January – February 1945
It was somewhere near Kan that I was involved in a near fatal accident, met General Slim and got my comeuppance.
What happened was that while on one journey in jeep (Sapper IV) towing its trailer odd noises were coming from the rear. I as usual, was driving, so I swapped places with my driver, Mohd Khan, and told him to drive on whilst I hung over the back of the jeep to see if I could see the cause of the trouble. As I was returning to the front seat there was a severe crash of which I can only remember seeing the face of a West African driver looking at me from the window of a three-tonner towering over us. I then blacked out. The next thing I remember was wandering around the company lines asking when Christmas was coming.
I was whipped into a nearby Casualty Clearing Station (CCS), given a lumbar puncture to see if any damage had been done to my spine (negative) and laid down on the ground on a stretcher. I was lying there between a West African and an Indian soldier when General Slim, Officer commanding the 14th Army, arrived in a light aircraft on a nearby strip to see how his troops in this area were faring. In the CCS tent he walked down the line of stretchers and asked casualty each, in his own language, how he was getting on. When he asked me, I said that I had been involved in a jeep accident. He remarked gruffly that he was losing more officers through jeep accidents than through enemy action and stalked on. I felt rather small, but I had personally met our General.
I was threatened with evacuation back to base but thank to the intervention of Major Prow, after a few days convalescence I returned to the company and the trek to the Irrawaddy. It was then that I found that everyone had originally thought that I had been driving but Mohd Khan had admitted that it had been himself. What had happened was that while I was looking over the back of the jeep he had come up behind a tank transporter, complete with tank. This was the dry season and the surface of the dirt road had, with the passage of hundreds of vehicles, been turned into six inches of dust as fine as powder. Every vehicle caused a dust tail behind it as thick as fog. The technique in following was to keep well back and hope that a breeze would clear the cloud to one side. Mohd however decided to overtake through the fog only to be sideswiped by an oncoming truck which pitched the jeep off the road throwing us clear but concussed. The Military Police found us and knowing our unit from the company number on the bumper (34) took us and the jeep back to camp. Mohd’s concussion was only mild but mine was aggravated by whiplash to the spine below my head. I could feel the effect of this for a very long time and it only disappeared after 20 years.
The war diary records the following dates and places that either company HQ or the rear party or the advance party were located:
| January 1945 | 1 | Kalamyo |
| 13 | Kan | |
| February 1945 | 3 | Tillin |
| 5 | Pauk | |
| 9 | Sinthe |
On one rare occasion when it was deemed safe to do so a mobile cinema unit set up a white screen on a paddy field and those who could get there were entertained to an Indian movie in Hindi. The crowd sat on both sides of the screen so half of us saw the film back to front.
Somewhere near Tilin the map showed “oil well”. Never having seen one, we looked forward to seeing the real thing. In the event, after much searching the “oil well” did not exist as such but was only a cleared patch in the jungle with the remains of the trial bore, mud and stones lying around.
On the 18th of February a detachment of the company set up at Myitche on the North side of the Irrawaddy where there was a stores dump and an airfield established.
On Feb 13th 7 Div crossed the river and a major operation commenced to ferry the two divisions and a tank brigade across for the assault on Meiktila. The whole operation, of which 305 Fd Prk company was an integral part, included engineer units of 7 Div, IV Corps, 36 Fd Squadron I E, 854 Bridge Coy, 457 Forward Airfield Engineers and 331 FD Prk Coy. Much ferry equipment had to come hundreds of miles by road from the railhead at Dimapur and much was unserviceable.
The move of 17 Div towards Meiktila began on 24th February and it was not until the end of March that the town was secured.
During March the three tasks of 305 Fd Pk were to receive and pass forward engineer stores, to construct operate and maintain one of the three ferries and its approach roads and to operate a water point to serve the forward troops.
The approach track to the ferry consisted of Sommmerfield track over the dry sand banks of the river, now fairly low in flow. The track had to be continuously reset because it curled up at the sides under heavy traffic. A traffic control tower was set up to direct vehicles to an appropriate jetty. We were taken by surprise one morning to find that overnight the river had risen several feet thus necessitating a complete resiting of everything. The weather had been perfect for weeks but what had happened was that the snows hundreds of miles away had started to melt!
The ferries themselves were standard class 40 Bailey pontoons on folding boats propelled by Johnson Seahorse outboard motors which gave a lot of trouble to start. The pin on the propeller axle sheared far too easily.
The running of operating ferries gave us opportunities of “fishing” with a stick of explosive. The return was reasonable but led to one of the few casualties that the company suffered. One of the sappers lent over the side to retrieve a stunned fish. He grabbed it firmly but the erect stickleback-type dorsal fin penetrated his palm. It was poisoned and landed him in hospital for a time. However since the war diary records “No fresh meat provided for I O R’S for whole month”, fresh fish gave the company an acceptable alternative.
The other major task was the provision of water for all the forward troops. 305 took over a waterpoint already set up on the south bank at Nyaungu by 24 Eng Bn. We extended the arrangements and at peak was supplying 4000 gal/day to a large number of troops. The water was pumped up from the river into one of two large tarpaulin-lined reservoirs for initial settling and later purification. During the time this took, the water in the other reservoir, now ready for use, was being delivered through a series of pipes and taps to the queuing water trucks of the numerous units, Delivery was continuous throughout daylight hours.
Alternative sources of water were sought using a D6 to dig a two meter deep trench in dried up river beds with no sucess, and also by investigating local wells. Water trucks from many units were arriving all day and the wells could not make much contribution to the demand.
It is of interest to note that all the company vehicles were 4 x 4 except the water truck which was a 4 x 2 Bedford and served us well from Imphal to Pegu and back to Mandalay.
One night I spent a disconcerting half hour being lost in a boat on the broad Irrawaddy. What happened was that there was an urgent need to get some equipment over to the other side. Together with a Naik and two sappers we set sailing the pitch black overcast moonless night. To those who effortlessly cross wide rivers at night the navigation is simple. Simply keep two dimmed light on the far bank in line with each other and you will inevitably make a fair landfall. I quickly lost the two lights as the current swept as downstream and there we were without any guidance as to direction. Eventually we hit a far sand bank where we knew we had to trek upstream. After half an hour of difficult terrain and shallow water we got to the ferry site.