Part 3: August 1943 - 1944

August - December 1943

“Another train journey, this time to Chittagong. At night, just outside the town, we stopped to let a train pass going the other way. It was full of wounded coming back from the front, and they shouted “Good luck” and “God help you!” to us, and called the Japs all kinds of names. At Chittagong we boarded a paddle steamer, about 50 years old, and sailed down the coast for several hours to a place called Cox’s Bazar.

We joined the 36th LAA Regiment, 1st East Surreys. Three of us were sent to B Troop 97 Battery, Number 1 Gun Detachment, about two miles down river by rowing boat. It was a Bofors like I’d trained on at Aldershot. We were in the 11th Army Group, 15th Indian Corps; this was before the 14th Army had been formed.

With me on Number 1 Gun Detachment were:

Sgt TOM HOOK aged 24
BILL HOOK (Tom’s brother) aged 21
BOB MORTIMER aged 24
ERIC OSBORNE aged 25
BILL HOLMES aged 25
BILL HOUGHTON aged 26
DAVE THOMSON aged 27
TOM DEVLIN (driver) aged 25
TED SAUNDERS (cook) aged 29

They all came from the Hayes area in Middlesex except Thomson who was from Yorkshire, and Devlin who was, like me, from Liverpool. When the Sergeant shouted for ‘Bob’ we didn’t know whether he meant me or Mortimer, so they decided to call me Charlie, and throughout my time in the 36th LAA I was known as CHARLIE DUFF. This used to confuse the bloke who brought the mail, who asked one day why my letters had R. Duff on them. The Sergeant told him we couldn’t say as it was Top Secret!

Our gun was a mobile one towed by a 15cwt Chevrolet tractor. We could be in action in three minutes. When we couldn’t get the gun any further, because there was no road or the jungle was too dense, we would proceed as infantry. This was referred to as A Move and B Move. The gun fired 40mm or 2lb shells in clips of eight. We could fire 100 rounds in five minutes on automatic, or single shot.”

December 1943

“Moved up to Tumbru Ghat by Bawli Bazar. Japs had moved up the Arakan Range, some were seen in Comilla and Chittagong, 90 miles behind us.”

January 1944

“Moved up to Ngakyedauk Pass and arrived at 2am. There was machine gun and rifle fire all around us. We rushed to get the gun in action while Jap planes were dive bombing the road. The sandbags around the gun were split open by machine guns.

I was bleeding under my chin and on my right arm. I don’t know how it happened and didn’t feel anything at the time. The Sergeant said it could have been shrapnel. He used his field dressing to bandage my arm up. An officer came on a motorbike and told us to clear out back to Bawli Bazar. He asked if I could swim. When I said I could, he said if we couldn’t get the gun on the road to remove the breech block from it and swim across the river, as the British were going to blow up the bridge to cut off the Japs, and we wouldn’t have time to get the gun across.

When he’d gone I told the Sergeant what he said, and we decided to think for ourselves. We took the gun out of action, hooked it to the gun tractor and made our way to the bridge, which was about 5 miles down the ‘road’ — little more than a dirt track. We were ready to go when we realised that the road was full of refugees, and Indian soldiers who’d decided they’d had enough. We couldn’t get on to the road, so two of us stood in the road and held the traffic up, to get space to move the gun. We finally managed to get the gun and tractor on the road and travelled, at walking pace, about 5 miles to the bridge over the Bawli River.

Throughout this time we were being machine gunned and dive bombed by the Japs. We managed to cross the river and carried on over a mountain pass. At the top of the pass we had to cross a small bridge which had been partly blown away. It was at this time that the Sergeant jumped out to test the handbrake on the gun. We couldn’t stop and the gun went over his foot. The driver swerved and nearly went over the pass with us inside the tractor. We jumped out and found the front wheels of the tractor hanging over what was left of the bridge.

The Sergeant had to go to the First Aid station to get his foot attended to, so there were only 8 of us left and no Sergeant. At this point about 30 Jap planes came over and we were a sitting target, so we unhooked the gun and pushed it down the hill to a small clearing. We decided to leave 3 men with the gun, and the other 5 would go back and try to get the tractor back on the road.

I’d been trained on every position on the gun, so I said I’d stay, and the cook and one ammunition man stayed with me. We got the gun in action and I told the cook to lay on the aircraft vertical and the other fellow to lay horizontal. I stood up on the platform and loaded and fired single handed, with the other men laying the sights on the target as best they could in the hope of hitting something. I didn’t think we had much hope of a direct hit, but thought it might keep them up and stop them dive bombing the lads on the bridge.

There was a convoy of ammunition lorries on the road, so they had to take cover. All the drivers came over and asked if they could do anything to help. I said they could open the ammunition boxes and bring the shells over for me to feed into the gun. We had 100 rounds and fired 96 shells, keeping four back in case we were dive bombed again; at least then we could fire the last four at them and go down fighting.

A Major came along on a motorbike and said we were doing a fine job and keep it up. He said we’d knocked the tail off one of the planes and I said it must have been sheer luck. The Japs moved away and bombed a hospital ship in the river. We managed to get the tractor back on the road and hooked the gun up. The other five guns in our troop were about 10 miles ahead of us. We caught up with them at the rendezvous at about 1am the following morning, having had nothing to eat or drink the whole time.

We had to report about firing the gun, and as we had fired it we had to boil out the barrel before we got anything to eat. It took over an hour to clear everything up and by this time all I wanted to do was sleep — I just dropped to the ground where I was.

Next day we travelled back to Tumbru Ghat where we had a gun sight on a small hill overlooking a big valley and deep jungle. Nothing much happened for about a week, then one morning we were on the gun, the barrel pointing out over the valley, when we saw two planes coming towards us. We couldn’t make them out at first, then we realised there were two more planes behind them. The first two turned out to be Hurricanes and they were being chased by two Zeros. We couldn’t fire until the Hurricanes went past us, once they were clear we opened up on the Zeros.

They were so low they only just missed the cookhouse. Unfortunately we didn’t..... one of our shells took the roof off. Ted the cook was making breakfast, which came with added bamboo that morning....

C Troop were very inexperienced. They couldn’t seem to do anything right, and after blowing the back off a 15cwt truck full of troops reporting sick, they were kept out of everyone’s way. This particular morning they were about 10 miles back from us, and the Zeros were cruising along think they had escaped. Then C Troop spotted them. The Sergeant ordered automatic fire: they set it on single, fired one shot and scored a direct hit!

A few days later we moved again, back to Bawli Bazar then across the river and on to a place called Yen Yin. We built a dugout with some railway sleepers, and a ‘log cabin’ with a tarpaulin roof. There was a pool in the river nearby with a small wooden pier. Four of us went for a swim, two on guard with rifles and two in the water. I dived off the pier and found it was at least 20ft deep. Suddenly there was a terrific bang which nearly blew me out of the water. When I surfaced the lads were yelling at me to get out. I got to the bank - and then saw the two crocodiles. They had followed me into the water and the lads on guard had thrown a couple of hand grenades at them.

That night I was on guard with a bombardier. We were just about to be relieved at 1.30am when a 3 ton lorry full of Japs came along and stopped about 200 yards away. Of course we couldn’t do anything as we would give our position away. By this time the rest of the detachment were awake and in the gun pit. I was still 50 yards away in a trench with a Bren gun. One of the lads came over to take my place as I’d been there over two hours, and I managed to get back to the gun pit.

Before I was relieved the Jap patrol had tried to blow up some 3.7 inch guns belonging to the 8th Irish. A short distance from us there was some rifle fire and hand grenades exploding. A soldier from the 8th Irish jumped in a lorry full of ammunition, which was on fire, and drove it out of the way. He just managed to jump out before it went off with a hell of a bang.

Next morning we were just about to have some breakfast after being up all night, when we heard a whistle right above us. It was a Jap shell which landed just behind us, then came another which was much closer. At this point we dived for cover, and the shells kept coming until they reached the 8th Irish guns and all hell broke loose for the next hour.

We heard someone crying in a shell hole and cautiously went to investigate — aware that it could be a trap. Sadly, this time it was a Burmese man with a hole in his leg as big as an orange. We couldn’t do much for him apart from putting a piece of towel in the hole and wrapping a bandage round it.

Later in the gun pit when it was quiet again, the bombardier was standing next to me with his rifle pointing down. Suddenly there was a bang — he’d accidentally pulled the trigger and the bullet missed my foot by about half an inch.

The next day we were on the move again. We made our way to the Ngakyedauk Pass, about 10 miles away, under continuous mortar fire. We just kept going, keeping our fingers crossed. We continued over the pass, through thick mountain jungle. It was a nightmare, just a dried up mud track. We had to cover our faces as we couldn’t breathe with the dust, it was like driving through thick fog. Some of the 3 ton lorries failed to negotiate the bends and fell about 1000 feet down into the valley.”

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