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WITH THE EAST AFRICAN RIFLES IN CEYLON

BY ALFRED J BIRKETT

This is part 1 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. © Basingstoke Talking History

Part 2 describes experiences with the Monsoon Troops in Burma and eventual repatriation. Part 3 describes some odd events in Burma.

CEYLON

After jungle training in Ceylon we were moved down to a place called Horana just outside Colombo. My first experience of the Singhalese was when the headman of the village came up with some villagers and stood round the baths of the African. They were not interested in the baths of the white people but Africans wore three quarter length trousers and somehow the story had got round that the reason for this was because they were black they had tails and the trousers hid the tails. The Africans did not think much of that.

So we were not too happy at Horana but once we left there we went on exercise to Mantna and Ratnapura and there we came across a lot of leeches, which was not very nice. We used to burn them off with candles of an evening.

In Ceylon I used to buy Toddy, which is a kind of beer taken from the coconut. They take the sap out of the coconut tree before a coconut grows on the top of the tree and they ferment it and sell it as ‘Toddy’. It is a kind of a white watery looking substance, a similar taste to ciderish beer. They used to buy that for the Division and the Brigade at a place called Slave Island.

It was on Slave Island that I got diphtheria. The trouble is that when you get into a unit such as the East Africans, once you leave the unit, it is a hard job to get back into it because they have travelled on to a different part of the country.

GOING INTO BURMA
After coming out of the isolation wing I tried to pick up the unit, which had been on exercise. I missed the main party because they and the main part of the Division went into Burma by Chittagong whereas I went with the rear party that went into Burma via Calcutta and up the Brahmaputra.

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