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Amherst, El
Alamein and Aitken Spence She was Sheila
Dickson, one of the beautiful daughters of a Church of Ireland clergyman
and his wife, whom I always knew as granny. Sheila had served in
France as an ambulance driver during World War I. She was not only
an outstanding personality but also a very good golfer, who later
was to win the Irish Ladies Championship and then the Ceylon Ladies
Championship seven times!! In 1919 Cedric,
my dad, and Sheila, my mum, were married in a big London wedding
and soon afterwards they left for Ceylon. This time dad
was to be a tea planter on a privately owned estate called Amherst
in Halgranoya in the District of Udapussallawa - about 5000 feet
elevation and good tea country, near Nuwara Eliya. In November
1920 I was born in the upcountry Hatton Nursing Home - their only
child. My first seven
years were happy as far as I remember - being loved and cherished
by my mum and dad and cared for by a succession of Sri Lankan nannies
and then by an English governess. At the age of seven, in 1928,
the inevitable break happened - mum and dad took me back to Ireland
and during the next 10 years I lived most of the time in boarding
schools or with my granny and auntie in Donegal, Ireland. I saw
my dad for one summer holiday and my mum for three summer holidays
during my ten years of adolescence, and of course I missed them
so much when they weren't there. That was the price we paid for
being part of the British Empire. However, in
1939, when I was 18, mum and dad came back to Ireland on leave and
then all three of us returned to Sri Lanka. World War II,
as it was known, was now raging with the Germans ready to invade
England, so along with other young men, I felt a huge obligation
to do something about it! The nearest opportunity was the Indian
Army, so after training, I became 2nd Lieutenant Thornton, aged
20 in the 2nd Royal Lancers of the Indian Armoured Corps, and soon
afterwards I joined the Regiment with the 8th army in North Africa.
Unfortunately our army was so badly equipped in 1941 that at El
Alamein we, as part of the rearguard, had only 2 pounder guns mounted
on trucks to fight Rommel's tanks! After many
adventures with my regiment in other parts of the Middle East, including
Palestine, Iran and Iraq and on the North West Frontier near Afghanistan,
I eventually returned to Sri Lanka in 1945 as a major, having commanded
a squadron of armoured cars at the age of 23. Those were days where
we learnt some of the lessons of life the hard way and early on! Going back
as a civilian to be a lonely assistant superintendent on a tea estate
was not much fun after what I'd been through, particularly with
rival union leaders coming to see me each evening to fight their
corners and talking only in Tamil, which was very rusty, having
spoken Urdu for four years! So with help
from my dad, I was found a job in the shipping dept. of Aitken Spence
in Colombo. It was a great life, working hard, booking freight,
visiting ships in the harbour, playing golf and hockey and having
plenty of parties. But the highlight
was meeting the lovely girl who, three years later, became my darling
wife. She was Ruth Bostock and thus came the strong link between
the Bostock and Thornton families that exists to this day. Ruth is one
of three children of Norman and Beth Bostock. Ruth's elder sister
is Eve and her brother was Mark, who died in 2000 in Sri Lanka.
Her grandfather was the civil engineer who built part of the Colombo
Harbour in 1894. Her father, Norman, had a distinguished record
in the 1914-18 war, being awarded the Military Cross and Bar for
gallantry. After the 1914-18 war, he came back to Sri Lanka and,
whilst working in Colombo with Aitken Spence and others during the
week, he took off at weekends on his motorbike to supervise the
creation of Aislaby tea estate in Bandarawela on patnaland. This 800-acre
estate was to become one of the most productive tea estates in Sri
Lanka. So I'm happy to be linked by marriage to this family; some
of us continue to be involved in the development of this lovely
country. Ruth and I
were married in London in 1950 and came back to Colombo. Ruth had
a lovely voice with an LRAM Degree and she was much in demand in
Sri Lanka as a singer on the radio and stage. She led the choir
at our church, made many friends among the Sri Lankans and helped
in the hospitals, particularly among the incurables. I had become
a good golfer, winning the Sri Lankan Championship three times,
but my main role was as an executive in Aitken Spence; I was elected
to the board in 1954 and appointed Chairman in 1956 on the untimely
death of Reg Gaddum. My main achievements
as Chairman were, in my opinion, the selection and encouragement
of a number of young men from Royal, Trinity and S. Thomas' to create
a tier of embryo managers; and the development of our islandwide
resources, such as bringing the printing and carton-making departments
from Galle to Colombo and starting a shipping office in Trincomalee
for tea exports. Best of all was the development of many personal
relationships that Ruth and I made during those years, most of which
still exist today. But by 1962,
Ruth and I had to decide whether our loyalty to our three children
was stronger than our loyalty to Aitken Spence. I could probably
have remained as Chairman for another 10 years but I was offered
an exulting opportunity in England to be the Director of the Centre
for International Briefing at Farmham Castle in Surrey. This was
a Centre recently established to help British men and women when
they took jobs abroad, to learn and understand the new post-colonial
era that now existed in many parts of the world, so that they could
accept that now they would be guests in those countries and no longer
in charge. Most of our "students", who came with their
husbands and wives to our five-day residential courses, were British
teachers, administrators, nurses and other professionals. We had a full-time
staff of 10 executives, all of whom had recent residential experience
in Asia, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East and we could call
on 200 lecturers, all expert in their subjects connected with various
developing countries worldwide. Among our senior
staff were Gordon Burrows, until recently the Vice Principal of
Trinity College, Kandy, and his wife Pat. And of course, my wife
Ruth, who was responsible for the "Living in Britain"
courses for men and women from the developing countries, mostly
Africa, who were coming to Britain for commercial training and who
found many of our British customs and habits difficult to understand. I was Director
of the Centre at Farnham Castle for 10 years and during that time
14,000 (yes, fourteen thousand!) men and women had passed through
the Centre on five-day residential courses on their way to contribute
to the development of countries they had never seen before. Ruth and I
could never have begun to take on these huge responsibilities if
we ourselves hadn't learnt the ability to relate effectively to
those of other faiths and different cultures during our years of
childhood and adult life in Sri Lanka. So our debt is great to you in Sri Lanka - the land of our birth. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
