大象传媒

This is not a story of heroism; nor am I claiming in anyway to be a hero.

Like thousands more I was called up in February 1940 to Catterick Camp with the Royal Signals. Conditions were inevitably testing with the parade ground frozen over and with the old 1914-18 barrack rooms "double banked". The fact that we put out our mugs of water for shaving the following morning but woke up to find it frozen gave some indication that conditions were not particularly pleasant.

They tried to make me into an "Electrician Signals" and I was posted toa unit in Belfast called Northern Ireland District Signals. Unhappily, whilst I could understand the theory of an electrical diagram and could follow the circuit on paper, when a telephone or wireless set was opened up in front of me it represented a frighteningly insoluble puzzle.

I was selected for OCTU training and to my surprise was also found to be medically grade B, for although I had been fairly active in sports all my life I had not understood that I had flat feet!

I had qualified as a Chartered Secretary immediately before I was called up; and it being accepted that I was not much good technically, I might be reasonably competent administratively so they transferred me to the Pay Corps. I was determined at all costs to stay out of a pay office; and having had training in OTC at school I was deemed to be suitable as a OCTU instructor in charge of military training (As an aside, I had the duty with the C O to interview each batch of new recruits individually on arrival. They had already been selected by the War Office Selection Procedure (WOSB) I made a strictly private note in my little book of my own assessment of each man's qualities. I did not look at it again until they were passing out in about 13 weeks, by which time they had been subjected to all sorts of stress situations. There is, of course, no infallible method of selection; but checking on my initial impressions I found that I was reasonably accurate in about 75% of the cases. Of the rest I was wrong in about 3/4s of cases; men who were self confident, articulate and personable but who collapsed under pressure -"marketing types". At the other end, chaps whom I had assessed as slow stolid and lacking initiative, had turned out to be amongst the best leaders.)

I attended GHQ Battle School at Bamard Castle which had been set up to train officers for the Divisional Battle Schools in the new concept of' fire and movement' instead of relying on fixed lines of defence. It was there that I found out why they had graded me B, because with the severity of physical exercise running, training and climbing etc, I suffered somewhat and spent the last two or three weeks of the course with the arches of my feet bound up in plaster!

In due course I was appointed as a Field Cashier and posted to India. I went out by sea with the first convoy through the Med; I was glad that I was on the first one as the second one was cut to pieces by the Germans who had had time to get their submarines into position. I arrived at Bombay and after some time there went on to Allahabad which was a permanent regular army depot. I got landed with the temporary job of Transport Officer. I had to go back to Bombay and take with me some 60 IORs (Indian Other Ranks) who had been taught to drive at a training camp. None had had any road experience.

My job was to collect thirty snub-nosed 15cwt Chevrolet trucks, manufactured in Canada but assembled in Bombay and to deliver them to Calcutta. We had no mobile phones or other talkie talkie apparatus to get in touch with each driver. I did have the support of another officer who travelled in a 3 tonner plus a regular army Lance Sergeant -allegedly a motor mechanic -whose solution to most problems was to hit it with a hammer! ! 1 myself had a jeep and driver.

The road across India on the map is a prominent red line -misnamed the 'Grand Trunk Road' -because after about ten miles of metalled surface out of Bombay it descended into a dirt track. Each vehicle stirred up a cloud of dust which needed 100 yards to settle; so with each vehicle needing at least 100 yards behind the other, our convoy occupied a minimum of three thousand yards or about two miles.

The question of control was something of a problem; and I finally resolved it- or attempted to resolve it- by requiring that the relief driver (two drivers per truck) should keep the vehicle behind in his sights, and if he could not see it he was to stop'.

Inevitably, one of the dopey relief drivers would nod off or forget to check; and sometimes instead of two miles, we occupied nearer 20 before we could get the convoy together again.

One day I let the L/Sgt lead the convoy, which after a while came to a stop in the middle of a village with the leaves of the 'Bashas' - straw houses - scraping the sides of the trucks. I forced my way to the front and found a bar across the road where the surface had just been rebuilt with mud and water and was drying out.

I demanded from the foreman that the bar be removed and ordered our convoy to go over- amid loud protestations from the foreman.

Soon after it became clear that the road was almost none existent; I then saw a charabang grinding its way towards us with the inevitable people on the roof, on the bonnet, or hanging outside.

I asked if anyone spoke English and was this the road to Calcutta? 'Oh Sahib you have come the wrong way -the proper road is about ten mlles back'.

There was nothing for it but to turn the convoy round, make sure all engines were firing, blow the whistle and back we went. We got there just as the road building gang had repaired the damage caused when we first had driven over it.

I reckon to this day that that Foreman has neyer either forgotten or forgiven us!

We averaged about 100 miles per day and finally reached our destination after about 13 days on the road.

I was finally posted to Burma with the rank of Captain and with responsibility for providing financial services for the various units in the Arakan. I should explain that the Arakan is the district on the extreme west of Burma and runs from Chittagong down to Maungdaw, a small port on the coast. On its north it has a range of almost impregnable mountains (Yomas) and jungle.

The Arakan road itself was not a proper road; it was virtually a track, it was made exclusively of brick and mud and it was interspersed with hundreds of "chaungs" or small rivers each one of which had to be bridged with wooden bridges. It can, therefore, be understood that travel and progress on that road was not the most speedy. On the sea side were paddy fields of rice which also contained innumerable leeches.
The Arakan was not the nicest of places, with 1 OOf temperature and 100% humidity, with two months of monsoons and plenty of mosquitoes. We lived off Mepacrine and Multivit tablets and tinned food.
I was responsible for the bulk supplies of money to the various units passing up and down the Arakan road. I was asked to supply a lot of silver coin for use by some of our intelligence units who were using them to buy information from the natives behind the lines. I was constantly on the move and, indeed, l remember working out that at one stage I had spent forty days sleeping on a different bed and at a different place every night!
I did have a small section of Ghurkhas to act as my bodyguard, more for the protection of the money than of me!

The Burma war had hitherto been a story of progressive withdrawal of the allies as the Japanese extended their grip on virtually the whole of Burma. III effect our forces were driven back to the two main exits from Burma; at Kohima and Imphal in the north and at the bottom of the Arakan road at Maungdaw in the south.
But, at last, under General Slim, there were signs that the continual withdrawal of allied forces to prevent them being encircled by the Japs, was drawing to an end. Indeed, the tide did turn when decisions were made and stuck to, that ALL troops including line of communication troops, maintenance troops, cooks, clerks and everybody else who were not normally deemed to be fighting soldiers would stay put and should resist any attempt by the Japs to encircle them. This was the famous " Admin Box" and it took place at the end of the Arakan road just near Maungdaw, and successfully repelled for the first time the advances of the enemy.
Major reinforcements were gradually arriving from India and England and so enabled counter-attacks to commence on the Japanese whose lines of command had become progressively extended. There was savage fighting from the Allied troops in the north making their way south down the Irrawaddy through Mandalay and ultimately to Rangoon; while in the south it was decided that the main thrust should be by sea into Rangoon.
I myself returned to Calcutta with the appointment of "Major and Staff Paymaster, South Burma". I took possession often million pounds of sterling in new notes printed by De La Rue in England which was to be distributed through the whole of Burma, coincidental with the declaration that all other currencies previously in circulation, including the phoney Japanese occupational currency, were invalid.
I went in by sea from Calcutta for the reinvasion of Rangoon. I took over the Chartered Bank of India premises in Rangoon and had a man from Chubbs in England flown out to repair the safes, which the Japanese had blown up on their retreat. My function was primarily to ensure, mainly through the medium of the newly appointed Civil Affairs Officers, that the new currency was made available as widely and as quickly as possible and of course, using our own troops also for it's dispersal.
Rangoon itself was a " mess" in that it had not only been bombed from the air; but every house had been pillaged by the locals when the British withdrew and again when the Japanese retired. No utilities were working; the streets were piled high with rubbish; and the RAP attempted to reduce the health risks by spraying the whole city with DDT. We were under canvass just outside Rangoon.

There was one ' romantic' interlude. In the course of my travels across India I used to visit the Bazaars and became interested in the numbers of precious stones -mainly rubies and sapphires -which were widely available. Some of them of course were of poor quality and some synthetic. I asked for a guide from the Burmese Government to take me to see a man named U. Bassein, who was the Chief Valuation Officer for the Burmese Government and who had taken refuge in the sacred territory behind the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon.

On my arrival it turned out that he was a little grey haired man and obviously in a state of deep distress. I ascertained that that very day his only daughter had been snatched by a gang of dacoity. He would have nothing to do with me so I returned to my unit and went into the mess tent for a cup of tea. Next to me was an officer named Bill Kidd who had been Chief of Police in Rangoon and was now Head of the Special Intelligence Branch of the Army. I said 'Have you had a good day Bill?', and he replied that they had just rounded up a gang which had a girl with them. I told him about my experience with U. Bassein and he promptly went off to make some enquiries. Sure enough the girl was U.Bassein's daughter and was returned to her father's arms that same afternoon!
In the few weeks while I was in Rangoon I visited U .Bassein several times when he went out of his way to greet me like a son and taught me how to judge precious stones. It proved that most of my collection was lacking merit; but occasionally, from the Mogouk mines in North Burma (rubies) and from Pilen on the borders of Siam and French IndoChina (sapphires) I had the opportunity of acquiring a few stones of reasonable merit.

Of course the whole country was in a state of chaos: the administration of the civil population did not exist; there were large forces of Japanese trapped between Mandalay and Rangoon on the west of the Pegu Yomas and were liable to breakout at any minute; and everywhere was in a state of confusion and insecurity with gangs of dacoity and other robbers who \were "making hay whilst the sun shone".
After the disasters of the Arakan in 1943 and the recapture of Rangoon in May 1944 lawlessness in Bunna still prevailed: but on the 6th August the first atomic bomb wiped out Hiroshima and the second fell on Nagasaki on the 9th August. The practical effect was to raise the question of liberating all Japanese occupied territories including Malaya, Siam, Singapore, IndoChina, Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong and Borneo.

This took place on 2nd. September; and on 3rd September, I flew to Bangkok with the first flight of planes into Siam.
A lesson here about the Japs. We landed at Mingladon Airport where there were knots of Jap officers standing around, obviously uncertain what to do; but there was no mistaking the look of black hatred in their eyes. But after the Emperor had ordered all Japs to accept the authority of Allied Officers their feelings became quite inscrutable -never rely on appearances!

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