The Missing Box

            While going to Australia in December 1985, I had sent two steel boxes - one with Indian cooking wares and the second with sundry articles of my Army kit. As I had no clue of international travel and had fixated ideas on how to pack one’s belongings, I did not think of cardboard cartons.

            Towards the end of my course, sometimes in October 1986, I learnt of an Indian Air Force aircraft coming to Canberra with a plane load of officers on some official visit which would return to Delhi after a week’s stay in Australia. As luck would have it, there was a bus trip planned for the guest students to Sydney and Canberra. So after having a word with the Defence Advisor (DA) in Canberra, I loaded the box containing the unwanted Army kit in the bus and dropped it at the Indian High Commission where the DA’s PA took it under his charge.

            On my return from the guest students’ pleasure trip and on inquiring from the DA’s PA about the fate of my box, I learnt that the pilot of the Air Force plane refused to carry it to India due to the ‘load factor’. So I instructed the PA to send it back to me at my Staff College address through Air Force courier service which operated thrice weekly service towards North and South from Canberra.

            When there was no sign of the box even after more than a week, I became a little concerned because it contained the items most dear to a fauji – DMS boots, SD, P cap & belt etc which cost a fortune in those days. So I set about tracing the box through the telephone in my class room. (Luckily, each class room was equipped with a phone on the Australian Defcon network which facilitated direct dialing to any military establishment across the three services, which we still do not have here)

            The Fairburn Air Force base at Canberra told me that a box with my name pasted on it was indeed loaded on a courier flight the previous week but (here comes the gem) as the address  mentioned on the box was ‘Queensland’ it was loaded on the Northern Courier and not the Southern. This was typical Indian stuff courtesy the PA, who in his wisdom had converted the ‘Queenscliff’ in my address to ‘Queensland’ for the simple reason that he had not heard of the former but was quite familiar with the latter. So due to this extra initiative by the ubiquitous PA in an Indian set up, the precious box of a poor major sahib in an alien land was sitting some where in Brisbane.

            At this stage my concern turned to panic as I had less than one month for my return journey back home and I could only imagine the prospects of a major sahib returning to India without his Army kit. So I decided to contact the Commandant – Brig John Grey. He had become quite friendly and accessible to me ever since we had met at the Australian Embassy in New Delhi in December 1985 at the end of his NDC course there and before he left for Australia to take up his new assignment as the Commandant of Staff College. So I rang up his PA and fixed an appointment with him the next day.

            When I told him about my problem, he smiled and asked me, “Have you seen Corporal Lee?”

            I knew Corporal Lee, the Movement Corporal at the College, well enough from a couple of encounters with him earlier in the year and hence replied, “Sir, I thought Corporal Lee looks after movement of personnel.”

            The Commandant told me that Corporal Lee looks after all kinds of movements – be they of men, animals or goods and that I would do well to see him. I thanked the Commandant for his time and advice and rushed down the steps of his office, outside the building to the next block where Corporal Lee shared his office with the pay Sergeant.

            On seeing me approaching his desk, the Corporal smiled, gave me that mischievous ‘I know’ look and remarked, “Sir I am hearing some wild rumours about a steel box of your having gone missing from Canberra.” When I told him that the rumours were not wild but true, he said, “Sir, you didn’t have to go to the Commandant for such petty problems. Your truly is there only for such things.”

            So I gave him the works on the missing box which he noted down diligently on his scrap pad. He then asked me to give him one week to come up with concrete results, to which I agreed unhesitatingly and went about living life normally.

            After exactly eight days, the door bell of our house rang in the afternoon. When I opened the door, I found two soldiers in military fatigues carrying the ‘missing’ box.

            (That was the military efficiency of a corporal of Australian Army. It would be well nigh impossible to get such things done in an inter-service environment here unless one raised the level appropriately and pulled the required strings.)