Crater of Death

We often came across dead Japanese. One day we found a dead Japanese in a Chaung (a stream), there was a terrible stench of dead bodies, so we did was we burned them, set them alight. But that was a horrible smell as well. There was nothing else we could do with them; they were too far deteriorated to do anything else.

One Japanese soldier got a burial by our guys. They buried him because he was in a state they could bury him in.

Another time, we came across a massive shellhole and it was full of dead Japanese soldiers. It was at a place called Taugni - We called it the ‘Crater of Death’.

We slept not far from that place. That’s a railway station there, so some of us could get in for a bit of shelter. There was that terrible smell of death there. We burned some bodies which were lying around, but what happened to those men I don’t know.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the BBC Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Richard Jones and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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