Message from Judith Havens - March 2021
My father, Clement Havens, was a clerk in the Assam Oil Company at Digboi.
Below is a download on the history of his life - click on download at bottom of this page (on PDF)
In Memory of my father Clement Havens 1918-1981 & my mother Iris Havens 1919-1990
From Judith Havens - Born in Digboi 10th February 1951
My father, Clement Havens, was born in Norwich, England in 1918 and served in the British Army in Burma from 1941 till the end of the war.
He married his first wife there and from 1946 to 1949 he worked as a wages clerk in the Burmah Oil Company in Rangoon and became involved in the sporting activities of the employees there.
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Clement Havens, centre.
His Rangoon driving licence gives some tips about using hand signals!
When his wife died Clement transferred to B.O.C. in Digboi, where he took on the post of Paymaster.
My father used the Digboi Club.
His final bill survives:
Clement Havens, front right :
Clement’s Bungalow:
No. 57 Muliabari
Clement returned home to Norwich for a while and met up with Iris Allison, his sweetheart from before the war.
They married in Norwich on 29th April 1950.
That summer Iris went out to Assam with him and they took up residence in one of the bungalows.
I was born in the hospital in Digboi on 10th February 1951 by caesarean section.
A few months later my father received the hospital bill for the three surgeons and anaesthetist who performed my mother’s operation. 250 rupees would not go far today.
Family Life at the Digboi Bungalow :
My parents were very friendly with another couple
who lived close by. They were called Anne and Len Holden. I think they are on the right of this picture.
I wonder if the man on the left could be my parents’ “house-boy”. He was called Sammy, and my father had great affection and regard for him. A few years after we had returned to England word came that Sammy had died; it is the only time I ever saw my father weep.
Another member of the household staff was my ayah. I have reason to be very grateful to her because I was told that one day she fell down the bungalow steps while carrying me and, in cradling me to save me from the fall, she broke her arm.
A few household items from the bungalow were brought back to Norwich with us:
Some pieces of embroidered linen, including my bib!
A carved box, probably from my father’s days in Rangoon. Length 11”.
This teak table was also from Rangoon. I remember
that my father told me that the top was made from
one whole section of wood and that it had been
carved by a prisoner in Rangoon Jail.
It had puzzled me how this piece had come my father’s
way until fairly recently, when a relative told me that
the father of my dad’s first wife was governor of the jail,
though his actual position there might have
been an exaggerated tale and has not been verified.
Diameter 24”
My father loved life in Assam, but unfortunately my mother could not tolerate the heat and humidity of the climate there, so the decision was made to return to England.
The Assam Oil Company gave my father a good reference, and the employees presented him with a cigarette caddy. The lettering is hand-punched.
On top: his initials C. F. H .The side reads: PRESENTED BY WAGES CLERKS- B.O.C. DDAW
A passage was booked on SS Strathaird and we sailed for England about a year after I was born. I always have regretted that I was too young to have remembered anything of my life in Assam.
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