I am lucky enough to have a photograph of my lovely dad when he was 18 years old, taken in Burma. I understand he couldn't wait to join up and leave his family town of Sherborne, Dorset. However he had three weeks on a ship, where he suffered terrible sea sickness, to get to India.
In training before leaving England, when it came to PT, the Sergeant said 'everyone over 30 fall out' with regards to exercise, so my dad not wanting to do the scrabbling under and over an arduous assault course 'fell out' even though he was 18! He told my sisters and I there he climbed over the barbed wire, in training, rather than crawl under it and risk getting snagged. He was put on a charge for that!
He played draughts alot with a man nicknamed 'Bunger', who he met on the ship and he was from Leicester, but in the Chindits. He didn't talk about his experiences, except he refused to have any Japanese product in our family home. He saw some dreadful things and he became an ardent socialist from his experiences in India and Burma.
He sadly died at the age of 66 in 1991 and his home town of Sherborne named a road after him, for his services to the town that upon his return from Burma, he strived to make a better place for all.
I would love to hear of anyone who knew him or had a photo of him with his mule (who he said was very stubborn), which carried his radio equipment.
The Chindits had a really tough time, not only coping with the heat, starvation, dehydration, dysentry, hiding from the Japanese in the Jungle, shaking their boots out for scorpians, building bamboo beds off the jungle floor where ever they camped, watching films in Indian cinemas to escape the heat outside (my dad watched many Indian films) but then to return to England with virtually no welcome or recognition for what they had endured. Hence the forgotten army.
My youngest sister is currently living in Thailand, teaching and I plan to visit her. We would like to travel to Burma to see where our father was stationed. Any help or information would be greatly appreciated. He was a clever , funny man with a strong sense of justice and it would be good to appreciate how difficult it must have been for him there. He has been dead 20 years and we all still miss him terribly. Therefore to see what he saw as a young man would be an emotional but meaningful experience.
He said he always wanted to go back to India as he did not really appreciate the Taj Mahal and other places he visited at the time and he loved curries. Sadly he didn't make it. He had a painting of a woman that he kept in the family home and mum got rid of it after Dad died. My sisters and I often wonder if the painting looked like a woman from India or Burma who he had fallen in love with, but could never tell us. We would not mind and it would help us better understand the silent bits of his time in the Chindits.
