A RELAXED POSTING by Bob Milton

A relaxed posting to army wireless chain squadron in Ceylon(AWC).

There were AWC squadrons at Army HQ’s in England, Singapore, Egypt and Ceylon. Ceylon had been independent since 1947 but there were still remnants there. I was sent in 1949 to the transmitter detachment at Ekala, between Colombo and Negombo which at that time was still an RAF airfield.
When I got to Ekala no-one knew I was coming, and it was suggested that I should say hello to the OC, who seemed rather surprised when I saluted him. I found out that apart from pay parades it was not usually so formal.
There was an ex-boy radio mechanic in the transmitter hall whom I had met in Eastbourne when he visited his granny. At midday we went in a truck to where we were billeted in the Radio Ceylon compound. This used to be Radio SEAC. There were still BBC records surviving, which were once played by the DJ’s.

We went to the mess hall and I said where do we get served. I was told to sit down and Derek called out for “Willy”. Willy was one of the Sinhalese cookhouse helpers and at mealtimes he acted as a waiter for the English ‘Masters’, which was the customary way of addressing us. You can imagine that at the age of 19 I was a bit taken aback.

I found out that we were also served by a room boy named Sidaman who looked after our billet. He cleaned our kit and made our beds as well as sweeping up, he used to look after our laundry and do all sort of odd jobs for us. He was a lovely fellow and used to get many things like free fags and anything else which we didn’t want. He used to start his work before we were awake without disturbing us and used to bring back our laundry at the end of the day and clean our kit ready for the morning.

Another important chap was Peter the char wallah. On the minus side, Peter smelt rather strongly. One day someone gave Peter a big block of carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush, together with instructions. About two hours later Pete returned, smelling sweetly. The next day Peter was back to normal.