‘You won’t get a better view of Everest than this,’ the blond lieutenant told Madge. But the rascal was up to his tricks again and his pal pointed out that it wasn’t actually Everest, but the peak of Kangchenjunga, a mountain that was once thought to be the world’s tallest. Madge and Grace were handed powerful military binoculars and the boys pointed to the real Mount Everest, which they were told was known locally as Chomolungma, goddess mother of the world.
As they gazed at the stunning beauty of the world’s tallest mountains they noticed that they had suddenly been surrounded by a large group of fellow tourists.
‘What’s happening?’ Madge asked the rascal. He told her it was a surprise for her birthday. ‘But that was days ago,’ she replied.
‘They don’t know that,’ he laughed.
Then, with the tallest mountains on earth silhouetted by a blood-red morning sun and the snow-clad Himalayan peaks glittering like diamonds, the sound of a dozen voices resounded across the summit of Tiger Hill as they joined to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Madge couldn’t help smiling.
Grace, however, was still far from amused at having made the journey up to Tiger Hill on a mule. She gave the scallywags a second and far more severe rollicking until, by way of an apology, they offered the girls a lift. They hummed and hawed for at least ten seconds before graciously accepting the men’s offer of a drive back to Darjeeling.
‘They should have done more to put it right,’ Grace whispered to Madge. ‘They didn’t even ask us out to dinner or for a drink. Shame about that. The least they could have offered in addition to the ride back was a bottle of champagne – or two!’
There was no stopping her and she added, ‘It may have been more than a hundred miles away from where we were but at least we saw Everest. Shame about the mules!’
Later that morning, Madge walked down to pick up the shoes she had ordered from the cobblers just off Chowrasta Square in Darjeeling, but there was a slight problem. Instead of copying the fashionable, high-heeled Vogue design in gold and silver lamé they had made three pairs of flat-heeled white brogues. There was no compromise to be had and in the end Madge decided to just leave the shoes at the shop.
This trip is turning out to be rather eventful, Madge smiled to herself.
25
The Japanese Surrender
Madge and Grace returned from Darjeeling to discover that Winston Churchill had been deposed as Prime Minister. The news had been released in London more than a week earlier that Clement Attlee’s Labour Party had recorded a victory unprecedented in British political history and there was general sense of disbelief in the wards at 56 IGH. The election result was the first of two major surprises because days later rumours began to sweep the hospital that the Americans had dropped atomic bombs of enormous power on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Emperor Hirohito, in a broadcast to the Japanese nation, confirmed Japan’s surrender to the Allies on 15 August.
In London, King George V said, ‘Our hearts are full to overflowing, as are your own. Yet there is not one of us who has experienced this terrible war who does not realise that we shall feel its inevitable consequences long after we have forgotten our rejoicings today.’
In Rangoon the news was greeted with wild celebrations when hundreds of troops cheered the attempts to drive a tank up the steps of Government House and in through the front entrance.
During this time Madge received a letter from Basil. Since it was confirmed that the Japanese had surrendered it has been one long party through the night, he wrote. But we have been told to be on standby for redeployment from Rangoon to Saigon, so I still don’t know when I’ll get to see you.
In Chittagong, Japanese soldiers continued to arrive at the POW casualty ward so it was still very much business as usual at 56 IGH. Madge had initially thought that the Japanese surrender might bring her and Basil back together, so she was sad to read his letter telling how they were to be driven even further apart. Basil’s unit, which was responsible for running the Saigon docks together with other troops, was assigned the risky task of repatriating captured Japanese soldiers and sailors taken prisoner by the Allies in Vietnam. The Japanese had taken control of the colony, then part of French Indochina, in 1941.
From the moment the DC-3 on which he was flying to Saigon entered Vietnamese air space, Basil could hear the pilot’s conversation with air-traffic controllers and realised that they were Japanese. When the Allied group landed in Saigon, heavily armed Japanese soldiers drove them in lorries to their billets. However, the Japanese, still fully armed, proved to be a godsend to the Allied forces who had fewer than five hundred troops to protect the French from the Vietnamese at that time and meant that the 20th Indian Division could focus on important day-today responsibilities. The Allied Commander-in-Chief told his Japanese counterpart that they could temporarily retain their arms, and would be responsible for the maintenance of order among the French and Vietnamese populations. When the French military arrived, the Japanese would then surrender all their weapons and equipment.
It all went all right, Basil wrote to Madge, though as often as the locals were disarmed, the Japanese probably sold, or gave them, more arms. We couldn’t do anything other than warn them to stop, but I will give the Japanese their due because they are well disciplined, know how to work and don’t need to be forced to carry out the new responsibilities. The Japanese officers, to the best of our knowledge, never took advantage of the situation
