QUITE AN EXPERIENCE
(Some memories of Army Service in India and Burma 1943-46)
                                by Basil French

Just out of O.C.T.U. April 1943 Age: 20 years 10 months

 

I have been encouraged to put a few notes together regarding my experiences in Burma by various members of my family, Lynne in particular, and also by a good friend Tony Pickles who has a great interest in all things military. The story really starts on a dark evening in October 1943 when a group of some ninety or a hundred officers and other ranks are drawn up on a vast parade ground outside the main entrance of the Royal Artillery Depot in Woolwich. I, a second lieutenant of six months standing, was one of this group and we constituted draft REHYZ bound, as we were later to discover, for India and Burma.

The column was marched off in the custom of the day, with a clear hurricane lamp being carried by the man in the front right hand column and a red lamp by a man at the right rear.

And so we arrived at Woolwich railway station down the hill from the Depot where we boarded a train already waiting in the blacked-out station. I shared a compartment with a group of other second lieutenants and with black-out blinds pulled carefully down we chugged off into the night.

It was exactly two years to the month since I had been called up and told to report to Hinckley, Leicestershire where I was to join the 3rd Training Battalion, Royal Army Ordnance Corps - my own choice of regiment, having worked for two years in the motor trade. (Click here to see group photograph)

This proved to be a very bad choice as I discovered, after initial training, as I was just a clerk in uniform and as I was only 19 there was little hope of promotion. Most NCOs were well into their 20’s and I understood that it was not possible to be commissioned in the RAOC under 25.

One day, on the parade ground in Hinckley Park, being sworn and shouted at by an ignorant reservist Sergeant Major as we learnt the rudiments of foot drill in the pouring rain we were suddenly halted and turned to face the front. As we stood miserably in our gas capes, rain running down our faces, a young lieutenant in an elegant greatcoat, smart peaked service cap and leather covered cane in his hand had emerged from a building across the park and came towards us. A few muttered words were exchanged between the lieutenant and the Sergeant Major, after which the officer returned to his building whilst we continued to march up and down the paths of Hinckley Park in the pouring rain.

This was, without doubt, a turning point in the military career of No 10570314 Pte B French! I said to myself, “Young man, you’re at the wrong end of this man’s army. You don’t want to be marching up and down in the rain. You want to be in a nice dry building, smartly dressed like that young fellow!” And whether it was a worthy thought or not I thereafter applied myself in every way to obtaining a commission, preferably in the RA but in the Tanks or Infantry if this was not possible.

But the best of resolutions take time to achieve and after seven weeks basic training I was posted to the Royal

Ordnance Depot in Sinfin Lane, Derby where we were billeted in Normanton Barracks some three quarters of a mile from the Depot. We had to marched to and from work every morning and evening and if it was dark, once again the white and red hurricane lamps were carried at the front and rear of the column. The work was very tedious, day after day checking lists of spares.

This was a great incentive to get into something more active and after numerous applications and interviews I

successfully passed the War Office Selection Board in London. I was sent for 6 weeks pre-OCTO training in Wrotham, Kent and having crossed that hurdle went on, in October 1942 to the 123rd Officer Cadet Training Unit in Catterick.

Memories of OCTU are many and varied but it was generally happy and exciting time, crammed with hard work, study and physical activity and I confess to feeling pleased and relieved to be passed out as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in April 1943.

My first posting was to a Field Regiment of the 59^th (Staffordshire) Division stationed near Hastings in Sussex. I found it a strange posting as the Regiment was spread over a wide area of the County (due to its defensive role) and I don’t think I ever saw the other two Batteries or the Regimental Headquarters which was several miles away in Tunbridge Wells. I gather that both the Regiment and the Division received a terrible mauling in the weeks following the invasion of Normandy so perhaps it was as well that I moved well away to another part of the world.          

Of course, the best thing had happened to me at this time was my marriage to Beryl and we both managed to get ten days leave (she was serving as a Red Cross nurse at this time) which we spent in Stratford-upon-Avon, little thinking that twenty four years later we would move there to live.

Things moved fast after this. In the late September I was put on notice for overseas posting and moved for a very short time to a transit camp near Colwyn Bay. Here we were sorted into “drafts” and the most extraordinary thing was that I discovered my draft contained about twenty five of the thirty odd men who had comprised of my squad at the Catterick OCTU. So we had been earmarked as reinforcements for Burma for a considerable time! Our draft was moved down to the Royal Artillery Depot at Woolwich and this is how I found myself on a dark October evening marching down the hill to Woolwich railway station.

We eventually arrived in Liverpool and we halted at a platform which was certainly not part of the main station. How we got from Woolwich to Liverpool in the darkest period of the war without changing trains I shall never know, but all these years later I still think of it as a superb piece of logistics.

We left the train, marched a very short distance down a covered slope and were confronted by a bleak, grey wall, a wall which we quickly realised was the side of an enormous ship - in fact the SS Strathmore (Click here for photograph of ship). Moving straight in through a doorway in this “wall”, we were dispersed to our quarters in various parts of the ship and I found myself in a cabin on ‘C’ deck which had been fitted out with four bunks, two up and two down. We had a small bathroom and all in all we were quite comfortable. One of my cabin-mates was a friend from OCTU named Don Turton who had had a miraculous escape from the SS Lancastria which was sunk during the evacuation from France in 1940. A German bomb went straight down the funnel and the ship literally blew up with a great loss of life. Don was blown out of the side of the ship and was rescued from the sea, very little the worse, physically, for his experience. But more about him later.

Although we were not aware of it at the time, our convoy was the first to sail for India through the newly opened Mediterranean. This reduced the journey time to five weeks but as we to discover, the new route exposed us to dangers which may well have been avoided had we sailed via the Cape.

It had been an uneventful journey as far as Gibraltar, where we paused to pick up a small number of naval personnel but I remember so clearly chatting to a friend on deck and wondering what the German agents, undoubtedly watching from the Spanish coast made of such a nice juicy convoy! We were soon to know. The following evening, November 5th, it was dusk and we were sailing eastward, just south of Marseilles when the alarm bells started ringing, warning of an imminent air attack. The drill for air attack is that everyone goes to their cabin or mess deck and stays there until the all-clear sounds. Scarcely had I and my three companions reached our cabin than an air attack commenced by (we later learnt) a number of German bombers and torpedo bombers. The noise was deafening from the anti-aircraft cruiser firing flat out, from ack-ack guns on the Strathmore herself and numerous other ships in the convoy. Suddenly their were two enormous muffled “crumps”, one on each side of the ship. She seemed to stand absolutely still for a second or two, she shuddered, and we felt her bow rise and then plunge forward before sailing on normally. And this was a ship of 23,500 tons!

Apparently a bomber made an attack on Strathmore (the Flagship of the convoy), thankfully missing her but with a near miss to port and starboard. Then there was a ferocious outburst of machine gun fire and poor old Don Turton who had had such a bad time on the Lancastria shouted, “Quick, get under the bunks, we’re being machine gunned!” Well, we did all try to squeeze under the two lower bunks to get protection from the mattress above but fortunately realised, quite quickly, that the firing was coming from a number of Oerlikon heavy machine guns mounted down either side of the Strathmore and one wa situated almost outside our cabin!

Eventually the raiders left but sadly one ship had been sunk which unfortunately carried a large amount of troops' Christmas mail. During the weeks ahead I frequently met men who had lost mail from home and was able to speculate with some certainty on how and where it had gone.

The remainder of the voyage was quite fascinating and thankfully free from any further enemy action. The weather was poor through much of the Mediterranean but it became warm and sunny as we approached Alexandria. The Suez Canal, Red Sea and Aden were all names from geography lessons coming to life and from Aden, in a much smaller convoy, we sailed straight across the Arabian Sea to arrive safely, during the early part of November, at Bombay, the Gateway to India.

There was no sightseeing in Bombay, the Strathmore disgorged its 5,000 odd passengers and within the day, my draft had been entrained for Deolali some 100 miles to the north. Deolali was (I believe) the main Royal Artillery Depot in India and to me, being new to the country and everything Indian, it was fascinating.

We travelled slowly by train over several days some 600 miles to a transit camp at Gaya, a town in the Bihar district of India. The camp was very comfortable and it was here I spent Christmas 1943 in warm sunny weather like a perfect English summer. After a week or two, off we went again by train to Calcutta and here we had a spot of bother with our boozy escort -   an ageing Artillery subaltern whose whole life centred on when he was going to get his next glass of gin! We were housed in the comfortable Grand Hotel which, throughout the war, served as a leave and transit hostel. Our escort told us we had to move on next day but we informed him that we had no intention of leaving before we had had a good look round Calcutta and enjoyed the civilised comforts of the Grand Hotel. He was literally in tears at one stage but eventually agreed to our request and arranged with the transport authorities for our departure to be delayed for three or four days.

All good things must come to an end and off we went again on our eastward journey towards what we now realised was the Arakan “front” in the Burma Campaign. Arakan is the south­western province of Burma and adjoins India (now Bangladesh) some 150 miles east of Calcutta. However this is a very difficult 150 miles to travel being partly by train, partly by river boat down the Brahmaputra and finally by road to the port of Chittagong and on to Cox’s Bazaar where the metalled road ran out and became a rubble, stone and sand surface maintained by hundreds if not thousands of Indian labourers who moved to and fro with baskets of earth on their heads which were tipped and raked onto the road surface.

My closest companion from when we left Deolali had been a chap of my own age named Arthur Holding and the fact that he was a cousin of a boy with whom I had been at school gave us a strong common interest. By this time I knew that my posting was to the 4th Field Regiment, RA, a part of the 5th Indian Division and Arthur’s posting was to a Field Regiment of 7th Indian Division. So this was the parting of the ways and I continued with my bed roll and small tin trunk in a l5cwt truck until we found the sign for the 4th Field Regiment HO where I had to report. Although I didn’t realise it at the time I was to remain a member of the Battery right through to the end of my overseas service in July 1946.

Of course, horror stories abounded, mostly true but some just calculated to put the wind up a newcomer. A day or two before my arrival the 2nd West Yorks (of our Division) had sent out a small patrol in a Bren Gun Carrier and when they failed to return a larger party was sent out to look for them, and when found a dreadful sight was revealed. Each member of the patrol had been tied to a tree and a length of barbed-wire passed around the forehead and secured behind at back of the tree. A length of wood had been used to turn the wire behind the tree like a tourniquet and the way those poor chaps died is too terrible to contemplate.

I was told that the Japanese had limited artillery they used to send out “gun busting  parties at night. A group of them would carry lengths of bamboo which, being hollow, could be filled with explosive. They would creep up to a gun position and drop the length of bamboo down the barrel of a gun, having first ignited the fuse to the explosive. This could destroy or badly damage the gun and although thankfully this never happened on any of my gun positions it was always comforting to have an infantry screen around us rather than having to rely on our own gunners with their ears peeled! Every man to his job.

During the second half of 1943 the whole Division was withdrawn from Africa and travelled via the Persian Gulf to India where all the troops were given leave before starting intensive training for Burma. At the turn of the year 1943/1944 the Division entered the Arakan and when I joined them in early January they were attacking a cluster of strongly defended hills known as the Razabil Fortress. In his superb book, “Burma - The Longest War”, Louis Allen writes, “The term Arakan covers a great distance - but from a campaigning point of view in 1942-45 the area concerned ran from the Indian frontier to the island and town of Akyab. Cox’s Bazaar, just over the frontier was 120 miles north of Akyab and Chittagong, the supply port on the Bay of Bengal for the British forces, was another forty-five miles further north. The Mayu range of hills, rising to 2,000 feet, which runs from near the frontier along the peninsular ending - just opposite Akyab Island, is about eighty miles in length. He goes on to say, “So the distances were not great. The operational conditions, on the other hand, were appalling.” An abortive campaign had been fought early in 1943 to advance and capture Akyab but ended in near disaster with some 2,500 battle casualties and an infinitely larger number of casualties from malaria.

Now, in 1944, our objective was again the town of Akyab and this was to be achieved by 5th Indian Division on the western (coastal) side of the Mayu Range and 7th Indian Division on the eastern side. As a protective shield to the 7th Indian Division the 81st West African Division was deployed to its eastern flank.

Then, without any warning, we found ourselves in a completely new situation. Without being detected a large force from the Japanese 55th Division had moved with great stealth along the Mayu Range and when well behind 5th and 7th Indian Divisions they fanned out to cut off supplies and movement to both divisions. The attack (code-named Operation Ha-Go) was intended to first to annihilate the 7th Division and then to destroy the 5th Division roughly in the area that we at present occupied. 7th Division fought an epic battle for several weeks in what has become known as the Battle of the Admin Box and is well documented in every book on the Burma campaign.

This sort of tactic had been employed on many occasions by the Japanese and usually resulted in a fighting retreat by British and Indian forces with great losses of men, equipment and territory. In this 1944 campaign, however, Mountbatten had already said that this time there would be no retreat and that “...Iike Father Christmas supplies would be sent down the chimney!” And there were, every conceivable item that an army needs to fight and survive came in on a fleet of Dakota aircraft. Right down to mail and the forces newspaper SEAC. We could hear the distant “thump” as the guns fired and a whistling sound as the shells approached. At this the Sergeant Major would call out “Down, two, three” Then the bangs as the shells exploded and after a second or two his next cry was “Up, two, three”, and we would all look to see where they had landed and whether anything had been hit.

Although it sounds strange, we had a visit from a mobile film unit at this time and we were told that a film would be shown that night behind a nearby hill and that so many men per troop could attend. So off I went with a handful of men to the film crew where I think there were about 50 in all and the film got under way. I knew that our senior subaltern, Ron Makepiece had an HF task to fire off during the early evening and indeed heard our guns fire on the other side of the hill. On this occasion the guns had to fire directly over the Command Post, a situation we would normally avoid like the plague, and one of them had a “premature”. This occurs, usually due to a fault in the ammunition and the shell explodes prematurely, either in the barrel of the gun which can open it up like a peeled banana, or as in this case, just beyond the end of the barrel. A large shell splinter hit Ron at the very top of his thigh taking away most of the bone and there was no question whatever of saving his leg. He was taken by ambulance to a dressing station where he lay for some days, too ill to be moved and then transferred by an L5 light aircraft to a base hospital. Next morning I found his wallet containing a thick wad of notes through which the shell splinter had passed and it was torn through as if by two giant fingers. And we never even knew which gun had fired the premature, which was perhaps just as well because all the gunners were very upset but able to share the sadness equally.

As a result of the loss of Ron Makepiece, I was appointed GPO (Gun Position Officer) of A Troop and after a short while was given a reinforcement officer to be my No 2. He was a lieutenant, about my own age, by the name of Ron Clegg. I suppose, looking back, he was a bit like me; a dark haired chap with a black moustache, slim build a Yorkshireman with just the barest trace of an accent. We hit it oft from the start, socially and in the way we carried out our duties, and he remained a good friend to the day I left the Regiment to come home in 1946.

At this point my reasonably well-ordered life took a sudden change and the imminent move in which I was to be involved seemed to have unpleasant implications. Operation Ha-Go turned out to be a diversionary attack on the part of the enemy in the Arakan to occupy the attention of our troops already there and to force us to bring in our reserves while they prepared their main thrust, Operation U-Go. This was aimed at Imphal and Kohima, some 500 and 600 miles respectively north of the Arakan.

Their intention was to capture the great British base of Imphal, destroy the garrison of Kohima and provide themselves with a springboard for the invasion of India. The enemy was moving rapidly westward with three divisions and our defence force of three widely dispersed divisions (17th, 20th and 23rd Indian) could only prepare and await the attack from where ever it may develop.

lmphal, the capital of the indian state of Maripur is situated on a plain 30 miles from north to south and 20 miles wide. The plain is surrounded by hills and mountains up to 9,000 feet in high trough which wends the only supply route to India. It passes through dramatic scenery to Kohima some 60 miles north and thence on to the railhead at Dimapur.

So to return to my “imminent move”. I was called without notice to a conference at Battery HO with all officers and SNCOs at which we were told that a serious situation was developing on the Central front and that the whole of 5th Division was to fly up to Imphal within the next two days! Well, it was such a flap, but quite a well organised flap; we were issued with “loading Tables” which listed what was to be carried in each transport aircraft. I was to be in charge of one aircraft and would have to load into it, two Jeeps, one motor cycle, a certain weight of stores, so much 25pdr ammunition and ten men. Give or take a day or two either way the date was 18 March 1944. I was aware that the aircraft was bumping a lot as it taxied along and all of a sudden it stopped. A crew member in a baseball cap (American of course) appeared at the flight deck door and shouted to us “Sorry guys we’ve got a flat, we’ll have to unload.”

And that was it. They couldn’t change the wheel with the load on board so all the work of the night before was to no purpose and off it all came. Loading was, of course, not such a problem on the second attempt as we knew what snags to avoid and by lunch time we were airborne at last. Transport was loaned to us by 23rd Indian Division and at last we moved off to a quite a respectable camp which had been built for the Chindits who spent some time there before flying into Burma.

It is likewise quite amazing how quickly young men can bounce back after a good sleep and it was not long before we were fulfiling the gunners’ normal role of supporting the infantry. We were attached to the 9th Indian Infantry Brigade whose infantry units were 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment, 3rd/9th Jat Regiment and the 3rd/4th Punjab Regiment. All superb fighting soldiers who respected their gunners as much as we respected them. Some ten miles north of Imphal at a village called Kanglatongbi there was a very large supply depot holding many vehicles and light anti-aircraft guns. It was reported that Japanese patrols had been seen in the village and their main force could attack at any time. Our job was to drive in convoy to this supply depot and snatch as many guns and vehicles as we could before the enemy got there.

I’ve never seen men move so quickly! The evacuation was quite skillfully organised and as each one of us entered the depot an officer or SNCO directed us to the piece of equipment we had to hitch up behind our truck. Once loaded we formed up on the road in convoy ready to go back to Imphal. But it was a tricky little operation and I was full of apprehension waiting for an outburst of firing which would have meant we had left it too late. But we had virtually cleared the depot, got back safely to lmphal and felt very fortunate when we heard next morning that the Japanese occupied Kanglatongbi during the night.

And with the cutting of the road here and at numerous points to the north and with our small garrison in Kohima locked in a life or death struggle, we in Imphal were now completely cut off from all overland supplies. The RAF and their American counterparts never flinched and did a wonderful job, sometimes in monsoon conditions when an electric storm could tear the wings off a Dakota or heavy bomber sending it uncontrollably to earth.

These are personal experiences I am writing about and I don’t intend to get bogged down in describing strategy and tactics but I must give a short quotation from HM Stationery Office publication of 1946 entitled “The Campaign in Burma”. On page 97 the author writes, “Slim had already cropped the (Imphal) garrison’s tail by marching out, or flying, 52,000 non-combatants and civilians .. . .The place of the evacuated non-combatants was filled with fighting men - some of the finest in South East Asia... .By the time the enemy approached Imphal it was not so much a defended base as an offensive springboard. So it proved.

The Japanese came near enough. They reached the crest of the hills overlooking Imphal airfield north of the town. The freshly de-planed 5th Division reinforced with tanks, dislodged the intruders and prevented their guns from doing serious damage. Tanks climbed up to the hillside bunkers to blast them at point blank range. The salvoes of the artillery rolled like thunder through the valleys.”

I must mention one interesting point about the attack on the hill where the Japanese were able to overlook the airfield. My Troop Commander, Captain John Bellman was the gunner FOO (Forward Observation Officer) with the attacking infantry on that morning. Over the radio I could hear his voice against a background of machine gun, rifle fire and grenades exploding as he calmly gave his order for us to fire in support of the infantry. For his actions during this operation, which lasted for several days, he was awarded a bar to the Military Cross he had been awarded in the Western Desert. A fine regular serving officer who, I am glad to say, survived the war in one piece.

The siege went on for two and a half months, until 22 June 1944 when the enemy had been defeated at Kohima and our troops pressing northwards from Imphal made contact with units of 33rd Corps advancing to the south.

Malaria was a terrible scourge of the British and Japanese armies in the earlier campaigns but by this time we were being issued with mepacrine tablets for preventative treatment and I never heard of anyone catching malaria who was taking his tablets daily. We had mepacrine parades every evening supervised by an officer or SNCO and a Court of Inquiry was held for any reported case of the illness. So you needed to be sure that the chap swallowed his pill. The enemy did not have these more sophisticated forms of medical treatment and suffered terribly until the end of the war. It is interesting that the Japanese had a rumour put about that mepacrine made a chap sterile and it was difficult to persuade some that this was pure enemy propaganda which was quite untrue. The pills, bright yellow in colour, gave ones skin a yellowish hue and when I got home Beryl said I looked like a Chinaman!

The siege went on for week after week with battles constantly being fought at points to the north, south and east of the plain. Ammunition was very low at times for our 25 pdr guns and it was not unusual to be rationed to five or even three rounds per gun per day which made it tough for the infantry who we were there to support. What brave men they were. By this time the monsoon rains had set in and if you were doing FOO (Forward Observation Officer) duties you would see them in a quiet period in a recess hollowed out on the reverse side of the hill with perhaps an added piece of tarpaulin to help keep off the rain. And British, Indian or Gurkha they all seemed to go about with a sort of cheerful resignation which I always thought was wonderful considering that in a few days time some of them would be killed or wounded. And it had to go on like this, month in, month out without any end in sight. Superb men, all of them. Enough of these sombre thoughts.

One thing I want particularly to mention in these recorded memories is the presence and activities of our Anglican Chaplain (Padre) James Priestner. Jimmy, as we called him, came from Lancashire, was probably about 26 years of age, had unruly hair, wore steel rimmed Army issue spectacles and always had a cheerful smile. He dressed in jungle green battle dress, wore three black ‘pips’ stitched on his epaulettes and wore a normal officer’s peaked cap. His transport was a personal Jeep in which was carried a portable altar, and apart from personal gear, all the necessary items to furnish the altar and conduct communion.

In times of danger he was the only padre I ever came across who wore a revolver on his belt and he used to say, “If the Japs get hold of me they won’t take any notice of my dog collar and I’m not going to go quietly!”  What is more he always offered his Jeep to pull a gun if the gun towing truck had broken down and was always there to help pull a vehicle stuck in the monsoon mud if that help was needed. A very memorable man and I hope that he had a happy and fulfilled life when he returned home.

I used to knock the dust of my service dress cap by holding the peak in my right hand and beating the top against the -palm of my left hand. One day my left hand went right-through the top of the cap which had of course become rotten and weakened by sun and humidity and, until it could be replaced, I had to wear a bush hat.

Well after nearly three months the siege came to an end when British and Indian forces moving south from Kohima made contact with troops of 5th Indian Division pushing northwards from Imphal. By this time we were certainly feeling the effects of living for a prolonged period on short rations and of course the strain and pressures of the war situation. After all, the alternative to beating the enemy was unthinkable and had things gone the wrong way there would have been no escape for the bulk of the allied troops on the plain.

But it was the Japanese who had been thoroughly beaten and, due to their bravery and fanaticism, when the end came they were demoralised, diseased, starving and without any reliable supplies of food or ammunition. They had lost over 10,000 counted dead in the Imphal battles alone and we had taken 49 prisoners most of whom were too sick or badly injured to carry on fighting. It is doubtful whether this number of dead to prisoner ratio was matched by any campaign throughout the war.

Things improved considerably for all of us on the Plain. Food poured in on convoys of lorries from the north and one great joy was to have fresh vegetables for the first time in three months. No less enjoyable was the restoration of beer supplies and (for officers) their ration of a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin per month. These days this sounds like a ‘class thing’ but I am sure that there was always a reasonable rum issue for the gunners.

One always gets a bit of luck in life and I had certainly had my share in Burma. With the easing of the military situation leave to India started again and my name was one of the first to come out of the hat. Wearing the clothes I stood up in, jungle green battle dress, black boots and gaiters and (now) an Australian style bush hat, I set off by Jeep to the Imphal airstrip to get on my plane going to Dum Dum, the airport for Calcutta. My only baggage was a small pack (haversack) containing toiletries and a change of underwear. At Dum Dum I climbed into the back of a 3-ton lorry with about 20 other chaps all going on leave.

The next thing I did was to go to the hotel’s barbers shop to get the full treatment - shave, haircut, scalp massage and shampoo. Many memories fade with time but that particular event was something very special!

All good things come to an end and after four weeks which seemed to pass in a flash I was back on the plane for Imphal. Somehow I had procured a new jungle green battle uniform, but from where, heaven knows - it is possible that there was a Quartermaster’s Store in the hotel. And, of course, a smart new cap purchased from the Army & Navy Stores.

It had been an enjoyable and relaxing experience, but above all I felt so much fitter and in much better general health than when I had arrived. Looking back it was probably an unpleasant attack of dysentery during June which had affected me more than I realised at the time. There are two types of dysentery, amoebic which is particularly nasty and invariably resulted in the victim being repatriated to the UK -at that time I do not think that there was any permanent cure. The more common type (which I had) was bacillary dysentery and the various particularly nasty symptoms are accompanied by griping stomach pains.

So, to get back to my main story, I arrived safely back with the Regiment and was warmly greeted by all my friends in 7 Battery. Made more warm no doubt as I had brought a dozen battles of Carew’s Indian Gin for the mess! Carew’s was a very good quality Gin and it was a custom that anyone who went on leave would bring a supply back with him for which, of course, he would be reimbursed from mess funds. But this is where my next bit of luck cropped up. For a long time General Slim had been very concerned about the state of morale in the reinforcements’ camps back in India. They were staffed in many cases by men who had been involved in some of the earlier disastrous Burma operations and many were convinced that the Japanese were invincible supermen. This of course had a demoralising effect on reinforcements passing through the camps and Slim decided that they should be staffed by officers and men who had recent battle experience and knew that such a gloomy outlook was quite unjustified.

It was a demanding but enjoyable administrative job attend­ing to the needs of the British troops who came into the camp until they were eventually posted on to one of the various units of the Division. Some would be there for a few days, some for a few weeks. But they all had to be housed, fed, kept fit and then fully ‘kitted out’ for when they moved on. Of course, I had a good staff of a Sergeant Major, several NCOs and men who knew the ropes well and were a tremendous help.

My enjoyable, and mentally restful, stay in Comilla came to an end in late March, I said my farewells all round and boarded a Dakota aircraft on the Comilla airfield bound for Myingyan, 300 miles away on the east bank of the

Irrawaddy. Here I learned that my regiment was some 50 miles away in Meiktila and with massive amounts of transport now pouring along the roads it was not long before I was able to find a truck which would take me on the last leg of my journey. In all modesty I must say I got a good welcome back and it was rather like being back again with the ‘family’.

I must digress a little from my personal memories at this point to explain why the town of Meiktila is so important. Since the defeat of the Japanese at Imphal and Kohima hard battles had been fought in many parts of Burma, including operations in the far north by Chinese/American forces, Wingate’s Chindits - fighting a major guerrilla type war also in the north and Fourteenth Army with some 12 Divisions and supporting formations battling their way forward over hundreds of miles to cross the great Irrawaddy River and capture the fortress of Mandalay. Some 60 miles south of Mandalay was situated the vital communications centre of Meiktila and here the Japanese put up tremendous resistance. Bloody hand-to-hand fighting, tank and artillery battles raged for the town and casualties were heavy on both sides, particularly for the enemy. They still had a lot of fight in them (they fight until they die!) but the Japanese army in Burma was never able to mount a serious offensive from that time on.

This thumb-nail sketch of the situation would probably horrify a serious student of the subject but I am just setting the scene for the next part of my personal experiences.

I have arrived back with 4th Field Regiment, it is the last week of March 1945 and the big push south to Rangoon was about to start.

There was one further sharp engagement for the capture of Pyawbwe some 20 miles south of Meiktila and in his superb book “Defeat into Victory” Field Marshall Slim writes “Now the straight all-out drive on Rangoon could be loosed”. Early on the morning of the 11th April, as the 17th Division cleared the battlefield and hunted down enemy stragglers, the 5^th Division went through. They were off! I stood beside the road outside Pyawbwe and saw them go. Three hundred miles and, with luck, some thirty days before the monsoon to do it in. I was sure 4 Corps would pull it off. They certainly meant to, and they looked like it; there was an air of purpose about every truck that rolled dustily by.

There are one or two incidents which particularly come to mind from this particular period. One concerns our Divisional Commander, General Robert Mansergh who until recently had been our CRA (Commander Royal Artillery). In this capacity it was claimed that he knew by name all the officers of his Divisional Artillery Regiments and he was held in high regard and with affection by all ranks.

In the present hectic situation operation orders were issued — almost daily and I used to call a meeting of my Sergeant Major and SNCOs to explain what was happening and generally keep them in the picture.

On one such occasion I could see that their attention was being distracted by something behind me. I looked round to see a big man with a red band round his hat and red tabs on his collar, quietly watching my conference. It was General Mansergh! It was a bit shattered and said something like, “Good morning sir. Would you care to take over from me?” “Not at all, French. I’m finding it most interesting and please do carry on.” So I did, and shortly he went off as quickly as he had appeared. But secretly I felt pretty pleased with myself and the chaps also were quite “chuffed” at having a visit from the great man himself!

At about 6 am one morning I was shaving (from my canvas bucket and with a steel mirror!) when I heard some of the Indian soldiers shouting and beckoning towards themselves with their arms.  Then came a sharp explosion from the far side of the railway embankment followed by a short burst of Bren gun fire - the Bren being the light machine gun used throughout the British Army. What had happened was that the Indians had seen a wounded emaciated Japanese soldier crawling towards them. They beckoned to him to surrender but with his remaining strength he threw a hand grenade at the Indian soldiers which fell far short and did no damage. There response was to give him a short sharp burst from the machine gun which sent him instantly to his ancestors! It is sad that even when at the very end of their tether they simply would not give in.

The race to reach Rangoon was going well and by 1st May the leading division, 17th Indian, under the command of General Cowan had captured the town of Pegu just 50 miles from Rangoon. In his book, “Slim, The Standard Bearer”, Ronald Lewin writes “...Rangoon was 50 miles away. But any remaining hopes that Slim’s old friend (Gen Cowan) might lead his battle-scarred force triumphantly into the city were immediately dashed. Within 24 hours heavy rain thickened into continuous torrents; the monsoon had arrived prematurely and, as waterways flooded, bridging was protracted or impossible. What should have been a swift and final thrust became a miserable crawl through mud and minefields by Cowan’s sodden infantry.”

But fortunately such an eventuality had been prepared for by Slim and his commanders and on 2nd May a sea and airborne invasion of Rangoon took place by 26th Indian Division and contact was quickly made with our forces advancing from the north.

This sealed the fate of the Japanese Army in Burma of which approximately 19,000 were trapped in an area known as the Pegu Yomas leaving some 7,500 who made their arduous and dangerous escape to the east. (These figures are taken from Louis Allen’s book “Sittang: The Last Battle”.)

Well I thought it was all over bar the shouting. But in war it doesn’t do to count your chickens and I was about to experience the most unpleasant two weeks of my whole service in Burma.  The chief objective of our forces now was preventing the escape of the Japanese forces from escaping eastward across the Mandalay-Rangoon and eventually into Thailand and comparative safety. My part in this operation was to accompany, as Forward Observation Officer, the 21st Punjab Battalion to a village in the Pegu Yomas called Mokshitwa. An unpleasant name for an unpleasant place!

Quoting from “Ball of Fire”, the history of the 5th Indian Division by Anthony Brett-James, he writes: “Here the battalion fought against the remnants of the (retreating) Japanese Army. It was an area of small hillocks covered with thick clumps of bamboo and some 5,000 enemy troops were said to be trying to escape across the road. Each day patrols of a company strength hounded the Japanese. Airstrikes and artillery concentrations were called down upon places where the Japanese were known to be. Ambushes were laid on likely escape routes. Most nights the battalion perimeter was jittered by enemy parties, and on one occasion a heavy attack was made by 150 Japanese. This was repulsed with severe loss to the assailants!”

How well I remember that attack. My Battery Commander, John Bellman had come that day to visit the position and he and I were in a slit trench below the raised floor of a Burmese hut just a few yards behind the Indian soldier’s dug-in positions. Rifle and machine gun fire blazed away during most of the night, interspersed with explosions from mortars and hand grenades. The Japanese were yelling their screams of ‘Banzai!’ and the Punjabis were responding with their own lurid battle cries. Well, these night attacks went on for two weeks and by day I used to accompany whichever company was sent out on a fighting patrol. I had several useful “shoots” on targets pointed out by the Company Commander directing fire from my guns some four or five miles back by wireless. Two signallers operated and carried the set and I also had a Bombardier assistant.

On another patrol we were suddenly fired upon by certainly more than one machine gun and as all the Indian Infantry dropped down flat, I did the same into a deep bullock cart track, rather like a shallow trench. Fortunately they were firing high and I could hear the rounds cutting through the trees above and the chopped-up leaves came fluttering down on our backs. When things got sorted out, this was one of the occasions when I managed a successful shoot with the 25 pounders.

This was the pattern of activities for the full fourteen days out each morning with a Company patrol and “jittered” or attacked each night by parties of enemy troops who were trying to escape. Mokshitwa happened to lie on one of their designated escape routes. At last we were relieved by the 4th Royal West Kents who I later heard had a bad time during their time there. I believe that one night the Japanese broke through their perimeter defenses inflicting a number of casualties before the situation was restored.

In time all the enemy troops had either escaped, been killed or died of sickness and that virtually ended most Japanese resistance in Burma but we all knew that there was still a long way to go and we hardly dared to think what lay ahead before Japan was completely defeated. A lot of reorganisation was taking place. Fourteenth Army HO moved to India to prepare for the invasion of Malaya and the troops remaining in Burma came under the command of the new 12th Army commanded by Lt Gen Sir Montagu Stopford.

My Regiment, 4th Field, with many men due for repatriation after four and in some cases five years overseas service, was transferred to 17th Indian Division which had been in action almost continuously since the Japanese invasion of Burma in early 1942. The Regiment moved to Taunggyi (pronounced Torn-gee) in the Southern Shan States where we did little more than keep the guns and vehicles maintained and carry out local foot patrols to make sure there were no Japanese stragglers in the vicinity. There were not!

I cannot remember just how long we spent in Taunggyi but I do know that we speculated constantly on when our next move would take place and what new unpleasantness this could involve.

Then, out of the blue, almost overnight, the whole thing was over. The atom bombs had been dropped, the Japanese had surrendered and the war had ended. Whatever criticisms may have been made about the use of the atom bomb, to us it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened. The dreadful prospect of having to conquer Malaya, Thailand perhaps parts of China and finally Japan itself had gone. Gone too was the prospect of thousands of lives that would have been lost in those campaigns. For we who were actually out there, it was a moment of great joy, excitement and relief. There was certainly no moral dilemma at the time and even fifty years on I feel exactly the same now as I did there.  Before long we had a large Japanese prisoner of war camp set up near to us and they ran the whole thing themselves, using their own officers and NCOs. They gave no trouble whatsoever and there was an arrangement whereby they sent a working party over to our Regimental camp each day to do such jobs as digging swill pits or latrine pits, making gravelled paths and so on. The only trouble was that they worked so hard and so fast that it was difficult to find enough work to keep them going!

The end of the war is nearly the end of my story. We have reached September 1945 and from Taunggyi, about this time, we moved to Meiktila, the scene of much fighting which I mentioned earlier. Meiktila is in a particularly dry zone of Burma and we were camped here beside a large lake. All the officers were housed in tents about 7ft long by 5ft wide and it was quite a pleasant situation. Here I received yet another stroke of luck - my name came out of the hat for a month’s leave home to England. The journey was by RAE Air Transport Command in a Dakota aircraft and converted bombers, mainly Mitchells and Sterlings.

It was a wonderful leave - we got some extra petrol for the 1937 Morris 8HP belonging to Beryl’s mother and toured the Cotswolds, visited relatives and in fact enjoyed our first real taste of married life together. But all good things come to an end and by Christmas Day 1945 I was back in a transit camp in Rangoon waiting for transport back to the Regiment.

The next seven months were quite tedious with little to do and I was glad to be on my way home once again by air in early July. A very good time to arrive home with Jayne being born on August 15th.

The last few months of my service were spent back at the Royal Artillery Depot in Woolwich and I was demobilised in October 1946, exactly five years after setting from New Street Station for Hinckley with a little attache case and a cardboard box for my gas mask.

Just one footnote. When I arrived back at the Regiment after my month’s leave home my friends greeted me with, “You’re a lucky so-and-so!” I have mentioned that when I left Meiktila we were housed in tents by the lake and it was a ritual to have a short snooze between lunch and afternoon parade at 2 O’clock. On the day I left for home a 3 ton truck had been left on the vehicle park just above our tents but without the hand brake having been applied. At 1.45 pm it ran down the hill, straight through my tent, smashing my camp bed to matchwood and coming to a halt at the water’s edge with my tent draped over the bonnet. It could have been nasty.

But then, you’ve got to have a bit of luck!

Basil French

 experiences, Basil French has included extracts from the splendid book, “Ball of Fire - The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War” by Anthony Brett-James. 

The title of the book refers to the Divisional sign which was a bright red disc on a black background. Hence, Ball of Fire. 

Since the publication of the 1st part of Basil French’s story we have received the following letter from Basil. 

Dear Sir, You have been kind enough to print the first part of my Burma story “Quite an Experience” in the current issue (No 132) of DEKHO! When I was writing this account I was unable to find out where my Troop Commander, John Bellman, won his first MC and have always believed (as I stated) that it was in the Western Desert. It was not until I read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph (9.4.98) that I learned that it was in fact for his part in the Battle of the Western Tunnels in the Arakan during March 1944 that he received this award.

I apologise to DEKHO! readers for this error.  This fine soldier achieved the rank of Brigadier and according to his obituary was ADC to Her Majesty The Queen in 1973.

Returning from home leave. Christmas Day in a Rangoon transit camp, 1945 The artist charged 10 Rs - 75p!

Basil French Stratford-upon-Avon  

 

Spring 2000 DEKHO!

 

 

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