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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Don and Betty Tempest of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of George Jupp and added to the site with his permission.

I was in the ‘10th. Field Artillery’ and we went to Kohima. We crossed the Chingwin River on the Pontoon Bridge and on to Mandalay. Then we went to Kayan and down the mount on the way to Rangoon.

We were trailing the Japanese all the way, supporting the Infantry Second Division. I was a Gunner Signalman.

I lost some of my mates through this that and the other. We were shelled and some were killed by Land Mines that they ran over.

The food was meagre, dry biscuits and corned beef. We used to brew our own tea when we could find water. Most of the river beds were dried up, so there wasn’t a lot of water to be had. If we found wells and that, we couldn’t be sure that the Japanese hadn’t poisoned them. But we used the water for washing and that.

I was out there for a year altogether, out there being India and Burma, until the war ended.

I was there when the Atom Bomb went off. There was a sense of relief and we were glad that it was all over. A lot of people didn’t think that the ‘A’ Bomb wasn’t right, but we did, because a lot more people would have died if it hadn’t been used. Therefore it saved a lot of lives.

The thing we would have done, and should have done, was go onto Malaya, Burma and Singapore, therefore more lives would have been lost.

I came back to England and got de-mobbed. I wasn’t a regular, only a conscript, but if I had to do it again, I would, even though we had no option.

There were some good times and some bad times, but we managed. One of the good times that I do remember was swimming in the Irrawaddi River on Christmas Day 1944.

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