DRIVING TO WAR

They say that war brings out the best – and the worst – in people.

 Most people come back from war with tales of horror to tell their shrink. With my grandfather, we had tales of adventure from the war (the nastier bits left out), narrated with the flair of a natural-born storyteller, told to a bunch of spellbound, wide-eyed grandchildren. One of the most interesting of his stories, for us, was his recounting of the Burma campaign in World War II.

 General Slim, the Supreme Commander of 14th Army, was to lead the British Indian Army in a campaign to recapture Burma. My grandfather, then posted to COD, Dehu Road in Pune, received orders to move to Ranchi, from where they would then proceed on to Burma.  

 “Waran!” barked Major Heptinstall, the man in charge at Ranchi. “Drive the truck with supplies to the camp!" “I don’t know how to drive, sir,” young Waran protested. “I don’t care! I have 50 trucks and only 30 drivers. You have to do it!” said Heptinstall. “I don’t even have a license,” the young Quartermaster began to explain. Heptinstall responded by making out an impromptu driver’s license on the spot, signing at the bottom to lend it the stamp of officialdom; and handing it over to young Waran.

They were to start driving from India to Burma in two days.

 For all that, Heptinstall wasn’t being unreasonable or unfair. Orders were orders, and Major Heptinstall had his orders to march. In the army, obeying orders is such a way of life that not to do as one was ordered it would have been unthinkable. Heptinstall had to finish the job, in any way possible.

In the course of the second great war that swept across the world, with everything from drivers to supplies at a premium, army men stepped up to the mark to meet impossible demands in untenable circumstances.

Meanwhile, my grandfather, who had never driven a vehicle in his life, had two days to learn the theory of driving. Fortunately, his immediate senior, the Havildar Major, who knew how to drive, was a good friend. Sitting in a stationary vehicle with the Havildar Major (they didn’t have the authorization for practice drives), my grandfather learnt the basics about the accelerator, brake and clutch, moving the gears about to learn how it was done.

It was a quirk of destiny that got a man of such unquashable optimism in just the place which needed men whose spirit could not be broken. Such things happened to my grandfather all the time – fate loves an optimist!

So he drove a motor vehicle for the first time in his life, from one country to another, in the middle of a raging war. At the wheel of a monster 3-ton truck, he drove all the way from Ranchi to Burma, the last vehicle in the convoy of 2000-odd vehicles of different shapes and sizes. The vehicles began driving at 8 am and kept driving till nearly 6 pm, when they stopped for the night and set up camp at one of the designated halts en route. They were on the move, driving through the day, every day, for one-and-a-half months. During the drive, he had to navigate with the help of map reference points, in a truck loaded with all the food and cooking vessels for all the men.

That was how my grandfather learnt how to drive.

This nerve-wracking introduction to driving might have put some people off driving. Not so my grandfather. Till he was 92, he was zipping around on his Sunny, an un-geared scooter that was hugely popular with teenagers - and people like my grandfather, ever the teenager in spirit.

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BASE CAMP: NIPPON OR INDIAN?

My grandfather had many terrible experiences in the Burma campaign in the Second World War. One of the worst was getting there.  

Having just learnt to drive in theory, his knowledge was to be put to the test. My grandfather began his journey by road from India to Burma, a new driver who drove much more slowly than the others because of his lack of experience.

Driving to Burma meant crossing the infamous Tiddim road. The Tiddim Road was narrow 10-foot road that snaked steeply uphill alongside the stormy river Irrawaddy, a tributary of the tempestuous river Bramaputra. On one side, the land fell away into a gaping chasm, at the bottom of which the waters of the Irrawady flowed in swift, deadly currents.

My grandfather, the first-time driver, inched forward, driving a lumbering, 3-ton truck over a ten-foot hill track that was just barely wide enough for the vehicle. The stench of the swollen bodies of Japanese and Indian soldiers who’d fallen into the river floated alongside as a gruesome warning. If anyone fell into the river, that was it. There was no question of even attempting a rescue.

Before his very eyes, vehicles that lost their hold on their track tumbled into the river and were lost forever. Many people from his convoy lost their lives on the way, while the new driver watched grimly and tried to concentrate on the road. Inch by inch, judging the road with inexperienced eyes, he drove over the narrow, steep, serpentine road, one of the fortunate ones who made it through the nerve-wracking journey alive.  

On the way, young Waran, who had not seen action so far, had his introduction to combat at Mingalden Camp. The convoy passed through the body-strewn former theatre of war, where the bodies of slain Japanese soldiers lay stinking and swelling as they decomposed, still dressed in full battle-gear, still wearing their watches. In the middle of war, nobody had the time to bury the enemy.  

Real trouble came when my grandfather reached the rain-forests of Burma. In fact, he nearly drove right into it.

Nobody learns to drive without taking a few wrong turns, and my grandfather was no exception. Driving his big truck slowly and being the last in convoy in the thick Burmese jungle, the newbie driver Waran lost sight of the convoy. Guessing the way, he took the wrong fork on the road and got lost. New drivers often have a problem judging distances on the road when they drive. My grandfather miscalculated the distance and his left front wheel went over a culvert, hooked over the edge of the tiny bridge.

Sheer luck brought a British Sergeant on Military Police duty nearby to the rescue. “What’s the problem, Johnny?” asked the MP. All soldiers were addressed by the generic Englishman’s name ‘Johnny’ at that time, and to this day, the term ‘Johnny’ is sometimes used synonymously with ‘soldier’, especially by the older generations of army men.

“My vehicle has got stuck,” my grandfather told the MP. The MP used his radio to call for a recovery vehicle or ‘breakdown’ (as they were called back then), to pull the truck off the culvert and set it back on the road. 

The MP then told him that he was going the wrong way. My grandfather was headed straight for the Japanese base-camp! Had his vehicle not got stuck, my grandfather would have driven straight into the arms of the enemy.

Oh, and there was more.

The MP also told him that he was two miles into enemy-occupied territory, and that Japanese were, in fact, coming up from behind him, gaining on him every minute. “Run for your life!” the sergeant exhorted him. Turning the truck around, Waran drove hell for leather through the jungle to reach base camp, putting as much distance between him and the enemy with as much speed as he could.

When he finally reached his own base camp, exhausted , it was about eight o’clock, and everyone was in the middle of dinner. Huge cries of surprise and happiness greeted him. “We thought you had been captured by the Japanese!” exclaimed the other men. He very nearly had been, too.

That was how my grandfather almost became a Japanese prisoner of war – but didn’t!

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UNDER FIRE

Coming head-to-head with the enemy is the quintessential war experience. That’s when you find out what you’re really made of. My grandfather was a very resourceful man. And out in the wilderness of the Burmese jungle, he proved it.

  On that fateful day, having driven the whole day, at six o’clock at night, my grandfather thankfully got to base camp – only to be sent back.

“Waran! I’ve run out of petrol. You need to drive to the POL Point and get it tonight!” said the Commanding Officer. The Petrol, Oil and Lubricant Point or POL Points were the basic refueling stops for the Allied Forces in Burma, set up by the army to make sure that the all the cogs in the machinery of war moved with well-oiled precision. As the Quartermaster, all supplies were my grandfather’s responsibility. So when the petrol ran out, he was the one who had to drive back 50 miles to the last POL Point for it. They needed that petrol- they had to start driving the next morning.

He gathered a ‘working party’ - a group of men to do the heavy lifting- which consisted of four men, and set off to get the necessary fuel.

This time, however, there was another, unforeseen danger.

They had driven about 20 miles when the air was rent with the rattle of machine-gun fire. The staccato bursts came from Japanese troops who were hiding in the trees, waiting to pick off any enemies who might passing by on that road.

“Stop, stop!” said the co-driver, who was fortunately a man experienced in the ways of war. “We must stop, and hide, so that the enemy thinks we’re dead and moves on,” he said. They stopped hurriedly, scrambled out of the vehicle and dived into the shallow ditch-like trenches dug on the side of the road. At that point, my grandfather confessed, he thought it was all over for him.

Or almost.

My grandfather was never the sort of man to give up.

In tense silence, crouched in the trenches, the men waited breathlessly for a sign that it was safe to move. My grandfather had his service revolver on him which had five rounds. He fired five shots, one after another, to lure the enemy out.

Nothing.

He and his men made their way cautiously back to their vehicle. No sooner had they started the engine, than - rat-a-tat-tat! The staccato of machine guns spat fire with redoubled fury.

The truck standing conspicuously in the middle of the road presented a large and easy target to the enemy. The men in the truck scrambled out and hid in the trenches once again.

The service revolver was now empty, and there was no more ammunition left.

Then my grandfather had an idea. In one of those happy strokes of luck that came so often to my grandfather, he had held on to his haversack while making a hasty exit from the truck. Being the Quartermaster, his haversack held, among other things, matches – and Bicat Strips. Bicat Strips were used as training ammunition. Their chief feature was that they went off with a real bang. With nothing else to hand and nothing to lose, my grandfather lit them up like firecrackers and tossed them towards the enemy. The Bicat Strips made an enormous noise, and the Japanese, believing that their enemy had brought out the machine guns too, turned tail and retreated, with many shouted curses and threats.

They then went on to the POL Point at Mile No. 50, filled the steel drums in the vehicle with petrol and drove all the way back to base camp. It was 6 am by the time he returned. The CO (Commanding Officer) upon hearing what had gone down during what was meant to be a routine refueling trip, commended him warmly on his presence of mind.

That was how my grandfather won a gun-battle against the Japanese without ammunition, and came back not only alive, but unscathed.

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IS IT A PLANE?

The long drive through Burma led the 5th Indian Division, my grandfather's formation, deep into the interior of the country, and to better quarters and better living conditions. Luck has a way of changing suddenly, when you least expect it, and in my grandfather’s case, he caught a break.

In a small town in interior Burma, next to a famous pagoda (a Buddhist temple), the company settled down to something very like comfort. Among the local people were Indian-origin settlers. With the enterprise of the true Malayalee when he’s out of Kerala (there’s something about the southern state of Kerala in India which makes its expat inhabitants hugely proactive when it comes to the food and beverage business), the ladies would come around on Sunday mornings with traditional South Indian steamed rice dumplings (idlis) and savoury rice-flour pancakes (dosas) to sell to the home-sick Indian men. 

 My grandfather was promoted to Chief Quartermaster. He and his friend Subedar Bali, being two of the  senior-most men around, had the luxury of getting a thatched hut by way of accommodation, a definite upgrade from the tents which had served as living quarters so far. And sharing a boundary wall with an anti-aircraft unit meant that they could relax and stop worrying about the constant, ever-present threat of the German bomber planes that hovered over the Great War.

For my grandfather, who possessed the happy knack of ignoring unpleasant things and enjoying life to the hilt whenever possible, this was living the high life.                 

 For a while.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. My grandfather and Subedar Bali sat outside their hut in the peaceful tropical surroundings and enjoying a breakfast of masala dosas, crispy golden brown pancakes filled with a spicy, savoury potato filling. There was nothing to do but eat and bask in the sunshine. They looked up lazily as seven planes painted with the Indian insignia flew overhead. The planes swooped down, raining bombs on the unit. At the first, explosive sounds of the deadly shower from the sky peppered the camp, my grandfather and Bali abandoned their masala dosas and dived into trenches.

Ironically, the anti-aircraft unit’s artillery guns were just outside the unit, but they, too, thought the, as my grandfather put it, that “the planes were ours”. It wasn’t until much later that everyone figured out that the planes were enemy bombers, cleverly disguised with the Indian insignia and flying under false colours. By the time the anti-aircraft unit realized what was going on, the planes had disappeared.

The ruse had caught everyone unawares. The camp was levelled and as many as 30 vehicles were reduced to smoking wrecks in a matter of a  minutes. 22 people died that day. My grandfather came out of the trench to find that friends and colleagues who hadn’t been so lucky were gone forever. Also gone was the prized thatched hut (which had take a direct hit) and all his worldly possessions, which had been in the hut. But things, unlike people, can be replaced; and as the Quartermaster, retrieving a fresh set of clothing and other supplies from the stores was a simple matter. Far simpler, in fact, than dealing with the sudden deaths of twenty-two people with whom he’d lived, worked and travelled for so long - a loss that cut so deeply that 75 years later, he still couldn’t talk about it.

In fact, he had been lucky again. He could have been inside his hut when a bomb from the enemy planes had landed on it, but instead, he’d been outside.

That was how my grandfather survived bombing by enemy aeroplanes in the Second World War. 

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