The Industrious Ants

The narrator arrives in Calcutta in summer 1944 and reports to the commanding officer, a Scotsman named McAlister, who tyrannically controls everyone at the base. Learning of McAlister's ill-treatment of a female nurse, the narrator (who is of equal rank) confronts him, thereby incurring McAlister's wrath.

The title refers to insects that corrode some of the airplanes in the fleet. The tale is similar in style to Bates's 'Flying Officer X stories.'

In the third volume of Bates's autobiography, The World in Ripeness (pp. 78-78), he relates difficulties in Calcutta with a squadron-leader named Nickson that, while not including the nurse, nevertheless provide factual basis for much of the story.

In Evening Standard, (February 4, 1955, p. 13, attached) in a series called 'True or False," in which readers were invited to guess if a submission was fact or fiction; the next issue revealed that this piece was fiction. Also printed in Singapore Free Press, (August 31, 1955).