大象传媒

ODD EVENTS IN BURMA

BY ALFRED J BIRKETT

This is part 3 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 2 describes experiences with the Monsoon Troops in Burma, and eventual repatriation..

IN KALEWA: 鈥淜ING GEORGIE HAS COME TO SAVE YOU!鈥�
Whilst we were making camp on the far side of the river, one of my scouts came in and said, 鈥楾here鈥檚 active movement in one of the villages.鈥� He said, 鈥楾he natives are coming back.鈥� If the natives were coming back it meant there was no Jap there, we had thought there was. We had not gone that far yet so we went out on an 鈥榚xpeditionary鈥� to find out. Sure enough, the natives were back but they were mostly elderly ladies, young children and some elderly men. When we came in to the village we were all full of bravado, 鈥� King Georgie has come to save you.鈥�

All the houses in Burma were on raised platforms on stilts because of the flood plain and there were several villagers looking down upon us. They were a bit wary, but not unnecessarily so and they brought out two chairs: there was a cane chair and a deck chair. I did not take the cane chair because last time I went to a Singhalese cinema and sat in a cane chair I was badly bitten by bugs, so I took the deck chair. The elders came out and we noticed they had some chickens in a little cage. Christmas was coming and we had an idea of buying one for a nice little chicken dinner at Christmas. You could not use paper money because they did not trust paper money. The Japs had flooded the whole county with paper money that was useless, but if you had any metal money, that was worth its weight in gold. I had some loose change and we bought these chickens, to my surprise. He would not accept it at first but I pressed all the money on him. It went down to the interpreter, who was an Indian I had with me because we used Urdu there as a language. We were doing well. He gave me one of these fat Burmese cheroots type of thing made of bamboo. We had to smoke them and puffed away, I did not have anything to offer him except some old Victory V cigarettes. Victory V cigarettes were terrible when they were fresh, but these Victory V cigarettes had been in my pocket and were stuck to the cardboard packet. That was all I had, so I gave him them and he was more than happy with them. We were getting along very well, King Georgie was getting a good write up. I was telling him what we could do and offering the villagers work on the dropping zone and such like. Suddenly there was a noise in a foxhole that we had missed. No-one moved as fast as yours truly, out of that deck chair and lying in a prone position on the ground. Everybody else was moving and one of the children that came down a ladder and went down into the foxhole came out with a little puppy. I never went back there again. Big brave soldiers!

A RUM STORY
Most of the Divisional HQ and lot of people from the back units thought there might be a medal issue with the capture of Kalewa. In our little mess,such as it was, we finished up with about four or five Europeans, all the rest had malaria or something else. Actually, I went down with a fever. People used to come and visit us and say that they crossed the Chindwin at Kalewa because they thought that there might be an extra medal for doing that. That was all right, because we could entertain them royally as somehow it was thought we needed a lot of help because they sent up a 150 gallon drum of double strength Rum. You are supposed to water it down before you drink it. It was all right for some, but I could not stand Rum; if I had just a spoonful of Rum I used to be sick, but as it happened this barrel of Rum was revolting. I was lying on my bed wishing I were home, wishing everything, looking for a hedge to die under. A sassy friend of mine came in and said, 鈥淎lf, the Burmese supplies people have come up and they want to take over some of our stores.鈥� I said, 鈥淥h that鈥檚 all right, there is a 150 gallon barrel of Rum if they want to take that over.鈥� 鈥淥h,鈥� he said, 鈥渂ut there鈥檚 not 150 gallons in the barrel, what shall I do?鈥� Water was scarce and what water we did have came up by tanker, we did not have much to spare. I said, 鈥淲ell, put some water with it鈥�. I was thinking the tanker would come up and we could get some more. But no, Lenny did not have any water so Lenny went to the river and got water from the river. He topped it up to 150 gallons because the Rum would float and when they dipped it there would be 150 gallons. What he did not realise was that there was also oil in the river. If there are any Burmese alive after tasting that Rum I would be very much surprised, but it was one of those things.

PALL BEARERS
We did very sterling work there, including being pall bearers at the burial of an Indian lady whose name was Mrs White. We did not realise my friend had volunteered me and two others as pall bearers because this lady must have been at least 20 odd stone. The contraption used to take her to the cemetery was a 鈥楾onga鈥�, like a two-wheeled pony trap. You have to be very careful how you put a heavy coffin on a Tonga and what is more the wooden steps to the bungalow where they lived were rather steep. There were two of us of the same height, my friend Leonard, who got us into this mess, and me. The two at the back were an artilleryman and a paratrooper. The paratrooper was about six foot tall but the artillery chap was five foot nothing so as we came down the steps, the whole weight was thrust onto the front two, my friend and me. After staggering to the Tonga, we managed to get it onto the top and once we got it to the cemetery we had to put it on the trolley. It is very hard to lift 20 odd stone from two of you onto a trolley, but we managed. The trouble was we could not push it back far enough and the front interfered with the steering apparatus, which was just a handle that guided the front two wheels. Provided you were going straight ahead it was all right but the vicar in charge, who was reading out the various readings, went to the left. The trolley would not go that way because we could not turn the handle and all we could do was go straight on. This was rather awkward because after about four or five yards we could not stop the trolley because of the weight. We had to pull it back and then lift it round so we could go to the left of the vicar.

Eventually we made it to the graveside. They had a sort of grass mat down at the side of the grave where you put the coffin on the ropes. Now we got the coffin to the side of the grave with the ropes, then we all took the strain. The trouble was at the opening to the grave the small artilleryman鈥檚 foot slipped and the coffin went down one end of the grave, with the artilleryman down on his knees trying not to go with it. Eventually we managed to get the ropes up and sorted things out. We went back and we did not know whether to laugh or cry and we were thanked. There was an unholy row when we got back because of the caste and colour thing that was in Lucknow at the time. The girl who had asked my friend to help out at the funeral was a half-caste and we had not realised that. The rest of the white ladies created merry hell because they said we should not interfere with their funeral.

THE RACES
So we left Lucknow not only under a cloud but also without much money because my friend had got his wallet stolen and we were working the two of us on my money. At the same time an Australian jockey who was riding in the races the following day said we could recoup that money at the races and he would put us right. So we went to the races but we did not get there for the first race, which was rather lucky because he had got disqualified in the race and for the rest of the meeting. The information that we got from him was no good at all because he was not even riding.

It was ironic that when we got back to the unit I was asked, 鈥淎lf, do you know anything about horses?鈥� As a youngster I used to ride out for a racing stable and I knew a bit about horses so I said, 鈥淥h yes, yes fair enough, I know horses.鈥� I was told there were seventy horses for me to take charge of as well as a great many mules. I told them I could not do anything about the mules, as I knew nothing about them. One must presume that we should have had these horses and mules whilst we were in action during the monsoon but typical British Army; we got them when we came out. So there was I with a nice stable of horses, which I farmed out to various Battalions because most of the officers and British NCOs could ride. And we had our Division races and Brigade races.

We thought we were sitting on a money earner for the Brigade with the Brigade race because we thought of it first and had the most horses. I had about 50-60 horses and I could run the race meeting myself. But the Brigadier went overboard and bought seven fields of millet to make the racecourse. The result being that the 鈥榢itty was dry鈥� and we did not know how to replenish the money from the racecourse. So instead of running the tote, where the most you could take was 25 per cent, we had to make 鈥榓 book鈥�, which is a bookmakers鈥� thing that I had knowledge of. I reckoned I could do a 50 per cent take there and get most of the money back that we had spent.
We had a marvellous day: everybody got well and truly merry. The various Battalions had their marquees and suchlike and several people backed six losers and said they had never enjoyed themselves so much in their life. When it came to the end we had made a profit. The Brigadier and the Brigade, all of us in fact, we all thought ourselves very lucky. We could let the racecourse out to the other Brigades if they wanted to run their races because they also had animal transport allocated to them. But they wanted to do better than us and make a better racecourse than we had done so we made a small profit.

The only profit I made personally was at the Div races with my horses. I managed to make quite a little money on my own horses by spreading the money between the African and European totes. We made quite a bit of money and I brought home various jewellery, gold jewellery, I think, because one of the Indian clerks came from a family of goldsmiths. I managed to bring back quite a little bit of money.
The mare that really won most of the money was a favourite of mine and during the evening I went round the stables. The Africans were having their dance because they also had money in the kitty, everybody was happy; everybody was a rich man. The following morning when we swept the stables I noticed that for most of the horses, especially the mare, the droppings were not normal, in fact the poor thing was running. I did not know what had happened until I found that the Africans had made their beer with the millet and the stewed millet they gave to the horses, This gave the horses a severe dose of diahorrea but, against, that it got rid of the 鈥橫onday morning feeling鈥�. So, all in all, everybody had a good time.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.