Calcutta Rats

Heroes Remember

Calcutta Rats

Transcript

I can remember taking a young lady to dinner at the hotel, the Grand Hotel, in Calcutta one night. And Calcutta was full of rats. Well actually, India’s full of rats, and our hut was full of rats. I’ll tell a story about that in a minute, but I got to be very, you know, nervous about rats, you know. I had dreams about them after the war. I never dreamed about getting shot at, but I dreamed about rats. There was a big rat came running across the floor right under our table and I noticed that the girl I was with, she just put her feet up in the air like that as it went by and put her feet back down again and went right on talking. And I was just spellbound by it. You’re customary they jump up on the chair and say “Eek,” you know. She’d lived there for a while. She was a white girl, but she was, you know, a Brit daughter of some British officer somewhere. Anyway, we had rats in our basha hut. It had a rice straw roof, thatched roof. The rats lived up there by the hundred and they would run around. And all the rice, straw, chaff and droppings always falling down all over everything. So I said to my roommate, Pissy, one day, “I’m going to see if we can’t get some burlap from the mess and we’ll sew them together and we’ll nail them across, you know, make a roof in here to keep that damn stuff up there.” We did and we got a pretty tight layer of burlap across our … it was about roughly ten by ten, or twelve by twelve I would think. It was a palm, I don’t know if you know what these buildings are like, but they were bamboo corners and palm leaves mats. They tied on to these frames and then a thatched roof and it had no windows. They had shutters. A shuttered window on the front and a shuttered window on the back and a door on a cement pad. But anyway we had, this worked just fine. But now it was like a playing ground for the rats, ‘cause they’re bouncing, you see, like a trampoline up there. They were all over the thing. So, another bright idea. They had a mess, a cat over in the mess. A big tomcat. So let’s go and get the cat. We’ll cut a hole and shove the cat up there and put a bunch of safety pins in it, turn him loose up there and see if he can deal with the rats. Well, it was mayhem and the long story is, finally there’s a great big bag hanging down there and now there’s our cat and he’s dead. These rats had killed him. There was just so many of them and he was all, it was pathetic. He was torn to bits. His head, they’d really got at him. He’d killed a hell of a lot of rats, but they also killed him. The cook never forgave us because he needed him. Because in the kitchen where the cat had room to move around, you know, it was a real ratter. But there it was trapped I guess, you know. It was in their territory and I guess he couldn’t get enough grip on that, you know, to get at them. But anyway they got him. It’s … I never forgot that, bloody things. You’d sleep under a bar, you know, a mosquito bar. Well there’s four pieces of bamboo up the corner of your bunk. There’s a charpoy, it’s a wooden box frame with rope back and forth of canvas in strips because you can’t use mattresses out there. They’re so damp they get mould in them very quickly. So this thing, you put a folded blanket on that and then your sheet and so on. But you just get in, you tuck the sheet in all around, and a sheet of netting in around, and in the sheet, under the sheet. Then the damn rats go up. They’d run up the sides of the net and they got on the side. They’d get up on the top. Well the poles start coming together like this and started bagging down. And we’d try to knock them off and they’re all over. Now it’s a very upsetting environment in which to live. As I said, I dreamt about this after the war when I came home. I had a terrible time ‘cause I’d have these nightmares of rats on the bed. And I’d be up sweeping the bed, you know. And you know, I would tuck in things all up so they couldn’t climb up off the floor onto the bed and stuff. Somebody would wake me up and say, “Calm down there, you’re making a hell of a row.” I was almost afraid to get married, for fear, you know, that I might start beating up my wife, thinking that she was some kind of an invader. In any event ... happily, that’s all past. I’m not a permanent cripple from that.

Description

Mr. Sharpe describes his experience living in a city infested with rats.

Charles Richard “Dick” Sharpe

Charles Richard Sharpe was born in St. Catharines, Ontario on February 11, 1925. His father worked for the Canada Customs Service, getting pensions for wounded Veterans. A Veteran of World War One, Mr. Sharpe’s father told him many stories about the war.

Mr. Sharpe joined the RCAF on the morning of his 18th birthday and became a pilot. He flew 23 missions for the RCAF and rose to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war, Mr. Sharpe became a very successful businessman, serving for many years as CEO of Sears Canada. Among his many awards and recognitions, in 1998, he became a member of the Order of Canada.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 4:37
Person Interviewed:: Charles Richard “Dick” Sharpe
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Southeast Asia
Battle/Campaign:: Burma
Branch:: Air Force
Units/Ship:: 159 Squadron
Rank:: Lieutenant
Occupation:: Pilot

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Calcutta Rats

Heroes Remember

Calcutta Rats

Charles Richard “Dick” Sharpe

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Calcutta Rats

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