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Burma 1942

In February 1942 the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers were one of several regiments to be charged with the defence of Burma. Vital to delaying the advance of the Japanese was the destruction of the oil fields at Yenanyaung in the centre of the country. The 1001 Irishmen were to be parachuted in to help in this task and to delay the Japanese for as long as possible, with the hope that once the monsoon came rapid advance would prove impossible. They were told quite plainly that they were ‘expendable’ and that no attempt would be made to extract them. They would have to make their own way to India as best they could.

If this wasn’t testing enough a task, the drop itself was a shambles. They landed some 250 miles South of Yenanyaung in the boggy ground of the Irrawaddy delta, trapped between a maze of tributaries. This was enemy held territory.

Jack was safe though, and had a pack full of explosives. He took the opportunity to blow up a fuel dump at Bessein before those members of the regiment who had survived the drop and had managed to locate each other headed off North for Yenanyaung.
They were following the course of the Irrawaddy, trying to stay away from the main road to Mandalay when they saw a group of Hurricane fighter aircraft approaching them. Hope turned to horror. The planes began an attack run and it became clear that the RAF roundel had been replaced with the symbol of the rising sun. The troops were strafed and Jack dived into the Irrawaddy. He found a couple of stragglers in the water and helped them to safety on the opposite shore — a total swim of 11 miles, an astonishing feat. But now Jack was on the opposite side of the river to the road to Mandalay. Getting to Yenanyaung would be difficult enough, finding his way ‘home’ to India even tougher.

So it was through the jungle that Jack and his companions trekked, keeping the river in sight to maintain their orientation North. Several bands of Irish stragglers met up and a small force, including Jack found itself under the command of a Major Connolly. This was bad news for Jack in particular. The Major had had a series of run-ins with Jack in India. One such incident had ended in humiliation for the Major when an attempt to court-martial Jack had met with failure. He was an unstable man and was to prove a dangerously incompetent commander.

Of course, it is unfair to blame any of these troops for incompetence in jungle warfare. There wasn’t a single British Army troop trained in this kind of warfare at the time. The Chindits of General Wingate would only go into action in 1943 for the re-capture of Burma. The intention to slow the Japanese advance with an organised withdrawal was unrealistic. The entire campaign quickly turned into a ragged, disorganised retreat, mostly ignored by a British public keen for stories of recovery in Africa. Singapore was already an unmitigated disaster that had seen the capture of more than 100,000 British Empire troops. Burma would have been a humiliation too far.

Foraging for food was a necessity of course. So surviving the march North meant trying to get supplies from villages. This was a remarkably dangerous business as the Irishmen had little idea of which villages had been infiltrates by Japanese troops. Japanese patrols were a constant danger. It was Major Connolly’s lack of care in sending men into villages in particular that raised concerns among the men. He was clearly prepared to risk the lives of his men to determine whether a village was friendly or not. At this time the Japanese were trying hard to develop a sense of oriental togetherness versus the European Imperialists.

But Yenanyaung was reached and Jack did manage to plant his charges. It was however at enormous personal cost that he blew up the fuel dumps he’d located. He was operating at night, lying ‘doggo’ to avoid detection. But he’d stayed too close to the site of the explosion. As the huge blasts consumed the oil and metal of Yenanyaung Jack’s ear drums were burst. He survived the marauding Japanese troops but crawled away, blood pouring from his ears.
Jack was almost entirely deaf for the rest of his life.

This did not prevent Major Connolly from continuing his policy of putting Jack and others in mortal danger. The final straw came when Jack was ordered into a village in broad daylight to scout for Japanese soldiers. To everyone present it was clearly a suicide mission. Jack went ahead into the jungle. He skirted behind his own positions and shot the Major dead. The company of men moved on with a second lieutenant for a commanding officer.

Advancing was a slow business. Japanese patrols plagued the dwindling group of men. Knowing that any British Army stragglers must be short of rations they’d cry temptation in the daytime darkness of the jungle. Wounds quickly became gangrenous, food had to be requisitioned from the bodies of dead Japanese and comrades, or taken from villages. Most progress could be made at night, because the Japanese were superstitious about advancing after dark. Camps would be set up with a ‘killing zone’ cleared around them for Japanese snipers to take out anyone approaching the base.

This was where Jack’s sniping skills came into his own. Using a standard rifle Jack was able to kill Japanese officers from outside the ‘killing zone’. He was afterwards to claim that he found his senses of sight, smell and touch enhanced as a result of his inability to hear. His actions often left the Japanese demoralised and lacking the organisation to hunt the Irish.

However the small body of men did not have only themselves to worry about. Burma was chaos in this period and many civilian stragglers were found on the jungle tracks. This could sometimes help the Irish but often brought more pressure on rations and much greater exposure to Japanese patrols. It was when a Buddhist priest was in their rag-tag company that they were to suffer from a series of ambush attacks. Suspicion intensified and eventually Jack slit the man’s throat. The ambushes subsided.

The company was dwindling. With medical supplies having run out, men fell victim to gangrene. Jack had to knock one man out in order to perform an emergency amputation. The man was left with a rifle and a tourniquet in the hope the Japanese would take him prisoner. Others fell through sheer exhaustion, lost in the perpetual near-darkness.

And so, eventually Jack found himself alone with no supplies left and still hundreds of miles to go to get to Kachin province and possible transport to Assam. He navigated his way North by touch, feeling for which side of the trees the moss was growing on, in order to determine where the sun rose and set. He scavenged food. He benefited for a time from the capture of a cockerel. He didn’t eat it, but sent it scampering into villages. Sometimes it would come back with a hen in tow.

However as he trekked further and further away from any form of civilisation this trick (and preying on the rations of dead Japanese) was impossible. He began watching how the monkeys sustained themselves and lived on a diet of the poor fruits that grew within reach, roots, grubs and insects. The greatest prize was a snake, killed, skinned and eaten while it was still warm. Water was the biggest problem with supplies extremely scarce. What fluids he managed to ingest came from the juices of the plant and animal life he was eating.

When he found himself in an area where the enemy was active he’d erect booby traps — he’d rig a trail with two lengths of bamboo bent back taut and held by a trip wire. Any man or beast stumbling into it would be shorn in two as the bamboo sprang viciously back.

However, Jack too fell victim to exhaustion and dehydration. He was suffering from what was later to be diagnosed as two forms of dysentery. Finally he collapsed.

Jack woke up on a rough bed in the dwelling of a tribe of the Kayan — a bronze age people who’d had hardly any contact with the Western world. We know them as the tribe where the women extend their necks with bronze rings. The people of the village coaxed Jack back to relative health. He even managed to learn a few words of their language.

And yet, he knew his only hope of proper medical treatment and a return home was by making it to India. He set off, first in the company of a couple of guides and then alone. His new supplies didn’t last long. He was affected by gangrene in his leg and had to stuff maggots inside puttees stolen off a Japanese corpse to eat away the rotting flesh. His simian diet returned, his health began to decline again.

And so, eventually when he stumbled towards a clearing in which he saw a pool of water he desperately crawled towards it. The body of a dead mule lying in the water could not deter him and he drank the foul liquid. In later life the infection he picked up from this was to continually afflict him. At the time, it brought collapse, a blackout.

Perhaps the mule itself was a sign that stragglers had been around, that he was close to a means of escape. He was indeed now deep inside Kachin. Two Gurkha soldiers found the stricken Englishmen. Just as earlier in the saga Gurkha stragglers had greatly aided the group of Irish stragglers they were to be Jack’s saviours now. They lifted him up and carried him through another stretch of jungle to the edge of a much greater clearing. They did so with haste, for in this clearing was a small airfield with a single passenger aircraft remaining to fly across the border to Assam in India. The Japanese knew this too and those that had made it this far North were rapidly advancing towards it.

The two Nepalese rushed Jack across the open ground and to the airstrip. There a rag-tag group of stragglers were being hurriedly loaded onto the aircraft. It was a charter aeroplane piloted astonishingly by a fourteen year old Chinese girl who was continuing the service after the death of her father. Jack was drifting in and out of consciousness at this time and was privy to an amazing act of heroism:

With places on the aircraft running out a Padre who had been on board decided to give up his place to Jack. Moreover, once the Anglican priest had decided to do this the Roman Catholic minister too decided to stay on the airfield, allowing the wounded more space. This when Japanese bullets and mortars were just beginning to fizz and crash around the landing strip and rude building.

The aircraft did manage to take off despite the attentions of the Japanese and get to the safety of the airfield at Dum-Dum in Assam. The remains of the two ministers were to be later found crucified upside down, suffering for the frustrations of the Japanese commanders.

The recovery: South Africa

When the Gurkhas had first found Jack, he was a six foot tall man weighing six stones. It took Jack four years to get back to a satisfactory weight, ten to get up to ten stones. In the Indian Military Hospital, his condition actually got worse before it improved, his twin bouts of dysentery and other injuries not helped by his being
constantly shifted around. However when he finally began to improve he was flown to Cape Town Military Hospital.

Here Jack’s stubborn nature and taste for mischief caused constant headaches for the medical staff. Borrowing clothes he’d sneak out of the hospital and enjoy Cape Town. One of the hospital patrons was a Mrs. Naomi Lester, a kind and philanthropic middle-aged lady who helped British wounded soldiers if she could. She arranged for Jack to stay on her beautiful and extensive stud ranch in Orange Free State.

Transported there in a fine Rolls Royce complete with immaculately uniformed chauffeur, Jack suddenly found himself in an elegant colonial-style house. Servants had laid out clothes and everything else needed to keep Jack in enviable comfort. Mrs. Lester dressed in a different fine gown at breakfast, lunch,
tiffin and dinner, while insisting that Jack wear informal dress.

One day Mrs. Lester presented Jack with two Purdy guns, knowing Jack was a crack shot. Asking him whether he’d demonstrate his shooting abilities, she was astonished when Jack suddenly toted his gun and shot at a black shape far in the
distance, his bullet going straight between the eyes of one of her pet cats. Mrs. Lester was all forgiveness (eventually).

When he wasn’t shooting, Jack went riding with Naomi’s two sons, who each owned an estate as big as hers. He’d been allowed to pick out a horse from one of her herd of 1600. Soon Jack also found himself taking trips with Mrs. Lester to Johannesburg (in one of her two private planes), staying in the finest hotel suites. And when he was at the ranch, most evenings he was treated to the finest wines and brandies, laid down years before by Mrs. Lester’s ancestors. Life could not be better and Jack’s health was improving steadily.

But soon Jack became uneasy with the great kindness being shown him. He yearned to return home and became embarrassed by the ease of his life. So despite Mrs Lester’s willingness that he should stay as long as he pleased, Jack resolved to return home.

He was not to receive such considerate treatment off the state as he had done from Mrs. Lester. Dumped in Northern Scotland to recuperate further he grew
ill and was eventually sent home on a stretcher. The army didn’t want a sick man and so he was consigned to the miserable Army pension and wasn’t even paid
for the nine months he’d spent lost (to the army) in the jungle.

Jack did receive medals in the post, but no promotion, no secondment to Wingate’s Chindits (to whom his experience would have surely been invaluable). His astonishing story of survival and dedication to duty has remained ignored, the tragedy of the Burmese retreat largely forgotten.

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