Tag: Lewtey Tree

Facebook post #052 (Jan 2021)

Last week, I posted my Grandad’s final résumé. It was quite a coincidence that he was posted to British India in WWII. He met my Gran (who liked us to call her by her first name, Marguerite) at Cambridge. She would have been caught up in the war out East herself had she not sailed to Britain in 1935 to continue her studies. It’s another matter of regret that I never had the chance to talk economics with Marguerite, given that she managed a 1st Class Degree at Rangoon, despite having completed the first two years in one. She ‘blazed a path’ to England in 1935, where she was permitted to shorten her Degree at Newnham College, Cambridge, too.

John and Marguerite married in 1940, and John joined the army in 1942. These were strange times – another relative recounted to me how he and his mother escaped India to Australia. There he joined the Australian Air Force, only to be posted back to his mother’s home town, and then to Swindon!

John’s obituary recounts that he had command of the Allied Land Forces biological research section in South-East Asia, and that he was mentioned in despatches but I don’t know why, nor have I heard that he ever talked about it.

But, as a curiosity, it did remind me of the cousin on Dad’s (Larard) side we didn’t know we had, Sidney Maynard Smith. He was also a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps (pic)(but in WWI), and also mentioned in despatches (three times). Apparently, he was consulting surgeon to the British Fifth Army and then the British Second Army. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre by France, and appointed Knight of Grace of the Order of St John (pic), and Companion of The Order of the Bath. And he was Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of England! His wife was sister of the Olympic rower, Frederick Pitman – and daughter of the old Etonian founder of stockbroker, Rowe & Pitman. Quite a catch for a lad from the District Royal Medical Benevolent College, Epsom (around the corner from where Marguerite lived with John’s mother during WWII).

But for every illustrious cousin I discover, there’s a black sheep! One of the Brittain cousins, Nellie Riley, married a Benjamin Bennett. He also served in the RAMC in WWI. On enlisting, he asserted that he was married to an Ethel Cunliffe. I found letters dated 1918 from the Major at the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup: “I should be obliged if you interview the soldier and favour me with your observations on the matter, at your earliest”, and then explaining that Bennett “was under a misapprehension”, that Ethel was an “unofficial” wife, and that he would allocate his separation allowance to Nellie henceforward. He was later caught stealing blankets from the hospital.

Closer to home, John Squire’s second cousin Letitia Marjorie Green (1903-1978) deserves a medical mention. She lived in Dore Village, Sheffield and was one of the earliest physiotherapists, specialising in child polio patients. I found her in 1935 on the register of Chartered Society of Massage and Medical Gymnastics (patroness: Her majesty the Queen), with qualifications in massage, medical gymnastics and medical electricity.

John and Marguerite may not have met through medicine but it was through medical men that she came to be in British India in the first place. More anon.

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.