Stanford Doig was made an OBE for his services to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in India
After a distinguished career in the Army, Stanford Doig was made an OBE. He talks to CLAIRE BURKE about serving in India under the Raj, fleeing Dunkirk during the Second World War and meeting Mother Teresa.
Stanford Doig was born in a town near Calcutta in India. His parents were first generation settlers and, as a boy, he attended a school in the Himalayas.
While working in a "soul-destroying" job on the East Indian Railway, he heard the British Army was looking for young men with an engineering background and decided to join up.
In December 1937, Mr Doig, who now lives in Abbotsleigh Mews Residential and Nursing Home, Sidcup, sailed from Bombay in the troopship Dunera, spending sleepless nights in an uncomfortable hammock.
After arriving at Woolwich Barracks, he enrolled with the British Army and worked his way up to Armament Artificer, a skilled technician, with the rank of staff sergeant.
When the Second World War broke out his unit sailed to France to repair broken down tanks, but they were soon on the run from the advancing Germans.
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As they made their way to Dunkirk, they came under attack by Luftwaffe bombers.
They were among thousands of Allied troops being evacuated from the beaches, and he was rescued by a small yacht who took him back to Margate in England.
Mr Doig, 96, who has four brothers and four sisters, said: "We were very lucky to have got away, really.
"Bombs were falling all around us. We
were scrabbling in the sea to get into the boats."
In 1941, he was sent to Iraq where the 10th Indian Army was reinstating a pro-Allies Regent who had been deposed.
After being posted back to India, he was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), and was appointed to New Delhi where he worked at the Directorate of Mechanical Engineering.
His mother was matron of the Silver Jubilee Tuberculosis Hospital in nearby Old Delhi.
Around this time, the Quit India Campaign, demanding independence from Britain, was becoming increasingly belligerent.
Mr Doig was on leave in England when reign of the British Raj ended in 1947.
Violence flared between Muslims and Hindus, with people slaughtered in the streets.
In his book, Hither, Thither, Then and Now, published in 2002, he wrote how a radio broadcast "reported all hell had broken out in the sub-continent.
"I was lucky to have missed the worst of it."
In June 1955, a letter dropped through the letter box of his home, in Barton Road, Sidcup, summoning him to Buckingham Palace to receive an OBE for his services to the REME.
He said: "I was called up to the stage and presented with a medal.
"I was very excited. Queen Elizabeth pinned it on my shoulder and said a few words about India.
"I felt it deserved a response but all I could manage was a glug from deep down in my throat."
When he and his sister, Mars, visited his brother, Desmond, an artist, in Calcutta in 1977, they had tea with Mother Teresa, who Desmond was writing a book about. Afterwards she asked them to pray.
Mr Doig said: "She was a very sweet person.
"She said Now let's talk to Jesus'. She sank to her knees with the consummate grace born of years of practice."
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