Home to England 1945

At night it was so hot and crowded that we used to move out onto the decks to sleep taking a pillow and a sheet, and lying under the stars. We had to get up fairly quickly in the morning, before the Indian deck crew came to wash down the decks. They carried on regardless of who was in their way, sloshing water around and helping it along with great brooms. There was little to do during the day except chat to our friends and play endlessly a wind-up gramophone that we had. We played a mixture of dance records and classical. I think Grieg’s piano concerto was our standby. At first the weather was tropical, but as we drew further north the climate changed to an ugly English summer.

We eventually arrived back in Liverpool [on 10 July 1945] and disembarked into what seemed a very dreary grey depressed Britain. The Japanese war of course still continued though the war in Europe was over. I remember being surprised how everyone seemed to be white – that, believe it or not, in Liverpool. I was not used to being surrounded by white people doing all the menial tasks, but that was of course well before the influx of West Indians and Indians into this country which followed on a few years later after the partition of India.