大象传媒

WITH THE MONSOON TROOPS IN BURMA

BY ALFRED J BIRKETT

This is part 2 of an edited version of an interview by Nina Koch on 18th May 2004. The original recording and full transcript are held in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive, ref. BAHS 114. 漏 Basingstoke Talking History

Part 1 describes experiences in Ceylon. Part 3 recounts some odd events in Burma.

WITH THE EAST AFRICAN RIFLES IN BURMA
The Division took over from the Royal West Kents who had held the Jap at bay at Kohima, which is near Infal. It is a well-known battle across the tennis courts. The opposition was just the other side of the tennis courts and they held them. When the Royal West Kents pulled out the 11th East African Division moved in to push the Japs back.

MONSOON TROOPS
We were what you would call Monsoon troops. We went in at the beginning of the Monsoon and although I had seen heavy rain in Ceylon, I had never seen so much rain in my life as at the start of the Monsoons in Burma. To give some idea, I had with my platoon a 6 x 6 Dodge, which is a Dodge that has six wheels and is driven on six wheels . Nowadays there are 4 x 4s but it was just chance that we had the Dodge. I was with the advance party of my platoon and we crossed the river round about half past four in the afternoon, it was getting misty and the rest of the platoon were supposed to follow on the next morning. Overnight the river rose to make the crossing impossible so they went down one side of the river and I, with the 6 x 6 Dodge and about ten Africans, went down the other side. The Jap did not know who we were because they knew the West Africans were on another front but they did not know anything about the East Africans.
[NOTE The Dodge WC 62 and WC 63 (basically the same truck with and without winch) were stretched 6 x 6 (1.5 ton) versions of the 4 x 4 ( 3/4 ton) " Weapons Carrier" which was one of the standard light trucks of the period. Introduced late 1942 or early '43 and in production to the end of the war. They were much smaller and lighter than the ordinary 6 x 6 truck which was a 2.5 ton truck, and so the Dodges would be much more suitable for use in the small muddy tracks of the area. In real mud they were fitted with six sets of tyre chains and the winches were used extensively.]
We were the Monsoon troops, in other words we fought through the Monsoon. We got soaking wet when it was raining; when it stopped raining and the sun came out we were soaking wet with perspiration, so we were continuously wet. You had to be careful when you made camp because you had to wait until the mist was forming. We found out to our cost that if you made camp when there was no mist, Jap could find out and send in what we used to call 鈥楯itterbug Parties鈥�. They used to go: 鈥淗ello Tommy, How are you, Tommy? We鈥檙e over here, Tommy,鈥� and we found out that if you used the rifle or the Sten or whatever it was, the flash would give your position away. After two or three nights of this and wet pants, we decided this was not the game so we used to take in stones and sticks. When Jap came along for his jackpot we used to throw sticks and stones. If we heard a movement then we used to toss over a grenade and we found that after about a fortnight we lost the Jitterbug Parties.

MAKING ROADS
There were several actions not with my Brigade. We had three Brigades in the Division, the 21st, the 25th and the 26th and the idea was there would be one in action, one resting and one making roads. 鈥楳aking roads鈥�, meant cutting down trees and making a log road. So you had the 25th Brigade in action, 26th Brigade resting, 21st Brigade making roads, and then you would jump over and over and rest one, one would come out and then the next one would come in, and so on. The Japanese positions were all in 鈥榝oxholes.鈥� They were positions dug into the side of hills and places with just slits and so on. What we had to do was very hard, you could not use a rifle or a Sten because it would give your position away, We used to go in with pangas and grenades. Pangas are big long knives, I have one now as a momento. We used to put these grenades into the slit trench and go at them with the panga.

You could never recover any wounded because all our wounded we found, had their throats cut by the Japanese. Although personally I never lost any Africans that way, the people who told me about it are the people of our Battalions of the 21st Brigade and also the 25th Brigade. They said, 鈥楾ake no prisoners,鈥� -what we could have done with prisoners I do not know because we were miles away from anywhere.

The whole thing was fluid. Once upon a time they used to say, Form a square,鈥� but we found if you formed a square, all they had to do was find one side of the square and toss in grenades over that side and it was right in the middle of the square, which was rather awkward!

Somebody had the bright idea of bringing in a squadron of 鈥楽tuart鈥� tanks. The Stuart tanks were manned by Punjabis who liked their chapattis and so on. They made a nice little fire and, being monsoon, there was loads of smoke. The RAF came over and saw loads of smoke, thought it was the Japanese position, bombed them and knocked out half the squadron of Stuart tanks. We could not use the Stuart tanks at all because we only had two left. What we did get was a couple of pieces of artillery and that made all the difference to us. You used to point this gun straight at the foxhole, once it was sighted, and blast it. What the shell did not kill were killed with concussion. My experience of actually killing Japanese is with the big gun and not by hand, except at night-time I may have killed some in the Jitterbug parties I do not know. We did not find any and we did not go looking for them because if we found them we would not know what to do with them.

If you went sick - for instance, we had loads of fever - a Lysander would come in during the break in the monsoon. The sick person would be taken out and they would go way back yonder to the base and you would never see them again. As it meant never seeing your friends and equipment again, you would try and soldier on as best you could. I used to wear so many pants inside my shorts because I had constant dysentery all the time I was there. It was not too bad because you could wash them out and hang them out to dry.

What we did do, we made the road as we went along and it helped a lot. I used to go along with a Panga and mark the trees for the Dodge to follow me. We used to do about fifteen to twenty miles a day the result being that we did not run quite as fast as the Japanese retreated, but we nearly did. There was about half to three quarters of a mile gap we could have closed, but there was a division and a half of Japanese, including the Imperial Guard. We did not get them but we made the road, which was a great asset to the Second Division when they took over from us after Kalewa.

The road we built started just after Tamu and finished at Kalewa, where you find the Nagas. They were very strong little fellows, dressed in black. Then you came to other various tribes of Burmese, but they were nowhere to be seen in the villages. The natives were very canny, they used to go and hide in the mountains, and I mean mountains!

RUST OR RAIT?
There is a snake in Burma called a Krait. To try and get some sleep we would build a bed above ground level, of trees and branches but, if we were on the side of a mountain, we had to tie our boots to one of the bedposts because if it rained heavily it would take the boots down the side of the mountain and you would be bootless. When you awoke in the morning you always turned your boots upside down and shook them because these little snakes used to get in your boots: If you did not, they were deadly.

We used to carry a razorblade in the puggary of our bush-hats. The puggary in the bush hat is the cloth that goes around the brim and we used to keep the razorblade in there. The idea was to cut the vein either side of where you were bitten so the poison would come out and you would reduce the damage. The trouble was in monsoon weather whenever you looked at the razor blade there was more rust than anything. I am not quite sure whether we would have got rust poisoning or snake poisoning.

PARACHUTE DROPS
On top of that we had to prepare dropping zones for the aircraft, which were Dakotas. Bags of rice would be dropped 鈥渇ree fall鈥� and other things came down by parachute. Parachutes were very good because we could use them for sheets and they were lovely to wrap yourself round in. When you are in a mountainous country it gets very cold at night: in the monsoon weather it gets damp and cold and it was lovely after army blankets to have these parachutes, it was lovely, really lovely.

There were different grades of petrol and 87 octane was the Stuart tank petrol, 80 octane was a car, lorry and such like petrol, 90 and suchlike was aircraft petrol. The petrol dropped was 87 octane for the tanks and all I had was that old Dodge 6 x 6 which ran on 80. It was lucky we had some oil with us so I used to reduce the octane with oil in the petrol and that was when my expertise with petrol came in. We had people cleaning the plugs because they get sooted up. But we did it. We even got to Kalewa 14 days ahead of schedule.

REACHING KALEWA
Kalewa is a town on the Chindwin river, very mountainous and bushy. In crossing the river at Kalewa, we had to make a raft to take the Dodge across. The Japs had put oil all along the far bank, the idea being to set it alight as we came across. Behind that was elephant grass, stacks and stacks of elephant grass which meant that you could not have bare flesh because it could cut. It was sharp and you could get scratched and goodness knows what. On top and back of that were cliffs and in the face of these cliffs they planted the artillery. As I came across on the raft with the Dodge I was shelled and I got wetter than I did in the monsoon because they missed me and hit the water. We managed to get to the far bank and under the bank. We had to wait there and then the bigwigs in their wisdom said, 鈥榁ery well done, well done, marvellous you did that, now form a 12 mile bridgehead.鈥�

The idea might have been good but the trouble was we had told our Africans that as soon as we took Kalewa we were going to pull out, we were going home on leave. The Africans had taken this literally so we had some trouble. We managed to get round it by bringing in another tribe where there was a bit of tribal rivalry, so of course we managed to form this 12 mile bridgehead.

CONVALESCENT LEAVE
We had to pull out on Christmas Day for convalescence at Dimapur and my Christmas Day dinner was a dry biscuit and a cup of tea in a YMCA tent that we found on the way. There were two, an African and myself, both down with the same type of fever. It was not malaria, but I do not know what it was. We were scared to go sick because if you did you lost everything and we had to see it through. The African, I am sad to say, died - he was a nice boy - but I managed to tell the tale.

When we got to Dimapur we were sent on convalescent leave and a lot went to Simla. This was a resort up in the mountains popular with Governor Generals and such like where you had snow in the Himalayas. The trouble was the clothing they had to wear was old army clothing grey with moth preservative. It looked terrible and after feeling it I thought, 鈥業 can鈥檛 do that.鈥� Others went up there and got snowed in for three weeks, so what convalescence they got I have no idea. Lenny and I decided we would not go to Simla but go across India for convalescent leave. We finished up at Lucknow and that was as far as we got because of the Welsh Regiment who had a depot there. Having the Burma Star was like an 鈥榦pen sesame鈥� to all those messes and officers鈥� clubs and being East Africans as well gave us extra kudos because they did not know what we were about.

D-DAY AND AFTER
Everybody rejoiced on D -day but we were still out there with the Africans, and Jap was still going strong. We had to wait for the landing craft to come over from Europe because our next objective was going to be French Indo China. We were on the exercise that you had before you embarked to go into action when they dropped the H-bomb. So we never saw Indo China but repatriation was deferred to deal with the Africans because we had to look after our Africans. They wanted to fly me home but I said I would rather go home by boat and there were 12 people in our draft in the Division who had similar ideas. We all came home and the first sight I remember was coming up from Southampton docks: chickens in the back gardens looked like white clouds. They looked marvellous. Although we were told when we got to India that chickens were a rupee, 1/6d in old money, when we looked at them they were chickens, but not much bigger than pigeons. You could not roast them, for instance; you had to boil them to eat them. When we came home and I saw these beautiful white chickens it was the most perfect sight.

I came home to my dear wife and young daughter, who I think had been five weeks old when I left. Everything was on points and ration and she offered me sliced Californian peaches. I could not face them because what she didn鈥檛 realise was that during one of the airdrops, all they dropped were tinned peaches, seven pound tins of tinned peaches. Once you had opened a seven pound tin of peaches you had to eat them more or less the same day, the same time more or less, because if you did not there was a little black fly which used to get in there and cause dysentery.

I returned without many of the presents I had purchased before Burma. They and other possessions were stolen from a tin trunk I hd left in 鈥渟afe storage鈥� as we went into Burma.

The war had its moments but it was six years of my life I wished it had not taken, put it that way. And that鈥檚 the end of my War.

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