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The column of smoke above Rangoon was still clearly visible 40 miles out at sea. But there was no sign of the expected enemy aircraft: the RAF and the Flying Tigers had taken a heavy toll of the Japanese air squadrons. As the Jessen headed northwest across the Bay of Bengal, tension slowly subsided and thoughts turned increasingly to the possibility that they might now, finally, be on their way home. Those on board the Danish ship included most but not all of the surviving members of the MTB flotilla. Alick Kennedy had been sent in a Burmese minesweeper, the Somagyi, to the port of Akyab, halfway up the coast towards India. With him were Petty Officer Bill Dyer and Able Seaman Len Downey. At least three other ratings—Alf Burrows, Charles Moore and Jack Thorpe—were also on their way to Akyab, in motor launches. Tommy Brewer, itching for a fight as ever, had volunteered to stay behind in Rangoon to carry out some final demolition work. After setting off thousands of land mines he broke out through enemy roadblocks, cracking a rib when his jeep turned over, but escaping upcountry with a British army unit. Just a few months later he was killed—not by a Japanese bullet in the jungle, but in a motor accident on a main road in England at the start of his leave. The Jessen reached Calcutta on 12 March, and the Hong Kong party put up at the Marine Club. They found it pleasant to be ‘back in civilization’, as one of them put it, but were also shocked at signs that India might be tainted with the same complacency that had been evident to some extent in Burma. The Great Eastern Hotel’s pretentious dining room was still offering a choice of forty different dishes to patrons in full evening dress. Calcutta was apparently quite unaware that war existed anywhere, thought Ashby. Yet bomb attacks on the city were a real threat now that the Japanese were firmly established next door in Burma. The news on the radio was a grim recital of Allied defeats, the latest being the fall of Batavia (Jakarta) and Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies. An announcement by the British Foreign 30 Glasgow Bound 8 March . . . Glasgow Bound 245 Secretary confirming atrocities in Hong Kong put the final seal on any hopes that first reports had been exaggerated. They all knew people who had been left behind, but Anthony Eden’s statement to the House of Commons—based partly on evidence brought out by Phyllis Harrop*—caused particular anxiety for those with immediate family still there, such as Gandy. At last, on 24 March, came an order to ‘proceed by train to Bombay en route to UK’. It was what they had all been waiting for, but just how many of them would actually be available to make the voyage home was hard to say, as the size of the party continued to shrink. The oldest member of the group, Pethick, had found a job as master of an elderly steamer called the Marylise Moller. Like Pethick himself, she had spent most of her life on the China Coast (where she had been pirated the previous year), but she was currently on her way to the Middle East. Two more of the merchant mariners, Skinner and Halladay, also re-enlisted in the merchant service. Two ratings from MTB 09, Able Seaman Les ‘Lofty’ Gurd and the coxswain, Bill Schillemore, were keen to stay on for a while in Calcutta. They volunteered to join the military’s Medical Services department—a plan to which Gandy had no objection. One of their old shipmates, Ron ‘Jez’ Priestley, also remained behind after being admitted to the Barrackpore Hospital. Several of the men had come down with fever after their time in Burma. John Collingwood and the flotilla’s six telegraphists had returned on the Jessen to Burma soon after arriving in India, and were to be based for a spell at Akyab with Kennedy and the others. There was an airstrip near the port that was coming under heavy attack from highlevel Japanese bombers. After the captain of an Indian Navy sloop absconded, Collingwood was put in command—he being the only officer who could speak Hindi, thanks to his family’s history of service in the Indian Army. Ron Ashby was sent back to Burma on a special mission with the Commodore in a Tiger Moth biplane. But...

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