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It was mid-May 1944 when the monsoon rain started and the whole of 2nd Division which had been reinforced with Lee-Grant tanks, moved from our rest-camps into Burma. It started as a thin continuous quiet pouring rain. We unpacked and put on our only protection against it …. our voluminous monsoon capes.

But even these did not prevent this rain from penetrating inside our clothes, and with the sweat from our bodies, it ran into our boots!
It soaked our webbing so that it was as heavy as lead, and we felt that we had been condemned never to be dry.

I have vivid recollections of ‘C’ Company 7th Worcestershire Regiment splashing and slipping in the deep mud, our weapons on our shoulders, our mud fouled haversacks and groundsheets flapping behind us, marching, marching, bent with fatigue. Most of us by now had substituted the heavy steel helmets for the more comfortable but by now soaking and drooping, felt Burma Hats that drooped over our eyes.

Every few yards, someone sprawled on his face in the mud, arose and after shovelling the mud off himself, toiled onwards. Our main concern was to keep the mud off our weapons. They were our passport to survival. Each time our legs took the weight of our bodies, the packs on our backs, and our weapons, our knees would complain from the pain it gave them. And the penetrating rain made us shiver and wonder if we had malaria. There seemed no end to it. All we could do was to keep staggering upwards.

It was in these conditions that, after a time in action, a fatalistic attitude takes possession of the mind, an indifference possessed us to the dangers of attack. And so we trudged on, wearily climbing the steep mountains and the winding tracks that were like great rivers of mud.

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