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.
Vous pourriez lire la version française de ce blogue à : http://waranenguerre.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-la-guerre.html
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