Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎14r] (27/118)

Precautions for Calcutta and the built-up areas running north from it for
over twenty miles on either bank of the Hooghly. This was something quite
outside the ordinary run of work and it was typical that the Service should be
expected to turn its hand to whatever fell to be done. Everything had to be
built up from scratch in differing conditions from Britain. What, to take only
one example, should be done about evacuation in conditions of a largely
illiterate and volatile population open to panic and unlikely to behave like
the phlegmatic Londoners buoyed up by the patriotic spirit of fighting their
own war? These and other questions of policy gave way to the immediate
practical issues of setting up ARP centres and shelters, giving lectures to
arouse public interest, planning courses for the instructors we were recruiting,
writing booklets and even devising uniforms (we followed military models and
badges of rank to lend extra authority). I went up from time to time in one
of the few privately owned light aircraft whose pilot gave a, for me, alarmingly
realistic imitation of a bomber diving on the Calcutta Fort to exercise the two
old machine guns which were the city's only air defences at this early stage of
the war.
I also had the rare fun of making a film, albeit a short and specialised one
on air raid precautions, using local scenes and elements to give it authenticity
for Bengalis. Directing the shooting, editing in the cutting room and fitting
in my commentary in preparation for the first showing in a Calcutta cinema, I
had a great satisfaction from this minor essay in creativity that was rarely to
be derived from the more important day to day running of even a large piece of
India. Soon I had to leave Calcutta on transfer. But I quote the tribute to both
British-Indian and Hindu-Muslim cooperation in ARP paid by Frank Carman of the
Indian Police who joined me from Serampore where we had been the only British
officials and who was an admirable leader of Indian colleagues from whom he