大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Barbara Hoblin of the Chineham Learning Centre on behalf of Harry Moore and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

I was born in 1926, my generation lived with the aftermath of the First World War 鈥� father, uncles telling us how dreadful war was and in retrospect we have not learnt anything.

At 14 I was an apprentice in London and saw London blitzed. The building I worked in was destroyed and the company opened new premises in Kent where the world took on a less hazardous frame.

The Battle of Britain came along and shook us back into the realities of war and the expectation of invasion. At 16 I volunteered for the Home Guard in Sevenoaks, Kent. When the invasion was anticipated every fourth night we stood guard in wooded areas with a Browning automatic rifle and told to shoot anything that was hanging from a parachute. We still had to do our five and a half hour week at work. At 18 I volunteered for the Navy, had a navy medical at Chatham but was put into the Army because the European War was coming to an end and the force that needed the most men was the army to take the Japanese out of South-East Asia. By the time I had been trained and posted the War was virtually over and I saw my service end with two and a half years in Burma with the Royal Signals as a wireless operator.

During my time in Burma I realised what a dreadful time the Burmese people had endured merely because they were part of the British Empire. I felt a great affection for the Burmese people and although I could speak a little Urdu my Burmese was dreadful, however I used to talk to them and try to understand what they felt about what had happened to them. During my many conversations, or attempted conversations, with local people I gathered the impression that they had a name for me, for wherever I went I appeared to be called 鈥淕ONGLIE鈥�. I never did discover what GONGLIE meant but felt it must have been a nickname resulting from something of my character or appearance.

Christmas 2003 I discovered how I had earned my title. A young lady came to visit an elderly neighbour and she was introduced to me as a Burmese studying medicine in the UK. I asked her rather tentatively to explain the name GONGLIE. She looked thoughtful for many minutes and said I do not know the name GONGLIE because in Burmese it means 鈥淚 DO NOT UNDERSTAND鈥�. After 57 years I now understood that I wasn鈥檛 so successful in having my questions answered but the good grace with which they listened to me said so much about the people that lived in this sad country, who are still living under a soulless regime. So we should remember that the war that gave us freedom did not free all mankind.

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