Before

Thirty-five

Bernard

We were packed like cattle on to the train in Bombay when we first arrived in India. Hundreds of troops. We walked three abreast into the station but were quickly outnumbered. Brown people all around. At my back, at my front, under my arms. Hands out. White palms begging. ‘Baksheesh, baksheesh,’ in my ear. Some held up wares – colourful cakes, drinks, trinkets of all kinds. Others had no pride, wanted something for nothing. Behind me someone was shouting, ‘Please, sahib, my mother and father dead, rupees.’

To my right a father was trying to sell his daughter to a Tommy, ‘Pretty girl – very clean, sahib.’

Children, who should have been in school, ran at my feet, hardly clothed. Eyes as black as apple pips. Some so young they could barely walk. No parents there holding them back from being trampled under a large man. Nothing for it but to walk on through. Shrug it off as best I could. No thought of causing offence. These people stank. Body odour was masked by sweet, sickly, spicy scents.

Confusion had me bewildered. Our chaps calling out, wanting to know which way to go, ‘Oi, oi – over here.’

Groups of carnival-coloured natives gesticulating with arms as skinny as sticks. Jabbering in mysterious tongues. ‘Good worker, sahib. No trouble. Please, job, please, sahib.’ Natives’ spittle breaking on my cheek.

English cries, ‘Fall in, fall in. Move on through there.’ The squeaky wheel on a cart. The screech of a train’s hooter. The dirty laugh of an erk. ‘Her? You’re joking! Maybe with a bag on her head.’

The station was familiar. A concrete building with vaulting roof. Could have been back home – St Pancras or Liverpool Street. There was even a man in a black bowler hat bobbing through the crowd. Looked like Pa on his way to work. Except he wore a long shirt and his legs were wrapped in baggy white cotton pants. He smiled bright red teeth as he passed. Thought someone had punched him in the mouth for his cheek, impersonating a gentleman. But he was too carefree – chewing and spitting globules of red on to the floor.

‘Sahib, nice oranges, juicy.’ We’d been warned about their oranges. Boiled in filthy water to make them big. The cakes spoke for themselves. Gaudy as Christmas and speckled with black – not raisins but flies. Some chaps bought them. Flicked off the insects and tucked in. Couldn’t blame them – never sure when we’d eat again.

A native man in a uniform, transport not service, hurried us on, muttering in a language of his own. He piled kits on his back. Five, sometimes six. They bent him double as he struggled to climb the steps of the train. Offload, then back for more. Face like thunder. ‘Chatty wallah,’ chaps jeered, as he hobbled away.

The train might have been in Bombay but the footplate I stuck my boot on said it was made in Crewe. The sooty stench of steam had me thinking of childhood holidays in Dymchurch. A sudden blast of grey smoke caused everything to disappear. As it cleared, through the mist, a cow wandered along the platform. Nobody shooed it or tethered it. A mangy beast with ribs you could count. It clopped, docile, through the crowds, parting a group of women who were carrying coal in bundled rags for the train’s engine. Some struggled with a hump of a child on their back and a fat belly of coal on their front, while the able-bodied native men jostled and begged from British troops. That had us all tutting and shaking our heads.

They came through the train windows. Faces. Fingers. Hands. Arms. Hustling and shoving. Clutching useless items. Yelling to be seen. ‘Sahib, take – you like? Take, sahib.’ Most things were no more than a shape to me. Should I eat it, play it or rub it on my prickly heat?

At last the train started to move off. The natives began running. Still hopeful. Until we picked up too much speed, and hands, arms and trinkets were grabbed back.

Two minutes out of the station I spotted grown men squatting by the tracks, defecating on the ground. For a moment there was silence in our carriage, like we’d just come through a raid. Out of the window, wobbling in the heat, I saw an elephant slowly dragging a car. I nudged the chap beside me. He just shrugged. There were hundreds of men on this train. Our toilet was a little hole in the floor with two handles to keep you upright. The silence was only broken when a well-spoken man shouted, ‘Wasn’t there a poet who once wrote about India’s spell?’

Answered by a Cockney calling back, ‘More like India’s smell, mate.’

* * *

Queenie didn’t want me to join up until I was conscripted. ‘You can wait until you’re asked,’ she kept saying. I’m not sure that women understood how it worked. We all knew, the men who met in the Feathers, we all understood. Harold, Arthur, Reg and George all signed up years earlier. RAF too. Harold flew Spits somewhere in Kent. Arthur and Reg became wireless operators but I lost touch with them after their posting. George was a gunner. Shot down over France. Missing in action. He’ll probably walk home one day and demand to be bought a pint, which he’ll down in eleven seconds, his speciality. That just left Frank and me. We were older, you see. Old hands at the bank – we understood what needed to be done. The other boys were young. They had no family of their own and their country needed them.

Frank suggested it. After two halves of watered-down beer in the Feathers, he flicked his cigarette out of the door. It flew in an arch of sparks and Hilda, the barmaid, yelled, ‘You’ll start a fire!’

He blew her a kiss, which I thought was a touch uncouth for Frank. But he was fired up. ‘Right, Bernard, let’s go and join up or it’s the PBI for us.’

The poor bloody infantry. Everyone knew, except Queenie, that if a man was conscripted, he went straight into the army. Gun under his arm, tin hat on his head and a bullet in his back. I didn’t need persuading. It was the RAF for me. If I was going to go, I wanted to go as a boy in blue.

‘You think you’re going to be like Biggles, don’t you?’ Queenie said, when I told her. I shook my head and said no. But I suppose if I was honest I would have liked to be a hero of the skies. A Brylcreem boy with the sun on my quiff. The enemy coming at me, rat-a-tat-tat at three o’clock. Diving swiftly. Hiding in a cloud. Emerging. Giving the enemy machine everything I’d got. Glorious deeds valiantly achieved. Queenie, tearfully joyful at my return.

But I wasn’t accepted for flying duty – eyesight failed me. Neither was Frank, which, I’m ashamed to say, I found a relief. We were both channelled as aircrafthands, known to everyone as erks. Ground crew. Options given were airframes or engines. Frank chose frames so I took engines.

‘You’re going to do what?’ Queenie said. ‘I thought at least they’d teach you to fly.’

She would have liked to live with a hero. I knew that much for a fact.

I was thrown from the truck when we finally reached the base out east, my face landing in the dirt. A mouthful of parched dust had me spitting and choking. Someone stood on my leg. No time to yell before another tripped over me. Stood on my hand as he staggered and fell, cursing. Everyone was running. The ground rumbled with pounding boots. Men shouted, ‘Move! Move! Cover!’ I soon got to my feet. Ran with my head low, the dirt kicking up into my eyes. I could barely see, just followed other moving legs.

There was the screech of a low plane. One, two – more, perhaps. Had no time to look before gunfire was hitting the ground. Dust erupting in a line, its debris belting me in the chest. I screamed (I admit). My boots skidded along the ground to change direction. The dust was like fog. I was blind. Lost. No idea which way to go. Then someone grabbed me. Ripped my shirt as he pulled me towards a trench. It was full of men, there was no room. I know I shouted, ‘Budge up,’ before I was pushed over.