大象传媒

It was obviously necessary to secure this major port without delay because the supply route for the Fourteenth Army stretched back for miles, and when the monsoon broke the supply situation would be critical if Rangoon were to remain in Japanese hands. The Fourteenth Army were making great progress but they still had many miles to go, hence the urgency.
Planning proceeded through the month of April, and the C.O.B.U. parties were able to re-equip and regroup. My English telegraphist GF Boomsma had been obliged to retire through medical reasons and had been replaced by an Indian, Petty Officer Gopal, somewhat frail in physique but an expert wireless operator and completely courageous in action. He was to be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. To replace Rex Crompton, whose broken kneecap was still not mended sufficiently, I was given another 2I/C, but sadly his name is forgotten. He was not to be with me very long. The driver of the jeep and trailer was a young boy from Sheffield named Raymond Elliott, only just nineteen and fresh from England, but quietly efficient and ready to do what was required of him.
The plan was for Gurkha paratroops to land on one side of the Rangoon river mouth at a place called Elephant Point, where a Japanese defence post had been located, while units of the 26th Indian Division would land on the other side of the river mouth and advance on Rangoon some twenty miles upstream. I was to land with the telegraphists in the first wave of infantry and the 2 I/C plus Elliott and the jeep and trailer would come later in a larger landing craft. The great rivers of the world tend to deposit silt where they discharge into the sea creating navigational hazards, and without up to date charts it was decided to keep the larger ships some ten miles out and to load the landing craft from there.
The one thing not expected was the weather. The monsoon is normally very predictable as regards timing. for example it breaks in Bombay on or about 6th June and in Rangoon it was expected mid-May, but in 1945 it came ten days early. This meant a ten mile sea trip in a flat-bottomed L.C.A. (Landing Craft Assault), not the most seaworthy of crafts. Then followed one of the horrors of war, namely sharing a boat with some twenty-five Pathans from the North West Frontier of India, all of whom were violently seasick. At long last we got to the shore and the infantry staggered out, glad to be on land at last. I was going to write 'dry land' but it certainly was not that. The torrential rain had turned the dust to mud and the little paddy fields were two feet deep in water. The way forward was along the tops of the retaining walls of the paddy fields, about three feet wide, and exceedingly slippery. One false step and you were down in the mire.
So far there were no signs of the Japanese, and word came that they had evacuated the city in a somewhat panicky retreat. Everything seemed too easy until we were going through a small village when we got our first casualty. A water buffalo, normally a most placid animal, kept by the locals for milk, had no doubt been frightened by the bombing and shelling and came down the village street at full gallop. We all jumped out of the way with the exception of one unfortunate infantryman who took the full impact and was impaled on its horns killing him instantly. On establishing that life was exinct, all we could do was to lay him on a nearby veranda, cover the body with a groundsheet and move on.
Then news came that one of the larger landing craft had struck a mine in the Rangoon river and had sunk, but no details were then available. Rain was puring down and we were all soaked to the skin. We managed to find an empty barn just before dusk and decided to spend the night there. It wasn't over comfortable but at least it was better than being out in the paddy fields.
The next day we moved on a few more miles and it was definitely confirmed that the Japanese had gone. Then came the worst possible news for our little party. The Landing Craft that had sunk had been carrying the rest of our party. Elliott had been below decks and the explosion of the mine had thrown him up, smashing his head on the steel deck above and killing him. My 2 I/C was thrown up in the air and landed on top of an army lorry. The canvas cover took the worst of the fall but the steel framework had broken one arm and several ribs and he was badly shaken. My friend Hector Emerton told me many years later that he had been in the landing craft alongside and they had managed to get all the dead and wounded off before it sank, but of course the vehicles with their contents, including all our worldly possessions, had gone to the bottom.
So it was that we arrived in Rangoon wet, weary, and filthy and in a subdued frame of mind. I felt that the first essential was to get some fresh clothes for the party, and on making enquiries I learned there was a Quartermaster's Stores of the Indian National Army not far away. The I.N.A. were former members of the Indian Army captured in the earlier campaigns and who had changed their allegiance in the hope of Japanese promises of Indian independence. We naturally looked on them as traitors and our loyal Indian troops treated them with absolute disdain. Hwoever, we made our way to the I.N.A. stores and went in. There we found a clerk and I told him our requirements, two sets of everything for the four of us. Indian bureaucracy dies hard. He waved his hands about and said he could not supply us because we had not authority. I then committed an act for which I am not very proud, it savours of bullying, but was all I could think of at the time. I put a magazine into my Sten gun, pointed it at him and said, 'Do I get the goods or do I pull the trigger?' One of the R.I.N. telegraphis interpreted just in case he didn't get the idea, but the result was instantaneous. He darted over to the shelving and brought out shirts, shorts, slacks, socks, in fact all we could wish for including an officer's valise over- printed with the name of Havildar something Singh, which I used until the end of the war and which still lies in the loft at Middle Farm, Oakley. It was wearing these borrowed garments that we went into Rangoon Jail to check whether there were any of our own prisoners of war still there and coming through the main gate, unknown to me, I had my photograph taken by a representative of the Time of India, who I think assumed I was a P.O.W.

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