大象传媒

This story has been collected and transcribed by Mark Jeffers with permission from the author. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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We joined forces with Guerrilla force hill tribes along the border of Burma to fight against the Japanese and act as intelligent agents. They could get behind the Japanese lines and bring it forward. I was 28th battalion then. We trained the villagers and at that time the Japanese were advancing along the border. We were withdrawing the whole time as the Japanese were pushing our forces back. They knew that the hillsides were going to be enveloped. My role with two or three other officers was to go round the villages with about 10 soldiers with us. The hill country on the border was just forest; all you could see was canopy. We visited all these villages and then at weekends we gathered recruits and armed them, sometimes with 12-bore shotguns, some with old guns from Calcutta museum. We taught them Guerrilla warfare and how to ambush Japanese soldiers. The children had never seen a European before. They were all peering through cracks in my hut.

The Japanese also recruited the hill tribes on their side for espionage. We invaded one of their outposts and I remember the gurkhas sharpening their knives (rifle knifes). They had these dugouts which were made from hollowed out tree trunks and they had canoes and we set sail one night about midnight to go out and find an outpost. There were about a dozen of these canoes until it got dark and in the moonlight we hit rough water. Some of the canoes got stuck sideways between rocks and such like. Fortunately I was able to go straight on. We landed on a sandbank and the next morning we were able to attack the outpost. We were up to our ankles in marshy ground and I remember getting out and chasing a Burmese villager while firing my revolver. The fellow got into the jungle before I got him.

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