Memoirs of GD Fell

From Cochin we sailed to Trincomalee in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) which was to become our base in the East Indies. There we officially joined the East Indies Fleet, and between February and March we were deployed ferrying planes between Ceylon and India.

At this stage of operations we called in at Colombo, in Ceylon, and we were allowed ashore. I knew that there was a station in the vicinity of Colombo called HMS Anderson, and that a number of chaps who had trained at Brighton and Eastbourne with me had been sent there to monitor the Japanese radio traffic, so I decided to pay them a visit.

When I arrived at the station I did indeed meet a number of fellows who had trained with me at Brighton and Eastbourne, and whilst we were chin wagging Peter Shaw, who I referred to earlier, came by on his way to going on watch.  When he saw me he came over and said, "Hello George, nobody can do it like you do it." It took me a long time to convince my pals that he was talking about haircutting!

In April, one of our planes crashed into the stern of the ship whilst landing and burst into flames, killing the pilot, and while on operations a hellcat aircraft missed the arrester wires when landing, hopped over the barrier between the planes which had already landed, ploughed into them causing one of the aircraft to fall overboard. Four personnel were killed.

On April 11th, we provided cover for our ships which were to carry out bombardments of enemy targets, and also supply air cover on return. During the return from the bombardments we came under attack from enemy aircraft, and two of them were destroyed.

Numerous photo reconnaissance flights were carried out over Padang, Sumatra and Rangoon,

We returned to Trincomalee on the 20th April. Now this day was a very special day, not so much as it being my birthday, but because it became the day that my rum category changed from U A to G, and therefore I became entitled to draw my rum ration. I haven't mentioned it before but in the navy at that time there were three categories for rum rationing.

U A was under age for drawing rum, the age being set as 20 years of age. T was for temperance, that is, over twenty years of age but opted to receive 3d per day in lieu of the rum ration, and finally G, which stood for Grog and meant that you were over twenty years of age and had opted to receive a rum ration of a tot of rum per day. Incidentally, a tot of rum was one eighth of a pint of neat rum.