Sundararaman Iyer Amar Chord – Memories of Chabua The mail from young Mohan brought back my memories of Chabua. Especially the then station commander’s outbursts against the Garrison Engineer, who was overseeing the repair works of the then Chabua air field. This was one of the left over airfields of World War II in North East India. Sometime in late July, 1962, I arrived there, I found an old and big rectangular building in one side of a vast and wide tarmac, an asphalt runway some distance away, with no aircraft around. Rest of the vast area was covered with thick bushes or jungle. When you cross the tarmac you find a long and wide shed with asbestos roofing – one part was SNCO’s mess with their accommodation; cordoned off on the other side of the shed was the airmen’s billets with their mess; in between one room functioned as MI Room. In fact at the entrance of our billet there was a faded sign - ‘Barber Shop’, inside which some 20 of us slept on the floor. No cots and no other furniture. Only some persons were having small transistor radios. There was an open area, inside the shed complex, with ‘boring pipe’ (with a handle). You need to pump manually to get water, which was mostly a mixture of yellowish water with petrol smell. Most of us went in pairs so that one man pumps and the other guy takes bath and then reverse the role. Some resourceful airmen who had their own buckets filled them and took it to ‘bathroom’, a cubicle where they can have their privacy. Thank God there was some toilets on stilt some distance away inside the thick bushes.(they called it ‘going to London’ or for ‘bombing sorties’). All these facilities existed in that vast shed complex. In front of the shed were few tents where some airmen who couldn’t get accommodation inside the billets or who didn’t want to sleep on the floors, resided. Because in the tent you have charpoys to sleep on. And in another corner there was a hut, real hut with grass roofing, served as Canteen. Tea and some nameless snacks were available there. You needed to walk a mile or more to go outside the camp, to the main road connecting Tinsukia with Dibrugarh, parallel to the railway track. Chabua was somewhat in the middle between these two towns. Actually Hatiali is the nearest railway station but why Chabua was chosen as the nearest Railway station – because it had one hut serving as Station Master’s room cum ticketing office and some space serving as platform; In Hatiali there was nothing – just the railway track. That is all. We were some five or six of us, (Sivaramaiah, Kesavan, Dhaliwal, myself and one or two others, memory fails me now) - fresh airmen just passed out and posted to Chabua. When we all reported the first day at our Signals section I was surprised to see the Sgt i/c (Ghosh?) sitting on a wooden packing case, in front of a contraption serving as a table who was least impressed by our look of young and inexperienced fresh inductees to the ‘operational Unit’. All WOM IIs (wireless operators) – hence before putting us on work on regular communication channels we were assigned to assist two senior Cpls (Saigal and Sharma) who were operating the channels. Soon I was assigned as an independent operator on a Ops channel located in the only HQ building, opposite which was a vast and empty tarmac – that was a WW II remnant – in one part of the building was the Orderly room, adjoining another big room where the Station Commander sat in the front half and the rear half functioned as Ops Room with some partition in between. In the rear half there was a big glass mounted on a pedestal and some map was drawn on it, in red and black colors, indicating the forward area ALG locations. In one corner of that room was my work station with a morse key and a radio. One Wg Cdr Murthy was the Ops Officer i/c flying; he was looking terrific with a big moustouche and red-shot eyes and I used to be afraid when he was around. I could hear the Station Commander’s voice sitting in the front half of the room. I understood soon why I was assigned an independent operator for that Ops channel – there was hardly any transaction – one or two messages came in throughout the whole day. Hence very little operation was involved. Some one was required to sit throughout the day with his headset on to monitor or just to listen. There was night shift also upto 10pm, when I have to switch off the system. Then I need to switch on again at 4am. Just monitoring for any message. There were some Army personnel operating in that channel based at forward ALGs and only in case of any urgency they will send some message which I need to receive. These army personnel will send in very slow speed hence any fresh operator can receive it easily and that is why I was assigned to this ‘prestigious’ independent position. Gp Capt J D Aquino, ( later Air Commodore John Dunbar Aquino AVSM) ,was the Station Commander at that time; He was a tall, impressive, Anglo-Indian, probably from WW II era. His voice was loud and clear and very authoritative. One day I heard him shouting to some one –‘Plug in his ass and bring the ****ing Garrison Engineer here’. He perhaps was not satisfied with the renovation works going around the station at that time hence his outburst. Those days Hindi was not really that official language and this station commander used slang words in English effortlessly to communicate and he made no fuss about it. (to continue)
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 04:18:52 +0000
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