Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎43r] (85/118)

Commander told me. We reached Bushire, four hundred miles north-west, in
record time and the pilot shot up the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. with such exuberance and the
accuracy of a deliberate near-miss that I remember Sir Geoffrey Prior running
out on to the flat roof with his hands up in mock surrender. On another
occasion I was flown by a young pilot who the very next day was taken off duty
with a severe mental breakdown. I had often to beg lifts on aircraft which were
being ferried down the Arab side of the Gulf to India and Burma. I recall
passages in a Hudson (whose pilot told me cheerfully its faults had earned it
the nickname of 'the killer plane'), Sunderland, Dakota, Catalina and the only
fighter that had a tiny free area for one concertinaed passenger, the Bristol
Beau. On my own Persian side of the Gulf no aircraft flew.
Of my attention to that coast the Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. wrote: "Mr Rogers has
been at considerable pains to link his own coast-watching organisation with those
in Gwadur and British Baluchistan". True, but I would be the first to admit the
limits set along the 550 miles eastwards from my base by a desolate coast with
few inhabitants and still fewer ready or able to help. Indeed, my comings and
goings in different small boats and afterwards my dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. began to resemble some
kind of one-ship stage navy moving to and from different points on the skyline to
make the one ship look like, or at least be reported by the rumour-prone locals
as, six. It was the parallel at sea of General Dunsterville's World War I stage
army magnified by gossip which I mentioned previously.
"It is hoped," wrote the Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. further, "that timely information
will be received of any enemy agents' attempt to secure a footing on shore".
While no one can be sure, I think we in general fulfilled his hopes. But things
would have been more difficult if the Germans had crossed the Caucasus and called
their agents or supporters in to help them. In that case Creagh Coen might have
been hard put to sustain his flattering judgement that "during World War II nine