Col H R C Pettigrew

Colonel H R C Pettigrew was GSO1 under General ‘Punch’ Cowan and received two Burma Stars. His written and verbal accounts are with the National Army Museum and his memoirs of being in the Indian Army including his time in Burma from 1932 to 1947 have been published by his sons called It Seemed Very Ordinary.

My time with Punch Cowan and 17 Division is not going to be easy to write about as things went rather sour between us later on. But that will emerge presently and this, or the next, chapter will lead up to it. For quite a long time things went very well, though Christmas for me was not a good time to arrive. Naturally and rightly enough everyone was relaxing and enjoying himself with divisional concert parties and so on going on, whereas I missed my family and wanted to get on with my work.

The first day Punch Cowan called me into his office-cum-caravan and we had a very warm and friendly chat as of course I knew him from my year as Brigade Major. He told me that he was pleased to have me, had in fact asked for me as GI and was sure that we would get on well. He even mentioned that I was pretty well certain to get a DSO in due course as the forthcoming campaign in Burma developed and that I might eventually get a brigade. It all sounded super. He was and I am sure still is, a very pleasant man indeed and we got along very well.

There were barely ten days before Punch, Dimoline (the Royal Artillery Brigadier or BRA) and I were to fly in from Ranchi to General Slim's 14th Army HQ in the Gangaw Valley of Western Burma. So all I could do was to meet as many people as possible, including my own pretty large staff, and get Divisional HQ and the Divisional HQ Defence Battalion out on a couple of exercises. The object of these was to rehearse a set drill and lay out for harbouring at night with the distinct possibility of a Jap attack, at least by infiltrators, as well as their usual nighttime jitter parties. I drew up a careful harbour plan so that every vehicle knew where it had to go, and so on. Later on in Burma it worked very well. I was delighted that our Defence Battalion was a wartime battalion of the Frontier Force Rifles commanded by Oliver, whose place I had taken in the Scouts in 1937. All that Waziristan part of my life seemed a long time ago.

Our fly in to the Gangaw Valley took quite a few hours and was the most luxurious air trip that I have ever made, in an RAF 'executive' type of small aircraft called, I think, a Beechcraft. The object of our trip was to discuss and plan for our coming role in the push into Burma, first with General Slim and his staff and then in greater detail at the headquarters of IV Corps. The Division would follow overland, taking about two weeks to concentrate on the Manipur Plain south of Imphal. Gangaw is about seventy miles south of Kalewa and we landed on a dusty airstrip that had been hastily bulldozed out of the jungle. We had left Ranchi all spick and span but were absolutely covered with dust by the time a jeep deposited us at Slim's HQ. I could not help laughing at Dimoline who was a very 'dapper' sort of chap and always very particular about his turn out.

I must make one thing clear. What I am writing now is not a strategical or tactical account of our 1945 campaign in Burma. You can read about that in the official histories. My account is just a personal one, including a good number of things that are not in any book as far as I am aware. It is more background stuff, atmosphere. What really went on. But you must know a little about the general plan. 7th Indian Division was to assemble at Pakokku sometime in late February when we were ready to establish a bridgehead on the East (Japanese) side of the Irrawaddy. Meanwhile we would turn our Division less one brigade into a completely motorised outfit at Ukhrul and then move secretly down to the Pakokky bridgehead, cross by enormous rafts and make a quick thrust into central Burma to capture Meiktila. This would completely surprise the Japs who were fully taken up watching the expected thrusts towards Mandalay by our 33 Corps and the Americans and Chinese from the North.

Meiktila was fair and square on the lines of communication northward to Mandalay so capturing it would not be easy, and holding it far worse, while Major-General 'Pete' Rees' 19th Indian Division attacked and hopefully captured Mandalay. Then the 14th Army could move south down the two roads to Rangoon while15 Corps would still be pushing forward in the Arakan. As an aside, 'Pete' Rees had been Brigadier General Maynard's adjutant in Peshawar when he was commanding the 5/6th Rajputana Rifles. I first met him in 1934 and he was always a very friendly easy person who I liked very much indeed. His 'Dagger' Division was to become famous for its capture of Mandalay. To show what a small world it is, his G1 was Jack Masters.

The General, the BRA and I were back at Ukhrul in time to meet the Division. I and all the other staff then had a very hectic fortnight getting the vehicles we needed to motorise the whole Division except 99 Brigade. The latter had all its vehicles taken away and was completely grounded. The plan was to fly it in in using Dakotas and gliders, to an airstrip a few miles from Meiktila as soon as it could be captured. I had stayed up all one night, together with the GI of 4 Corps, working out all the payloads to establish how many gliders would be needed. As far as all the infantry battalions and other units were concerned, especially the Indian and Gurkha ones, the chief problem was to find drivers for all their new vehicles. Frantic refresher courses were going on everywhere. The IEME workshops too were at full stretch (everyone was) to check, service and adapt the steady flow of incoming vehicles. We accomplished in two weeks what would normally take at least six months in peacetime

When we did start the drive south, to our assembly area somewhere between Gangaw and Pakokku, many of the drivers were still very much 'learners' but the long dusty drive taught them a lot. The rough road through the jungle was so bumpy, and the clouds of dust that each vehicle threw up so dense, that I had to order a minimum distance between vehicles of a hundred yards. Even then the drivers could barely see. I was in my brand new jeep with a Punjabi driver, who was quite good and reasonably experience.

My life value as GI was evidently rated more important than most as I also had the luxury of a converted Dodge truck as my office-cum-sleeping accommodation, which was a sort of mini-caravan. The workshops had fitted it with a desktop, cupboard, a bed made from a stretcher and so on and it felt really luxurious. 'Punch' Cowan had a super caravan, converted from a three-tonner.

At our destination Div. HQ ended up in a field of cotton with the ground iron hard and split in the dry season and last season's cotton bushes with some of their characteristic bells. I was highly amused though when the General's ADC, an ECO and some years older than me, asked me what the white fluffy stuff emerging from the dried pods was. Amused, as before the war he had been one of the top chaps in the Liverpool cotton exchange, without ever seeing the stuff grow.

I naturally took the first opportunity to go forward to Pakokku with the G2 Intelligence, a splendid chap called Ross, both efficient and pleasant. Our object was to liaise with 7th Indian Division commanded by Major-General Jeff Evans and find out all we could about the other side of the Irrawaddy. In fact we did not find out much at all and I found our reception very cool. I remember saying to Punch when I got back, joking of course: "I was left wondering who were our enemies the Japs or 7 Division HQ."

The fact was that our own 17 (Black Cat) Div. was not very popular with a lot of people, for two reasons I think. The first was plain straightforward jealousy. It was a fine division with a tremendous war record in the 1942 withdrawal from Rangoon right up to the Chindwin at Kalewa, and then again in its fighting withdrawal from Tiddim and the Chin Hills and the battle of Imphal in 1944. It had killed more Japs and won more VCs than any other division. And now here it was chosen to spearhead the 1945 offensive to re-capture Burma and Rangoon. The second reason was the unfortunate way that some of the more senior officers went about "blowing our own trumpet". A Mohammed Ali kind of approach that we were the greatest. We probably were but it was better for others to say it, not us. That was my impression anyway and it embarrassed and even irritated me at times. At last the great day arrived. The Division started to cross the Irrawaddy on February 18th and everyone was across by the 21st. The thrust for Meiktila was on, the Japs still did not know that we had left Ranchi, and it was weeks and weeks at least before they knew they were up against their old enemies - the 'Black Cats'. You see now I am very proud of my old Division.

My memories of the next few days are rather fragmentary. The Japs' resistance was as fanatical as ever and reports came back of their riflemen roping themselves up trees to leave both hands free, and officers leaping on to our tanks with nothing but swords in their hands. But the speed and force of our advance had taken them by surprise and they were no match for our Sherman tanks and well-trained, experienced and determined infantry. We swept on.

About the second night Div. HQ was harboured near a pagoda and we used it as a Mess. Inside I discovered a holy Buddhist book of some kind, in manuscript and beautifully illuminated with hand painting. I was tempted to take it as the pagoda and nearby village were deserted and the latter Had already been pillaged by the Japs. Something held me back though something more than to take the book would have been a form of looting anyway. I felt it was a holy book and to take it would be wrong and quite likely bring retribution and badl uck. I think it was still there when we moved on as I had ordered that it was not to be touched.

The only road to Meiktila was through a place called Taungtha and we expected it to be strongly held, especially as the wide sandy crossing of the Sinthewa Chaung had to be negotiated first, so we put in both brigades. 48 Brigade under Osborn Hedley from the southwest and 63 Brigade under Guy Burton from the south. In the event the opposition was much lighter than we had expected and the town fell to us during the day. From Taungtha the road to Meiktila bent to the right (eastwards) in an acute angle and late in the afternoon Punch Cowan decided to harbour the whole division near a village called Mingan. Mingan was beyond Taungtha and we would then be poised ready to move straight towards Meiktila the next day. Div. HQ had been following behind 63 Brigade and he then made the surprising decision to move us straight across country to Mingan. One side of a triangle, instead of two, and avoiding the congestion of Taungtha. It was a good idea but my objection, and I had unwisely started to object in a small way by then, was that it was too late in the day. There were not enough hours of daylight left.

Anyway off we went with Oliver's Defence Battalion in the lead and HQ following. I am not a hunting man but that is what it felt like, wild and exhilarating and I enjoyed every minute of it. The fields themselves, dry hard and reasonably level, were no trouble at all but at each small bund (mud bank) that separated them the majority of the vehicles, especially the jeeps, became momentarily airborne. The heavier lorries like the wireless vehicles just crushed them flat. Cactus hedges were no obstacle whatsoever. I was standing up in my jeep, which was one of the customs Punch had introduced to foster divisional pride (and which infuriated some of the other divisions), except at some of the larger 'jumps'. Looking in all directions it was an incredible sight with vehicles of every size, shape and purpose jolting and leaping on a broad front across the Burma countryside.

I don't remember how far it was or how long it took, five or six miles perhaps, until two things stopped us. Trees and snipers. We had run into the enemy and the Defence Battalion was already on foot and advancing through the wood to dislodge them. The remainder of us harboured temporarily in a small dip, which gave us some cover, though not many bullets, were coming our way. It was not too long a hold up but the sun had set by then and daylight was shortening. We could no longer go straight on and after perhaps half an hour I collected the brigade liaison officers, and a few others, and with a small escort we moved off in jeeps. I wanted to harbour for the night where we were but the General over-ruled me. Just before I left I heard that Oliver had been killed, shot by a Jap tree sniper.

We then had to drive towards Taungtha before we could turn right and out along the Meiktila road to Mingan. As we neared Mingan I honestly think that for a few minutes we were leading the whole Division. It was nearly dusk with thick trees close to the road on both sides in places and it all felt very eerie. I had no time for a proper reconnaissance and finally had to indicate vague brigade group and divisional HQ areas each side of the road, It was already dark as our last vehicles struggled into what was a very rough approximation of my harbour lay out. But without it there would have been chaos. As it was the Japs could have been very close indeed.

I think it was the near chaos that infuriated me and I could not help muttering something about the old Frontier rule of making camp three hours before darkness. I suppose that I should have kept my mouth shut. It was a quiet night, any Japs around probably in more of a muddle than we were and not proper fighting units anyway. Soon after daylight the next morning the 25th February we were on the move again, 48 Brigade staying behind to collect a supply drop, and on the 26th we were all concentrated in the Mahlaing area. The Tank Brigade was a little further on and with the Thabutkin airstrip in our possession Meiktila was only a dozen or so miles away. Everything had gone extremely well and Punch Cowan and his two infantry brigade commanders (all 'Abbottabad' Gurkhas) had shown how well they knew Burma and the Japanese. The troops had been magnificent. It was a great thrill on the 27th to see the Dakotas coming over towing the gliders containing the first battalion of our 99 Brigade. A light bulldozer had already been landed to help hurry up the filling of the craters that blocked the runway. The same day 63 Brigade with a regiment of tanks under command came up against a strong enemy position well dug in and wired behind a minefield and a demolished bridge. But it was outflanked and forced back. Already during those first few days hundreds of Japs had been killed and a great feeling of superiority over the hated little yellow men was spreading through the Division. There were many old scores from 1942 to be settled and with all their atrocities fresh in our minds they were easy people to hate and despise.

I have just been re-reading the account of our battle to capture Meiktila much of which I must have written myself, but I shall not go into it in military detail. The brief plan was for a more or less all round attack, 63 Brigade from the west, 255 Tank Brigade from the east, and 48 Brigade from the north. 99 Brigade (just flown in) was in reserve with the Sikh Light Infantry protecting our Div. HQ area about a mile and a half from the town. It took the first three days of March to capture Meiktila and a couple more days to mop up and kill the few Japs still hiding in drains and so on. Very few of the two thousand odd defending the town got away. Their resistance had been as fierce and fanatical as ever, with no surrender and no quarter asked for, but the Sherman tanks of Probyn's Horse and Sam Browne's Cavalry and our efficient, determined infantry, (British, Indian, and Gurkha) were too good for them. Punch Cowan, the BRA, many others and myself had a grandstand view of it all from a clump of trees on a ridge, and three incidents are still very clear in my mind. Two of them involved 48 Brigade, and the tanks they were working with, closing in on the Japs on our side of the town. I had my field glasses and could see fairly well, not only the tanks but also the Gurkhas with them, and I was surprised to see some of the latter suddenly dart all over the place. Then resume their normal advance. Days later I was told what it was all about. They had suddenly 'liberated' a run full of chickens and were chasing this heaven sent opportunity of a 'murghi' supper - all in the middle of the attack and under heavy fire from the Japs. Gurkhas really are strange little men. The second thing I saw, though not clearly at that distance, was some Japs who seemed to be crouching down on the ground under the path of our Shermans. Committing suicide I thought rather than surrender. But it was more than that. What I could not see was the aerial bomb between their knees and the bricks in their hands, ready to hit the detonator as the tank rolled over them. Several of our tanks suffered broken or damaged tracks at least. The Japs, despise them as we all did were certainly brave enough.

The third incident was a more uncomfortable one for Div. HQ on our 'safe' viewpoint among the trees. Some of our tanks sweeping round the far side of Meiktila to cut off the road south to Pyabwe and Rangoon began firing in our direction and some of their shots were obviously over-ranged or too elevated. Anyway we suddenly heard the odd shell overhead and then, far worse, explosions all around us. They must have been firing shrapnel and as the shells hit the trees on our ridge they were detonating and hurling lumps of metal everywhere. It was very uncomfortable for a few seconds and a gunner Captain near me lost most of the toes on his right foot. Also a corner of the General’s caravan lorry was knocked off.

It was as close to my becoming a casualty as at anytime during the campaign and from our own tanks!

On March 5th Div. HQ was able to move into the town and the main airstrip was back in action again. We had captured Meiktila in less than two weeks from crossing the Irrawaddy. Now we had to hang on to it while the Japs tried desperately to break our stranglehold on their line of communication with Mandalay. We were in Meiktila exactly a month and for the first half of it the enemy flung everything they could against us. But apart from making the air strip unusable, and being under constant attack for some days, their efforts were of no avail. Punch Cowan's tactics of offensive defence paid off well and almost daily 48 and 63 Brigade and the tanks were out attacking and breaking up Jap concentrations. Thank heavens we had complete air superiority, there just weren't any Jap aircraft around, and Dakotas kept us supplied by air drops and Thunderbolts (I think) were constantly in the sky in close support of our attacks. The American pilots were very good. As indeed was Thompson, the RAF chap on the ground with us, who controlled all the fighters. During March we killed another three thousand plus.

Div. HQ was, perhaps unwisely, in an almost undamaged house on the edge of a large lake and early on we came under Jap artillery fire, both day and night. I cannot say I liked it at all, especially at night, even though I was dug down in a shallow sleeping trench rather like Tocol days in Waziristan. Every sound is so underlined at night. First I would see the flash of light from the Jap gun somewhere to the north or east, then the thump of the firing sound, and then the rushing whine of the approaching shell. At night every single one seemed at first to be aimed straight at me. Some did in fact land quite close but most of them went too far or splashed into the lake. I did not like it and never seemed to get much sleep, as in addition I had a field telephone by my pillow and was frequently called to the wireless set.

The lake was a godsend, warm and none too clean and with a muddy bottom, but a wonderful place to have a bath - in one's underpants. Far away on the other side was 63 Brigade and sometimes, in a quiet moment, I would look at them through a captured periscopic range finder with enormous magnification. After Jap shells had shaken all the Div. HQ house's windows to pieces we made a sandbagged command post outside with narrow slit trenches. But as Punch scorned to shelter in a slit trench I could not very well either which we should have when shelling was going on.

The Sikh Light Infantry under Barlow-Wheeler was our Defence Battalion then. It was a new battalion with no battle experience and longing to prove itself. The famous old Sikh Regiments were made up of Malwa and Manja Sikhs the warriors and farmers, as were all the Sikh companies in other regiments like my own 2/14th. The Sikh Light Infantry however was composed of lower grades (the Sikhs' own distinction and not mine) like Mahzbis and Ramdhasias, and were now out to prove their worth. Punch and I had discussed it and agreed that their first battle must be a winner, not a pushover but a fairly certain success to keep their morale as high as it so clearly was. And the day came when a small Jap force was reported seen along the Thazi road to the east, and we sent off a company of the Sikhs. They were terrific and came back in great heart, having carved the Japs to pieces. They shot them up then went straight at them with the bayonet, forgetting in their excitement it seemed that they had machine guns in support. The tragic side of it was that they had far too many, unnecessary, casualties themselves including their British company commander who was killed. They had proved themselves right enough and the Sikh Light Infantry is now still a fine part of the Indian Army.

One of the things that caused me a lot of trouble and went a long way to straining the relationship between the General and me was a mere wireless set. We had normal W/T touch with all our brigades on our command net to which all their rear link sets were netted and that was fine. We could issue orders and they could report, when they wanted to and when they needed to. Unfortunately, however, the chief signals officer installed another set in our command post which enabled Punch Cowan to tune in to the command net of whichever of our brigades was operating at any time. This was useful and interesting and kept us in the picture about whatever was going on. But it did not end there. Regrettably and wrongly, I thought, Punch would then start to interfere with his brigadiers through me. He was the general, of course, and a very experienced and successful one and had every right to issue orders how and when he liked. On the other hand I strongly believed that when someone is given instructions to carry out a certain task he should be left to carry them out in the way he thinks best. He is on the spot and best knows what is going on. But Punch Cowan, as he heard spoken messages going backwards and forwards between a brigade HQ and its battalions and tank units under its command, could not at times restrain himself. I would be told to get on the division command net and tell the brigadier (or his BM) to do something else or other.

"Tell them to put in their tanks..." "Move round the right flank....”, or just "Get a move on..." or "Ask them what's wrong."

Reluctantly I did as I was told and as often as not got a brusque answer from the brigadier, with whom I sympathised. Then I began to argue the toss about it all with the General and was sharply told to do as I was told. Life was not easy. I was also conscious of the fact that I was not getting round to see the brigades enough.

Mandalay fell to 19 Div. on March 20th, and things for us again hotted up as the surviving Jap forces withdrew south and tried to smash a way past us. There was more artillery shelling and night jitter parties and lying on my stretcher at night I could hear the mechanical rattle of the Jap light tank tracks. It all sounded very unpleasant but was never a real threat,

In the middle of the month 9 Brigade of 5 Div. was flown in and came under our command so we were a very powerful force. By the end of the month the remainder of the Division arrived by road leaving us free to start the great push south. By then the brigadiers commanding our 99 Brigade and 9 Brigade of 5 Div. had both lost their jobs. It was a wonder I had not lost mine.

The saddest news was that Punch Cowan's only son, serving with the General's own old regiment the 6th.Gurkhas, had been killed in action in the attack on Mandalay. Punch was clearly, to me anyway, stricken with grief and needed badly to be with his wife, but he took it magnificently like the fine soldier he was. He stayed in his caravan for most of the next twenty-four hours and was then back in full command again of himself and of his beloved Black Cat Division. I doubt if I could have done it if Paul, for example, had been killed. 

South from Meiktila our first major objective was the capture of a small town called Pyabwe, which in the easy-going times before the war had been a Burma Rifles station. Burma must have been a very pleasant place to serve in on those days but certainly not the place for an officer intent on his career. It was a real backwater. The important place was the North West Frontier and I had laughed when someone had suggested I might like to join the Assam Rifles, in the Lushai Hills I think. I had hardly heard of the Assam Rifles or the Lushai Hills, or of the Naga Hills or Imphal and Manipur. That was all 'soft' country in the 1930s.

Apart from the troops from Mandalay the Japs had brought up considerable forces from the south in a desperate attempt to stem our advance until the monsoon came to their aid. We had to fight every inch of the twenty or thirty miles between Meiktila and Pyabwe, killing hundreds of Japs every day. In one action alone the Sikh Light Infantry counted two hundred and fifty three bodies. But as they had no aircraft, practically no tanks and very little artillery, the Japs had no chance at all. By the 11th April we had captured Pyabwe and the Japs had gone.

One night I remember only too well. We had harboured fairly late alongside one of the brigades 48 I think. The only water available was from a deep well and there was no certainty that the Japs, as they often did, had not thrown in a couple of dead bodies to contaminate it. But it was all we had, and the day had been very dry, dusty and hot. The Sappers poured chlorine into it and pumped it up, brown and foul looking, and we drank it as tea or soup to disguise its colour and (partly) the taste of chlorine. No one died as far as I know and I certainly felt no ill effects. Then all that night the Japs tried to 'jitter' us. Small groups of them fired spasmodic bursts from their tommy guns, let off Very lights and fireworks, screamed abuse or called out in Urdu or English how hopeless it was for us to go on fighting. All the usual old stuff and no one took the slightest notice, but it did not help sleep very much. Unfortunately though a new, completely inexperienced Mahratta battalion had only joined us that day. I think it had been an anti-tank battalion but was now being used as a normal light infantry one. Anyway when the 'Jap jitter johnnies' started on them they got the response they wanted. All hell let loose. Absolute bedlam. The Maharattas let loose with everything they had, machine guns, tommy guns, rifles, the lot. Every bush to them was a group of Japs. It had happened so often before, in the early days of the war so one can hardly blame the battalion. Punch Cowan however was furious, understandably as it was hardly 17 Div. stuff.

"What's going on?" he demanded from me. I thought it was pretty obvious.

"The Japs are jittering the new battalion," was my approximate answer. 

"Get on and ask them what the hell they are doing. Tell them to stop firing." 

"They'll report in, sir, when they know enough to tell us something," I replied.

"Do as you're told," retorted Punch who was really angry as I had been silly again. I should have just done as he said the first time. I duly got on the 'blower', seething myself at being shouted at, and got the answer I expected.

"What's it sound like? We'll stop it as soon as we can. All the officers are going round now, kicking the men off the machine guns."

Naturally, after 35 years, the above quotes are only as good as my memory serves, but my recollection of the actual happening is still clear enough. From that day on my relationship with the General was never the same. I just did not feel like co-operating. I, and none of the Pettigrew's, take to being shouted at and pushed around and that goes for all my brothers, sons, nephews and so on. Strange perhaps when all of us went through Sandhurst - thirteen in two generations - and most of us made the Army our career. I like to think that I didn't need to be pushed. On the other hand I know that I did have a sometimes infuriating way of querying things, even direct orders, so I probably asked for it. I'm wiser, and much older, now but am quite sure that I'm still not to be pushed about. But I never have been since (nor before as far as I remember). Which is all rather personal and boring, but needed to be said. It was silly as I really liked Punch Cowan very much and he was a good General.

After the capture of Pyabwe 5 Div. passed through us and took over the lead, and I do not think anyone in the 17 Div. minded. Provided, of course, we went back into the lead in time to recapture Rangoon. We did in fact have a whole week's rest in the Pyabwe area before setting off again. We were in no hurry and each day I drew up timings for the move south by each brigade and for our Div. HQ. With several bridge bottlenecks quite large time intervals were necessary, to avoid a great line up and congestion of vehicles at each bottleneck, to try and ensure that the leading brigade would arrive at its new destination before Div. HQ even started. It never worked out that way though. Long before we were timed to move the General's urge to get forward, to stop just waiting and resting and doing nothing in our overnight area, proved too strong. I was told to get us on the move. So we spent long hours on the road, or temporarily dispersed off it, waiting for the bridge bottlenecks to clear. Thank heavens the Japs had no aircraft as we were a sitting target. In fact they did have a few as one day 5 Div.'s transport did get bombed while bunched at just such a bottleneck and several ammunition lorries were blown up. I don't think we ever reached our new area any earlier than I had originally worked out in my movement tables ("Staff College nonsense").

It was not until Pyu just south of Toungoo, that we took over the lead once more, to 5 Div.'s disgust I am sure. It was a fine division with a fine general, Bob Manser, whom I never really knew. That was the 25th April. Now the race was to get to Rangoon before the monsoon, with a number of chaungs and minor rivers to cross. Our tanks and armoured cars led the way with a Rajput battalion and the 1/3rd Gurkhas under command. Then 63 Brigade, then us, then 48 Brigade, and finally 99 Brigade less the 1/3rd Gurkhas. 99 Brigade always seemed to be the Cinderella brigade and were moved in a strange assortment of vehicles, including the tank transporters. Very uncomfortable I tried them once so I know.

When the tank brigade caught up with the Japs they were astonished that quite a number of them were horsed cavalry and they quickly brushed them aside. Next came a heavily mined area and two of our tanks were completely written off by buried aerial bombs, and as we were moving into our Div. harbour area a Sapper jeep just in front of me suffered the same fate. I'm glad it wasn't mine.

Whenever the Jap resistance stiffened we hit them with air strikes, intense artillery fire and the Sherman tanks and by the evening of April 29th we were very close to Pegu. That particular day was about the happiest of the whole campaign as we recaptured about four hundred British and American prisoners of war, released from Rangoon jail and including a number of men of the West Yorks who had been captured (quite close to that very area, I was told) in 1942. They told us that the Japs were getting out of Rangoon fast and making for the Sittang crossings into Thailand.

The prisoners had been forced to walk out with them to start with, but had moved too slowly and presently had been told they were free and just left. They had sheltered and rested in some trees led by the senior officer present a lieutenant colonel who had stood up for them so manfully in Rangoon jail. Some years later I read that our own aircraft had strafed them in the wood and the colonel had been killed, the only casualty. Then my conscience began to prick as I remembered ordering an immediate air strike by our Thunderbolts on a large body of men seen by air recce entering a wooded area. It was, I know, on the Jap escape route from Rangoon to the Sittang River. I wonder?

I have another very clear picture of a Burman who came up to me at a crossroads and surrendered. But he wasn't a Burman spoke excellent English, and was in fact an Indian lieutenant-colonel who had gone over to the Japanese in 1942, either in Burma or Malaya or Singapore. The amazing coincidence was that Punch Cowan knew him well from the Military Academy at Dehra Dun (the Indian Sandhurst) before the war. Punch had been an instructor there and this chap (I wish I could remember his name) had actually won the sword of honour. Here he now was a traitor and an active Jap collaborator. The tragic part was that he came from a really fine Punjabi family with a strong and distinguished Indian Army record over several generations.

We had quite a struggle to capture Pegu with all the bridges over the river blown up but we were in full possession by May 1st and pressing on south the next day. The Divisional Engineers had lost no time in getting a low level Bailey bridge over the river. It was in Pegu that I acquired my only 'loot' of the war, a pair of Japanese rubber-soled boots from a supply depot there. My own boots had just about had it.

Two things happened on the 2nd May. Seaborne and parachute troops of our 15 Corps from the Arakan entered Rangoon to find the Japs gone, without a shot being fired. And the monsoon broke, the heavens opened and the rain poured down. Our hitherto headlong advance was bought to a muddy slithering crawl by mine fields, booby traps, swollen chaungs, rivers and destroyed bridges. The Division got as far as Hlegu on May 5th and met the forward elements of our 26 Div. from Rangoon, and that was as far as we went. Our new role was to turn round and go back to Pyu to cut off and destroy the Japs trying to escape to the east.

Meanwhile VE Day had occurred on May 8th and the war in Europe was over. But Europe seemed such a long way away and our own particular war could go on for a long time with the Japs all over Southeast Asia still. It was on May 8th that I was standing in the pouring rain on the near bank of one of the flooded chaungs watching some Div. sappers preparing a bridgehead, when a dispatch rider rode up on his motor cycle and handed me a signal. I opened it and read it and then called out to the sapper sergeant in charge.

"Sergeant"

"Sir?"

"I’ve just got some very good news. The war in Europe is over and Germans have surrendered”

A pause. "Very good, sir." Then to his men. "All right lads, a five minute break." 

And that was how we celebrated VE Day, that and a half-pint can of beer each specially flown in to us. We were still a long way from Tokyo.

As we turned round and drove back northwards again there was a tremendous feeling of anti-climax within the Division. I felt it too, though my disappointment could not compare with that of Punch Cowan and all those who had been forced out of Rangoon in 1942 all the way back to Manipur. They had wanted so dearly to be the first back in Rangoon and they certainly deserved to be.

In our new role each brigade group had its own area of responsibility and there was very little to do for me on the G (operational) side. The Japs, dejected and half-starving, had broken up into small groups. They offered little aggression and more and more soon began to surrender something unheard of earlier on. They just wanted to get across the Sittang River and into Thailand, but even the Sittang was being closely watched and patrolled by 19 Div. It was during that time that I got the chance to visit 19 Div. HQ near Toungoo and received a very friendly and warm welcome from General Pete Rees and his GI, Jack Masters, both friends from Waziristan days. Jack Masters and I had also been at Quetta together, you will remember.

We were billeted in empty Burmese houses in partially destroyed and nearly empty villages. The smell of burnt wood and bamboo was still very strong, but slowly the local people were trickling back from wherever they had sought shelter from our air attacks and shelling. They bore us no grudges, knowing the hated Japs were our target and not them. Indeed they welcomed us and the security we brought, and readily supplied us with what fruit and vegetables and eggs they could. And we even paid for them unlike the little yellow men. Also our troops didn't molest their women either. The Japs had had their so-called 'comfort' girls but there were far too few of them and the local women had often been forced to help out. One of our battalions actually captured half-a-dozen comfort girls and out of curiosity I went along to see them. Squat, ugly and leathery looking I could not see how they could be a comfort to anyone. All our own troops had to remain celibate all through the campaign and it was a great tribute to them that we had no woman trouble'.

I also went in to see one of the first of the Japanese captured soldiers. He was in a small room standing stiffly to attention in front of a British sergeant, who was interrogating him.

"Has he told you much?" I asked.

"Not much, sir. I don't think he knows much."

"What are you doing then?" I was pretty sure that I had seen the sergeant's rifle butt drop heavily on the prisoner's toes as I came in.

"Giving him the Rangoon treatment, sir."

I left him to it. The sergeant must have been talking to some of our prisoners of war from Rangoon jail, old mates of his from 1942 possibly and I knew he would not actually torture the wretched prisoner.

With so little to do except visit the various brigades and battalions I was far from busy and even had time to go for walks in the early evenings.

I had time to notice what was going on. There were pied kingfishers by the score endlessly diving and fishing, parakeets and scarlet minivets, and even flowers. I noticed too some great, long, yellowed pods dangling from creepers on lots of the trees. When I picked one and peeled off the dry, crumbling skin I found the inside was a loofah, which I used for weeks to scrub myself with. I needed some scrubbing at times too, I had no idea loofahs grow on trees. Now you know. I had not had a chance to notice before. I even saw some cobras, some of them the bigger King cobras that particularly infest Mount Popa whose conical., volcanic shape I had noticed southwards as we made from the Irrawaddy to Meiktila. Were once a year the local Burmese maidens are said to kiss them without any ill effect, quite probably true too.

Punch Cowan was very tired and was clearly anxious to get back to see his wife and seek some mutual help in their grief over the death of their son. He had fought a fine campaign and deserved better than to lose his only boy and to suffer the bitter disappointment of not being the first back into Rangoon. He had had me to put up with too and I had not been much help to him as a G1. Before too long, thank heavens, he got away on leave and a new divisional commander arrived soon after. I too had put in for two months' leave to go back to England. I had not been there since my wedding in January 1938 and all my thoughts, with the real campaign over, were on getting back to my family. Sometime in July my own relief arrived and I was off! I do not even remember the name of my new general or the new G1. I had switched off after Pegu.

It was a wonderful feeling driving south in my jeep and I was very interested indeed to see Rangoon for the first time. It was a dreadful mess still but the newly formed 12th Army Headquarters were already busy reorganising and getting things working again. I did not have a chance of a Cook's tour as it was already late afternoon and I was to fly out the next morning, but I did see the outside of the jail where our prisoners of war had been and had a fleeting glimpse of the enormous Shwe Dagon pagoda. Its famous golden (gold leaf) dome looked very tatty. I also saw Brigadier 'Effie' Armstrong who was on the 12th Army staff and working very hard. He had been at the Staff College as Assistant Commandant and was very much liked there. I next met him at Meiktila where he joined us as a 'floating' brigade second-in-command, but he had not turned out a good infantry commander (he was a Sapper). I remember very well the day he was given a run out as brigade commander in an area north of Meiktila and he had dithered about far too much. Punch and I (interested but reluctant) were listening in on that confounded 'big brother' wireless set.

My one and only night in Rangoon was spent in what must have been a super bungalow before the war, near the lake, and the next morning I drove out to the airport at Mingaladon. Inevitably it was a Dakota sitting there ready to take us. I reckon the Dakota (with its supply drops and landings), along with complete air dominance, was one of the main reasons for our spectacular success in Burma in 1945. Others were Mepacrin (which reduced our malaria figures to nil and our complexions to an unhealthy-looking yellow) and the Sherman tanks. Yet none of them would have been any good, as always, without good commanders and even better infantry.

I just can't describe my elation as we took off, circled over Rangoon and then headed across the Bay of Bengal towards Calcutta.

The monsoon rain and wind gave us a real buffeting but I really wouldn't have minded if we had flown the whole way upside down. It was only about five or six hundred miles to Calcutta anyway. The Dakota put down at Calcutta airport at Dumdum (more historically known as the name of the hated soft lead bullets made there) and a truck took us to the Grand Hotel where 'Tricia and I had spent a night with two weeks old Paul in October 1939. All I did in Calcutta was to have my haircut and to buy a new army cap and the next day we were flown across India via Delhi to Karachi. This time in the great luxury of a real, civilian, air-conditioned passenger aircraft. The contrast with the last six months or so in Burma was sudden and unbelievable.

Karachi was hot and dry and dusty, whereas Calcutta had been hot and wet and humid, and we were glad to fly on the next day in another RAF Dakota. It was again a normal air transport plane and all we had to sit on (all the way back to England) were narrow, aluminum seats all round the interior. I just lay down on the floor in the middle when I wanted to rest and stretch out. We stopped first on the edge of the desert in Iraq, to refuel at the RAF station at Habbaniyeh, even hotter and dustier then Karachi, and then on to the Lydda airport in Palestine (Israel now of course). There we had an unexpected two-day stop to allow us to acclimatise or get used to the clock change or something. It seemed pretty silly and unnecessary and annoying to all of us impatient to get home as quickly as possible. As it turned out we had two wonderful days. The first was in Tel Aviv where we bathed in the sea, listened to what could have been in its excellence a symphony orchestra, made up of Jewish refugees from Hitler's pogrom in Europe, ate a good meal and lazed generally. 'We', I might explain were a very motley collection of ex-Burma officers and the ones I remember best were a lean, tough old guy called Frank Ford, who had commanded the Kachin Levies in north-east Burma, and a Royal Navy chap called inevitably 'Sailor' something or other. All splendid men.

Our second day was one of the most wonderful and unsentimentally moving in my whole life, when we were driven up into the hills to Jerusalem. It was the best possible time to go, with the European war only just over. No tourists, no touts, no one selling phony splinters from the Cross, and so on. Unhurriedly, in complete peace, we wandered from the site of Pontius Pilate's house along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha,

Halting for a while at each of the Stations of the Cross. We said very little. Then into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where it was sad to be told that the main keys were still held by Moslem 'neutrals'. After that back to watch, unobtrusively and from a distance, the Jews praying at the old wall of the Temple (the 'Wailing Wall'). The great dome of the Mosque of Omar, where my own old 20th Punjab Infantry had stood guard in 1917, dominated a great part of the scene. A scene that included the Mount of Olives and Bethany across the valley, very much as I had imagined it all.

In the afternoon we were driven the short distance to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. If I remember rightly it was really three churches in one, Catholic, Protestant and Coptic. A Coptic priest lay asleep on his altar steps, which didn't impress me. What did impress me most, and its memory still does, was the Holy Crib with its worn, stone steps down from the Church above. I cannot describe it.

The next day we flew on, with a brief refuelling stop in the dark during the small hours at Malta, to Brize Norton. I was home in England after seven and a half years. We had a reserved carriage on the train to London and 'Tricia was at Paddington to meet me.  

These memoirs are of India, and I shall not set down details of my extended two months' unwinding leave, except one day. VJ Day when the Japs surrendered and my war was over. We were staying with my sister Jo at Percy House in Wimborne and there was singing and dancing and drinking in the town square nearby. Everyone was delirious with joy. Strangely perhaps I didn't want to join in, to rejoice noisily. I just felt a great sense of relief that it was all over.

I eventually arrived back in Bombay in early November by Ship, an old. Union Castle liner, called the Llangibby Castle and was sent to Kalyan transit camp, not far from Deolali where 'Tricia had had to endure so much. There I had to wait for my next posting, back to an infantry battalion I hoped. I had been an instructor or on the General Staff ever since going to Belgaum in 1940 and it was high time that I got back close to the real soldiers again.

One extract from a letter I wrote to 'Tricia while I was on the Llangibby Castle and posted at Port Said is worth quoting.

"We have about 150 officers and 50 nurses on board. There are a few pleasant QAs among the nurses but most of them look, and act, about on the ATS level. The officers (men I mean) are a pretty mixed bunch too and I feel rather disgusted at times. Nothing particularly terrible goes on but there are so many soldiers on board there is no privacy - and I don't care much for seeing officers and QAs holding hands, and cuddling almost, in front of the troops. However they are not all given that way and I have managed to get one of them to do my ironing for me. I do the washing with the aid of the Rinso you gave me and it seems good stuff. Frank Ford who flew home with me and John Ottley, who was with me in the Gordon's and who had been 'trapped' in the South Waziristan Scouts all the War, are in the same cabin as me."

To my annoyance I was kept hanging about for two weeks waiting for orders (spending a good deal of my time down in Bombay) and when I put pressure on they even tried to send me back to my old GI job with 17 Div in Burma who where right down in Tenasserim in the extreme south by then. As I have already said, my permanent relief had arrived before I went on leave back in July so I insisted that another signal be sent to the Military Secretary's branch at GHQ in Delhi, otherwise I would just go there myself. Then at last my posting came, to be a GSO I in the Directorate of Weapons and Equipment at GHQ itself. Not what I wanted but I set off for Delhi by train with an open mind, and with a new bearer called Mohammed Ashraf, another Poonchi like Shafi and Raffi and Co. He could speak English but I forgave him that.

Here are some more direct quotes from letters I wrote to 'Tricia from Kalyan and Bombay, where John Ottley and two others and I stayed a few nights sharing a room at the old Taj Mahal Hotel.

"I got some sheets, a pillow and a towel from the officers' shop in the camp yesterday so I am quite comfortable. The sheets were only Rs.9 a pair and a large bath towel cost Rs.2. I got white ones as I can give up green and khaki things now the war is over."

"Yesterday we shopped in Bombay, went to Juhu for a bathe, had a couple of drinks at the Yacht Club, ate here at the Taj and then early to bed. The Yacht Club lawn overlooking the harbour is very pleasant and cool in the evening and there was an orchestra playing inside for a cocktail dance. It’s the nicest place I've struck in the Indian cities - better than the Saturday Club in Calcutta and other places."

"I've ordered a two pound tin of chocolates to be sent to you from Sprung's, and one to Mother and one to Jo. Also for a food parcel to be sent to you now, another in December and a third in January, from the Great Western Stores. Each will contain one pound of tea, one pound Poison's butter, one pound brown sugar the only kind available here) and a pound of marmalade………I've bought you a pair of stockings as an experiment and let me know if they are O.K. I have a shrewd suspicion I've been done as they cost Rs. 15. The Army and Navy only have lisle ones. For Jane I've got three pairs of shoes all size 4. One silver pair which are pretty Kutcha but which she'll love, one blue pair and a stronger brown pair. They only cost about a pound for the lot. Other oddments I have bought are three combs, two dozen Kirby grips, six yards of rather inferior-looking elastic, a packet of English needles and some soap. And I've collected together twenty various handkerchiefs. I'll get them all off to you as soon as I get duty free labels from my unit." Thank heavens it isn't the hot weather. As it is, it is over 90 degs in the daytime and too hot to be pleasant. Bombay is nearly the hottest part of India at this time of year so wherever I am posted it is almost certain to be cooler. I would love to get up to the Punjab, or Kohat or somewhere like that for the cold weather." 

In Delhi I was quartered in a vast Officers' Hostel with umpteen GHQ officers of all kinds and I did not take happily to that at all. It was too much like a transit camp and I resolved to get out of it as soon as I could.

I quickly settled into my new job and got on well with my Director (Major General Clayton, a Gunner) and Deputy Director (Brigadier Nobby Clark). In very general terms our task was to work out and coordinate policy on the weapons and equipment that were required for the whole Army in India, and to control the development and trials of new weapons and equipment. Quite a task and it sounds very important and a lot of it was. But my first problem, I remember, was to cost and then persuade the Military Accounts people to accept a requirement to double every soldier's monthly ration of dubbin for his boots. Not exactly earth shattering but it was quite costly for the whole Army even so. The downgrading of officers from their war ranks had already begun and there was no certainty as to how long I would stay a Lt-Colonel GSO1. Office hours were from nine to five-thirty with a long enough break to walk back to the Mess for lunch, though I soon bought a second hand English bicycle for about four pounds. In practice I sometimes worked till six or even seven o'clock and occasionally on Sundays. It was all very peaceful and normal though. The shops at Connaught Circus were some way off so GHQ had its own officers' shop, grocers, bakery, stationers, barber and post office. Supplies of nearly everything were very limited but much better than in England, so I kept up a flow of as many food parcels to 'Tricia as I was allowed. Drink was limited but my monthly ration was quite enough for me - a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of English Gin and nine large bottles of beer. And I could get Canadian whisky in the Mess and normal bar drinks at the Club.

At first I could not get into the Gymkhana Club with a long waiting list but it was not for long, and in a month or two I got a very good room privately in a bungalow near the tennis courts and had all my meals in the Club. It was much, much nicer than the Mess I had been in and not much more expensive. It was a modern bungalow and I had a bedroom with a private bathroom - long bath, pull the plug, , everything. It was a standard I had not often met in India before. The Club food was very good and cheap too. For example, Sunday lunch on the lawn of a first-class curry or various cold meats etcetera cost Rs 2/8 (or under 20p in present English currency) and a tea of toast, sandwiches and cakes was one rupee, about 7.5p. One just cannot comprehend it now. Of course one's pay was much less and mine as a married lieutenant colonel was under £2,000 a year.

I appreciated the Club most for its good grass tennis courts and closed, electrically lit squash courts and I played as often as I could. It was not easy to get new balls though. Life in Delhi seemed very easy and luxurious after Burma, and miserable as it was to be separated from 'Tricia and the three children, it was far easier than it had been with 17 Division. Knowing how small the meat ration was in England I could not help feeling guilty every time I had a steak at the Club. I longed desperately for the next cold weather when they could rejoin me. The plan was for them to come out by ship in August, when I would get leave and meet them at Bombay, a night or two in the Taj and then straight up to Simla. Delhi would still be like a furnace then but beginning to cool off by our return in early October. I had hardly been in Delhi a month before I had our name down for accommodation in October and 'Tricia's name on the passage application list. She was number 3363. But families were coming out in a steady stream and she was certain to be all right by August. The hot weather in Delhi would have been out of the question with three small children.

Delhi was full of people we knew and more and more seemed to be collecting together in GHQ. George Chaloner (Di's husband) came back from UK leave into a job I got for him under 'Tony' Boyce of the 2/14th in Military Intelligence Hugh Hudson was another who came into 'Q' Branch. And umpteen more from Quetta days and elsewhere. The Boyces were (as always) particularly kind and I had dinner there on Christmas Day. As I had already had a Christmas lunch at the Barlow - Wheeler's, you may remember he commanded the Sikh Light Infantry in Meiktila, I must have considerably over-eaten.

The 2/14th had come back from the Hong Kong POW camp and had been sent off on leave to recover. The British Officers, I was told, were all right but the CO, Gerald Kidd, and Kerfoot had been killed. At first it was not the policy to re-form any of the ex-POW battalions but this was later changed and the 2/14th would go on. Under its own name but amalgamated with the wartime 6/14th battalion.

One problem I had was to locate and assemble all my kit. Grindlays in Quetta had taken charge of all our heavy, household stuff like china and glass and silver, and as luck would have it had long since sent it to their stores in Old Delhi so that would be easy to get tot. Apart from that we had some personal belongings 'Tricia had been left in Quetta, I had a uniform case in Ranchi with the 17 Div. rear baggage, and I had left my bedding roll in Calcutta. But eventually, miraculously, it all turned up and I could unpack what kit I needed. Life seemed even more civilised then. I had a dinner jacket even and things like that.

I was sent off on two 'outside' jobs in January - February. The first one was down to Bombay, where a Brigadier Stephenson from the Staff Duties Directorate and I had to meet an Australian general and go with him by car to Nasik to visit our contingent for the Commonwealth occupation force for Japan. One incident during my tour was very funny - at least I though it was, and I quote from a letter I wrote home when I returned to Delhi.

 "When it was time for me to leave the hostel, and go out to the airstrip at Juhu, transport came to pick me up. I then went and collected the Brigadier at the Taj and we went on together. The arrangement sounded quite ordinary to me until I went outside to start off. First I had two military police outriders on enormous motorbikes, then a police jeep, then me in a very large black and chromium Humber with an ADC in front and another police jeep behind. So we roared up to the Taj and then out to Juhu, the outriders forcing all the other traffic out of the way. I felt tremendously important for about three minutes and then I saw how funny it was. I might have been the Governor of Bombay at least and when we tore up to the main door of the Taj with the two white-helmeted motorcyclists in front I was definitely the Chicago chief of police arriving at the scene of the murder. Terrific stuff:"

Later in the same letter I go on:

"At Nasik we spent all the time watching ceremonial parades, inspecting the troops for Japan, and in conferences (I had to try to sort out any last minute weapon and equipment problems). I saw quite a lot of 'Punch' Cowan, who was commanding our contingent, and also something of Mrs. Cowan and their daughter Ann. They were all very pleasant to me, especially Punch, and there was no sign of awkwardness over the differences of opinion we had had in Burma. He had written to me evidently but I had not received the letter. Mike Saunders from Quetta is his AQ so I saw him, of course, and also "Bottles" Ottley yet again, now second-in-command of one of the battalions. We left Nasik the next morning and motored the 118 miles back to Bombay, and then flew up to Delhi in the afternoon in great comfort in General Northcott's private Liberator. He is very easy and a typical Aussie and is C -in- C of all the Empire troops for Japan. He half-offered me a job on his staff but I don't think we want to go to Japan do we?"