大象传媒

Thursday 5th march 1944, I was in the Wing gates. In Lallighat, Asam, India on the Burmese Frontier and we were carrying out an operation called Operation Thursday and our objective was to stand behind enemy lines at a place codenamed Broadway. at 6pm at night we were getting to the gliders. My mucker (pal) was John Shaw. The american Jackie Coogan (the actor from Adams Family) was supervising the take-off. There were 19 people in my glider but they should only carry 12. Thay were called Wacko gliders. They told John Shaw to get out because too many. So he got out and said he would see me at Broadway. It was 70 odd feet high so it was freezing because we only had our jungle greens on. The co-pilot passed cigaretes round. After 10 mins i could hear him shouting and it felt as the glider just stopped in the air...then we crash landed but we were okabut we were trying to push the glider out of the way but we couldn't so we had to leave on the air strip. And that night gliders were coming in for all directions. That night there were 126 killed and injured. Some of the gliders had crashed into the trees. The next day I sat with Mad Mike Colbert and Colonel Scott at the side of this airstrip. They faught that the operation had failed but it was actually a success. The most successful airborne landing in military history in fact. On Monday i started to llok for John Shaw but I couldn't find anyone anywhere. After 5 months the campaign ended. We were in a place called Michenar and bullets were flying over our heads. The next day they flew us back to Tinsuki and we headed back to base at Dairy Dunn in central India. I enquired about the wherabouts of John Shaw so the colonel communicated with the Imperial War Graves Commission. I didn't hear anything for 6 months. Then the comander received a letter and he told me what had happened to John Shaw. His glider had landed on a Japanese air field and he was taken prisoner. He was taken to the Shangi prisoner war camp were he worked on the railway. He had been ill with Beri-Beri and Maleria and he had died. He was taken to a place called Cundabad to be burried. I called it a toss of a coin because it would either had been him or me.

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