Facebook post #029 (15 Aug 2020)
I watched ‘Midway’ with my son last night, a reminder of the sacrifice of 160,000 US servicemen killed in the war against Japan. Up to a million Filipinos died too. But it was not just the naval battle and the atom bomb which persuaded Japan to surrender. A battle-hardened force of a million Soviet soldiers were redeployed from Europe (partly because Stalin was deterred from invading western Europe by the atom bomb), and repelled Japan from Manchuria. The long war of attrition in China had turned against Japan, despite the death of up to 4 million Chinese soldiers; around 20 million civilians also died, from multiple causes, including genocide.
The other front was ‘South East Asia’, which included India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore. The stand-out catastrophe in my family history was the fall of Rangoon on 7 March 1942. The British army narrowly escaped, and burned the city as they left. The retreat was conducted in horrible circumstances. Starving refugees, disorganised stragglers, and the sick and wounded clogged the primitive roads and tracks leading to India. Many civilians had been prevented from leaving earlier.
“It’s a story rarely told, despite being one of the most difficult, desperate mass evacuations in human history. Astonishingly, some 220,000 refugees survived the harrowing journey, of up to 300 miles long; 4,268 are recorded to have died en route, from sickness, exhaustion, malnutrition, starvation or drowning – although the true death toll will never be known.”
The Independent
So when my great-grandparents mentioned it was ‘quite a walk’, you get the idea. I have traced nine families of relatives surviving the evacuation – and two which didn’t make it, and died in POW camps within a few months.
My Anglo-Indian family was military in its origins but I don’t know how many served in WWII, and the records are not yet on general release. I spoke to one elderly Anglo-Indian relative who had joined the RAF in Australia and was posted back to India, and then to Swindon!
My Anglo-Indian grandmother, born in Rangoon, was already in England, having married my English grandfather whom she met at Cambridge University. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and by coincidence or not, was posted to the South East Asia Command, newly formed under Mountbatten in 1943. In 1944, he was given command of the Allied Land Forces biological research section.
(Churchill thought that the fall of Singapore in February 1942 was the great calamity – my other grandmother’s brother managed to escape, tens of thousands were not so lucky.)
On 8 March 1944, the Japanese crossed the Chindwin River into India. But this was the end of their tether. By the end of June, they had suffered the biggest defeat in their history and were pushed back into Burma. Into 1945, the British and Indian ‘Chindit’ insurgents under Stilwell, and the 14th army under Slim, advanced through the length of Burma. Some British heroes had remained behind enemy lines to coordinate resistance.
In 1945, the 14th army was the largest in the world. It was built around the British Indian army, with many units from Britain and from all over the British Empire, augmented by Chinese, Thai and Burmese troops. By the end of April, the Japanese fled Rangoon, amongst similarly horrible scenes to those of three years earlier.
My grandfather’s cousin, a Flying Officer, was killed in 1945 when his Dakota came down in Burma, when carrying troops to garrison Saigon. He and his comrades had performed a vital role in supplying the allies, and had latterly rescued POWs.
By V-J Day, soldiers in India and Burma were already the ‘forgotten army’. At one point, my grandfather’s Section surveyed the troops on their attitudes, revealing resentment at wasting their lives, and anger at red tape and ‘bullshit’. My grandfather was mentioned in despatches for gallant and distinguished services in Burma. But this was in 1946, the army once again having generally been forgotten.
