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A JOURNEY THROUGH WORLD WAR TWO My call-up papers arrived just after
my 20th birthday in May 1940. I opted for the army, was medically classified Al
and allocated to the rank of Private, No 7382066. Having had a secondary
education and having been in the OTC at Grantham Kings School, passing the Cert.
A examination for cadets I was qualified to train to be an Officer (some of the
pupils of my year did so, one or two becoming RAF pilots). But I did not have
the courage or the ambition to aim as high as that, though I was happy to serve
as a private soldier. The Nazis were beginning to overrun Europe, their
atrocities against the Jews had already begun and I was therefore amply
convinced that I would be taking part in a just war. I
was living in Dorking, Surrey and working as a bank clerk there, and on 2nd July
1940 I was posted to a newly formed Royal Army Medical Corps unit - the 215
Field Ambulance at Guilford. The unit comprised about 200 men, some from the St
John Ambulance or with other nursing experience but the vast majority of us had
been placed in the RAMC quite arbitrarily without any reference to civilian
occupations. There was a small sprinkling of regular soldiers. Our Officers
numbered about 20, mostly recently qualified doctors and the unit also had about
50 Royal Army Service Corps drivers for the lorries and ambulances. After barely
a months basic training we were ordered overseas, issued with tropical kit and
given 48 hours home leave. I remember having to write out all the rail passes as
I was rash enough to admit to having had some office experience - I was far more
cautious thereafter! We weren’t told where we bound for, but were fairly sure
it was the Middle East. In Egypt we had a few days leave and I was able to visit
Cairo seeing the Pyramids and the Sphinx. After a couple of weeks we were
hastily shipped out again - this time to India, as the Japanese had overrun
Malaya and Burma and were preparing to attack India. Our entire Brigade of 5,000
men was put on the ‘Mauretania’ which was then brand new and capable of a
high speed and could therefore travel without Naval escort. There was scarcely
room to move but the journey from Suez to Bombay took only about three days. Our
first station in India was Poona, 100 miles inland from Bombay. We lived in
style in barracks which had been used by the regular army - a luxurious
existence compared with the nomadic way of life we were used to - we had the
services of all the camp followers associated with the Indian Army - char-wallahs,
dhobies, munshies etc. We acclimatised for a week or two but it was becoming
oppressively hot before the breaking of the monsoon. In April/May 1942 we
journeyed from Poona right across India by lorry (covering only about 100 miles
a day as none of the roads was metalled at that time except in the big cities),
finishing up in Bihar Province at a place called Khunti near Ranchi about 200
miles west of Calcutta. We
left the Ranchi area in May 1943, a year to the day after we had first arrived.
A Japanese force had invaded the Arakan area in Southeast Bengal & our
Division -now re-numbered the 70th and under General Slim’s command, was sent
there. We were at Chittagong and Cox’s Bazaar; there were no large battles but
the Japs were held and eventually withdrew. We had to deal with many dysentery
& malaria cases - the climate was the worst we had experienced with extreme
heat & humidity, and most of us had lost our appetites, probably having a
touch of jaundice. The local peasantry were in the midst of a serious famine -
our army had a large surplus of food & fed thousands of them but it was only
a drop of the ocean. Altogether a most depressing time but it didn’t last
long. We were sent to Bangalore in South India - ten days on the train. The
climate there was cool & fresh, and with plenty of good food we recovered
health. What I remember most about that area is the remarkable quality of the
light - at certain times of day it was almost as if you were looking through
blue & green, when nearby hills seemed to take on those colours. Also the
moonlight was exceptionally brilliant - I recall seeing a ‘moonbow’; a
rainbow in the light of the moon. From there we had another period of leave.
This time to the hill station of Ootacamund in Mysore State, going through
impressive mountain scenery on the Nilgiri Railway - a rack railway which is now
featured in the ‘Great Railway Journies of the World’ video series. Our
party was ‘Chalky’ White, Arthur Lesley, Fred and myself. It is a tea
growing area -one of the plantations offered a cheap postal service sending tea
to the UK. I ordered a six-month supply which was duly delivered home as a
welcome addition to their ration. We also visited Madras, seeing the church on
the site of the martyrdom of St Thomas the Apostle. During
the Arakan expedition of 1943, General Wingate’s force of Long Range
Penetration Groups (LRPG’s) - the ‘Chindits’ - had been raised from
regular soldiers and their heroic exploits have been well publicised; although
militarily speaking that operation was only a limited success. Despite this, it
was decided to repeat the operation when the expected Japanese invasion of India
took place. The task was allocated to our 23rd Brigade, as by this time we had
spent many months in Central India training as LRPG columns. This training was
very tough, with the deliberate intention of making it physically harder than we
were likely to experience during the actual operation. The Brigade was re-named
‘Special Force’ under the command of General Pereowne (Wingate had been
killed in an air crash). Some of the columns were to go beyond the Japs on foot
with mules & supplied by air: with other columns to be flown in by the RAF.
I joined the footslogging section voluntarily as most of my friends were to in
it. I was lucky, as the ones who were flown in had to go in gliders towed behind
planes, which released the gliders on to the jungle airstrips behind the Jap.
But they did not have the advantage of surprise (as our columns did) and some of
the gliders crashed. All in all they had a much worse time than we did. The
Japanese invasion reached Imphal & Kohima in Assam, and were held there by
British & Indian forces of the 14th Army. The decisive battle was at Kohima
with heavy losses on both sides and the defeated Japs began to retreat. During
this time our columns went in from Mokochaung in the Naga Hills, the furthest
outpost that could be reached by track. Everyone on our columns was armed
including medics, as Japan was not party to the Geneva Convention and was
indiscriminately torturing and killing prisoners, so our troops had orders to
take no prisoners. But fewer Japs were found and killed than had been expected,
so our operation was probably no more effective than the earlier Chindit
operation had been. Each
of our columns was of about 120 men with 5 Officers, and around 20 mules to
carry the heavy equipment. The troops were mostly infantry but included a
Signals section- vital for radio contact between columns; and with HQ for
arranging the air drops. (The medical section was an Officer and five men
including a muleteer.) Our Officer was Major Nicholas - ‘Nick’ to all of us
- he had been a GP, and at 40 he was the oldest man on the column. The rest of
the section was Sgt Len Nunn, Bob Marsh, Johnny Wells and myself - at just 24 I
was, I think, the youngest on the column. Our muleteer’s name was Stringfellow
and the mule, ‘Lady’. Each
of us carried a sten gun, 150 rounds of ammunition, two hand grenades, a
standard water bottle, a chagal, which is a canvas container for extra water
(essential in that climate), a waterproof groudsheet, a blanket, a towel, a
dixie & mug and five days’ supply of food - mostly hard stuff in the form
of K-rations. To accommodate all this the standard army pack had been enlarged
(just for us - I have never heard of it being done in any other theatre of war!)
by having two extra pouches sewn on the sides. The whole lot was frequently
soaking wet as we were entirely in the open, day and night. We
set off Southeast from Mokokchaung, more or less along the Assam/Burma border.
The maps showed ‘border undefined’ (in fact the border was in dispute &
I think it still is), so we never knew for certain whether we were in Assam or
Burma. The Naga tribesman were hostile to the Indians as well as the Japs, but
they welcomed the British and were most helpful in showing our troops the
whereabouts of the retreating Japs. Our column included an interpreter; he was
the only civilian and didn’t have to carry anything. One of our columns had a
detachment of Gurkhas - being hillmen the Nagas were friendly to them too. The
terrain was mountainous with spectacular views, and the area would have been a
plant hunter’s paradise - I have never seen flowers like the orchids that were
growing under the trees as profusely as bluebells in the woods back home. We
covered a distance of about 400 miles over a period of about three months.
Leeches were a constant nuisance but we experienced worse - an outbreak of
typhus spread by lice. When Nick diagnosed this he immediately ordered a supply
drop of new clothing for the entire force. All our old clothing including boots
were burned and this stopped the spread of the disease & undoubtedly saved
many lives. But nearly all of those who had already caught the typhus died -
there were dozens. Unfortunately
there was no way we could evacuate casualties. It was impossible to make even a
small airstrip in the mountainous terrain and there were no helicopters. They
were probably all in Europe being used for the second front -the news of D-day
came through to us a few days after it happened. So we had to take the
casualties along with us using Naga tribesmen paid as bearers - as many as 8 men
to a stretcher supported on long bamboo poles over the roughest of trails (we
were over 8,000 feet up in places). At one point we were only three days walk
from the nearest outpost of the 14th Army, so all the sick and wounded who could
still walk (about 150 men from all the columns) made their way out on foot under
the care on Len Nunn - we stayed put for a week until Len came back safely
alone, a great relief since one of the columns had seen a tiger in the vicinity
a few days previously. We
received air drops of food etc, every 5 days, from Dakotas. Our section’s
hands were full the whole time, but we had unexpected help at one point. One of
the men who was pushing supplies out of the plane at an air drop fell out of the
plane without a parachute, but miraculously he was able to save himself by
clinging on to a bale as it came down on its parachute! Having no equipment he
was detailed to help us for a time, and made himself very useful. Eventually
we came to a Naga village where there was a tiny flat cultivated area backing up
against the mountainside, about 30 yards square and with an almost vertical drop
at the front. Here two very small light aircraft were called up and were able to
land. They each had a metal frame welded to the outside and a stretcher with the
casualty strapped to it would be fastened there. At full power the aircraft was
moving just fast enough at the edge to plunge over the drop and become
successfully airborne. They made several trips and some of the worst casualties
were evacuated that way - the pilots were American volunteers, we had often
poured scorn on the American’s exaggerated claims of how they were winning the
war, but in my opinion no praise can be too high for the skill and daring of
those pilots. We
finally came out at a place called Ukhrul. From that point the track was
‘jeepable’ to the nearest road, do we got the rest of the casualties away by
road. I had had tonsillitis during the most of our ‘walk’ and by the time we
got out it was better. During the last fortnight or so we had been carrying a
man from the Border Regt whose ankle and foot had almost been blown off. He was
in a Thomas’s splint for the whole of that time - a Thomas’s splint was not
supposed to be used for more than an hour or two, but it (and his determination)
enabled him to keep his foot. Also, one of the typhus cases suffered the worst
of the illness whilst he was being carried along and he came through it all and
practically recovered at the end. The recovery of those two cases gave us a lot
of satisfaction. despite (or perhaps because of) the difficulties of that
campaign our morale was higher than at any previous time. We were sufficiently
experienced to work without military discipline: we were able to rely on each
other and had full confidence in our Officer and he in us. From
Ukrul we had only one more days walk, then went by road to Imphal then by plane
(Dakota) to a transit camp at Dacca. Whilst there I met someone I had known in
‘civvy street’ - Frank Lury who was a son of the house where I had been
lodging when I was called up. He worked in a NAAFI. Previously in India I had
met George Steer - a family and school friend who was in the Pay Corps,
stationed at Allahabad. Travelling through there I had a couple of hours to
spare and fortunately found him. Also, one day in Calcutta I bumped into Ron
George, and was amazed to see him in Officer’s uniform. After leaving the 215
in the desert he had been transferred into Public Relations, having done similar
work in civilian life, and the rank just went with the job. But I remained
parted from my own brother Anthony for well over six years. He served as a
despatch rider (motorcycle) with the 4th Royal Tank Regt, landing in North
Africa with the 1st Army, but by then I was in India. After the end of the North
African campaign Anthony went through the Italian campaign, during which time he
met a mutual friend of our schoolboy days, Robert Edwards, who had gained a
commission in the Royal Engineers. Anthony
was not demobilised until about six months after me having been called up later. The
word to leave came at the end of November and we entrained for Deolali near
Poona, and thence to Bombay for embarkation. Our troopship was the ‘Otranto’,
a P&O liner. By that time the Mediterranean was open to shipping and we
travelled via the Suez Canal (spending Xmas day at Alexandria - my fifth
consecutive Xmas overseas) and Gibraltar. In the Bay of Biscay we hit
exceptionally heavy weather; I have a vivid memory of even forgetting my
seasickness at the sight of other ships in the convoy and realising how badly we
were pitching when I saw a full one-third of the hull of the next linercoming
rightout of the water each time, with yards-long festoons of weed hanging down
below. It was a bleak morning in January 1945 when we docked at Liverpool. On
the approach up the Mersey we were kept below decks - the ship would have lost
its trim in the narrow channel if we had been allowed to line the rail at one
side. we docked just as dawn broke, and were only then allowed on deck, but we
were greatly disappointed to find there was no one whatsoever in view on the
quay. It seemed there was gong to be no welcome and therefore no way of
releasing our four or five years of pent-up emotion - when a solitary policeman
in uniform suddenly appeared from a small hut. He got the loudest and most heartfelt
cheer I have ever heard. From
Liverpool by train to the RAMC depot in Surrey and then home for seven days
leave. Incidentally I had met on the ship coming back another person from
Grantham who I knew - his name was Robins and he was in the REME. I remember the
local paper reported the return of both of us. I
had a home leave at Christmas 1945, and was still serving at Peinne, Germany
when my time for demobilisation came up. I was finally demobilised at Strensall,
near York in August 1946, still with the rank of Private, still medically Al,
and with a gratuity of, of I think, about £120, and a demob suit, returning to
my old job at the bank in September 1946. (Pte
JR Roberts was mentioned in a despatch, published in the London Gazette on 19
July 1945 along with four other members of his column.)
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