大象传媒

I was born in Calcutta, India. My grandfather was Portuguese. I joined the British Army Royal Warwickshire Regiment in Meerut (where the Indian Mutiny too place in 1857)in India. I joined as a private but after some training and on recommendation, I was promoted to sergent and joined the 17th Indian division in India. After some preliminary training sailed from Calcutta to Rangoon in 1942.

JAPANESE BOMBING
When we got there the Japanese had already bombed the port and there was a lot of damage. All the dock labourers had fled because of the bombing so we had to set to and unload the boat full of army equipment, from guns to stores, ourselves.
This particular unit of the British army was made up of two Divisions of Indians Gurkas, West Africans, Chinese, Africans and many others - and so was a very mixed force. I felt we were badly trained and could not hold Burma against the highly trained Japanese. Burma is about the size of Germany - and the Japanese forced us to retreat to North Burma and then on into India.
During the retreat the convoys of trucks and soldiers were constantly bombed, and when they got to India we, the 17th Regiment could not believe we had escaped as we staggered into India.
Burma is a malaria ridden country, and a there were a lot of casualties caused by illness - the writer had it six times.

MOUNTBATTEN HELPS
When we had settled in India, Lord Louis Mountbatten - supreme Allied Commander at the time, was instrumental in training and re-equipping fresh Divisions of our regiment, with the guns, planes and enquipment which enabled us to re-invade Burma from the north. (The Japanese lived off the land, and thousands died from starvation and malaria, but because the 17th Division was supplied by air they were a much fitter force)
Sebsequently after heavy fighting, when the Japs lost thousands of troops, Burma was re-conquored.
In 1945, after Rangoon was re-captured, supplies could then be brought in by sea.

AFTER THE WAR
When the War was over, Germany had surrendered and the Atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, we soliders were demobbed. Our unit came to England from Rangoon to Liverpool, when I was then a Warrant Officer. I was demobbed at York in 1946, then moved to live with my sister in Birmingham, and got a job at W. Canning suppliers of machinery and electroplating equipment. I spent 14 years in the export department as a supervisor, then moved to Fort Dunlop and later Cadbury's Bournville each time in the export department. I took early retirement at 60.

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