BURMA 1942 RETREAT
A Doctor's Retreat from Burma

From the Dekho! V.J. 50 Magazine of Winter 1995:-

In response to David Gooderson’s request for information on the retreat through the Hukawng Valley, E. H. Eason sent this interesting detail of his career and his experiences of the retreat from Burma.

Much of what I have to say is almost certainly irrelevant but to give you some idea of the impact the whole thing made on me, a bit about myself as a soldier. I began as a cavalry subaltern in the Cheshire Yeomanry (T.A.) two years before the war, was declared unfit for service overseas when my regiment went to Palestine at the end of 1939, and was posted to the Cavalry Depot at Colchester. This meant a desk-bound job for the duration which seemed rather pointless, and as I was an advanced medical student I managed to get leave, qualified as a doctor in 1940, transferred to the R.A.M.C. and was declared fit because they were very short of doctors. I went to India and thence to Burma just before Pearl Harbour as a G.D.O. in an Indian Field Ambulance. After a short stint at the front in Lower Burma early in 1942 I was invalided to the base at Maymyo owing to deafness and put in charge of No.2 Burma Field Laboratory as I was good at microscope work — diagnosing malaria, dysentery, V.D., etc. where deafness was less of a handicap. When the enemy swept northwards I took to the field with my unit which was attached to a C.C.S.

When the order came to run for it we were somewhere on the railway north of Mandalay. We trained up to Mogaung and our patients — unfit people, those over 40 and women (nurses,etc.) went on to the rail-head at Myitkyina and were flown back to India. The rest of us walked. Our party was in the charge of a British I.M.S. major who was an old Burma hand, knew the country and the Chin language, and had been doing thyroid deficiency among the Chins before the war. The rest of the party consisted of two other British officers (I.M.S. and R.A.M.C.), both of whom I had known at Maymyo, myself, about six Indian or Goanese K.C.O.’s — all either I.M.S. or A.B.R.O. and all doctors (I seem to remember that one was a dentist) an I.M.D. conductor whom I knew well, a British infantry sergeant with some rudimentary knowledge of life in the jungle, a number of B.O.R.’s — all, I think, R.A.M.C. — and quite a few l.O.R.’s who must have been I.H.C. I cannot remember how this party came to be made up because it didn’t include all the personnel of the C.C.S. but did include some I had never met before. The members of my Field Laboratory consisted of me, a jemadar I.M.D., two B.O.R.’s and a sweeper (I.H.C.). I had given my jemadar leave to buzz off and join his family, who had been living with him in Burma, about a week earlier, and one of my B.O.R.’s was Anglo-Burmese and, quite understandably, had deserted, taken off his uniform and mingled with the crowd, as he had no wish to leave his home in Burma and without his uniform would have been seen by the Japs as an ordinary Burmese civilian. My other B.O.R. was Anglo-Indian and was with our party, but I can’t remember what happened to my sweeper — he was probably with our party.

Before starting our walk from Mogaung we destroyed anything that might have been useful to the enemy. I threw my microscope, etc., into a nearby lake but retained the “oil-immersion lens”, an especially expensive but small article which I gave to one of the B.O.R.’s. The officers who hadn’t got standard issue service revolvers equipped themselves with side-arms from a pile left behind from the I.C.S. and P.W.D. people, and I took a .38 Browning pistol.

Our journey was in three distinct legs, and I will describe them separately. I am fairly sure of the distances but can only guess at their duration so am not sure of the miles covered each day. From Mogaung to Klwegyi, about seventy miles, was easy going through country inhabited by the Chins, and for part of the way we were able to hire bullock-carts. It must have taken about five days. We had plenty of rice and bought chickens, eggs, limes, melons, etc. from the villagers which had to be paid for in silver rupees as they wouldn’t accept paper money. The chief problem was water as streams and springs were not very frequent, and not everyone had standard issue water-bottles, only odd impro­vised containers. We had means of chlorinating the water and had to make it last. Normally Indians rinse out their mouths with the first swig and then spit it out but this habit was strictly forbidden, and when one wretched Indian did it Out of habit he was tied to a tree and whipped, not very hard, but to make him look a fool in front of the others, and it didn’t happen again.

No attempt was made to march in any formation but two B.O.R.’s acted as rear guards to make sure there were no stragglers, and two as advance guards in case we ran into the enemy and to police any river upstream to stop the Indians defecating in the river, — normally a very worthy habit as they washed their bottoms at the same time, but not when we were filling our water-containers down­stream, I had a brief bath in a slow flowing river (Or canal) and came out festooned with leeches. The chaps gathered round them by touching their tails with lighted cigarettes which made them let go —we still had cigarettes at this early stage. Klwegyi was on a tributary of the Uyu Chaung and here we managed to get sampans for the next leg of the journey. Down stream to the confluence with the Uyu about two miles north of Schedwin and thence down to where the Uyu joins the Chindwin at Homalin was about eighty miles, but easy going apart from a bit of rowing at which we took turns. This must have taken two or three days, and somewhere along the line we must have split up because I cannot remember any l.O.R. or all the Indian K.C.O.’s in the sampans. They have taken a different route as there were several alternatives. One of our aeroplanes dropped a package (presumably food) but it fell some way from the river bank and we left it as we had plenty of rice. A few miles short of HomaIm we heard shooting. This might have been the enemy who were advancing northwards, so we parked on the river bank and the Major and one other went on by themselves to investigate, telling me (the senior officer left) that if they were not back in an hour I was to lead the party back to India as best I could. I realised that this would have been virtually impossible with no map, only a compass, through dense and trackless ‘ungle and not knowing when I was likely to hit on a track or meet the enemy. It was pretty unnerving to say the least as I would, almost inevitably, have been responsible for the deaths of all my men as well as myself. However, I assumed a nonchalant air and to my im­mense relief the Maior returned inside an hour. The shooting was the Bombay and Burma Trading Co. shooting their elephants so that they wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. So we all re-embarked, went on to Homalin and started the eighty-odd-mile trip to Imphal in Manipur State (India).

This was the worst part because, although the path was easy to follow it went across mountains and very steep ravines. As we had to carry our rice, water and a few essentials everything not essential and weighing more than a few ounces had to be jettisoned, and I threw away a pair of spurs which I had since my Yeomanry days and which must now be at the bottom of the Chindwin. We did about ten miles a day to keep pace with the slowest, starting before dawn, and each evening the Major asked all the men whether they could do the same again and they all could (just). By this time we felt fairly safe from the enemy but there was a temptation among the younger and fitter to hurry on ahead to get back to the safety of India quickly. One of the advance guards did just that and I believe was court-marshalled for desertion. There were quite a few civilians, mostly Indian women, escaping from the Japs along part of our mute, all in poor condition with children. This was the most harrowing aspect of the whole thing as our job was to get ourselves back and not to get bogged down with civilians. In a moment of weakness I gave one of them a drink from my water-bottle which I ought not to have done. Some were dying of cholera and/or typhoid which none of the soldiery got because they had been vacinated. At one point we were overtaken by a party of Burma Military Police, all Sikhs without an officer and each with a horse. There must have been a ferry at some point across the Chindwin as it would have been very difficult to swim the horses across. I swam my horses and mules across the Ye river in the early stages of the campaign, and that was difficult enough despite the fact that the Ye was a mere trickle compared with the Chindwin. These Sikhs had their horses loaded with all their worldly possessions, but we needed the horses for our sick and a few stragglers left behind by earlier parties, who had collapsed. All one could do was to dispossess the Sikhs of their horses, often very forcibly, unhook their possessions and jettison them and replace them by a sick man. I remember one such man, a Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantryman, who disliked horses so much that he would rather be left to die than to ride: I overruled him, he did ride and he survived!

A colourful incident occurred when we camped by a Naga village. The Nagas were much less civilised than the Chins, and their practice was to shoot one of their pigs when wanted for the pot. We bought a pig and one of our B.O.R.’s who was armed with a rifle, shot it, much to the amazement of the Nagas. The weapon they used for this job was a rather defective rifle which, when fired, sent half the charge backwards and half forwards, so that the marksman had to move his head smartly to one side before pulling the trigger. They couldn’t believe their eyes when our chap didn’t get his head blown off. Although thirst was worse than hunger on the first leg of our walk, they were both equally bad on the last leg. Although all available food was generally shared out equally, there tended to be a suspicion that some greedy people got more than their fair share. Apart from the pig we existed on rice which became so nauseating that we hardly ate anything. Severe hunger alters one’s personality and I can understand how stranded explorers come to kill each other. The sergeant had somehow acquired a few dried plums the size of very small grapes. Although he did pass a few around he ate most of them himself (and I don’t blame him). I was so hungry that if it had not been for our in­grained discipline I might have attacked him and eaten the lot I I am grateful for this experience which not many people have had, as it gives an insight into my nature.

When we got to Imphal, where there was a military establishment, we were given a hero’s welcome despite the fact that all we had really done was to run away. We gorged on biscuits and bully and made ourselves quite ill as by that time most of us had malaria. It took many days and numerous large doses of epsom-salts to get our guts working again. End of story!

The success of our escape was largely due to the Major (Raymond) who was a good leader and organiser. On the whole we were a happy crowd with a minimum of jealousy and disagreement, but we were lucky to get across the Chindwin in time to escape the enemy and lucky that the monsoon was just over which made travelling easier. I hope you have time to read all this. I have enjoyed writing it as it is the first time I have set my mind to remembering it all and putting it down on paper

                                    E.H. Eason (1737)