大象传媒

In 1945 after the battle of Mandalay, the Japanese Army began to retreat along the whole of the Burma front. They fell back slowly and stubbornly and whenever they stood and fought, they were as savage and dangerous as a badly wounded tiger. The advance against them was hard and in the next few weeks the 7th Worcesters only covered forty to fifty miles.

We left the undulating plains with their short brown grass. We left the roads and tracks and the outcrops of stony hills studded with pagodas.
We left the sluggish half-dry streams that crept into the Irrawaddy. We moved into the barren desert of central Burma, a land of cactus and prickly scrub, a waterless wilderness of sun-baked earth and stupefying heat.

Meiktila had fallen and the Japanese Army was disorganised and leaderless, without orders or supplies. They were no longer an Army. Although scattered, they were united in one savage determination - to fight their way out or die in the attempt.

The 2nd Division halted a few miles short of Meiktila, with the oilfields of Yenanyang on the right and the volcanic slopes of Mount Popa on the left. Mount Popa is an extinct volcano which rises majestically nearly five thousand feet above the plain. It is renowned for the vast quantity of poisonous snakes that live on its slopes.

Here was the most dangerous resistance that remained. Five or six thousand Japanese clung tenaciously to the slopes of the mountain. By now it was the end of March 1945. We had been fighting for a long time and we were tired out now, mentally and physically. The Battalion was down to half-strength. But we had to stop and dislodge the enemy in the Mount Popa area.

鈥楥鈥� Company, Worcestershire Regiment established a camp alongside a 鈥榥uhla鈥�(ditch), where we dug trenches and brewed tea. Having got organised, patrols started to be sent out to seek out any enemy in the vicinity. Later that afternoon, one of these patrols returned, tragically carrying the body of Sergeant Eric Millman. He had been killed by a sniper.

Our shocked Company stood in silence as they laid him down. Four men were detailed to dig his grave. They dug it deep with sides as straight and smooth as those in an English churchyard. We made a wooden cross with his name and rank on it, so that those that followed would know where Eric was buried. The Company fell in and were called to attention. We stood straight and in silence as a short service was conducted by Major Burrell. We had lost another respected companion.

As I looked at the forlorn grave, the lines of the poem by Rupert Brooke came to me -
鈥淭hat there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England鈥�

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