Breakspear In a tribute to the late Eric Shaw Breakspear (PJ, August 19, p262), Mr VICTOR HAMMOND writes: It was with a deep sense of loss that I read of the death on May 21 of Eric Breakspear, one of the draft of at least 62 pharmacists who sailed during World War II from Glasgow in January, 1941, on the troopship Ormonde, arriving in Bombay on March 3 of the same year.
His first letter to me (November 15, 1992) begins in typical modest style ". . . My own record is not much interest but will give the details nevertheless". Eric's first year out was at the British Military Hospital Lahore (now in Pakistan) where he applied for field service and was promoted to staff sergeant in charge, medical stores, Indian General Hospital, being sent with the unit to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in order to set up the hospital in Kandy. He remained in Kandy for a couple of years before being returned to India. There he was posted to a new Field Ambulance, ". . . which we set up at (believe it or not) Deolali, where I stayed until repatriation ending in Aldershot, thence to CRS at Boyce Barracks. Rather smells of a round trip".
Eric disclosed another interesting side to his army service in a letter that he wrote to me in March, 1995: "On reading from time to time from your letters and details of the various pharmacists who served in World War II, I have not seen any mention of service with the infantry, which is what I choose to call it in my case. While on the Ormonde I was approached by the ship's RSM [regimental sergeant major] and detailed for a 24 hour session as guard commander and was handed a platoon of the Royal Berkshire Infantry to act in this capacity.
"Luckily I had had some OTC [Officers Training Corps] training in my school years, so was not completely ignorant and was fortunate to have three corporals who turned out to be very efficient as they were ‘regulars' and were fully able to mount the various guards at each change with little more than rather minor supervision from myself.
"All went well until about 3am, when a voice called for the ‘guard commander', so I presented myself with a snappy salute to a rather youthful but enthusiastic second lieutenant who, as orderly officer, wished to inspect the guard posts. This taxed my memory, as I was not quite sure where they all were, but I nevertheless requested that the orderly officer follow me to locate the various posts, or rather those I could find, and had quite a journey scrambling over various bodies sleeping on deck. After several stumblings from my officer, he decided to go back to bed or whatever, and I took a little nap, which was not interrupted by my three corporals who duly changed their guards and left me to it. Finally, I think it was about 8am when the new guard came on, I handed over to the new guard commander and reported to the RSM as what I termed ‘mission accomplished' and found a nice quiet nook for my lost sleep.
"Just thought I would mention this as I wonder how many other pharmacists performed this function."
I was pleased to read reports of today's colleagues performing similar service in the world's trouble spots in the same issue of The Journal (August 19, p268).