| Legendry WW2 singer was in Dimapur |
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 Dimapur, Aug 17: Dimapur is poised to become another household name in the UK following the publication next week of a book of memoirs by Dame Vera Lynn.
A World War II legend whose songs gave comfort to British troops, Dame Vera is best associated with such sentimental favourites as “Well Meet Again”, “White Cliffs of Dover” and “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow”, reminding war fatigued soldiers of their sweethearts and families back home.In her soon to be published autobiography, entitled, Some Sunny Day, she tells of how she was based in Dimapur during a three- month tour of the North East where Allied troops were pushing back the Japanese.“I was in Dimapur in 1944. I went over to entertain the troops and Dimapur was one of the places I was sent to, to visit the hospitals there. They were casualty hospitals, they were just tents and bamboo huts. It is where the casualties were first taken before they were moved further back nearer to real hospitals in Calcutta or Chittagong”, Dame Vera told the Nagaland Post in an exclusive interview. Asked what Dimapur was like in those days, she replied, “Well, it was just sort of more or less jungle, country type style you know. There weren’t any houses or villages around at that time. It was just a base to bring wounded soldiers down from further back where the trouble was in Kohima. Where I was staying there were just little grass huts, there was no village there then. There was just this makeshift hospital where casualties we re first taken”. During her three months stay, Dame Vera recalls how the British army accommodated here by the river in a little grass hut that was called a basher. Meals were taken in the verandah of the basher where, we had to watch our soup because of the flies. You needed a little twist of the hand to get beneath the solid layer of flies that settled on the soup. There were sufficient flies to make you not want to consume. Other forms of wild life that she had to endure included mosquitoes and bush rats that seemed to live in the roof of the basher. “The mosquitoes weren’t so bad because we always had to go around with long sleeves and long trousers. The boys were always ticking me off for rolling my sleeves up. At night we had nets which I tucked into my camp bed. Later at night I’d hear the bush rats scampering about the top part of the basher. They are like squirrels, or a large rat with a big bush tail, probably unique to the wild life from that part of the world”. Among the friends she made in Dimapur were two BBC correspondents with whom she spent one memorable evening after a hard day out in the field with the soldiers. “Oh yes, Dicky Sharp and Jerry I can’t remember Jerry’s surname. They were there reporting on the problem there, on the war. One night we were talking outside our huts and they said they had been to the officers’ mess and there was nothing there for them to drink. Suddenly, I remembered this bottle of Canadian Club that this old colonel had given me for medicinal purposes, only, he said, not to drink it unless I needed it . I carried it around in my little haversack for a long time, but then I thought the need was there that particular night. We had a bad day and there we were out there alone in the jungle and I brought it out. The problem was there wasn’t any water. They went to the Dimapur mess but there wasn’t any water. All the water had to be dropped in, you see. You couldn’t touch the river water and there was no water on tap. So of course we all sat there and sipped our Canadian Club whisky neat. I went off to my little grass hut and left them to it and left the bottle with them. Whether they drank it all that night, I don’t know.” When Dame Vera first arrived in India from the UK, travelling on board a Sunderland Flying Fortress, the army had booked her to go to Kohima and visit US troops serving beyond what was called the (American built) Lido road. But the plans were changed at the last moment because the situation was deemed to be too serious, so Dimapur was chosen as the alternative destination. Before returning to London in June 1944, she made short forays to Chittagong, Calcutta and Bombay where she boarded the plane for her journey home. 
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