Shortly after my father, Joseph Anthony Gerard Morrissey, passed away in 2009, I discovered some hand-written 'diary entries', written by one of his many Slovakian friends, on loose A4 sheets of paper. Many other 'diary entries' had already been typed up, by my father, and published on a Slovakian website, which is unfortunately no longer on-line. I do not know who wrote the following, or how to go about contacting anyone that may know the author, so I am placing them here, to finish what was started.
If anyone reading the following 'diary entries' does have any information, or thinks they may know someone or something, please do get in touch, by either leaving me a message or by e-mailing me.
Enjoy.
My partner and I use on our ancient wood burning range, probably contemporary with our three-hundred plus year old cottage, my long departed 'aunt's' cooking pot and two skillet, one large and one small. These latter still with their original teak, detachable handles. They are extremely weighty, being made of heavy gauge cast iron.
At first sight, when I unpacked them, they were far too heavy for a mere cardboard box, my partner pooh-poohed them. Understandably so, as these utensils are emphatically not for your aga owning bourgeois with a compulsory range of colourful, enamelled cast iron casserole pots. My 'aunt', if she had known of these expensive kitchen accoutrements, would have heartily despised them.
My partner dismissed them because, apart from being extremely heavy (the large pot and skillet, even without their lids, are a two-handed job) they had an encrusted interior due to four generations of deposit from the soot, smoke and ash of countless camp-fires. They were often buried deep in the embers, without their handles, of a dying camp-fire, partly to conserve fire wood but, much more importantly, so as not to betray the camp to the watching Japanese, by building up a fresh fire with its tell-tale plume of smoke.
However, for our ancient wood burning range they proved ideal. I showed, much to her surprise, that they were very functional and non-stick, by virtue of having been cleaned from first use without detergent, just boiling water and then, while still hot, the interior smeared with oil. This rendered them as non-stick. Better than any Chinese made, Teflon-coated, aluminium frying pan guaranteed to last three years, but not four generations.
It was the sight of these ancient utensils quietly bubbling on the stove that inspired this diary, which is an homage to my 'aunt's' memory and her remarkable life.
My mother's family was born into the Indian Raj and had lived there for generations. I was the last member of the family to be born there, in 1941, up in the hill station of Simla, with its incongruous mock Tudor bungalows with their neat English gardens. (No shortage of gardeners and water-boys, then or now.) It is at the end of a narrow gauge mountain railway and boasts a convalescence and maternity hospital, because it's elevation above the hot teeming dusty plains far below, ensured a quiet cool peace for the man Sahib, their babies, young children and convalescing walking wounded. Both my grandmother and mother were born there.
When the Japanese, 'Nips' as they were termed in those oh so politically incorrect times, invaded Burma and approached India proper, the women and children of the Raj, including mother and me, were evacuated by convoy via Cape Town to Britain, as Rommel was then threatening the Suez Canal.
However, my 'aunt' was left behind - literally behind - the Japanese lines in the jungles of Burma. A distant elder cousin of my mother, during the last heydays of the Raj, had done the then unthinkable. He, a middle-aged bachelor and devoted servant of the Raj, fell in love and, what is worse, married a young and beautiful upper caste Hindi girl. It was, my mother assured me, a mutual love-match.
He married late because his young manhood was disrupted, as were uncounted millions, by the Great War. He served on the front lines throughout the four-year long slaughter unscathed, because he was simply too good a marksman to be hurled over the top into the Flanders quagmire, laced with barbed wire, to pointlessly perish. My mother lost three younger brothers who did pointlessly perish in the bloody mud bath. Because of his Indian big-game experience he was an excellent sniper using his personal, long obsolete, 'Long Lee' Enfield rifle. However, it possessed an unmatched range and accuracy as I well know, because I still own it. It is, as the name suggests, long. It is also heavy and cumbersome and kicks like a mule. But, by God, it's accurate; provided, and this is crucial, you have position and time. With a long First World War bayonet, it was unusable, except in this specialist role. Hence the universal adoption by the then all volunteer British and Empire armies of the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, probably the finest bolt-action rifle ever produced. Like its cumbersome predecessor it was beautifully engineered, in stark contrast to the current SA80 service rifle which, is the totally unsatisfactory product of financial engineering sicked-up on the British Army, by the Thatcher privatization of the Royal Ordinance Arsenals. We have subsequently given over Rolls Royce, British Rail, London Underground, Banks and the entire economy to the financial engineers with utterly predictable consequences: a junk rifle, a junk engineered car, junk railway system, junk banks (the financial system even wrecked their own industry) and a junked economy. AHMG Titanic striking a continent-sized iceberg of toxic derivatives and sinking in an ocean of debt, Captained by Prudence Brown, who has the chutzpah to congratulate himself for launching the lifeboats.
The Raj promptly excommunicated the couple and then pondered what to do with their wayward son, who had so besmirched it by marrying across the racial barrier. A discreet concubine was frowned upon - but a WIFE! Ye Protestant C of E Gods!
After due deliberation it was decided to exile the couple to the distant jungles of Burma, far from the censorious eye of the Raj. The British Raj, for all its class consciousness did not, unlike the later more modern Nazi and Communist empires, gas, shoot or incarcerate in concentration camps all similar racial and class transgressions, real or imagined.
He was made an offer he could not refuse - Chief Inspector of His Majesty's Government's Burmese Hardwood's Inspectorate - chiefly mahogany and teak and other more exotic and rare timber. The middle-aged newly appointed Chief Inspector and his young wife took to the posting like ducks to water, or should I say elephants to the jungle. Far from the disapproving Raj's glare the Chief Inspector, the only white man in the entire inspectorate, covering virtually all of jungle Burma and consequently becoming Lord and Master of it in true Kiplingesque style.
He made the utmost of it: setting up an imposing impromptu 'court' complete with a retinue of servants, male, female and children, hunters and a small platoon of native soldiers and most important of all mahouts. The latter were all important because the entire entourage incessantly travelled the extensive jungles of Burma on elephant back. There were, all tolled, an impressive twelve adult elephants, with their half-dozen calves and two tuskers, an elder bull, the herd leader and a younger bull being groomed for the role. There was also a small train of mules and donkeys tended by the women and children. Horses being deemed not hardy enough for jungle travel. There was even a small herd of goats to provide milk and cheese and, if the hunters were unsuccessful, meat for the pot.
This 'court' travelled the length and breadth of jungle Burma, inspecting the valuable natural stands and plantations of hardwood; stamping out illegal logging; lending its considerable man and elephant power to expedite a big logging contract - elephants being the powerful animal logging tractors of the time, especially when worked as teams; acting as travelling doctor dispensing basic medicine and advice, setting broken bones; instructing the 'courts' native, but British trained, midwife to help with jungle village births.
Also my 'aunts' father acted as an itinerant unofficial magistrate, settling petty village disputes involving land and water rights, ownership of bull elephants and such like. He greatly added to his reputation by refusing to be bribed. Inevitably awarding his decision to the non-briber and widely publicized the briber or bribers names and donating the bribe money to some charity. Word soon got around the jungle telegraph and people flocked to be judged by him, much to the displeasure of the official local magistrates, where there were any. And all that they could do in their torpid and ineffective colonial administration in distant Rangoon, was to complain.
How different in the post-war post-colonial independent "socialist democracies people's justice." Bribes are expected, indeed demanded by the various corrupt military junta's and their myriad non-producing bureaucrats.
He further added to his legendary reputation by becoming adept at shooting rogue tigers that had turned to marauding village livestock and even taking villagers. He had a cow elephant especially trained to remain silent and motionless in the presence of tigers. Elephants normally react extremely aggressively against tigers charging on sight or smell. Using his sniper skills to pick off these very dangerous big cats, who had lost all fear of man, instead of the 'Boche' - my 'aunts' archaic term for Germans spoken, not least because it aggravated my German born father.
He had a personal regal howdah equipped with a gun nest and would station his elephant beside a tree downwind of a tethered kid goat. The terrified bleating of the kid for its mother broadcasting through the warm still jungle soon brought the tiger into the sights of the 'Long Lee' Enfield rifle. The ensuing imposing collection of tiger skins sent back to Rangoon were, alas, lost in the confusion and chaos of war and the turmoil of decolonization.
The young girl worshiped her father, 'Sahib' as he was inevitably called, because her mother died in a jungle childbirth, the efforts of the midwife not withstanding. The 'Sahib' father naturally could not bear parting from his daughter and only child. And to whom could he entrust with her care? The families on both sides of the racial chasm would have disowned her - treating her as some untouchable in those politically incorrect times. The terms declared illegal under the Indian Constitution and she was far too young for a distant boarding preparatory school.
So he kept absolutely quiet about the death of his young wife and daughter's birth; handing her over to a native wet-nurse who was the wife of the chief with her own child, who became a substitute mother. She grew up with the other 'court' children, related at least linguistically, to the Khmers. The entire 'court' entourage was drawn from this indigenous jungle tribe, much used by the British for jungle rangers, trackers and hunters, partly because of their differentiation from the majority of Burmese people and mainly because of their intimate and inimitable jungle knowledge. A classic case of imperial divide and rule, much practiced since Roman times. It has, of course, dire consequences for the minorities when imperial rule fails.
'Aunt' grew up as an untraveled jungle child, a-la-Kipling's Mowgli, playing with the other 'court' children under the protective elephants. Elephants may look clumsy to the casual Western observer, but in their natural habitat they are silent, deftly shouldering their bulk through the dark, dense green jungle mass. They never trampled on the children playing under them and they kept every type of predator at bay from tigers to snakes, looking after the children as they would their own calves. One of 'aunts' first memories is being picked up by an elephant's trunk and being presented to 'Sahib', who was on another elephants back, for some inspection.
When 'aunt' came of school age - some 8 years-or-so - 'Sahib' interrupted this idyllic Kiplingesque upbringing, sending her to a girls boarding preparatory school in Rangoon. But the taint of mixed blood trailed her even to this imperial backwater which, together with the inevitable petty constraints of a prim and proper colonial girls boarding preparatory school, unsurprisingly conspired to make her utterly miserable. After a number of very unhappy terms during which she learnt the Lord's prayer, played rudimentary hockey and became proficient in the three 'R's, she returned for good to the carefree Kiplingesque camp life where, in her own words "she was a happy little queen, if a trifle wild."
Her 'Sahib' father did his best to continue her education, involving her in his paperwork, reading aloud to her, inevitably Kipling's entire works, ditto the King James Bible every Sunday and religious holidays, plus Shakespeare. These volumes, many of them illustrated, were carried in a special zinc lined trunk, together with the office materials necessary for the reports and her school studies. It was zinc lined to keep out the jungle damp and myriad voracious paper loving jungle bugs. This trunk doubled up as a desk by having four folding legs, on substantial brass hinges, while the lid had a brass piano hinge running down the length. The whole contraption being made out of teak.
It was an imposing piece of furniture. The only 'executive' desk, indeed the only desk in the jungle. When set up under a canvas awning with mosquito nets dropped down the sides and, after dark, a hissing tilley lamp suspended from the ridge pole, the empire's business was done. Reports compiled and received, justice and basic medicines dispensed, school exercises written and corrected. One of 'aunts' duties was to keep a 'count diary' parts of which survived and were read out loud to me when 'aunt' bivouacked out, under a similar awning at the bottom of the orchard in all weathers, when the myriad stuffy rules and regulations of an English bourgeois household, religiously enforced by my German born father, got too aggressive. Naturally his open contempt, mutually reciprocated, for the poor relative living in his household much aggravated family matters.
'Aunt' read to me, as her father had done, the entire works of Kipling, the King James Bible on Sundays and Shakespeare. Only Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress and Fox's martyrology were missing from this protestant repertoire. She had a quiet, deep murmuring voice, with a husky rasp to it from the chain-smoked, vile smelling, cheroots and from quaffing copious amounts of cheap sherry. This oft-repeated scene of the rasping murmur merged with the creaking and rustling orchard shadows and the hissing crackle of the campfire, on which bubbled a pot (the pot of the title), of 'jungle stew', made an indelible impression on this young boy.
She entirely, in an absent-minded way, ignored my two younger sisters because, I surmise, they were female and my mother, because she was far too submissive to the Teutonic tyranny my cantankerous father established in his household. His children escaped this regime by being dispatched to distant boarding schools, as soon as possible. 'Aunt' escaped through retiring, when she was not bivouacking in the orchard, to her private fourth-storey, three-room attic flat, where the servants once lived. From this 'jungle den', as we children called it, seeped strange and exotic smells; Curry, cheroot smoke and stale sherry smells, much to my father's disdain.
I was the only member of the family that, on privileged occasions, was allowed in. It was spartan in the extreme; containing only the trunk-desk which doubled as a table, a folding canvas chair, a sleeping cot, a stand with a tin basin and water jug on top and a porcelain potty underneath, (no running water either for the servants or the poor relation), a simple sideboard and wardrobe contained all her domestic possessions, a cylindrical coke stove - antique at the time - for heating and cooking. (The rest of the house had central heating.) One of my duties, on school holidays, was to fill the coke hod up, when it appeared at the top of the attic stairs, from the coke bunker in the basement, which was down four flights of stairs. A scrap of lino plus threadbare curtains completed the inventory, apart from a huge, obsolete school-size world map covering most of the sloping attic ceiling. Obsolete because it was largely coloured
Empire Red and was titled 'The British Empire'. Hanging from a roof beam, it was after all an attic, a Long Lee Enfield Rifle, a razor-sharp machete and a small carved ivory elephant.
The book filled trunk-desk, awning, mosquito nets, poles, Tilley lamp and folding canvas chairs were carried by two elephants. There was also a 'kitchen' elephant that, among other things, carried the pots and skillets. If you have an elephant, weighty cast iron pots are not a problem.
'Sahib's personal elephant, the tiger trained one, had its own regal howdah. The removable gun nest could be replaced by a camera nest upon which rested an Ikonta Zeiss, a bellows plate camera, which could take photo plates of jungle flora and fauna, including shot tigers and back-up photos for the reports. (There was a developing tent and equipment, carried by another elephant.) The elephant was, as already mentioned, trained to remain motionless, which was essential for a slow gun and a slower camera. The camera hut could be replaced by a lap desk, on which notes and draft reports were written, whilst on the move. 'Aunt' had her own wicker-work chair, up-sized when required, made from jungle rattan. Just try sitting at a stationary school desk in uniform at boarding school, after that elevated perch upon an elephant's back, wading through the waters and traversing the hills of jungle Burma.
'Aunt' drew an incredible Kiplingesque picture of the elephant cavalcade, trailed by mules and donkeys, plus the odd jungle pet. There was even a raucous parrot happily squawking overhead. Snaking along jungle trails from one obscure village to another, via natural and plantation stands of hard woods, now long logged without replacement, but with severe environmental consequences. The regal howdah, with its rifle rack, camera, lap desk, porous clay water bottles - porous, so that the water and howdah occupants could be cooled by evaporation - and a zinc lined lunch box was her mobile home. It sure beats prams and pushchairs.
In due course the very intermittent delivery and dispatch of telegrams, the sole direct contact with senior colonial officialdom, was supplemented by a wireless as radio was then called. However, 'Sahib' carefully ensured that the clumsy primitive contraption was never fully operational. Not difficult given its primitive design and natural jungle hazards, not the least of which was damp. The wireless paraphernalia required its own elephant burdened with a bulky transmission and receiver, a kerosene generator, with spare cans of kerosene, a back up pedal generator - literally a bicycle without wheels - a cumbersome battery, a box of spare valves and a tall extending aerial that further required a tall tree atop a prominent hill to fully function.
'Aunt' lovingly detailed all this to me beside the orchard fire because she was not only his only beloved child, but his secretary and radio operator. She learnt to transmit and receive Morse, pedal the cycle generator and generally acted as a P.A.. So 'Sahib', radio not withstanding, remained out of day-to-day not to say week-to-week contact. Sending telegrams and reports and receiving instructions by courier to and from the nearest jungle outpost in the extensive British Empire
But on the Empire's periphery such postal and telegraphic services were few and far between. 'Sahib's' meticulous reports detailed not only the hardwoods but the general state of HMG's jungle: its natives, waters, flora and fauna. I am convinced that they lie filed away and unread, in a long forgotten cupboard in some dusty Rangoon office, slowly mouldering away. I would love to have them. They are the last detailed snapshots of a way of life, on the jungle fringes, of what was then the world greatest empire, that has long since vanished, as Kipling, the empire's poet laureate foretold. 'Aunt' cannot recall any action being taken on these extensive reports whatsoever.
The odd telegram and spasmodic radio contact remained his sole contact with the torpid imperial administration, until the sudden eruption of the second world war destroyed this Kiplingesque existence forever. Hardwoods no longer concerned the Raj, if they ever did, being replaced by frantic and real concerns about what 'Nips' were doing in its long neglected, taken for granted, backyard.
The Raj immediately forgiving and forgetting 'Sahib's' transgression peremptorily ordered him to set up an intelligence network. Who better than him to report on the rapidly moving Japanese columns, storming through the jungle towards India proper. He was already behind the lines with an extensive pre-existing network of contacts, a small army of trackers, hunters and jungle rangers with an inimitable knowledge of the jungle terrain and, last but not least, possessed a suddenly no longer cranky radio. The excommunicated exile suddenly metamorphosed into a valued official, in the right place at the right time.
The Japanese were aware that there was a mysterious spy behind their lines. They must have had radio intercepts and informers, though the jungle people are naturally inconspicuous, especially when choosing to be, a group that size could not remain secret. Especially as 'Sahib' refused to downsize his 'court', let alone disband it, regarding them as his responsibility in true colonial paternalistic fashion, nor could he send his unknown daughter through enemy lines to far distant India, where war itself threatened. So he kept her and the 'court' with him as if nothing untoward had happened.
The inevitable occurred. 'Sahib' was captured, betrayed almost certainly by an informer - possibly one who had been bribed. The Japanese ignored the 'court' entourage who were then able to promptly vanish back into the jungle together with my dark-skinned 'aunt'. The white man and his wireless occupied their entire malevolent attention. The last 'aunt' heard of her father were his distant screams, as his Japanese captors began enthusiastically 'interrogating' him. These 'gentlemen' liked to bloody their own hands, so unlike New Labour, which prefers to farm out its torture policy, or Bush who situated his concentration camp outside the USA, in Cuba, and unlike Hitler who situated his camps inside Germany.
A tracker later reported that his naked, badly mutilated and burnt corpse was hanging upside down from a tree. The wireless and elephant were missing. The 'court' could have handed the 'spies' daughter over but instead treated her as one of their own, as they moved silently and unseen through the jungle, evading the Japanese for the rest of the war. They also evaded the incoming British Chindits columns, driving the Japanese back, under the eccentric but brilliant command of General Orde Wingate, with similar ease.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 'court' handed 'aunt' over to a bemused incoming British administration; together with an elderly cow elephant, an obsolete Long Lee-Enfield Rifle, an equally obsolete bellows plate camera, a zinc-lined trunk-desk containing a small tattered library, a machete, a pot and two skillets, before vanishing back into the jungle for good.
No one knew what to do with this strange dark-skinned young woman with a Norman-English name. who spoke an already archaic Kiplingesque/King James' Bible English, with a smattering of even more archaic Shakespearean English and was fluent in obscure native language. Who could handle with ease an elderly cow elephant, which she claimed was hers, competently shoot and maintain a long obsolete rifle, ditto an ancient plate camera, operate a wireless transmitter and understand Morse code. Plus, she could deftly wield a machete. One of her tricks was to get me to toss an apple towards her which she would slash with her machete, the two halves of which I would try and catch. She read my school reports closely and noted the phrase, 'a useful bat and bowler but tends to fumble in fielding.' Alas, my fielding, in spite of her innovative training remains fumbling. All of these esoteric accomplishments were not accompanied by any passport, birth certificate and, as my father later acidly pointed out, no table manners.
Gradually the facts were ascertained and aunt and her few belongings, but minus the elephant, made their way back to my mother's family in India. My father was too far away and too busy setting up a new West German government in Bonn to object. So aunt became aunty and remained so for the rest of her short life.
She died in her young 40's, no one knew her exact age. Her Colonial passport gave her age as 42 and my mother's Anglicised Norman name, which my father insisted on when he took her name on marriage thus shedding his German ancestry, at least on paper. This premature death was because her wasted body harboured various tropical ailments which had undermined her health. Also, I am convinced that after I went to university her extreme isolation hastened her death. Of course bivouacking out in all weathers, chain smoking cheroots, the non-stop sipping of cheap sherry and my father's open hostility all contributed.
Only the immediate family, my father excepted, attended her funeral. She is buried in a small home counties Church of England graveyard, accompanied by a small exquisitely carved ivory elephant carrying an ebony howdah and mahout, the only really valuable artefact she bequeathed me amongst the rest of her meagre belongings. On impulse I took it along to place in her grave so that she had an elephant to take her on her final journey. A soul has no weight so even a miniature elephant can bear the burden.
The next time you see on an obscure shelf at the back of some dirty cellar a common but ancient household utensil, do not idly toss it out in a fit of housecleaning. It will have generations of domestic and political history behind it. My 'aunt's' pots, one of which is quietly bubbling on the range as I write contains so much more than a venison goulash. It contains four generations of history from the most terrible and turbulent times the world has yet witnessed.
They were smelted and cast somewhere in Britain, when it was the world's workshop, then crated and shipped Eastwards to India through the newly opened Suez canal on one of those new-fangled steam ships. Purchased by my mothers families distant cousins when Gladstone or Disraeli were Prime Minister. They then passed, in due course, to the newly wedded wayward Raj son and his Indian wife as he was packed off to a glorious jungle exile.
Travelling the length and breadth of jungle Burma they witnessed the swift rise of the 'Land of the Rising Sun' and its even swifter setting in a fiery nuclear sunset, man's all too successful attempt to mimic the nuclear fusion process of the sun itself.
Then the long fade out of the British Indian Empire, with its bloody sectarian Hindi and Muslim birth-pang wars between India and Pakistan, where armed nuclear rivalries still trouble the world.
Then, in the company of 'aunt', mother and myself they were re-shipped back through Suez to an impoverished and post-war Britain, with its collapsing Empire. My mother and myself flew out on a war-time Sunderland flying boat, converted to civilian use by the simple expedient of replacing the depth charge racks and their munitions with rattan cane furniture. The Royal Air Force insignia on the fuselage and crew uniforms with B.O.A.C. (now B.A.) logos. I was, alas, far too young to recall this epic flight which tool several overnight stopovers via Gibraltar, Alexandra and Aden, This form of flight is now as obsolete as 'aunt's' elephant travels or coach and horse travel.
Used over campfires in a Home Counties English orchard they were bequeathed to me along with a non-functioning bellows plate camera, a functioning rifle, a portable (only by elephant) trunk-desk, a razor-sharp machete and a carved miniature ivory elephant along with indelible poignant memories of a woman who only had three loves in her short life; Her 'Sahib' father, her 'nephew' and an elderly cow elephant - "a spinster like me", she would bitterly chuckle.
In my possession the pots have witnessed the rise of the American and Soviet Empires and the improbable implosion of the latter, hence their presence with me in Slovakia, an ex-province of the Soviet Empire - a political Tyrannosaurus Red Rex that armed itself into extinction. The American Empire may well have gambled its wealth and power away under the totally incompetent born again clown 'Mr. Mission Accomplished', George W. Bush. The born again Christian single-handedly achieved, with the unstinting help of a few fantastically greedy and incompetent financial engineers, what the Third Reich, the Land of the Rising Sun and the Soviet Empire all failed to do. A truly almighty Mission Accomplished.
As these pots, unlike the above regimes, are indestructible and will be passed on, I wonder what the future holds for them and if there will be a diarist to record it? Will they witness global warming and nuclear war? The former a certainty, the latter very likely, especially if we keep electing such men and a few women to high office.
