Page 55 - ABA Salvoes 1999-2024

SOME MEMORIES OF NO5 COMBINED OPERATIONS BOMBARDMENT UNIT
By the Reverend Canon Maurice Harper
Before ordination Major Harper had served in the Gunners from 1941 to 1959. There has already been a very full account of the formation and organisation of COBUs written by Captain PN Clark RA, in the July 2001 edition of SALVOES, but I have been asked to write something about one particular unit, No. 5. This I am pleased to do, but because of the way that it operated, in small parties which only met up with each other when they were all together at their base camp at Juhu, near Mahatma Gandhi’s HQ a few miles outside Bombay, it must of necessity be limited to the personal, the anecdotal and my increasingly failing memory!
In 1943 I was serving with 1 Indian Field Regt, which having been through the withdrawal from Burma had had a short time in Peshawar and was then stationed in Quetta. Early in the year I was unexpectedly sent on a naval gunnery course in Karachi, the Indian equivalent of Whale Island. What comes to mind most clearly from that time is not so much about gunnery. but a lot about naval etiquette, saluting the quarter deck and who should be first, or last, in and out of a ships boat however that may be. I had apparently absorbed enough about naval guns, admiralty fire control tables and bombardment procedures to be accepted and I soon found myself on the way to Bombay to join a newly forming unit to be called 5 COBU. The unit started life at the Combined Training Centre at Mahd Island, just off the coast, before moving to Juhu, where the only building of any size was equipped as its HQ and Officers’ Mess. The cookhouse and ORs’/ Ratings’ Mess was behind it, with their accommodation. Officers were housed in ‘bashas’ on the land immediately behind the beach. These were constructed and roofed with branches of palm leaves. In time an assault course with scrambling nets, rope swings, pole walks and all the usual hazards, was constructed among the palm trees and several times a week we all had to belt round it trying to break our own records for completing it, without breaking our necks. Eventually there was a CO, 2i/c, two Tp Comds. and about 40 other officers on the strength, with a nucleus of experienced bombardos, who had taken part in the landings on Madagascar, like Bill Knight and Hector Emerton and Major Freddy Marsh, a Tp Comd who initially got the outfit going. The remainder was made up of learners drawn from units already stationed in India.
Early in its life the unit was taken over by Lt.Col A McEwen Window (Scuttle), who had gained an MC in WW1. Major John Manning was posted in as 2i/c and Major Maurice Timms as the other Tp Comd. The essential complement of RA driver operators were posted in, together with RN and RIN tels, shepherded by Sub.Lt. Jimmy Ball RINVR, who was responsible to Lt Cdr Seymour-Hayden RN, OC Signals Section at HMS Braganza in Bombay for their signal training. To cope with the admin a QM, clerks, and cooks
were provided. I shared a basha with Capt Gerry Robins, which gave me the advantage of also sharing his bearer, Manickam, a young Madrasi who had served him while he was with 2 Indian Fd Regt. Unfortunately there were a few rats at Juhu, which caused at least two embarrassing incidents. Once they ate the fly buttons off Gerry’s shorts during the night and on another occasion ate the talc off a map which had been marked ready for an operational exercise (Scuttle was not amused).
We did our parachute training at Chakiala where Gerry survived a nasty landing when thrown rigging lines, a term used in WW2 to describe a number of Bombardment Units, reduced his canopy by half. I don’t know how the ORs and ratings fared, but food in the Officers’ Mess left much to be desired. At one time the Catering Corps Local Purchasing Officer must have found a bargain supply of herrings in tomato sauce! There were so many moans about food that Scuttle threatened that the next officer to complain would be made Mess Caterer. Shortly afterwards, at lunch, someone took a mouthful of some concoction and cried out “Ugh, shit!” and catching Scuttle’s eye as he looked up quickly added, “But beautifully cooked”.
Sometimes we did training exercises on Mahd Island, These were not popular, as that was where Bombay Duck was made by hanging raw fish to dry on huge racks. The stench was unbelievable! At other times we were attached to ships to get some idea of the BLO side of the job. Gerry and I joined HMS Ceylon in Trincomalee for some of these trips. While on one such attachment we received an urgent signal to return immediately to Juhu for a conference. We were given passage on a small fleet carrier, HMS Unicorn, and on the way back to Bombay I had the thrill of a rather alarming flight in one of its ancient aircraft. Having been briefed on survival techniques. As if I was going to the South Pole, we took off, flew round the ship and came back to land, only to be waved off due to some pilot error in procedure which would have caused us to overshoot the deck! We had to do another circuit before landing safely. When we got back to Juhu we found that the conference was in fact a party to try and drink all the profits the bar had made as there was a rumour that the unit was to be disbanded, with the closure of the mess and therefore all its funds handed in to the RA Central Mess. We were furious, because in the meantime HMS Ceylon sailed for Perth without us, where everyone had a great time and stocked up the wardroom with Swan ale More seriously we kept our hand in with OP work by flying in to work with batteries in action in the jungle. Once I flew in via Calcutta. Chittagong and Imphal (which was surrounded) to a battery supporting the troops at Kohima. But most of the operations that I was engaged in were in the Arakan, after being flown in via Chittagong. As my subaltern (an additional officer to some parties,
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