Following his letters of 1988, Mr Bob Homer has sent further reminiscences:

How interesting that you should have taken the boys to France to row. Presumably on the stretch of water you were using a careless 'wash- out' produces the lovely 'Macon Blanc'. (The worst puns are actually the best!) Where will you take them next? To Japan, like the blue-boats? I ask because the idea triggers off two specific memories - one obvious; and the other much more indirect.

The obvious one is the sight that no rowing man who witnessed it will ever forget. In 1936 the Japanese Olympic VIII won the Marlow 'Grand', striking fifty-five in the last minute (I timed them myself). They were a lightweight crew rowing with short oars in a short, banana- shaped boat (before the crew were seated the bow and stern were well clear of the water). When paddling they had a style all of their own, with a tremendous 'hoick' with body and arms over the stretcher followed by the leg-drive. When they rowed it was impossible to discern exctly what they were doing. It was a kind of 'kamikaze' effort and, over the longer Henley course, they, like the ill-fated pilots over the pacific, 'blew up'.

I often thought about that crew when we were fighting them and for my indirect association I go back to the last days of the Imphal Siege in 1944 and the nearest approach to a happy evening in those strange circumstances. I think it was the first time I rode Rajah (aptly named), a beautiful big grey charger I had borrowed from a nearby animal-transport Company (horses and pack-mules) of the R.I.A.S.C. It was all quite safe; the nearest Japanese-held hill-top bunker which was being pounded to dust by the medium artillery and the R.A.F.'s 'Hurri-bombers' was about three miles away and we no longer had to drag in the Bofors guns at sunset to put them in a ground-defence role. As a troop-subaltern, all I had to do was to make a twice-daily tour of them and their crews in their widely-dispersed A.A. positions.

That evening I decided to ride round to amuse the troops and give myself a bit of fun. I went off at a gentle trot, keeping a careful look-out for any of the debris of war on the dried-up paddy- fields of the Plain that might injure the horse's feet; but on the return journey he obviously wanted to liven things up, so I sat down, gripped like mad, and let him break into a canter - which turned into a beautiful thundering gallop. So we arrived back at his lines in some style, and when I dismounted the grey-haired rissaldar- major gave me a wicked smile as he said 'He came back without the brigade-major last night, sahib.'

I walked back to our little T.H.Q., sweaty but exhilarated, and when I got there I had my second ration of happiness. The weekly number of S.E.A.C. had come in. It was the Command newspaper, instituted by Mountbatten to boost morale, and on the front it usually carried a large picture of 'Home'. That week it was a pre- war Henley Regatta. I sat down on the scrubby hillside and devoured it. Gone was the noise of war; gone were the ten intervening years; and I was sitting in a boat beside the booms, in gentler sunshine, with my mother and one of here friends, watching Monkton, stroked by the gallant and graceful Lea-Wilson and with Peter Kirkpatrick (probably the best Cambridge man to be denied a Blue) rowing six, leaving the pink blades of Westminster lengths behind. It was a lovely reverie.

For me, rowing means golden memories - God's gifts. No-one and nothing can take them away.

With very best wishes to you all,

Yours,

Bob Homer