"حكاية جد: مذكرات معنية في أغلبها بالخدمة في الجيش الهندي والخدمة السياسية الهندية في الهند والخليج الفارسي في الفترة ١٩٣٢-١٩٤٧" [ظ‎‎١‎٦] (١١٨/٣٢)

- 24 -
in both, the Foi*eigii and Political Depantinents, but when X hacx paid
my visit to Delhi to be vetted in February 1936, Lord Hillingdon was on
the point of departure for England at the end of his term of office and
quite naturally was far too busy to see me* I was sorry oecause X had
long admired him from afar and should have liked to have met him in
person. He was certainly a far more likeable person than his successor.
Gueritz and I left Simla in the second week in June 1937 and had
an exceedingly hot journey down to Karachi. It was just before the monsoon
and the temperature in the train as we passed through the oind Desert was
astronomical, despite having an 80 lb. block of ice in a tin bath in the
carriage with the fan playing full on it. He were both flying home on
short leave to England but unfortunately could not get seats in the same
aircraft. Flying in those days was still something of an adventure and
I had never been on a long flight before. He were each allowed 220 lb.
including ourselves, and as I weighed only about 150 lb. I was able to take
a small cabin trunk with me. We left Karachi on the 10th June in an
Imperial Airways Handley Page HP42 E (Hannibal class) theHadrian which
had a cruising speed of 95 - 100 m.p.m. It was a bi-plane with a maximum
range of about 400 miles. Our first stop was Gwadar, on the British
Mekran coast, and the method of refuelling was by pouring in petrol from
4 gallon tins. The aircraft had bucket seats and very few amenities. We
flew most of the time at only a few thousand feet and had an excellent
view of the country we passed over. On the first day we had headwinds
against us and at times our ground speed cannot have been much over 50 m.p.h.
From Gwadar we went on only about 60 miles to Jiwapii, just on the British
side of the Persian Border, to top up with petrol once more, as the pilot
was anxious we should have enough fuel to take us on to Sharjah on the
Arab side of the Persian Gulf. There we were to spend our first night in
the R.A.F. Fort, which was about 350 miles on from JiwaJii, mostly across
the Gulf of Oman, as the Persians objected to our flying down the Persian
coast, and then simply across the Strait of Hormuz to Sharjah which normally
would have been a less hazardous route. However, we arrived safely and the
next day we flew on via Bahrain and Kuwait to Baghdad, where we spent the
night in the Maude Hotel in great comfort. On the third morning we left
for Alexandria, flying due west across the desert, refuelling at Rutbah
Wells (where we saw the road convoy passing through) and one other place
en route.
At Alexandria our party of eleven transferred to the Capella, a C
Class Flying Boat, and leaving at 2 a.m. on the 13th June we arrived that
night at Southampton at 8 p.m. having completed the 2,300 miles via Athens
and Marseilles in 18 hours. This was the first time that the journey
from igypt to England had ever been accomplished in under two days, and
it was headline news in the English papers of June 14th 1937.
After this it was rather an anti-climax to arrive by train in
London on a Sunday evening too late to travel on to Essex. Only two of us
had not been met by friends or relations at Southampton and my companion
was an oil-driller from the Bahrain Petroleum Company, with a broken leg