He struggled manfully to the end, ignoring all the ribald remarks coming from some quarters and when he had finished he acknowledged the sparse applause; definitely not the sort of poetry expected by the licentious soldiery. Days came and went, I don't recall how many but the time came when the sea birds arrived on the scene and we knew that landfall was not too far distant. The brighter ones among us told us that we were nearing Bombay and for once they were right. INDIA As HMT Aronda approached Bombay we eagerly scanned the coastline and almost at once discerned that imposing arch The Gateway to India but there was not too much time to spend sightseeing as we had to prepare to disembark. The ship docked and a little later we were making our way down the gangplank. Partway down I could see a commotion on the quayside; three military policemen were holding down a prone figure; though his face was flat where it was being pressed against the quay I recognised him as being the prisoner from the ship's brig. He had attempted to escape custody once more but again he had failed; I think he didn't like the army very much. We fell into position by drafts and waited and waited; it was mid-day and getting very hot. We stood in formation for about an hour, eventually our guide arrived to lead us to our billets; he was Indian Army, somewhere around five feet tall and he set off at a blistering pace. We quick marched behind him and when I say quick I mean it, with his short legs he had a short stride and we longer-legged ones kept up with difficulty. After a mile or so we entered Colaba Camp, this was to be our home for a while. Now started our introduction to things Indian. The teeming masses and the number of people sleeping in the streets surprised me as did the apparent disregard for personal safety amongst the traffic. New words came into our vocabularies the origins of which sometimes go back to the many countries that British forces have garrisoned over the last three centuries. Some military personnel must obviously have become proficient in the local languages but for the most part the British soldier was and still is linguistically lazy, content to adopt and sometimes anglicise foreign words and phrases to suit the occasion. Strangely enough using some English mixed with some foreign phrases and body language the soldiers usually made themselves understood by the locals who probably thought that all the words were English. At times it led to some interesting exchanges.