大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Lucy Thomas and Pam Barnett of Callington U3A on behalf of Ray Moxley. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

Part 4
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY

I had 120 men in my platoon and we worked hard and did a terrific job. I enjoyed that very much, training them up with the idea of taking them, eventually, to Burma to fight the Japanese in the third Arakan Campaign.

Well, at that time, the 81st Division of the Royal West African Frontier Force, with other units was fighting a very successful battle. The first Arakan Campaign was a bit of a disaster when the Japanese chased us to the frontiers of India. The second Arakan Campaign having been properly supplied with sufficient air cover had resulted in pushing the Japanese back, which was the first time it had ever been done. Although the West Africans didn鈥檛 have the right temperament for frontal assault work, they were very good at circumnavigating enemy units and cutting them off. They were much more jungle-orientated and understanding the nature of the jungle than, of course, anybody else, so they were fine. We apparently followed the river beds because the ravines through which they ran were very steep and difficult to deal with.

Our troops used mule trains a lot and of course the 81st West African Division had aux (auxiliary) troops. They were headload carriers and were big, strong chaps with very beautiful straight backs. They were Africans, of course, who had been trained up and were good at headload carrying anyway, but they did headload carrying for the troops up and down these fearsome gorges through the jungle and, of course, liable to be potted at by the Japanese at any time. It was very bad stuff and lots of snakes in the jungle and horrible snails, bilharzia, in the rivers that can attack people and leeches 鈥� pretty gruesome stuff. Anyway, that was successful.

We were destined for the Third Arakan Campaign for which we were in preparation outside Madras in the Arakan. Suddenly, in the warehouses and other buildings around, there were Union Jacks flying. It was amazing. What was all that about? Well, gradually the news filtered through that two atom bombs had been dropped on the Japanese and that they had surrendered. Now, that saved many hundreds of thousands of lives because to assault the mainland of Japan and the Japanese offshore islands would have cost a vast number of people, far bigger than the loss of life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During their assault on China, the Japanese had killed 36 million people in a very cruel manner. With that sort of enemy, you have to be pretty unsentimental because there were some really horrible things.

Of course, it was the 鈥淎xis of Evil鈥�, as Churchill had described it, so we were delighted that that suffering and misery had come to an end and all the prisoners that the Japanese had had been released, including my wife, who was interned in Shanghai. Her story is also recorded.

So, that really marked the end of the War for the Forgotten Army. We came home eventually on Southampton Dockside. There was a large banner, tattered and torn, saying 鈥淭hank you, Yanks, for all you have done for victory鈥� and the Forgotten Army, about a year later, had come back and nobody wanted to know. There was no celebration, no victory parade, nothing, and all these released prisoners of war who came home and had suffered quite big psychological problems as a result of all that.

I went back to the School of Architecture. I felt I could hardly hold a pencil, after four years away, but I was grateful to be alive in one piece. The only thing I had brought with me was a dose of malaria!

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