His experience — partially re-created in Richard Attenborough’s 1977 epic film, A Bridge Too Far — was in fact as fierce as that of any young officer in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden. Captain “Jimmy” Cleminson’s platoon led the advance of the 3rd Parachute Battalion from the drop zone towards Arnhem on September 17 1944, until progress was briefly impeded by a German staff car which the platoon enthusiastically shot up, discovering later that they had killed Major-General Kussin, the Arnhem garrison commander.
After further skirmishes they moved through the quiet suburb of Oosterbeek to the Hartenstein Hotel, which had been a German staff headquarters but whose occupants had just fled, leaving a substantial lunch on the table.
Cleminson’s men tucked in until ordered by their company commander to continue the advance.
The following day, the company was pinned down by unexpectedly strong German fire a mile short of their objective, the bridge at Arnhem. Cleminson and another captain found themselves trying to assist the divisional commander, General Roy Urquhart, who had become separated from his staff, to regain his HQ on foot. When progress became impossible, the trio accepted a Dutch couple’s offer of shelter, only to find a German self-propelled gun positioning itself outside the house; there followed 24 frustrating hours in an attic, during which Urquhart became fixated on Cleminson’s luxuriant moustache, which he described as “damned silly”. In A Bridge Too Far, Michael Graham Cox played Cleminson to Sean Connery’s Urquhart.
Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji
Indian pilot who flew Hurricanes over occupied France and was awarded the DFC for his daring reconnaissance missions in Burma
A graduate in law from Bombay University, Mahinder Singh Pujji was already a qualified pilot by the time war came in 1939, and he volunteered for RAF service the following year. Coming to the UK for further training, he saw service as a fighter pilot in sweeps over France and in North Africa, in both of which theatres he was involved in intense action.
He was subsequently posted back to India where he flew ground attack and reconnaissance operations over the jungles of Burma, participating in air operations over the strategically important battle for Kohima. Pujji ended the war as a squadron leader, having been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After nearly 20 years living in India he settled in Britain in the mid-1970s.
Mahinder Singh Pujji was born the son of a senior government official in Simla, India in 1918, the former hill station in the Himalayan foothills which then served as the summer capital of the Indian Empire. He read law at Bombay (Mumbai) University, learning to fly at Delhi Flying Club, where he qualified as a pilot in 1937. Before the war he was working for Shell Oil as a fuelling superintendent.
Volunteering for RAF service in 1940, he was one of the first batch of 24 Indian pilots who were posted to Britain for operational training that summer. Like his contemporary Ranjan Dutt (obituary, November 6, 2009), who subsequently became an air vice-marshal in the postindependence Indian Air Force, Pujji distinguished himself on this first course and, like Dutt, was selected as a fighter pilot.
As a Sikh, he was determined not to be deflected from wearing the turban, which is mandatory to the religion although at first this was deemed by authority to be unsuitable headgear for an RAF officer and impractical for a fighter pilot. However, it soon became accepted that the RAF cap badge could be affixed to it without prejudice either to his performance as a pilot or to the dignity of the service, and Pujji wore his turban both on the ground and on operations until the end of the war.
He later claimed that the turban had helped to prevent him suffering serious impact injuries when he crash-landed after his plane was badly damaged in a dogfight over the Channel. “There was blood pouring from my head, but that six feet of wound cloth which makes up my turban saved me from worse impact injuries,” he said.
His first posting was with 253 (Hyderabad) Squadron, operating Hurricanes, with which in the spring and summer of 1941 he flew fighter sweeps by day and night from bases in southern England over occupied France. He was next posted to 43 Squadron in which he served as a flight commander on fighter sweeps and intruder sorties.
In 1942 he was posted to North Africa where he flew American-built Tomahawk fighters in the intensive air battles which raged over the ground forces in the Western Desert. Pujji was shot down and wounded, and spent time in hospital in Cairo, before returning to the front line. In his dogfights with the fighters of the Luftwaffe, his final tally was two Messerschmitt Me109s shot down and three damaged.
He was next posted to India where he was assigned to the North West Frontier and flew Lysander and Hurricanes on army co-operation and reconaissance sorties over Afghanistan and Waziristan. As he recalled, it was hazardous work over inhospitable terrain with a certain and horrible death awaiting any pilot who fell into the hands of the ferocious Hoor tribesmen.
Pujji’s next two tours of the war were served in Burma, where he flew “Hurribombers” — as Hurricanes used in ground attack and armed reconnaissance operations were styled. These were with No 6 and then No 4 Squadron, which soon became known as “the eyes of the 14th Army”, which, under its commander General William Slim, was involved in dislodging its Japanese opponents from Burma.
One of Pujji’s most notable reconnaissance feats was to locate a force of 300 West African troops under American command, who had become detached and lost in the jungle. All American attempts to locate them had failed and RAF help was sought.
Flying low over the jungle, Pujji had to circle the clearing in whose fringes the troops were hiding from the enemy, scribble a message on a notepad on his knee and drop it accurately. When the Americans, following his co-ordinates, failed to find the lost troops, Pujji’s report was called into question. It was not until he personally led an American Lightning fighter to the spot that he was vindicated. He was awarded the DFC for his Burma services.
After the war Pujji remained in India and after independence in 1947 had a busy career in Indian civil aviation as an administrator and air traffic controller. He continued flying himself and set many gliding records.
In 1974 he came to England, settling in London where he managed a hotel. In East Ham, where he made his home, he was in retirement an active member of many voluntary groups. In October 2000 he was made an honorary Freeman of the London Borough of Newham. He later moved to Gravesend, Kent, and a biography, For King and Another Country, was published earlier this year.
A popular and frequent figure at veterans’ events, he was always a prominent guest at such events as Black History Month at the RAF Museum, Hendon, in 2003 and the opening of the RAF Museum’s Diversity of the Royal Air Force exhibition in 2009.
Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, DFC, wartime fighter pilot, was born on August 14, 1918. He died on September 18, 2010, aged 92
