大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Story gatherer Jessica on behalf of Ronald Matthews. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

Our unit 8th Battery started off in Rangoon, Burma, in January 2nd 1942. It ended at Kolewa where war destroyed all of our equipment and we marched out back to India. The conflict of 1942 was bloody and dirty. There were approximately 13,000 troops that took on the Japanese army, and around the beginning of March we lost the support of our air force which was forced back in to India and we were left to defend ourselves the best we could. The whole army fought themselves to a standstill for six months. We had no replacement of men also with little rations. Yet when we got back to India we were treated like traitors and made to feel as if we had let everyone down. In most of the men that had came out felt they had been let down in the higher command and to this day no one has said to any of those troops that were in the retreat of Burma in 1942, 鈥淲ell done lads you put a gallant fight and gave us time to prepare in defence.鈥� You will find little about the retreat and those who were there feel they were completely forgotten.
The boys of Dunkirk in 1940 were heroes but the boys of Burma were treated as traitors.

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