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The voyage from Colombo took eight days, all of which were a little hazardous. There were a number of submarine alerts which luckily did not materialize into attacks, due no doubt to the vigilance of our destroyer escort. We disembarked at Chittergong on the 8th June. I remember Chittergong then as a ‘filthy shambles’. When I revisited the port during a trip to Bangladesh as a consultant in 1990 or 91 it did not seem to be a hell of a lot better.
We began to get organised to move up country, this took the best part of three weeks. This was due chiefly to the chaotic local arrangements for discharging our cargo of gear and equipment by lighters to shore. When we about to move at the end of the month, I went down with amoebic dysentery and was shipped off into hospital. I spent the next three weeks there. So the Division went off into the blue leaving me with one 15 cwt. truck, one personal ‘boy’ Muindi, and instructions ‘to get back up’ as soon as maybe. They went off up country heading for Imphal.
I was in the Military Hospital there from 30th June until discharged on 21st of July, well looked after by the local nurses and the one or two QA’s stationed there. One of them, trying to be helpful, did me a bit of no good towards the end of my stay. She gave me a large slug of locally made whisky. Locally made whisky in those days was akin to petrol and did nothing for my insides! During the whole of this time Muindi, billeted in the hospital lines, was probably having a gay old time with very little to do. He came to see me every morning to see if I wanted anything and then beetled off until another visit in the evening.
Three days after being discharged I thought that I would be off back to the Division but no, the senior MO at the hospital insisted that I took some sick leave. He suggested Shillong which was in the hills on the way up to Imphal where the Division had now pitched up. So off we went, Muindi and I in our 15 cwt. truck. Some way before reaching Shillong two days later I had to make many excursions into the bush with my trowel and I soon realised that all was not well with my tummy.
When we got to Shillong I managed to find a small unit with an MO. Having heard my story and with no Army medical facilities in Shillong, he promptly shipped me off into the local Welsh Mission Hospital. This was a very small unit set up in the hills in peace time to convert ‘the heathens’ to Christianity and look after their ills.
The hospital had only a dozen or so beds and was run by a doctor and two Welsh nuns. All three were absolutely charming and very good at their job. They were assisted by very little Naga nurses who could not have been more than 12 or 14 years old. They spoke no English and were always very cheerful, grinning from ear to ear. They came from the Naga Hills where, I was told, not too long ago they were pretty barbaric and reputed to be inclined to cannibalism. These nurses used to come into my room, in pairs, to change sheets, etc. I donÃŒt know who was more terrified, them or me. Very early on the Doc decided that not only had I had amoebic dysentery but that I now had bacillary dysentery as well. He said that I probably had both at the same time that should have been diagnosed at the Military Hospital in Chittergong at the beginning. I remained there, most of the time in bed, for two weeks.
During this time I became extremely bored. Other than one old copy of the Financial Times that had been sent out to the Doc, there was almost nothing to read. I remember reading that FT from cover to cover and, out of curiosity, looked at the price of Burma Oil shares. As far as I remember they were about four pence ha’penny. At that time my pay was being paid into my account at the National Provincial Bank in Maidstone. My mother had power of attorney and the bank had my instructions to buy a certain amount of National Saving certificates each month. After 5 years of war, there was therefore quite a reasonable credit balance building up. I thought, rather vaguely I admit, ‘I must write to the bank manager and tell him to buy a few Burma Oil shares since I’m in the ruddy country’. Of course I never got around to it. It was a bit galling to see them rocket up so high after the war.
On the 7th of August they chucked me out of the Welsh Mission but insisted that I stayed in Shillong for a bit of sick leave. I mooched around doing nothing for a couple of weeks and left to rejoin the Division now just short of Palel with a guy called Bobby Thorp on the 22nd. Who or what he was I cannot remember. I rejoined Div HQ two days later just south of Palel where one of the brigades had just flushed out some Japs.
My tummy was still playing up and so the ADMS insisted that I go and have a check up at the CCS (Casualty Clearing Station). Here an enthusiastic young medico decided that he would try out his new toy, recently arrived from home, a telescopic instrument for inspecting oneÃŒs innards from the backside. It was a most undignified procedure, particularly on a table in a tent! The end result was that he decided I had a round worm causing the latest trouble. I must have picked it up from some food eaten while on sick leave. So back I went into the nearest Military Hospital for two days while they got rid of it.
I got back at last to Div HQ in the middle of a flap. We moved shortly to ËRhino HillÌ at Moreh which remained our operational HQ for nearly six weeks. During this period, on separate occasions, both Lord Louis Mountbatten, CinC Combined Operations and General Slim the 14th Army Commander paid us visits. Mountbatten was in great form, while he sat on the tailboard of a 3 ton truck, he bemoaned his fate as a ‘desk walla’. He told us quite a bit about what was going on elsewhere in the World, wished us well and said that he would like to be coming too. Slim came by a few days later and gave us a down to earth pep talk but in doing so had a twinkle in his eye that made it quite acceptable. He was not quite so ‘steely’ as our own man.
In the mean time the three brigades were moving forward through the jungle driving the Japs in front of them. They grouped their own HQs in the Khampat area. All this was being done in monsoon weather. We were always soaking wet and leather boots went green overnight. We were now in our third monsoon in a row. Two of them we had consecutively at the opposite ends of Ceylon while ‘jungle training’ and now this one that started soon after we left Chittergong.
Most of the fighting was of the type used by guerrillas in which the Japs would make sporadic attacks at several points at once and then quickly retire. Our Africans soon found that a short sharp charge with a lot of yelling while whirling their pangas around their heads put the fear of all the Japanese gods in the heads of the opposition. They rapidly disappeared. Rifle and machine gun fire merely invited them to stand firm in a suicidal attitude and retaliate. Following them up was particularly hazardous as they left behind them cunningly camouflaged pits with upward pointed spikes of sharpened bamboo carefully adorned with rotting meat. Falling into these pits ensured pretty certain blood poisoning.
I had managed to get my three brigade workshops up as far as Rhino Hill and some of the LADs up with the brigades and field regiments. The Lof C workshop had been left back at Imphal and was no longer under my command. Rhino Hill was at the head of the Kaladan valley leading down to Kalewa, a bit north of Mandalay where the rivers Kaladan, Chinwin and Irawaddy meet.
Up to this point I had been short of three officers and a number of NCO tradesmen. They finally turned up from the UK having chased after us through India and what is now Bangladesh. Most of them were first class and settled down very well to conditions that none of them had ever dreamt of before - except one! He was a major and had come out to replace one of my three brigade workshop COs who had been invalided back to Mombassa. He was a regular, five years my senior and, into the bargain, a complete bloody twit. He had come from a succession of units stationed in the UK and this was his first active service posting. My initial reaction at our first meeting was not good. He inferred that now he was here, everything would be all right. He would bring me up to date and show me how it all should be done! Unfortunately for him this was not too good a start.
Very early it became evident that he had not got even an elementary idea command and man management. Putting him in charge of a complement of Europeans and several different tribes of Africans within a unit, was disastrous. Within a week I had him on the mat. I told him that I recognised that he needed time to settle down to the conditions he found himself in. However he was no longer in the middle of the UK, albeit being dive bombed and doodled bugged, but in Burma jungle with African Troops and that his attitude must change. His general reaction was close to insubordination! Two weeks later I had him in to Div HQ and told him that if he did not pull his socks up, he was out. This of course was my mistake. Even in 1944, in the Burmese jungle, in wartime, there was a procedure to be followed! And I did not know it.
I gave him another week and finally went to the General and told him that he was useless and had to go. I said that I intended to prepare an Adverse Report. ‘All right’ said ‘Fluffy’ , ‘prepare your report and wheel him in’.
Two days later I sent for him, gave him a copy of the report and ‘wheeled him in’ to the General’s bivouac. I did my spiel and when ‘Fluffy’ said to him ‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself’, both the General and I were a bit disconcerted to find that my major was a ‘barrack room lawyer’. He maintained that I hadn’t given him a chance. He said that I hadn’t explained all that there was to know about handling African troops and that he didn’t speak the language. Finally he said that I had not given him two written warnings before submitting an adverse report.
Whether or not ‘Fluffy’ was aware of this requirement when on active service I don’t know, I certainly was not. Anyway he rose to the occasion brilliantly and said "Very well, I am sure that the Colonel will arrange for you to have the requisite warnings in writing as soon as possible". That’s all gentlemen.
It was not long before that major was on his way back and the workshop 2nd in command promoted in his place.
We were now thrusting deep down into the valley with as much speed as possible. It was however very hard going as we were pushing through the jungle where there were no roads and only occasionally just the odd track. It was in the middle of the monsoon season and no white man had ever attempted to go down the valley before at this time of the year; on foot let alone with vehicles and field guns.
Getting the wounded back was one hell of a job. It became a combination of hand carry and jeep where possible. There were several pre-war Moths flown by non combatant American pilots, who were trying to fly out some of the walking wounded and sick. They could only take one at a time from forward brigade positions. I well remember my first flight with one of these chaps who had just arrived in Burma and did not know the country. He asked if anyone ‘wanted a lift’ up forward and could show him where brigade HQ was located. I was just about to leave by jeep with some field gun spares urgently needed by one of the regiments. I told him that if he could carry the spares and me too, I would ‘show him the way’.
Brigade HQ was about 18 to 20 miles ahead. I showed him on a map roughly where it was and got into the front cockpit. Looking sideways I saw, on the nearest strut, a quadrant wind speed indicator that seemed to be a bit primitive. As we took off I looked at my watch and thought that I could check the distance travelled when I saw how fast we flew. When we were flying level it looked as if we were flying at around 80 mph and I calculated that we would be getting near destination in about 15 minutes. Our only means of communication was by shouting between the two cockpits. After 10 minutes I turned round and shouted back that we were getting close. The pilot reached down and pulled up the map in front of his face and somehow let go and it blew right out of the plane. Below us, not very far, was just a solid mass of very tall teak trees stretching for miles.
I found that, at this low altitude, I couldnÌt identify any recognisable landmark that would help. After a further ten minutes I shouted back to him that I thought that we had gone too far and should turn back. Almost immediately faint puffs of smoke from the trees below confirmed the fact. We were being shot at by the Japs having passed over their front line. We made a hasty retreat and luckily were able to find the strip where brigade had cut down enough trees for landing. One feature of the Moth is that it has or had no brakes. Although it can take off in a very short distance, landing is another matter altogether - it can’t stop! It was a little nerve racking therefore to touch down amid chopped off tree stumps and have a platoon of Africans rush out half way down the runway on each side to grab the wings to stop us careering into a tall wall of teak trees at the end.
We operated in and around this area throughout September, ambushing and being ambushed but gradually clearing the jungle of Japs southwards. Div HQ remained at Rhino Hill so called because the Divisional ‘flash’, or in todayÌs language, ‘logo’, which was the side view of a black Rhino’s head.

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