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PARTITION - additional recordings I
Andrew Whitehead /
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CD-14
TOM DYKES
eldest son of Lt-Col Tom Dykes and his wife Biddy
now lives in South Africa
interviewed at his brother Douglas's home at Dorking by AW, 24th June 2001
Tr2
'well, I can remember waking up [on 27/10/1947 at Baramulla] and there was gunfire alia
round the place, the whole n'hodd there was shooting going on, and I got up and went into
the gardens of the hospital and there was some nuns standing, talking together, obv v
worried and concerned, and they beckoned me over to them. And suddenly, the who place
eruote with shooting, shouting, screaming, yelling, and the nuns grabbed me and we went
into a room next to the garden, and I think that was the medicine room for the hospital, I
remember, and locked ourselves in. And then these fellowa that had raide the hospital
started to batter down the door of this room we were in, I cd actually see the - the
splinters started to fly across the room, and I cd see the wild faces thro the cracks in the
door, and I noticed that at the back of the room there was another door, and I tried it and it
wasn't locked and I ran for it. I left the nuns, they were all huddled, huddled in a comer,
obviosuly petrified, holding each other in a group, I don't know what happened to them. I
do rememebr seeing some of them later, and they were staggering around the place with
their habits tom, but in retrospect maybe they were raped, but I certainly don't know if
that did happen. No one's ever told me this happened.
(2'15) But anyway, after having left this little room, I found my way to one of the wards,
where the tribesmen were looting the place, they were pulling everything apart, and
putting their booty into sheets which lay on the floor and were made up into bundles.
They were v nice - well when I say nice, I don't rememebr them being unkind to me.
They took me with them, and,as I say, bundled this stuff into their sheets, and made their
way to the front of the hospital where they put a;; their booty in a pil and I don't know
what their plans were for me at all, but I often wonder if they had any plans of taking me
off with them.
(3 10) But nevertheless, rather fortuitously, our servant -1 do remember his name, his
name was Feroze - saw me with them. He was obviously milling about out in the road
there, and he came up, and he persuaded them to let me go off with him. And he sd well,
we must go and find your family. Which we duly did, and went back to the central part of
the hospital, a garden ares with a path round it, and we came across these bodies, covered
with blood, and sittimng on top howling his eyes out, was my little brother Douglas. Not
very nice.
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