Читать книгу Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War - James Holland, James Holland - Страница 10

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was certainly very conscious of ‘The War’, and like many boys at that time, I made model Spitfires and Tiger tanks and read Commando comics. Grown-ups rarely talked about it, but they did often refer to it, although usually as a means of implying that we younger generation did not know how lucky we were – which I suppose was true. My mother, for example, would mention the war in the context of food. If I ever took too much butter for my bread, she would say, ‘That’s enough to have lasted a week in the war!’

What I never bothered to consider, however, was that most men I knew who were then in their fifties and sixties had probably served during the war, and that everyone I knew of that age had lived through it. The only person I knew who was happy to talk about it at length was the Classics master at school, who used to regale us with tales of the war in Burma. ‘Did you kill any Japs, sir?’ we would repeatedly ask him, then rush off to re-enact our own version of jungle warfare in the trees and bushes at the bottom of the playing fields.

One person who certainly kept his war record pretty quiet was the village GP, Dr Brown. Like most young children, I was forever coming down with stomach bugs, chest infections or needing stitches, so I knew him better than most other adults in the village, and was as familiar with the inside of his surgery, with its green waiting-room chairs and smell of antiseptic, as any place outside my own home.

Dr Brown was truly a pillar of the community. Kind, with a gentle, soothing voice and a warm smile, he did so much more for the village than tend the sick, whether it be helping with the various village sports clubs, writing a musical (revived every ten years), or allowing the villagers to use his swimming pool. Just a short walk down the road from my childhood home, his pool was where I learnt to swim.

But I never thought of Dr Brown in any other light. I liked him enormously, but to me he was simply the village GP and that was that. Only many years later, however, did I discover that he had served with the Chindits in Burma. His wife lent me his wartime diary, and for a moment I was quite taken aback as she handed me the thick exercise book, with its homemade brown wrapping paper dust jacket. Within its pages, neatly written up in blue ink, were his remarkably detailed – and human – wartime jottings, as well as a number of newspaper cuttings and photographs. The Chindits were the stuff of wartime legend; it seemed strange that the man I remembered had been part of that special force of jungle warriors.

Many myths have grown about the Chindits. The romance and derring-do of these soldiers are often all most people know about the war in Burma, and to many they are still seen as the SAS of the jungle war, the ‘green ghosts that haunted the Jap’. Like the SAS, they operated deep behind enemy lines, but there the similarity ends. The SAS were a small band of men, but the Chindits, although also special forces, were made up from ordinary infantry brigades; nearly 10,000 troops took part in the Second Chindit Expedition in 1944.

They were the brainchild of Major-General Orde Wingate, a charismatic and unorthodox soldier who had been brought to the Far East in 1942 by General (and soon to be Field Marshal) Wavell, then Commander-in-Chief of India. The war against Japan was not going well: Singapore and Malaya had been lost and so had much of Burma. With the Japanese knocking on the door of India itself, Wavell decided he needed someone with fresh ideas, unconstrained by notions of military orthodoxy, to help plan the reconquest of Burma and at the very least inflict serious damage on the Japanese lines of communication. He had first met Wingate in 1938, during his time as C-in-C Middle East, and found him to be a mercurial officer with plenty of energy and determination. Wavell’s early impressions were not misconceived. In 1941, and with only a few hundred men, Wingate famously bluffed 12,000 Italians into surrender during the Abyssinian campaign.

Wingate arrived in India having recovered from a recent suicide attempt. A manic depressive, he nonetheless found himself reenergized by the task Wavell had given him, and after reconnoitring northern Burma, began developing his ideas for ‘Long-Range Penetration’ (LRP). Mistrustful of paratroopers, he nonetheless believed that with the help of supply drops from the air directed by radio on the ground, it should be possible to maintain a force that could operate within the ‘heart of the enemy’s military machine’. His theory was that by keeping constantly mobile, his forces could avoid facing any concentration of enemy forces.

Wavell gave the go-ahead for an expedition using the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade. Split into seven different columns, they set off in February 1943, managing to penetrate 150 miles behind enemy lines. They blew up sections of railway, gathered some helpful intelligence and to a certain degree distracted the Japanese, but as one battalion history put it, ‘Never have so many marched for so little.’¹ Strategically, the expedition was certainly of small value, while the many who became sick or were wounded along the way had to be left where they were – a horrible fate considering the brutality with which the Japanese treated such men.

The First Chindit Expedition was, however, a propaganda dream, and Wingate and ‘The British Ghost Army’ were fêted around the world in the Allied press. Crucially, Wingate had also come to the attention of the prime minister, Winston Churchill – so much so that he was called to Canada to outline his ideas on Long-Range Penetration at the Quebec Conference in August 1943, a gathering that was attended by Churchill, President Roosevelt and the British and American Chiefs of Staff. An impressive orator, Wingate persuaded the Combined Chiefs of the value of launching another expedition. Even the Americans agreed to it, for although they had no interest in Britain’s colonial empire, they were keen to help the Chinese, who they believed could make a difference in the war against Japan. They had already sent troops under General Joe Stilwell to lead the Chinese Nationalists operating on the border of northern Burma. With this in mind, Wingate was given the task of cutting the lines of communication to those Japanese forces opposing Stilwell’s men. Wingate agreed, although privately he also hoped to reconquer the whole of the north of Burma.

Wingate also achieved another coup when the American Chief of the Air Staff, General ‘Hap’ Arnold, offered to lend him an air force of transport planes, gliders, fighters and bombers, to support the expedition. This was to be called No 1 Air Commando, or ‘Cochran’s Flying Circus’ after its commander, Colonel Phil Cochran. This generosity from Arnold enabled Wingate to think on an even bigger scale. With comprehensive air support, his men would not be left to fend for themselves; furthermore, they could be flown deep behind enemy lines to start with rather than tramping hundreds of miles through thick jungle. With air support, it would be possible to maintain many more men, and with many more men, the effectiveness of the Chindits would be even greater. That was the theory, at any rate.

Like many others, Captain Dr Chris Brown had been impressed by the accounts and coverage of the Chindits’ exploits, so when he saw a request for volunteers for a further expedition, he decided to put his name forward. ‘I could never face my conscience again,’ he wrote in a letter to his parents, ‘if I didn’t do something about it.’ A young doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), he spent a fortnight assigned to the 4/9 Gurkhas, before joining the 2nd Battalion, the King’s Own Royal Rifles, at Dukwan Dam, near Jhansi in India, on 1 December 1943.

Part of the 111th Indian Infantry Brigade, the battalion left Dukwan by special train on 15 January 1944, crossing into Assam six days later. From the railhead at Silchar, they had to march across country to Imphal on the India–Burma border where they were to begin training. A taste of things to come, it was tough going, but Chris was fit and young, and as a boy growing up in Scotland, had always loved mountains and the outdoor life. On a morning of rain and mist – ‘Scottish weather’ – his first view of Imphal Plain reminded him of Rannoch Moor. Imphal itself, he noted, was ‘no more than a glorified village, tho’ at present it is the main military base, and there is a constant and staggering flow of trucks’.

Amidst this hive of activity, they began their preparations. As with the first expedition, the main fighting unit was to be the ‘column’, which was formed by splitting a battalion of roughly 800 men, such as the 2nd King’s Own Royal Regiment, into two, and then adding a number of mules, ponies and bullocks. Each column had its share of rifle platoons, mortars, engineers, reconnaissance, and, of course, medical staff, albeit just one doctor and four medical orderlies. The 2nd King’s Own was divided into 41 and 46 Columns; Chris was assigned to the latter.

Training principally involved getting fit and practising marching through thick and often precipitous jungle, and crossing rivers. Getting men across water was not usually too much of a problem – it was persuading the mules that was tricky, and ensuring that none of the equipment became wet and damaged in the process.

General Wingate himself visited the brigade and inspected their progress in February, just a few weeks before the expedition was due to be launched. ‘We watched his arrival in a light plane with some awe,’ noted Chris. ‘[He was] a small figure in a pale khaki suit and an enormous old-fashioned topee.’ That evening, Wingate held a conference for all the brigade officers – Chris included – in which he outlined his plans. Nearly 9,000 men would be used for the Second Chindit Expedition, he explained, initially made up from five infantry brigades of which 111th Brigade was one. As a deception, they were to be called the fictitious ‘3rd Indian Division’. Formally, they were ‘Special Force’; informally, they were simply Chindits, a name derived from Chinthé, the name of the mythical griffins that were supposed to guard Burmese temples.

‘His main principle was age-old,’ noted Chris, ‘to outflank the enemy.’ This Wingate was going to do by inserting these brigades by glider or plane far behind the enemy lines. Once there, each brigade would make a base – a ‘stronghold’ – that would be inaccessible to wheeled vehicles but which would include a hastily constructed airstrip and drop-zone (DZ) for resupplying the brigade and for evacuating the wounded. The enemy was to be encouraged to attack the stronghold while ‘floater columns’, operating like guerrillas in the jungle, would assault the Japanese in turn.

Wingate’s abilities and character have been the subject of fevered discussion ever since the war – some claim he was a genius, others that he was militarily myopic and too eccentric for his own good. This is not the place to join the debate, but Chris Brown, for one, was deeply impressed by him. ‘His speech was magnificent and enthralling…He made everything appear so straightforward and easy,’ wrote Chris, who was won over despite Wingate’s ‘very anti-doctor’ comments. ‘The presence of doctors, he thought, made the men soft, illness-conscious and apt to “give up the ghost”,’ recorded Chris. After briefing the officers, Wingate talked to all the men as well, and, noted Chris, ‘took them from suspicion to quite enthusiastic support’.

As February drew to a close, Chris began to sense there were ‘big things in the air’. He knew their ‘show’ was about to start, but there were also rumours that the Japanese were about to launch an attack on Imphal and Kohima, the gateways to India. ‘We used to look eastward over the hills and wonder what the Japs were up to,’ he noted, ‘and if they really were coming.’ Then on 5 March, as they sat over their evening fires, they heard planes going east and looked up to see shadowy gliders following behind. Operation Thursday, as the launch of the expedition was called, was on.

Wingate had originally planned for there to be four landing-zones (LZs) established on areas of clear ground, to be called Piccadilly, Chowringhee, Templecombe and Broadway. Using gliders, men and even small bulldozers were to be dropped into these four places and an airstrip hastily constructed at each so that the rest of the troops, mules and equipment could be landed in the heart of the jungle. The 111th Brigade was due to be dropped at Piccadilly, but at the last minute, aerial reconnaissance showed it had been blocked by newly felled trees. Instead, 41 Column was sent to Chowringhee, and 46 to Broadway.

Chris watched 41 Column loading and taking off on the evening of 8 March, ‘with that deep roar of the twin engines and the head-lights sweeping past us down the runway’. And then the following evening it was their turn. Chris was in charge of four plane-loads, each consisting of three animals, thirteen men and packs of equipment and supplies. At midnight, four Dakotas came back from Broadway and Chris and his party hurriedly began loading them up again for their second trip that night. The mules were naturally reluctant to get aboard, but ‘with a little coaxing and much pulling of ropes and pushing of hindquarters’, they clambered in.

With the animals and supplies securely tied and after a roll-call, the doors were shut, the engines opened, and Chris felt himself bumping along the runway, with a dryness in his throat and nerves mounting. ‘Really off now,’ he noted, ‘no turning back, fingers crossed, please God we all come out of this all right, Mum and Dad!’

They landed safely in the early morning of 10 March. ‘Burma!’ wrote Chris. ‘Was it really possible this was it and we were now miles behind the Japs?’ The landing-zone was dry and dusty, filled with men, supplies, animals, planes and even field guns. But already the mission had changed somewhat. The brigade had been due to head to an operational area near Indaw, picked out by Wingate as an important railway junction. Nor was there much talk of establishing ‘strongholds’ – which were to be inaccessible to wheeled vehicles. Rather, they were to establish ‘blocks’ instead, defensive positions along key lines of communication, such as roads and railways, from where they would carry out demolitions and ambushes. 111th Brigade’s task had been to operate south of Indaw in support of 16th Brigade, who were the only columns travelling entirely by foot and who were to secure the two Japanese airfields at Indaw. But by landing at Broadway and Chowringhee, rather than Piccadilly, 111th Brigade now had much further to travel to the Indaw area and were already behind schedule to link up with 16th Brigade. Broadway, where Chris and 46 Column had landed, was more than fifty miles from Indaw as the crow flies – and much further than that when marching through the jungle.

Despite this, after a day resting and gathering themselves together, they set off, crossing the west end of the airstrip just as the first Spitfires came in to land. This, Chris noted, was ‘thrilling to watch’, although when he saw the large number of wrecked gliders he was glad they had landed by Dakota.

After marching just two hours, he began to feel thirsty and a slight sinking feeling came over him. ‘What on earth will I do with the seriously ill and wounded?’ he wondered. Even in 1944, he felt they lived in such a protected society that ‘it is hard to grasp the fact that from now on there’s no hospital around the corner, no ambulance to give a ring for, no surgeon to ask for an opinion, or policeman round the corner if the Japs start getting tough’. He felt a very long way from home and as a doctor, completely on his own. Whatever the problem – illness or wound – he would have to deal with it himself.

At the end of their first day’s march, having travelled a little over five miles, they bedded down where they were, and got stuck into their American K-rations, universally despised by GI and Tommy alike. Short of calories, K-rations did not give the men the nutrition and energy they needed when undertaking punishing jungle marches. They were boring too, but they had one overriding virtue: they were light and easy to carry.

Chris woke the following morning feeling terrible, with both vomiting and diarrhoea. But he had to soldier on and after heading through tall teak trees and along a beautiful grassy path, he began to feel better. At lunch they looked back and saw Japanese planes bombing Broadway and the Spitfires climbing to meet them. It reminded Chris of watching the Battle of Britain in Kent during the summer of 1940. A Japanese Zero roared low over them as they pushed on. The going improved in the afternoon, so that by the time they stopped for the night, Chris reckoned they had travelled ‘11–12 miles for the day’. There was, however, still a very long way to go.

They continued their march through the jungle for the next fortnight. Progress was often slow. All ranks carried heavy loads, even doctors. In addition to rifles and other weapons, they had a 40lb pack each, using pre-war designed webbing that had no padding, frame or waist-belt, or any of the comforts that modern-day hikers would take for granted. On only their second day of marching, Chris noted, ‘So stinking hot, and the big pack feels like lead by the end of an hour’s march.’ The mules were also slow, weighed down by huge packs. Each radio – the one link the column had to the outside world – was so big and cumbersome it took a staggering three mules to carry.

The lack of water and food was a constant problem. ‘One bottle of water per day is not sufficient in this heat,’ he noted. ‘Should have 7–8 pints.’ Most water came from streams that they passed, but if they could not find one with clear water they were in trouble. ‘No water anywhere,’ noted Chris on 19 March, ‘so spent a beastly thirsty night.’ Food, on the other hand, was dropped by air. Their first was on the evening of 13 March. Chris had been lying under a tree dreaming of cool beers when a plane came over. ‘Another seven K-rations to carry,’ he noted in his diary, but often they had to wait several days for supply drops. Sitting exhausted at the end of the day, they would watch planes tantalizingly come over and fly away again. When a drop was finally made on 17 March, the packages landed far and wide and were difficult to gather; then they had to wait a further week for their next drop and had even resorted to sending an SOS. Four light aircraft then found them and delivered a case of emergency rations.

Inevitably, more and more men became sick. Jaundice was a particular problem. Those afflicted by it were left sapped of energy, but there was little Chris could do for them except arrange for them to be relieved of their packs. ‘Poor lads can’t eat a thing,’ he wrote, ‘and how they manage to keep up in this march is a miracle.’ Another man was kicked by a mule and had broken his elbow, which Chris splinted as best he could. The following day another man fractured his ankle; he had to be carried by mule, but it was clear both men were now useless as fighting soldiers and Chris hoped to have them flown out as soon as possible.

Although during their training they had been repeatedly told that complete silence was to be maintained at all times, this soon proved impossible. Chris was initially alarmed by the loud crunching noise they made as they marched through the jungle. But despite this, during the first part of their journey they encountered no Japanese at all. Two men disappeared when looking for supply boxes and were never seen again, while a few days later four further men vanished. ‘Hard though it is to believe,’ noted Chris, ‘they must have deserted and returned to the last village.’ Later, he added, ‘They were never heard of again.’

Finally, 46 Column reached their rendezvous, some twenty miles southwest of Indaw, on 27 March, having slogged well over a hundred and twenty miles and having safely crossed a main road and railway line without incident. When they got there, however, they discovered no sign of Brigade Headquarters, whom they were supposed to meet, but did hear the news that General Wingate had been killed in a plane crash. ‘We all felt pretty upset,’ wrote Chris, ‘as tho’ the life had gone out of the campaign before it had properly started.’ And there was further bad news: the Japanese had finally invaded India and were assaulting both Kohima and Imphal. With this change in the situation came new orders: the brigade was no longer to concentrate on the railway south of Indaw, but to move further west; north of Indaw, the 16th Brigade were to establish a block with an airstrip to be known as ‘Aberdeen’.

By 2 April, when they finally linked up with Brigade HQ, 46 Column had reached their area of operations. The following afternoon they set off to prepare a roadblock. The going was hard and it was dark before they reached their destination. Chris had to walk through a hornets’ nest in order not to lose touch with the people ahead and was badly stung. When they eventually reached their forming-up point for the block, the column was split into two: a fighting and tail group. Normally Chris was at the tail of the column but in the anticipation of battle casualties was sent up front to join the fighting group.

It was just as well. Later in the night they heard the ‘most foul and nerve-shattering screaming’ coming from the tail. For a moment Chris stood petrified, then dived for cover as shots and explosions rang out. After the initial confusion, a platoon was sent to the rear to help the tail group who, it seemed, had been attacked. ‘It was an eerie night,’ wrote Chris. ‘We lay for hours listening to spasmodic firing and staring out into the moonlit trees, imagining one heard Japs’ footsteps coming over the crunchy leaves.’

Morning brought news of the previous night’s events. A platoon of men at the tail had become slightly separated from the main column and had inadvertently walked straight into a party of Japanese. Chris’s great friend Captain John Busby had been cut down by a sword and killed along with several others. ‘I put up a thankful prayer that I was not marching in my normal place behind John,’ wrote Chris. ‘How I pray he didn’t suffer too much. Felt hellish that I hadn’t been there to look after him when he most needed me.’

The next day they had their revenge of sorts. Having established their block, they waited for any enemy traffic to come their way. Sure enough, late in the afternoon a number of trucks rumbled towards them, the first blowing up as it struck a booby trap and in turn detonating explosives that had been laid under a bridge across the river. ‘What a gorgeous sound,’ noted Chris. ‘I felt like yelling in excitement, and kept thinking, “That’s one for John Busby, you bastards.”’

After holding the block for forty-eight hours, they were on the move again. Chris had had a busy time tending to wounded from their first encounter, treating ongoing sicknesses, and also one casualty who had been badly concussed when an air drop – a box of hob-nailed boots – landed on his head. As they headed west they crossed another road and accidentally walked into the middle of a stationary column of Japanese vehicles. ‘I was never so surprised in my life,’ wrote Chris, ‘when I found we were walking past a camouflaged truck.’ Fortunately, the Japanese seemed to be more alarmed than they were and fled into the jungle, the men of 46 Column firing after them. Later that day they had another run-in with a Japanese patrol – and again came out on top. ‘Very close fighting this is,’ noted Chris.

The next day they captured a Japanese-held village, but their promised air support arrived too late and opened fire on them instead. Two men were shot. One was not too badly hurt, but the other had been hit in the liver, a wound Chris knew would prove fatal. In the night, the man died.

The next few days they were constantly on the move, but Chris was discovering that marching was now much more of a burden. ‘Not only are we all tired,’ wrote Chris, ‘but I have to stop so often to pick up sick men who’ve fallen out.’ He would then have to get them onto a pack mule or pony and then catch up the rest of the column. By 16 April, he had two men desperately ill with cerebral malaria. Chris called for a light plane to evacuate them, but it didn’t arrive until the following day, by which time their condition had worsened. Both men died as they were being carried towards the nearest airstrip. And as if disease and exhaustion weren’t enough, they had the added strain of almost daily run-ins with Japanese patrols.

New orders arrived. The role of the Chindits had changed yet again and they were now under overall control of the American General Stilwell, who was planning an attack from the north to take two important Japanese railheads at Myitkyina and Mogaung. Indaw, for which the 16th Brigade had sacrificed so much, was now to be abandoned. So too was Broadway and the blocks at Aberdeen and White City. The latter had also been fiercely fought over, but now the main effort was to be further north: the Chindits, while continuing to make life as difficult for the Japanese as possible, were to try and link up with Stilwell’s US–Chinese forces. In the meantime, 111th Brigade were to set up a further block on the road and railway south of Mogaung at a clearing to be known as ‘Blackpool’.

But 46 Column faced a long, circuitous and arduous march to reach Blackpool, made worse by several torrential downpours, the first sign that the monsoon was on its way. Sore feet were now getting damp too. ‘I am giving poor comfort to a line of sick men,’ wrote Chris on 27 April. ‘They seem to be sitting everywhere with their big raw feet held ready for inspection. Flavine, elastoplast, more elastoplast, iodine, and they put their boots back on and hobble off.’ A man with a temperature of 104 degrees was given decent treatment; a man with a temperature of only 101 was given a dose of sympathy and told to get back in line.

On they went, one day catching some fish by lobbing hand grenades into a pool, another day getting completely lost. After rendezvousing with several other columns, the officers were called to Brigade HQ and given a briefing on the situation. Afterwards Chris noted, ‘It looks as if we will have some fighting now.’ How right he was. First, though, they still had to reach Blackpool. The closer they got, the harder the march. Climbing a particularly steep hill, one of Chris’s medical mules slipped and somersaulted twenty feet back down into a thicket of bamboo. It took two hours to free it and get it back on its feet again. ‘Yes, very bad country,’ noted Chris. ‘Very slow progress.’

They finally reached Blackpool on the evening of 7 May and Chris was given a patch of ground just below the crest of a ridge facing north for his regimental aid post (RAP). He and his orderlies immediately started digging in. The following morning, Chris clambered to the top of the ridge behind him and got a better picture of their situation. ‘Looking west there is a steep wooded slope down to the paddy fields where our airstrip is to be,’ he wrote. ‘The ground is already littered with white chutes of the supply drop last night. Beyond this, and about a mile away, is the road and railway…Our positions are all among fairly thick bamboo and when I sit at my RAP, it is impossible to see any of the defence positions right below me.’

During the day, everyone was busy, preparing perimeter defence positions, digging weapons pits and slit trenches. A railway bridge was blown up, and machinegun and mortar positions set up covering the road. The following day, after a small probing attack by the Japanese in the night, the airstrip was built. Gliders arrived, crashing into the clearing, but brought with them more equipment – even bulldozers.

The preparations of the Blackpool Block continued. The perimeter was lined with wire and booby-trapped. There was continual digging. Some days they were left alone by the Japanese, while on others, light attacks were made and the position would resound with rifle and machinegun fire. Japanese raiding parties attacked on five nights in a row and although they were always cut down, it meant a severe lack of sleep for many of the troops. But fighting was not Chris’s job, and he was able to spend the time establishing his RAP and rebuilding his strength. ‘The weather was good,’ he wrote, ‘plenty of food, morale very high and personally I am enjoying the bustle and interest of all that is happening.’

He found the nights difficult, however, and would often lie awake listening to the sounds of the jungle and particularly a small insect that tapped the bamboo down below him. ‘As is well known,’ he wrote, ‘tapping on the bamboo is the method by which Japs keep in touch at night, and it didn’t take long before one began to hear footsteps crashing through the dead bamboo.’ One night he watched in ‘breathless excitement’ as the first planes landed on the new airstrip, bringing with them 25-pounder field guns, ammunition and later evacuating the sick.

Then finally, a week after they had arrived at the block, Chris heard his first shell. He was sitting at his RAP when there was a dull ‘crump’ and a few seconds later a ‘horrid whine’ as the shell whistled over them. Unbeknown to Chris, the reason the brigade had largely been left alone was because the Japanese 53rd Division was heading north to meet them, and once there they began digging in their guns in positions that would dominate the newly built airstrip and much of the Blackpool defences.

To begin with the Japanese shelling was inaccurate but they soon found their range, and pounded the main positions. Two officers from 46 Column were killed almost immediately, as were many more men. Even more were wounded. Chris hurried to the brigade dressing station, a couple of miles behind the block in the jungle, and where the brigade’s Senior Medical Officer, Doc Whyte, was in charge. ‘The scene was certainly gruesome,’ jotted Chris. ‘Stretchers wherever a flat bit of ground allowed, with dead and others dying. Dressings and blood everywhere.’ Chris did what he could, dividing his time between there and his regimental aid post treating a number of men who had been wounded during a counter-attack. ‘Pt Wall had his chest opened wide and there was little I could do,’ wrote Chris. ‘He died that night. Sgt Young had a six-inch gaping wound from behind his ear to his Adam’s apple. At the bottom of the wound I could see the Carotid artery beating, quite intact, but I wasn’t half scared. He was staggeringly plucky and I was fortunately able to fly him out the same night.’

It was just about the last plane to fly out from Blackpool. During the next day, the perimeter was breached and the airstrip captured. The brigade was now being bombarded almost constantly. Chris was dashing repeatedly between his RAP and attending severely wounded where they lay. He was, however, quickly learning to distinguish the different sounds of shellfire:

Bang – all right, our own mortar. Bang – hello, grenades down in Dickie Jones’s area – what’s brewing? Faint crump – Jap 105 which gives me about 10 seconds. If I’m at the RAP, I can afford to sit on the edge of my slit trench for a few seconds trying to gauge where it will drop. If I’m further off, run like hell and undignified leap into the trench, landing any old how with my heart beating like mad. Just in time! Crash! And little splinters go whirring and crackling through the bamboo overhead. Crump – here’s another coming. Oh, God – is this the one for me this time? Listen – no. No, it’s going to the right. Thank God. And crash, whoomp, it lands somewhere near Joe Green. And so on and so on. Horrible and degrading to find oneself so frightened that even tho’ a long term agnostic, I offer up a little prayer to God – just in case he is there.

In fact, Dickie Jones, another of the platoon commanders in the column, was also killed during another pointless counter-attack. Then, as the rains finally began to fall, the King’s Own were pulled out of the front line and replaced by the Cameronians. The battle of Blackpool was already all but over, however. It had never been more than a block, but while the 111th Brigade were being blown to bits, news arrived from the north that Stilwell had not yet reached Mogaung. ‘Stilwell’s name was mud,’ noted Chris. On 25 May, they were given the order to evacuate Blackpool entirely. It was a hair-raising process, with the whole brigade leaving by a single narrow path. While mortars and shells fell around them, they slowly inched their way out – but many of those wounded had to be left where they were. The brigade commander even issued an order that those unlikely to survive should be shot rather than leaving them to be tortured and bayoneted by the Japanese.²

At midday, news arrived that the block had fallen. It was, felt Chris, an unbelievable moment, ‘like “Tobruk has fallen”, and with our rations finished, the near-future looked rather gloomy’. Chris and another of the doctors made their way forward to help Doc Whyte at the brigade dressing station. ‘I think it was the most miserable sight I ever wish to see,’ wrote Chris. ‘Poor lads – roughly bandaged and huddled under the trees, with no blankets and some with no shirts or trousers or boots, and the rain pelting down as if the heavens had burst.’ There was, of course, little they could do. Chris went round giving morphine and applying dressings. He found his friend Les Milne, another platoon commander from the column, who was suffering from a bad wound to the wrist. As Chris undid his friend’s filthy bandage, the radial artery began spraying blood. ‘It was a tricky job searching for it in the mass of shattered tissue but between all of us we managed to get a pair of forceps on the bleeding vessel and tied it off successfully, much to everyone’s intense relief. Not a murmur from Les. What a hero he was.’

The following morning, they packed up at first light, getting the walking wounded moving and the rest onto stretchers and what mules remained. They moved painfully slowly up a series of steep climbs and through thick mud, but the Japanese never attempted to follow them and by the middle of the day, the going had substantially improved. Four light planes arrived with emergency rations, much to everyone’s relief. ‘How the planes found us was a mystery,’ noted Chris. ‘A marvellous feat which gave us all a meal and one we’re not likely to forget.’

A day later they were on the downhill trail and the rain had stopped. By two o’clock, the column had reached Makso where there was an airstrip and a rearguard party waiting with hot cups of tea. Fortunately, the weather remained good and over the next few days, the sick and wounded and most of the remainder of the brigade were flown out.