INTO BURMA

At least that bit was true. We hoped they would come our way.  Just as they arrived reasonably close, they suddenly veered off in another direction.  It was disputable whether they were in fact nude.  They could have been wearing white blouse and white shorts.   We each had our own little fantasy.  We did try one more time after that but we missed them.  It turned out that they had selected a different time on that particular day.

One day we learned the road had been repaired and that a convoy of seven lorries was going to try and get through.  We would be on it and off to join a satellite of 169 Wing.  We left at 8 a.m. one morning.  I'll never forget that trip.  What a journey!  We took a side trip down a rutted road to the river to meet a barge and unload from it some equipment for 177 Beaufighter Squadron.  

It seemed like days before we reached Chiringa, as we seemed to have several meals en route.  I don't recall sleeping though, and then at about 7 p.m . one evening, after travelling over very muddy, rutted roads that shook the innards out of us, we found ourselves on the outskirts of the camp.  Here we ran over the now familiar wire-meshed roads, all through the camp, similar to the way the Yanks laid out their aircraft runways.   I spent the night in the Motor Transport billet and in the morning reported to the Orderly Room.  I was advised that the D/F station had come in to them damaged, probably from Akyab in a hasty withdrawal, and that some of the lads were currently trying to get it operational.  I went out to where they were working on it, and here I met Eric Foggo, Paddy Magowan Ken Loseby and Don Locke.  They settled me into the crude Signals Billet.  I spent most of that first day getting my dhobi [laundry] tended to and writing some letters home.   

Later, Eric Foggo and I went down to 211 Beaufighter Squadron stores to scrounge some white paint.  We got eight tins of the stuff.  I started to paint the inside of the D/F tender. 

At this point I should tell you that a D/F [Direction Finding] tender can be either just a big square trailer towed by a truck, or on a slightly larger scale can be inside a truck itself.  This makes it very mobile.  More about this later.  At this time Foggo, Magowan and Loseby had been detailed to escort a prisoner, Japanese or otherwise, I know not, back to Calcutta.  That left Don Locke and I to do the painting.  We then got some green camouflage paint and did the outside of the van.  

     Another of my first jobs was to assist in the building of a small bridge across a stream, so that we could drive our mobile signals van farther along and out into a high area among the paddy fields.  This whole area for miles each way was just paddy fields where rice was grown, bordered by dense jungle  It was part of a tributary of the Irrawaddy River and as the tides came and went, hundreds of miles away, so the fields were flooded.  I would have thought that salt water wasn't ideal for growing rice.  

Shortly after I arrived we were hung up with an equipment problem and were waiting for aircraft from Imphal to drop off some supplies.  Because of this lull I was given some time in the Hill Stations and was sent off to Shillong in northern India. It was much colder there and quite a relief from the humidity of a jungle area.  Once again I was amongst pine trees and in territory very much like our parks settings in Canada.  There was a Yank camp there as well and I made good friends with a couple of them.  One was an Everette Cooley from New York City and the other, Harold Roberts from Utica, NY.  We did a lot of walking everywhere, and just talking, about our homes, and life in general.  It was kind of neat for me after hearing the great mix of UK dialects.

Because it was a centuries-old peace-time British hill station nothing had been overlooked.  We were able to rent bicycles, and go roller skating at yet another roller rink with a wooden floor.  I also actually went horse-back riding.  The two Yanks were keen to do it, and I think it was a case of bravado on the part of all of us.  The horses were very slow and plodded along as we went out on the designated trail.  At about the halfway mark they began to trot and then to gallop, no matter what we tried to do. [My days on the Raper ponies stood me well]  One of the Yanks passed me in a hurry and was gone.  The other kept with me and we soon came upon his friend sitting on the ground and no horse in sight.  "What in the hell is the matter with 'em,"  he shouted as we galloped by, trying to rein in our Kentucky Derby contenders.  We soon found out, when we arrived in sight of the stables, from where we had started our little ride.   It seems that all of the horses are fed on return from a hiring out.  They are naturally very keen to hurry back.

Two weeks later I was back on duty. All of our small crew spent time doing a variety of jobs getting this Bedford VHF/DF van into shape.  We had a mechanic from the transport section make sure the engine just hummed and was ready to start in an instant.  In fact, later on we would always start it at the beginning and end of each shift.  TO BE CONTINUED