FOREWARD

It is difficult to imagine one's parents when they were young but if you're lucky, you may get a glimpse of what they were before life and parenthood shaped them into the people that we come to know as we ourselves mature.

The original papers and photographs have been donated to Cadbury Research Library Special Collection, Birmingham University UK who house the archives of TOC H.

Contact: belwebza@yahoo.co.uk

Cadbury Research Library

"Heather Bell: A South African who served as a Toc H Welfare Officer with the British Army in the East, gives some of her impressions of Burma (Myanmar), as well as of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka)"

1948

    In September 1945 my mother, Heather Bell, a Welfare Officer with Toc H [1] set sail from Liverpool docks for India on her way to Burma to join the 12th Army on the shore of Meiktila Lake and it is here that her story begins. As to why a South African woman aged just 25 was embarking on this rather unusual journey, you need to go back a number of years.

    By August of 1940 the war was well underway in Europe and life must have felt very precarious even in South Africa who was constitutionally obliged to support Britain and which had caused divisions as the Nationalist Party were anti-British. Cape Town was one of two strategic South African ports used by the British convoys that were traveling to and from India and beyond.

    Heather, born and raised in Cape Town, was now teaching at Rondebosch Boys Preparatory School and had volunteered with the Naval Transport Drivers which I suspect would assist her in getting to England in 1945. Her parents, James and Gertrude Bell, opened up their home, like so many others, to British Officers and it was on one of these occasions in August 1940 that she met Captain Alan Nicoll who was on his way to join 1/15th Punjab Regiment in India. Alan was from Edinburgh although he and his brother had both been born in Hong Kong. His parents, Charles and Edith Nicoll, by 1940 were living in Newton Abbot with their daughter, Margaret.

    It must have been difficult to sustain any kind of relationship, let alone one that would flourish, when relying solely on letters which would have been sporadic to say the least. However their relationship did against all the odds and soon war was declared on Japan and Alan was to find himself fighting in Burma. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1943 so Heather would have been well aware of the danger Alan was in.

    Towards the end 1944 they had made the decision to marry and after Alan was granted leave for the following year, they planned a spring wedding in Newton Abbot. Heather sailed from Cape Town in March 1945 aboard the British troopship “Andes"[2]. The passage would not been without risk and her thoughts must have been very mixed when she boarded with her wedding cake and trousseau, excited at the thought of getting married but sad to be leaving her family and friends behind for a life in England. I never did discover how she managed to get herself aboard a British troopship when the war was still on but I do remember her always saying that if you ever want anything "go straight to the top" and no doubt her time in the Naval Transport Drivers pool must have put her in contact with some influential personnel.

  The “Andes” docked in Liverpool on the 25th March 1945 and Heather must have been been relieved the trip was over and at the same time excited about the pending wedding. But the elation was to be short lived because when she disembarked she was to be met by Alan's mother and sister, and told that Alan had been killed in the battle for Mandalay on the 1st March. I can't image how Heather must have felt  and all she must have wanted was to return to the comfort of her family and friends but that was not to be as she was stranded in the England, unable to get a passage back to South Africa.

  The Nicoll household must have been a very somber place as Alan's brother Ian had been killed at Cassino, Italy in 1944 and their father passed away in 1943 leaving just his mother and sister. They were soon to be joined by Heather's brother, Gordon Bell who had be released from a POW camp in Italy and sent to England before going back to South Africa.

  Heather would have wanted to see where Alan was killed to get closure, so joined TOC H and set sail for Burma as soon as Japan surrendered in 1945 - she picks up the story from here.

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Andrew Wilson

Surrey, UK - 2015

Email: belwebza@yahoo.co.uk

Next page: CHAPTER 1: Through the Gateway

Footnote:

[1] TOC H is an international movement instigated by the Reverend Philip Thomas Byard (Tubby) Clayton as a way to perpetuate the Fellowship developed in Talbot House, a soldiers’ club run by him in Poperinge, Belgium from 1915-1918. It is from the contemporary phonetic alphabet for TH (Talbot House) that Toc H takes its unique name.

Link to website:  TOC H

[2] "Andes" (2)  Operating life: 1939 - 1971 - Tonnage: 25,689 - Passengers: 607 Constructed: Harland & Wolff, Belfast Andes was launched 6 months before the outbreak of World War Two. She was immediately requisitioned as a troop carrier and spent the war on active duty. In 1947 she was released back to the Royal Mail Line and, after a major refit in Belfast, she commenced her commercial service on routes to South America. In 1959 she was refitted for cruising. In 1971 she made her last voyage to the breakers in Belgium.

Link to website:  British Troopships