Papers of Heather Bell

Papers of Heather Bell, relating to her work as a Welfare Officer with The Twelfth Army in Burma, 1945.

Includes captioned photograph album titled 'Glimpses of Britain, India, Burma, Ceylon and East Africa' with photographs of the Toc H Headquarters in Calcutta, Toc H in Meiktila, and the Toc H Officers Advance Training School in Ceylon; manuscript letter written by Heather Bell from Toc H, Burma dated 18 April 1946; typescript account titled 'With the 12th Army in Burma: A South African who served as a Welfare Officer with the British Army in the East, gives some of her impressions of Burma, as well as of India and Ceylon' by Heather Bell; and four cloth badges.

A small number of original photographs have been replaced with reproduction images by the depositor.

Heather Bell was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, the daughter of James and Gertrude Bell. During the 1940s she taught at Rondebosch Boys Preparatory School and volunteered with the Naval Transport Drivers. During the Second World War, Heather's parents opened up their home to British Officers and, in August 1940, Heather met Captain Alan Nicoll who was on his way to join 1st/15th Punjab Regiment in India. Alan had been born in Hong Kong and raised in Edinburgh. By 1940 his parents, Charles and Edith Nicoll, were living in Newton Abbot with their daughter, Margaret. Alan fought in Burma [Myanmar] during the Second World War and was awarded the Military Cross in 1943.

Heather and Alan became engaged and planned a wedding in Newton Abbot for spring 1945. Heather sailed from Cape Town, aboard the British troopship 'Andes' and, on 25 March 1945, landed in Liverpool. She was met by Alan's mother and sister and told Alan had been killed in the battle for Mandalay on 1 March 1945. Unable to get a passage back to South Africa, Heather was stranded in England.

Presumably wishing to see where Alan had been killed, Heather joined Toc H as a Welfare Officer, and set sail for Burma as soon as Japan had surrended in 1945. She joined the Twelfth Army on the shore of Meiktila Lake. A typescript account of her time in Burma [Myanmar], India and Ceylon [Sri Lanka], written by Heather, is included in her archive.

Heather met Jake Wilson in Burma during 1946. Jake had taken up the post of Economic Botanist with the Agricultural Branch of Agriculture and Rural Economy Departments (Burma) and had sailed for India in June 1945. From November 1945 he was based in Mahlaing, some 20 miles from Meiktila.

Heather having left Burma and spent time in Ceylon, sailed from Bombay, India in September 1946 aboard the 'Khandalla' for Cape Town where she was reunited with her family and friends that she had not seen for 18 months. In late 1947 Jake had returned to England and had accepted a post as a lecturer at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in St Augustine (Trinidad) so Heather found herself once again aboard a ship, 'City of Exeter', with a new wedding cake and trousseau, sailing for Plymouth and onto Trinidad. The wedding was held on the 24 August 1948 at Christ Church, Cascade, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Heather died in 2005.

Sources: papers of Heather Bell; biographical information supplied by depositor and available via https://sites.google.com/site/12tharmyburma/home accessed 19 June 2018

Open, access to all registered researchers.

Presented June 2018

Please see full catalogue for more information.

Papers described at collection level by Mark Eccleston, June 2018 and added to at component level by Christopher Olive, July 2018. Prepared in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G).

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director of Special Collections. Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Heather Bell's papers were inherited by her son following her death in 2005

Special Collections department also holds the Records of Toc H (reference: Toc H)