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Wilfrid Clarke-WW2 Experiences

I write this account for my father, Wilfrid Clarke who spent most of the Second World War in Burma.

Wilfrid Clarke enlisted in the Territorial Army early in 1939. In August 1939, soon after his 20th Birthday he reported to the drill hall expecting to attend an annual summer camp, but instead found himself in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. During this period, which became known as the ‘phoney war’ he spent much of his time helping with the grape harvest practising his schoolboy French!

As the Germans advanced and British troops withdrew, Wilfrid’s section went to St.Nazare to get on a ship returning to England. When they arrived the ship was already fully laden with troops, so they travelled further round the Normandy coast to Brest where they managed to board a vessel and arrived safely back in England in June 1940 three weeks after the evacuation at Dunkirk. They learned later that the ship they had been due to travel from St.Nazare was sunk soon after departure from the French coast.

In June 1942, the young electrician from South London now in the Royal Corps of Signals was posted to Bangalore in India, then to Mhow where he received a commission. Second Lieutenant Clarke was stationed at Imphal on the Indian/Burmese border in late 1942 as part of the 14th Army 4th Corps-whose badge symbol shows a black elephant.

In March 1944 the unit was besieged in the Imphal Admin Box by Japanese troops and became trapped for about 3 months during the siege and ferocious battles at Imphal and Kohima, until the Japanese withdrew in June 1944. Wifrid reports that the food was pretty awful at first until the Australian Air Force began parachuting in fresh meat, a welcome change from Spam! Washing facilities were basic, i.e. non-existent until large canvas tubs were erected and filled with water, which you stood in to complete ablutions. If you needed a clean shirt you washed the one you had on in the river and hung it on a bush where it dried fairly quickly.

Wilfrid’s company was maintaining and installing communications and recalls the exhausting experience of being up to ones knees in mud, carrying coils of heavy cable and equipment up the steep hillsides of the Silchar track.

As Japanese soldiers withdrew Wilfrid’s unit were installing telecommunications equipment when a young Japanese soldier, left behind by retreating troops handed himself in to the headman of a nearby village. As the working party were the nearest British presence, the soldier was duly handed over. Apparently his appearance was somewhat dishevelled and he didn’t smell too fragrant as he had been living in the jungle on a handful a rice a day for months. Wilfrid wasn’t sure what to do with him and was thankful when a unit of Military Police turned up and relieved him of his captive.

The River Irrawaddy varies in width from about ½ a mile to 2 miles in places and flows at around 5-6 knots i.e. fast. As there were no landing craft (these were all in Europe) and the river was too wide to link pontoons in the normal way the Indian Army Engineers lashed outboard motors to individual pontoon sections and troops and equipment crossed the river in this way, a precarious journey taking about ½ an hour.

The 14th Army retook Rangoon on 3rd May 1945 and the Japanese surrendered on the 15th August 1945. Wifrid, now Captain Clarke stayed with the army in Pegu 50miles North of Rangoon until the end of war. On the ship on the way back to England, he caught sight of himself in a full length mirror in the wash room and was shocked to find that he was so thin that he could see his ribs clearly enough to count them! The ship arrived in Liverpool in January 1946 and Wifrid was demobilised in August 1946, just after his 26th Birthday.

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