Some Sunny Day
Page 28
Burma was renamed Myanmar and Rangoon became Yangon in 1989, but even after years in the international wilderness the sweeping elegance of the city’s tree-lined boulevards and the colonial splendour of the dignified Victorian buildings were an eye-opener for both of them. The city was spacious and very impressive, and not at all what they had expected. Intense pressure during Basil’s posting in Rangoon had meant there was no time for leisure visits to monuments like the Shwedagon Pagoda and gold-plated Chaukhtatgyi Buddha, which made seeing them during this trip all the more special.
The pair visited Ho Chi Minh City (once called Saigon) in Vietnam and had a personal look into the Cho Chi tunnels. There was a stopover in Australia, where they visited Basil’s youngest brother Bob and his wife Esther. Then it was across the Pacific to places like Fiji, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Next they visited Vancouver, Memphis and Washington DC before spending ten days in Barbados, where Basil had arranged for their daughters and their husbands to be flown to the Caribbean paradise for a family holiday. It was a lovely end to the trip and Madge was equally delighted when they flew home business class.
Madge found the trip fascinating because it answered questions that had been at the back of her mind for fifty years. Basil had lived in a tent on Labuan for weeks and had told her there wasn’t a single building standing when he left. When they visited together, the island was a happy, thriving community.
For Basil, rugby union was a way of easing the pressures of the Burma Campaign and after he was demobbed in 1947 he played for Esher Expendables, until he retired in 1985. He served as treasurer for many years and later became chairman before being appointed club president. He went on to become the first administrator of Aviva Premiership rugby club Harlequin FC. He also spent more than fifteen years as joint club archivist with Nick Cross and is still a founder member of Quins and life member of Esher Rugby Club.
Age has not wearied Basil and Madge, nor have memories of the Burma Campaign condemned them to the years of despair suffered by so many in the aftermath of the confrontation. At its height the Burma Star Association, which was founded in 1951, boasted a membership in excess of twenty-six thousand. By the start of 2018, Madge was one of just twenty surviving women members entitled to wear the coveted Burma Star on her left lapel. Her status as one of the last of the few resulted in a conversation with former Prime Minister David Cameron at the seventieth anniversary of VJ Day in August 2015. The service of remembrance took place at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, where Madge had attended her last Sunday morning worship before travelling to India.
Following the VJ Day service Basil and Madge took part in the parade down Whitehall with over a thousand other veterans and around Parliament Square to a reception in the grounds of Westminster Abbey. Madge wore the 1939–45 Star, the Burma Star, the Defence Medal, and the 1939–45 War Medal. Prime Minister David Cameron asked if the medals she was wearing were her own and was told very politely that if people wore them on their left breast, as she was, they certainly were their own. Medals awarded to deceased ex-service personnel may be worn on the right by relatives, she explained.
The following year the live audience of BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing were in tears at the end of a moving tribute to Basil and Madge on the Remembrance Sunday show that peaked with an audience of almost 12 million TV viewers. The internet went into meltdown after the background to their love story stretching back more than seventy years to the Second World War was re-enacted by Strictly professionals AJ Pritchard and Chloe Hewitt. The dance routine included Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ and the music of violinist Andre Rieu and his orchestra. The story of the wartime romance had been told with Dame Vera Lynn’s wartime classic ‘We’ll Meet Again’ playing in the background.
‘It was marvellous to hear our favourite song sung by our favourite singer, who is also a Burma Star veteran. We had the pleasure of meeting her at the Burma reunion in 2005,’ said Basil.
What very few people knew was that the show only went ahead after Madge turned back the clock to her Nurse Graves days and used the magic potion that brought light into the darkest of times in the Burma Campaign. Dancer Chloe was so overcome by the emotion of the part she was to re-enact that rehearsals had to be halted because she was in floods of tears.
‘I can’t do this; it’s all so moving,’ she told Madge, as she stood sobbing at the side of the stage. That was until Nurse Graves mixed a generous helping of compassion with TLC and the gentlest of cuddles to calm Chloe down and get her back on stage. Madge told her she danced so beautifully that all she had to do was take a deep breath and everything would be fine. Chloe and AJ performed with such grace and elegance that when Basil and Madge joined them on stage they were all given a standing ovation.
Several months later in the spring of 2017, the two veterans were invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. It was hosted by Prince Harry who had spent the morning at the Tower of London revealing the names of the ninety competitors to represent the UK at the 2017 Paralympic-style Invictus Games. He returned to the palace later in the afternoon, stopping when Basil told him that Madge had cheered his granny on the way to her wedding to Prince Philip in November 1947. Madge also told the Prince that it was almost seventy-one years since she caught a boat home from Bombay to England after nursing in the Burma Campaign, which he was fascinated to hear about.
‘He was a real life Prince Charming,’ said Madge, ‘and after we’d thanked him for taking the time to talk to us, I suggested he should go and get a cup of tea and some cake before it was all gone. He burst out laughing.’
Before Prince Harry went to talk to other veterans, he made Madge’s day by having his photo taken with her. What Madge didn’t know, as the garden party drew to a close, was that her very own Prince Charming, husband Basil, had slipped on the lush palace lawn and broken his collarbone. Their daughter Angela went with him in an ambulance to St Thomas’s Hospital and their son-in-law Chris drove Madge there. Madge made the nurses smile when she told them that when she was preparing for the journey to nurse in the Burma Campaign she missed curfew at Baker Street in July 1944 because a bomb had landed near the hospital and the roads became jammed with traffic.
‘They were such interesting times,’ said Madge, on a sunny afternoon in the early autumn of 2017. It was the same afternoon that she received the sad news from the daughter of Grace that her friend of more than seventy years had passed away in Yorkshire. Vera, who never married, had died several years earlier and Madge had lost touch with Phyl.
‘They were all part of the abnormal life we led throughout the Burma Campaign,’ said Madge. ‘I know it’s an odd thing to remember but one of my overriding memories is of the sheer tiredness. We all seemed to be constantly craving sleep because of the physical and emotional demands placed on us.’
‘It was impossible to lead even the semblance of a normal life because those times were anything but normal,’ said Basil. ‘We were just grateful that we managed to live day to day although we lived with a constant worry about the Japanese. We both think about the brave souls who never made it back home and we pay homage to them every year.’
‘What we all learned in those troubled times,’ said Madge, ‘was to compromise. There was no option in the Burma Campaign but to compromise. And I feel it is that ability to compromise that has really been the secret to our marriage too.’
Vivid as those memories of the past decade may have been, nothing compared to the peace of mind that Basil and Madge experienced at the end of a match in Brighton between South Africa and Japan in the Rugby World Cup. Both were on the edge of their seats in their bungalow on the south coast as the game thundered to a thrilling end. Then when New Zealand-born Karne Hesketh scored a try in the last minute for Japan to triumph 34–32 to complete the greatest upset in the history of the tournament, the Burma Campaign veterans burst into very raucous and very unified applause.
Her words were chosen with extreme care because under no circumstances w
ould the atrocities ever be forgotten, but as they cheered the Japanese Madge suddenly realised something profound seventy years after the end of the Second World War. ‘Basil, darling, we’ve forgiven them.’
Glossary
Anna (coin) 100th of a rupee
Arakan an area in Burma
Basha bamboo-built building
Bearer servant or general worker
Bengal now in Pakistan
Bhisti an Indian water-carrier
BOR British Other Ranks
Bully Beef slang for corned beef
Burma now Myanmar
Calcutta now Kolkata
CCS Casualty Clearing Station
CO Commanding Officer
DC-3 Douglas Dakota-3
Dhobi or Dhobi-wallah servant who washes clothing etc.
Dhoti a long white loincloth worn in place of trousers
DI dangerously ill
EMS Emergency Medical Services
GSW Gun Shot Wound
Havildar Sergeant in Indian Army
HMS His Majesty’s Ship
HQ Headquarters
ID Identification Disc
IGH Indian General Hospital
IGH(C) Indian General Hospital (combined)
Jai Hind Victory to India
L.O. Hello, as spoken in London’s East End by a Cockney
Memsahib respectful word for European married woman
Mepacrine substitute for quinine, used by British troops
Miliaria Rubra prickly heat
MP Military Police
NCO Non-Commissioned Officer
NGL Nurses Gossip Line
Pegu now Bago
PSP pierced-steel planking, used to make ground firm
Punka-wallah servant who pulls large carpet-shaped fan to air room
QA Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps
Rangoon now Yangon
RASC Royal Army Service Corps
RMP Royal Military Police
RMS Royal Mail Ship, used as a troop carrier
Sahib friendly greeting to European male
Sapper Royal Corps of Engineers (similar to an Army Private)
SEAC South East Asia Command
Sepoy Indian soldier (similar to Private)
SIB Special Investigation Branch (of RMP)
Simla now known as Shimla
SS steam ship
Tender small utility vessel
Thunder Box toilet pan
VAD Voluntary Aid Detachment
VD Venereal Disease
WVS Women’s Voluntary Service
Acknowledgements
Looking back on my story of the past seventy-four years I became very conscious of the debt I owe to so many. My thanks go firstly to my husband Basil who has always supported me from the day we unexpectedly met during the Burma Campaign. Next I have to thank Bob Blair, a journalist whose intuition for a story came to the fore after a number of conversations he had with our younger daughter Angela. He spoke to us regularly over the following twelve months and wrote this fascinating story. Bob spent much time going through archives and other records to ensure that our recalled knowledge was true and accurate, before putting everything into chronological order – a massive responsibility!
During the past couple of years Carolyn and her husband Keith took a lot of the pressure off us, for which we are most grateful. The Burma Star Association through Phil Crawley MBE, and Helena Hamlyn and Tristan Nichols of the Royal British Legion, went out of their way to ensure that Basil and myself were able to attend the seventieth anniversary of the Burma Campaign on Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall, London, and we’re very thankful for the invitation from Strictly Come Dancing for us to be featured in a unique programme danced by professionals Chloe Hewitt and AJ Pritchard on Armistice Day 2016, which was seen by nearly 12 million BBC viewers, plus thousands on Facebook.
To all our friends who went along with our moods and the necessary changes made in their diaries, for which we are most grateful.
To Rebecca Winfield, who looked after our negotiations with Macmillan; we thank her for the understanding and kindness she showed at all times.
To Ingrid Connell, Laura Carr and Zennor Compton who looked after our mood changes with much tact, consideration and every possible help.
We sincerely hope that everyone mentioned in these acknowledgements will continue to be friends for the rest of our sunny days.
—Madge Lambert
My thanks are due to Madge Lambert; I feel privileged that she trusted me to write the story of her truly remarkable life. Thanks are also due to her husband Basil for his guidance about life in the hell that was the Burma Campaign. Their patience and hospitality, which featured tasty cakes and most delicious home-made soups, was mirrored by the kindness of daughters Carolyn Blendell and Angela Elliot. The transcription of Madge’s diaries by Angie was of immense importance.
John Giddings, MBE, chairman of the Burma Star Association, was endlessly supportive and the Rev Rana (de la Tour) Davies-James, vicar of the Magnis Group Benefice, Hereford, recounted with great pride the stories of her father Rev John Conway de la Tour Davies. He couldn’t talk about the horrors of the Burma Campaign without weeping, she said.
David Blake, curator of the Museum of Army Chaplaincy, Amport, Hampshire, gave me a major boost at a time when my spirits were low, as I struggled to find an agent and publisher. He underlined how important it was that the courage and compassion of nurses like Madge Lambert and memories of Burma Campaign veterans like Basil were put on record before they disappeared into the mists of time. In an extraordinary coincidence it emerged that David went to the same St Andrews Church of England primary school in Bebington on the Wirral peninsula which I had attended many years earlier. His help was reflected by that of William Spencer of the National Archives at Kew, Abigail Cornick, curator of the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell, London, and Terry Sutton, of the Dover Association. Kashif Ahmed’s advice on cultural nuances of the sub-continent and help with translation was invaluable.
The reality, however, is that without the advice and expertise of my agent, Rebecca Winfield, at David Luxton Associates, it is highly unlikely that this book would ever have appeared. I am deeply in her debt. The guidance of Oliver Holt of the Mail on Sunday was also much appreciated.
To Ingrid Connell and Zennor Compton, who edited the book at Pan Macmillan, your patience and expertise was invaluable from start to finish.
Surprisingly I will, for once, get the final word in with my wife, Gaynor.
Thanks for everything you did to help over the past two years.
— Robert Blair
List of Illustrations
1. Madge Graves in 1930, aged seven.
2. Doris, Mum, Doreen and Madge in High Wycombe in 1941.
3. Madge as a trainee Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, 1941.
4. Madge with Vera Clark, her fellow VAD.
5. Madge with Phyl Irvine in 1942.
6. Ward 11, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, May 1943.
7. Madge in London, July 1944, as she waited to depart for India.
8. Arriving in Poona and enjoying a banana.
9. With the girls at the mess at Poona.
10. Vera outside a basha ward.
11. 56 Indian General Hospital, view from the mess.
12. The Lamberts on parade. From left to right: Bill, Buster, Beryl, Basil, Brian and Bob.
13. Basil at the Officers’ Training Centre in Mhow in 1943.
14. From left to right: Basil, Jock, Jim and Tom in Chittagong, March 1944.
15. An entry in Lieutenant Colonel Whittaker’s war diary, mentioning the Japanese woman with a gunshot wound.
16. Patients and staff at Christmas, 1944.
17. A beautiful bridesmaid in a dress made from a sari.
18. On holiday in Calcutta with Basil, April 1945.
19. Saying goodbye. A picnic on the beach at Patanga, May 1945.
20. Madg
e and the girls on the MV Georgic as they began their journey home.
21. Vera, Phyl and Madge on Regent Street, London, 1947.
22. Basil came back to the coldest winter of the twentieth century, February 1947.
23. Madge and Basil on their wedding day, 16 October 1948.
24. Madge and Basil meeting Dame Vera Lynn on Horse Guards Parade on the 60th anniversary of VE and VJ Day, July 2005.
25. Madge meeting Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace Garden Party in 2017.
1. Madge Graves in 1930, aged seven.
2. Doris, Mum, Doreen and Madge in High Wycombe in 1941.
3. Madge as a trainee Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, 1941.
4. Madge with Vera Clark, her fellow VAD.
5. Madge with Phyl Irvine in 1942.
6. Ward 11, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, May 1943.
7. Madge in London, July 1944, as she waited to depart for India.
8. Arriving in Poona and enjoying a banana.
9. With the girls at the mess at Poona.
10. Vera outside a basha ward.
11. 56 Indian General Hospital, view from the mess.
12. The Lamberts on parade. From left to right: Bill, Buster, Beryl, Basil, Brian and Bob.
13. Basil at the Officers’ Training Centre in Mhow in 1943.
14. From left to right: Basil, Jock, Jim and Tom in Chittagong, March 1944.
15. An entry in Lieutenant Colonel Whittaker’s war diary, mentioning the Japanese woman with a gunshot wound.
16. Patients and staff at Christmas, 1944.
17. A beautiful bridesmaid in a dress made from a sari.