Rowland William Button's War Story - Chapter 3

ROWLAND BUTTON’S WAR STORY AS TOLD TO HIS GRANDAUGHTER RACHEL

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

CHAPTER 3

I caught diphtheria. People rarely get diphtheria in England now but it is a nasty illness and for one thing your throat is swollen and sore. I think I caught it in a native hospital where we had taken some natives injured in a bus accident. But where we were there were no doctors and I delayed getting any treatment. The throat got worse though and so I travelled in our truck to Batticoloa. The doctor at the hospital there sent me by overnight train back to Colombo, it was a terrible journey right across the country, in a crowded smelly train and by the time I reached Colombo I was totally exhausted. I can remember struggling off the train onto the platform, someone helped me and because I really did not know what was happening I found myself in Mount Lavinia hospital near Colombo. I was here six weeks I think. It seemed ages and I took too long to get better. I was very eager to get on my way to India but no — back into the hills again, this time to a lovely convalescent home in the tea plantations. In wartime the sick were well looked after whenever it was possible. The nurses and doctors in wartime are of course as important as the troops themselves.

Fit again, back to Colombo and no sooner there sent on my way to India. But not by plane as I had hoped. All the way by train. If you have a map of the world just find out how far it is from Colombo to Gwalior. You journey first to the northern tip of Ceylon, across a short stretch of sea, into Southern India and up the east coast of India to Madras before cutting inland across to the Central plains of India. Train journeys across India can be both exciting and tedious. Progress is sometimes slow, it is often very hot. Yet to see India from a train is an experience of a lifetime. The railway system is good really and you can organise a meal in advance at some stations. You have a roll of bedding to sleep on for some journeys take several days and nights. I have slept on station platforms.

Gwalior to me was very cold but I do not think it really was but of course I had come north from the Equator. The Maharajah of Gwalior was one of the great India princes and his palace was up high on a fortress, above the town where I stayed for a day or so. You see, for many of us the war was spent just being moved around by foot, by truck, by train, by plane and by ship. For I was on a train again, this time with orders to report to Army 77 Brigade HQ at Lalitpur — still in Central India.

I arrived at Lalitpur about midnight and was surprised to see an Army truck waiting which took me to a large tented camp in the scrub jungle. The driver dropped me off in the dark and I could not find my way around — anyway I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was tired anyway so I decided to sleep outside a big tent. I was lucky, it turned out to be the cookhouse.

You will not believe this but I was having a cup of char (tea) in the morning when I saw someone I knew. It was amazing in Wartime that you travel thousands of miles and you meet someone you know. I found it happened quite often. Many friends were made in wartime and remained so for a long time after the war. You also met all classes of people, different nationalities and or course we saw how other people lived. So we learned much about the world.

The Chindits had been fighting in Burma for some time. They had gone behind the Japanese lines in long columns of troops and tried to create havoc by wrecking railway lines and creating alarm to the Japanese troops. They used mules to carry their supplies and the Air force dropped new supplies to the Chindits whenever they could. There was in each Chindit column an airforce officer and some signals personnel to arrange for the airdrops of food and other supplies.

Now at and around Lalitpur new Chindit columns were being organised and trained to go into Burma to step up the attack on the Japanese. There was still bitter fighting in Northern Burma and it was being very difficult to make progress through the jungle and push the Japanese back. At this time too the war in Europe was going through a difficult phase. I remember I was worried about my brother Bob. I did not know where he was, he was fighting in a tank in Belgium I found out later.

We went on long 20-mile route marches through the India scrub jungle. It was hot, there was little water, we did cross one or two rivers but most rivers were dried up at the time. We ate rice mostly and ‘K’ rations. ‘K’ rations were provided from America and each day we had a little box containing I think a little tin of meat, 2 biscuits and something I liked very much, this was compressed dried fruit bar.

Because we had communications equipment and a petrol generator and petrol to transport we had the two largest and most awkward mules in the whole column. But I had become used to horses on the farm when I was a boy and I was not afraid of the mules — didn’t relish walking miles behind them in the hot sun through. We also had a Gurkha muleteer, he was to help us with the mules. The mules are good at climbing up quite steep hills and will even swim across rivers (given a little encouragement). Our biggest trouble was, first of all every hour the column halted for ten minutes for a rest but we did not get much rest for we had to get into communication with our base. Then as we travelled along the petrol got lighter and the load on the mule became unbalanced and its back would become sore — and the mule didn’t like it! You must always keep a mule happy. In fact at night you always have to feed and water him before you eat yourself. With each column there is a veterinary officer who watched the column move off each morning and if he saw an upset mule he would make you drop out and put things right with the mule — but the column would not wait for you — you would have to follow its tracks and hope to catch up.

Training went on and on, when on earth would we go to Burma? Christmas 1944 went by. This group of would be Chindits didn’t get to Burma. We were all disbanded — the idea had been abandoned. I did say earlier on that you could never plan ahead in wartime.

What next?

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