With The Americans in Burma

This story is taken from an interview with William Telford at the Ballymena Servicemen’s Association, and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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Very little [contact with Americans]. We had very close contact with the pilots of the American Aircraft. They were a different … I can tell ye. Whenever the 11th East Africa Div come to Burma at kabal valley, and we were at the edge of the kabal valley, and I was at company HQ. I was based in the APM’s office — that was the Assistant Provost Marshall. He was my boss. Well, anyway, Jim Hunt was the section driver. And he had the whole back of the 3-tonner piled up with 14lb boxes of meat, and that’s officer had black SNCOs and as soon as they saw the bully beef their ears wagged. And they said “Listen Paddy, I’ll give you a couple of bags of coffee beans that night”. And the 2 big sergeants that were driving the lorry were going to fight over it. He had to give them a tin of it just to pacify them.

Well anyway, we got the beans and we never had had hot coffee. Jim Hunt was the section driver, he got a 5-gallon petrol drum and cut the lid off it, and filled it up with water and boiled it, and threw big handfuls of coffee beans. And it was as black as that there. And this big American officer, he was a senior rank, and “I smell coffee — Easy, men, easy!” as we all got to their feet. “Can I sample your coffee?” And Jim Hunt says, gets a clean mug, and give the big officer a mug of black stuff like tar. “The first goddamn coffee I’ve got since I left Texas”. And he told all his men. And they used to come, never said nothing, and lift a mug and take some. Black coffee, no sugar, no milk, no nothing. And always left a carton of cigarettes.

There’s no such a thing as black market.
We weren’t [] paper. A few transgressed, and we were told to lose it. It didn’t matter who you were. You were finished.

[on leave]
You couldn’t go anywhere. There was nowhere to go. You were always busy. Your day was 24 hrs. I saw me standing with a rifle with a bayonet on it, and putting the bayonet under my chin so that I wouldn’t fall asleep. It [fatigue] was, it was bad. The heat, you were standing in the sun.

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