The Sunrise Crew
Many years ago, people from a faraway country came to a corner of Asia. They built runways, put up Nissen huts and flew huge bombers at night. The snarl of engines ripped apart the silence of the forests and paddy fields and rain-washed gullies around the airfield. The men — and they were all men — chewed gum, drove jeeps and kept to themselves. The few villages around were tiny, dimly-lit places. The villagers focused on tilling their land. Then one day, the strangers left.
The massive machines that used to lift into the air every day and night, vanished. The new rulers of the place were not interested in preserving their memory. The stillness of the land was replaced by factories and towns. My father came to work in one of the factories and I was born there. And when I was old enough, Fido and I would go fishing. But fish were farthest from our mind. You see, Fido and I had our secret and till I started writing here, we had never told a soul.
In those days, winters were long and biting. I know, I don’t even recall where my woollens are anymore. We had decided to fish on Christmas Day. My mother had no problem with us going out at dawn and only asked that we come back in time for the traditional lunch of basmati rice and meat. I think Fido being with me was good enough for her. They often had long conversations on the veranda about life; rather, my mother did all the talking and he did all the listening. He slept among the rose bushes below her window. Fido was her bulwark against change and danger.
So off we went. It was, to be exact, five am. The moon was still sitting steadily in the sky. Even the strays were indoors-it was that cold. Anyway, Fido feared no one. It was seven hundred and fifty metres from our gate to the main road and then we had to cross the small shunting yard owned by our power plant. The petrol tankers and coal wagons were huddled together and the friendly little diesels were nowhere to be seen. I tried to keep rubbing my hands together as we stayed our course.
Once in a while, Fido would look back with condescendingly, as if I needed to lose a few kilos(I was much lighter then, but never mind that). Then we were suddenly past the yard, out of our township and onto the massive broad gauge line that connects Delhi and Calcutta. To be out there was like an astronaut trying to walk on the rings of Saturn. Everything was enormous and menacing. The conveyor belt straddling the railway and taking crushed coal between two plants hung over us for part of the way like a huge spaceship. You had to be careful because big black pieces sometimes fell on you. The signal posts were as high as the skyscrapers I read about in Tintin In America. Of course, I knew the Empire State Building is higher, but everything is relative when you are not quite fifteen. The plants themselves, steel and power, appeared like enormous cities of light, one on each side of the Grand Chord Line.
After twenty minutes of walking beside the railway line and passing the darkened ashram of the local sadhu, we followed the trail downwards. It descended steeply and continued through fields of cabbage, cauliflower and potato. I looked at my plastic watch. Quarter to six. Fido led on and now he was not even looking back. His stride was urgent. I could smell water. My Bata shoes were sturdy enough but the moisture from the dew was beginning to seep through. And then we were there. The lake was so big that you could not see the far bank. We had the place to ourselves. Fido and I stood patiently and waited. We knew what was to come and it was never enough for us.
At exactly six a.m., a roar filled the sky and something rose from the other side of the lake. I would recall later that there was no flight of birds or barking of dogs in it’s wake. Except, of course, Fido who was now almost hysterical. That was the way he used to get everytime he saw them and there had been many times. A massive shape grew and came towards us and then we saw it clearly- a four-engine aircraft with propellors. It was grey, with a white star and bars and went very low over us. Then it started climbing steeply and a man leaned out and waved at us. We could see his googles and a jacket sleeve. He shouted something and raised the hand to his hairline for what looked like a proper military salute. Then the plane was gone from the sky like it had never even been there. It was five past six and the sun rose. Fido and I looked at each other, laughing and yapping our heads off. I was sweating a river and his tongue looked like it would fall out. We fell onto the grass by the lake and lay down. The sky had turned rosy, a bit like the sherbets we drank in summer and soon the last few stubborn stars and the moon would be gone.
On 25th December, 1944, a Liberator bomber converted into a reconnaissance aircraft lifted off from a secret airfield outside Andal, next to Waria Railway Station, not far from where the Damodar Valley Corporation’s power plant would be built twenty years later. The plane belonged to the 10th Air Force of the USAAF which had a number of bases in the area and flew missions over Burma, Thailand and Malaya. It was never seen again, not by the base crew, nor USAAF ground radar or the various stations along the way. It’s flight plan was not known or recorded, which was not unusual for that base. What was unusual was that none of the other crew who worked on the base and flew other planes, ever talked about it. No social media, no photo reminiscences, no get-togethers. Nothing.
Survivors among local farmers recall the airfield but it remained unmarked (other bases were publicly marked and can be seen on maps even today)and no further missions flew after that day. That was remarkable because the 10th Air Force continued to use all the nearby bases extensively until August, 1945. After the war, it was demolished and the tarmac dug up and converted into a lake- a lake where tight-lipped villagers came and fished every morning, except when the weather was very cold and the mornings too dark.
Fido and I never shared our secret with anyone. I always maintained that I tried fishing without success-I did carry a rod. Everyone thought me a little strange-I guess writing stories contributed to that. So no one ever questioned our few trips. Over time, my trips stopped and Fido became old and could no longer walk that far.
I have done a bit of research about aircraft activities in that area in World War Two and found nothing. Why was this base unmarked? Why was it destroyed? Why was the lake created with what must have taken a lot of effort? I do not know. I don’t think I will ever know. And maybe it does not matter. What matters is that a little boy and his dog Fido, came there on those mornings and became acquainted with a plane from a foreign land and another time and its’ crew who always waved at them and saluted as they flew off on their mysterious journeys, always before sunrise.
