We were housed in British 4 man Tropical tents.  These British Tropicals were square, made of a tan cotton cloth, quilted into a pad about 3/4" thick.  The center pole had two stops near the top.  The roofs were double layers with a foot of airspace between them, maintained by the stops on the pole & two separate wood tie-offs around the perimeter.  The walls were a single layer of quilted cloth and were often tied up to the tie-offs to allow air to circulate.  In this position they served as excellent water collectors, as it rained quite often.  The soft water was dipped out with our helmets for washing & shaving.  The floors were built up about one foot above the surrounding ground and covered with strips of a heavy gauge tar paper.  The British used kerosene lamps.  Our base maintenance personnel soon had our Squadron generators operating and wire strung so that each unit had electricity.

     Water was in short supply and foul tasting.  Ice was non-existent.  In an organization of squadron size there is a vast resource of design, engineering and manufacturing knowledge.  Nearby were British wrecked vehicle dumps.  Many parts of these vehicles were salvageable.  Intelligent men put their heads together and were soon building portable water purification & filtering units.  Also an ice-maker, from these scrap-piles. (It never did make ice but it made COLD water, great for cooling our beer ration! The purifier worked fine)

    This part of the country was flat & contained no large trees.  Most places had a straggly brush cover apparently used as firewood by the locals.  There was no running water within easy walking distance of Syhlet.  The village water supply was a huge dirt pool.  Rectangular, it appeared to be in excess of 100 X 150 feet.  I would guess the depth to be more than 20 feet.  It was rather precisely built with sloped sides and apparently sized to allow the periodic rain to prevent it from ever going completely dry.  Of course, the Monsoons would fill it to overflowing and actually they flooded the entire area.  The local's had no concept of sanitation.  They bathed, (with their clothes on) did the laundry and drew the drinking water from the same place.  No wonder they died by the thousands.  I took one look at the local's legs, which were covered with "yaws", (open, weeping circular sores) my bare feet never touched the ground in India.  We purchased "ducks" (heavy wooden platform shoes) to wear to, from and in the shower.

    The Hindu's and Moslem's in this area were poor to the point of destitution.  The only civilian vehicle's I saw were bicycle's and very few of them.  Of course, we were at a railhead so supplies could be transferred from train to airfield.  These trains were festooned with people, inside, outside, on top, etc.  The town, if you could call it that, consisted of a few mud buildings & some temporary bamboo structures.  I'm sure that ALL bamboo structures in this part of India are temporary.  The termites began eating the bamboo as soon as it dried out.  Of course there were stores, (stores sprung up wherever there were Americans).   From large (10 X 20) "emporiums " to little "doorway" shops.   All merchandise had three prices.  Low for the Indians, medium for the British and high for the Americans.

     All menial labor was done by the local people.   Mess-hall duty, laundry, area clean-up and personal servants.  We soon learned to go to town, select items that we wanted without saying anything, then return to camp and ask our "basha boy" to purchase it for us.    It was usually less than half price and you know that he took his cut along the way.

     A popular item was a mattress pad.  Our British bunks were of what appeared to be a rectangular mahogany frame laced with a coarse rope, on the diagonal.  The rope stretched and had to be constantly tightened.  The issue mattress was less than 2" thick and the bed soon became a torture rack.   We added pads until the bed was usable.  These mattress's were made of wildly colorful cloth and we looked like a bunch of Gypsy's as we threw our mattress into the plane for our next move.