蜜芽传媒

Continuation.....

But the next evening I was on guard myself.

Then I had one more night out. This time one of the lads came with me. I took him to the Del-Monica but he wanted to move after a while and I did not, so he went off alone some-where. But after closing time I went back to the ship. In the morning on parade, my pal was still absent, and I wondered what had happened to him.

I soon found out. They fished him out of the docks 鈥� dead. I thought he had fallen in after drinking, but I knew her hadn鈥檛 put a knife into his own back. So I presumed that he had wandered into that ruddy all black pub but never did find out.
Then we were on our way again, destination India 鈥� Bombay.

Off we went zigzagging along watching and waiting for something to happen. Then the ruddy ship broke down. It took a couple of days and nights to mend it, and all the time we were sitting there, one escort kept up with us. It went up and down, whilst we were on guard all the time ready for action. Boat drills, fire alarms, closing all the water tight doors at different times. On one occasion I was trapped between the decks and had to wait until the all clear and the doors opened again. (I did not like that one bit).

But once more we were off zig zagging all over the place. No wonder the ship broke down 鈥� it must have been sea sick. Well, we finally reached Bombay and the heat was terrific. But we still had to do drills and guard duties. Of course we still had time off from routine and were allowed around the town to view the sights and ruddy hell! We saw some. I particularly saw a man going around like a spider, wriggling around with his arms and legs up in the air - terrible sight.

And then I went for my medicine, after a few drinks I went for a walk and then was passing a large building with iron bars up the windows. I thought it was a prison but I thought wrong. It was a place for women and others to live in. As I was walking past the place, a large comb fell from one of the windows above me. Upon looking up I saw a young woman naked and showing one leg. But I was not so daft.

I found out later that the idea of dropping things from the window was to attract attention, and try to get you to return it, and then (well you guess!!)

The following afternoon we were going around again in a different direction, this time I with some of the lads who had been this way the day before and they were telling of another big house. As we approached this house I was getting curious, but they told me it was a place of interesting things. So after a while we went in, now we climbed some steps inside and then at what looked like a round gallery with lots of port holes in it. They said I had to look through one of them to see these sights. I said alright, I will just for fun.

I put my head through but could not see anything except a floor. At then I heard some strange music and then more heads coming through the port holes. All of a sudden a soft clamp went over the back of my neck, so I could not get out. And by the shouting from the other lads, the same must have happened to them. Then the floor came up a bit and some dancing girls came on and there must have been a dozen of them. As they danced they came closer to our faces which were now level with their middles. They were wriggling and jumping about and they were slowly taking off their frilly clothes slowly, but they still kept brushing our faces, but we couldn鈥檛 do nothing to get out of the way.

And then it happened. They were all naked.

These girls kept rubbing every part of their bodies all over our faces and then one of them wriggled her bottom right on the end of my ruddy nose. After being released from the port holes we had to pay 10 rupees for the natural nature study.

Now for a drink I said as we came away from the Naturedrome. After another evening out on my own it was off again the next day. Now this trip was different from the others. We had to be more alert and had more drills and less sleep. And as far as the convoy was concerned I didn鈥檛 know whether it was going backwards or sidewards. But we travelled on and on until we were near our port of call. Then from nowhere it seemed there was such a rattle and noise and there were planes diving out of the sky, throwing everything at us, us whom were just travelling along on the nice calm sea, minding our own business.

But we soon had to make their business ours too.

Because they seem to mean it, and by the time we reached the docks, they nearly knocked us out of the ruddy water, and they even tried playing netball with a couple of bombs. After playing hell with our escort they dropped one bomb down the funnel of our ship but they must have forgotten to pull the pin out because it never made no bang, so after the lads captured it they threw it back again into the water.

We ran down the gang plank and took up our positions. At the same time the remaining civilians scrambled onto the ships and were sailing off as fast as hell. Before the last of the civilians left they had tried to push their cars into the sea. But there were so many thy all were jammed on the dock side. I myself was given four big cars and keys and papers. Big things they were too, Catalays or something. But what could I do with them?! Nothing!! but leave them there.

As soon as we were numbered off and the roll call taken we were on the move to different positions over the island. We had not gone far before we were attacked by a load of planes zooming about. So we had to scatter and take what was the nearest cover, but we had to keep moving until it was late afternoon. Then we were able to take a rest and have something to eat and drink (tea).

We had to take guard duties six at a time, alphabetical, so I was one of the first. We walked round separately in different directions for four hours until we were relieved by six more and then in the early hours of the morning we moved again through the mud and slush and before we knew what time it was we were being knocked to hell by machine guns and mortar bombs. Ruddy hell was let loose. The lads were going down like skittles in an alley.

The medical men who were not far behind saw to those who were still alive whilst us others moved on towards those ruddy guns, then all of a sudden the ruddy Japps were all around us. They were up trees and everywhere.

We took up position in a sink hole and the two men near me had the Bren Gun, number one number two but before they could do much damage the Japps were rattling off everything. They hit the number one on the Bren and gave him a full burst right between his legs. What a ruddy mess he was in. Then they hit number two and smashed him up and the Bren Gun and covered me with their blood. We were given the order to advance, what was left of us. And in front of us was some ruddy swamp as some of the lads went forward they sank. And of course they were sitting ducks for the Japps.

The rest of us had to run like hell to get across, what we jumped on to run across we never knew but it could have been bodies. And then my ruddy bolt of my rifle fell into the swamp and left me with a useless rifle. But luck was with me. I picked up somebody else鈥檚, who had been killed in front of me. I grabbed the rifle and the bandoliers and kept going. And then it seemed to be our turn to sort the Japps out. We caught some trying to move out and we found them up trees and in ditches. As we fired at them 鈥渟tinkers鈥� they came down from trees screaming but quite dead when they hit the ground. This went on for days until we were scattered everywhere and had to look after ourselves.

We soon dwindled down in numbers and before long there were only ten of us together and we were running out of everything 鈥� food, water, ammo. And half the time we never knew where we were going. So we had a rest. We were jumping at everything that moved. After organising ourselves so that we were not too close to one another we moved on again.

But it was dark now and the mad flies were flying about. The ruddy fire flies were the worst because their bodies lit up in the dark and when they flew towards you they looked like ruddy eyes. So we had to fix bayonets and wait until they were nearly on to us because they always seem to fly in pairs. We didn鈥檛 half feel daft charging at them 鈥� Ruddy things.

After rustling up some tea and a bite to eat we moved on again. It was getting light so once more we had to split up. Then we came to some open land and in front of us were some sort of oil tanks. Now to get to the other side of them we had all run through them. So away we ran like hell but the ruddy Japps had been waiting for us. But instead of firing at us they waited until we were running through those ruddy oil tanks and they fired at them instead. The ruddy things just went sky high and chucked boiling oil all over the place and black smoke. There was only two of us got out, the rest just boiled up screaming like hell. Poor buggers!!

The two of us kept running were knew we could do no good going back to the others, not a hope in hell. We ran until we came to cover of some sort, then we rested. We heard nothing or saw anything so the ruddy Japps must had thought they had got all of us, the rotten bastards. After having a drop of water from our bottles and a piece of chocolate we moved on鈥�..

ends.

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