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Cooking For The Royal Berk’s Wasn’t
Always Fun!
by
Sgt. Bertram King 14254119
Page 4
.....We went down
there overnight, and there were wild and tame elephants there, we got some
of those elephant’s, and Indian handlers, they used to sit on them and
ride around, they’d do all your donkey work for you. We had one for all
the cookhouse kit, which consisted of a big kerosene burner, and we had all
our knives and stuff put together. It was all packed up in a tin box, loaded
onto the elephant. Of course, no sooner had we put it on the elephant it started
playing the conga, you know, bangerty, bangerty, bangerty, with all the knives
and stuff rattling around, and the elephant decided he’d had enough,
so he pissed off into the jungle, it took us a week to find them. It was a
joke and a half. I had photographs, but they’ve all gone. This old elephant
used to think the world of me. Of course we used them extensively in Burma,
pushing logs about, bridging.
What happened of course, when we got really into action, battle simulations,
jungle warfare training, firing ammunition over your head. Some RAF at the
time, working with us, discovered that they could see all our khaki drill,
when we were in the jungle, because at that time we hadn’t made them
green. There was no green jungle warfare stuff then.
.....So anyway, all of a sudden I got a note from the Q.M. I had to get all
the baths we could get hold of, and all our hygiene tubes, and we had to dye
every piece of equipment we had. Handkerchiefs, underpants and all that, we
used to keep beautiful K.D’s, bleached in the sun. We had to get everything
done green, everything you bloody had. So anyway we had to put the lot in the
bins, and baths, and then get them all dried out.
When this had been done, they put us in a jungle warfare situation, to see
if we could be spotted, they couldn’t seem to see use because we were
now camouflaged. But the first time we went out, it rained, and you get a hundred
and four inch of rainfall there, overnight, and we got everything absolutely
soaked. We had to have what we call an ‘Arms coat’, that’s
a place where you keep all your arms, rifles and bayonets; you couldn’t
have a rifle or bayonet, on your person, openly; just encase it was pinched
by the Indian’s, so we used to store them in the arms coats. The first
thing in the morning, when we got up, we found all the rifles, in the arms
coat, were absolutely soaked in water, you could just see the tips of the barrels
poking out the top of it. So that took a bloke weeks to get their bloody rifles
pristine. Then once we got into the water, and rain soaked, all the bloody
dye came out, so all our bodies were absolutely green, this then of course
caused jungle sores, and one irritation or another.
.....One morning they decided that they had to get rid of this problem that
we had, so everybody was paraded absolutely naked, with only just their boots
on. They were stood up there absolutely naked, and the medical officers, and
their men came round with that gentian violet, like a paint, well of course
you had to stand up there, with your arms above your head, and your manhood
dangling, and they painted us all over, wherever we had spots, with purple.
There we were, the green men, with purple bxxxxxx, and all our appendages done
in blue, and faces red.
.....So of course they went round saying they were a secret weapon, the Jap’s
wouldn’t know what they were tackling, and ran. Of course they all got
dried out and there was some right old ribaldry going on, you know. But that
was one of the joys of it, you know.
We had barrels of beer issued, but no canteen, so the colour-sergeant, organised
the sale of beer. It was a barrel of beer from the Murray Brewery, and they
were really nice big barrels of beer. The blokes all came down to my kitchen
to pinch my Dixie’s. Beer schools were going, they all had little lamps
made, from evaporated milk tins, with oil in, we made a wick’s out of
some tent tapers. They had their little tent with their beer school’s
going away there. There all singing all the old ribald songs from the army,
you know ‘Eskimo Nell’, the lot.
.....The colour-sergeant came to me and said, ‘here, Sergeant King’,
he said ‘why are we not selling enough beer, and their all getting pissed?’ I
said, I don’t know, but I’ll have a look by. Somebody had discovered
that, where the barrels of beer were propped up in the little straw and wooden
hut, they just pulled the back up and the barrel of beer was exposed. So they
drilled a hole in the bottom of the beer barrel, and they put a matchstick
in it, or a piece of bamboo, and then they got one of my Dixie’s, they
used to pull it out from the beer barrel, and get a Dixie full of beer for
nothing. So they were all getting quietly pissed, and the quarter-master wasn’t.
Four anna’s a pint it was, and they could half shift some, you know.
The following morning everybody was pissed, except the quartermaster.
We had ‘Camp Followers’, a camp follower consisted of, a Bhisti,
water carrier, a cook was a Bobogy, and a sweeper was known simply as a sweeper
who cleaned all the rubbish up. They were all civilians and they were employed
by the battalion, in India. We gave them all English names. There was Sultan
Mohamed Khan, he was called Sambo, there was Montilali Lo, he was another one,
and their was Charlie.
.....Each company had a Bobogy, that was a cook, a water carrier and a sweeper.
These men made your tea and that sort of thing, they were absolutely useful,
but all were in their fifties. When we went to Burma we took all the ones under
fifty with us, from then on they were then involved in the army proper. We
had about forty Indian and British cooks, in the establishment roughly two
to three in each company, they were very useful those cooks, they could go
up a tree that was green, and come down with wood that was dry to make a fire
with, they worked very hard.
.....One of them got decorated; he went with a message to battalion headquarters
in Mandalay, through Japanese lines, and killed about seven of them on the
bloody way, Kahn was his name.
P 1 :: P
2 :: P 3 :: P
4 :: P 5 :: P
6 :: P 7
Sgt. Bertram King