, just skin and bone, waited patiently to get their
bowl of rice. It was a pitiful sight to see these starving people and still
more harrowing next morning to watch army trucks drive slowly along the line
to pick up the hundreds of dead. More than a million died in that famine. Life
was cheap in India.
Returning to headquarters one evening, I found an old lady lying in a ditch
just outside the gate. She was semi-conscious, emaciated and obviously starving,
and we carried her into the Officer's Mess and tried to feed her. Our efforts
were not very successful for although she wanted to eat, she could not keep
the food down we gave her. Her stomach was not used to the western food and
we had no rice. She did recover somewhat and we called the police to enquire
where we could take her. "Which side of the road did you
find her?", was the immediate question. "On our side", we said,
"That is outside our jurisdiction", was the reply. They could not
tell us where to take her and in answer to our pleas said there was nothing
they could do. Their indifference I found frightening and was typical of an
India where death and suffering was commonplace.
Our early days in Calcutta were a constant fight against flies, mosquitoes and a multitude of biting insects. Sometimes the flies were so thick that we could not get a spoonful of food to our lips without it being covered with a black swarm. Then we usually escaped with a plateful of food, to our "charpoys" (beds) to eat in comparative peace beneath mosquito nets. After we got the kitchens cleaned up, the walls sprayed, regular hygiene practised, and the swamps around the site sprayed with oil to kill the mosquito larvae, life improved. Oil decreases the surface tension of the water and the mosquito larvae can't cling to the water surface and drown. It was the major method of controlling malaria. A daily dose of mepacrine pills was also essential and for me it worked, but it made me as yellow as a Chinaman. I was not worried at all about that so long as I did not get malaria.
Another troublesome insect, this one small enough to penetrate the mosquito net, was the dengue fly. I, like most others, got my dose of dengue fever. The fever lasts about a week, then the patient recovers, only to be smitten again one week later. After the second bout of fever, all is well. Skin infections were not so predictable and in the hot humid Calcutta climate, could appear at any time. Often I would shower and change clothes three times a day, all to no avail, for I could wring the sweat out of my bushshirt half an hour after putting it on.
Bullfrog impetigo was a particularly troublesome skin ailment, appearing quite
suddenly as blisters that later burst and left sores. It was highly contagious
and spread quickly. On one occasion, I could not shave because of bullfrog impetigo
and grew an impressive beard. Things got so bad that I was packed off to hospital
to be treated by a specialist in tropical diseases. He gave me a thorough examination,
listing off half a dozen skin infections I had contracted, wrote them down on
a clipboard, and hung it at the foot of my bed. "Now", he said, "We
will get rid of these things one at a time. It will take two weeks to get you
cleared up." He was true to his word, crossing off some unpronounceable
infection every few days, and at the
end of two weeks I was completely cured. This doctor obviously knew his stuff.
Surprisingly, he was a German doctor interned for the duration of the war in
Calcutta. I was sorry to leave the hospital after being looked after so well,
not only by the doctor but also by the delightful nurses - the first white girls
I had seen since arriving in India.
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