Rangoon Battalion: The Evacuation of Rangoon - Part 4

PART 4
The Evacuation of Rangoon

On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at Z. I was kept tremendously busy the whole time and my men too worked like Trojans. As I have said, it was my first real job as an officer and thanks to the grand work done by the men throughout, we were complimented by both the Station Commander and our own OC when the time came for us to return to base camp. Actually a platoon of RAF ground gunners was supposed to have taken 24 hour turns with us but at the outset I found that the RAF men were insufficiently trained to operate and maintain the guns effectively, so, rather than have our guns messed up, my men were on the whole time without relief and during the daytime when the Japs did not visit us, we trained up the RAF platoon.

The main disadvantage at Z was the failure of the warning system but even so we were never caught napping. One night was rather amusing. We heard the Japs coming, sounded our alarm and duly got our nightly dose of bombs. A full ten minutes after the last bomb fell Mingaladon rang up to advise that many aircraft had been reported in the vicinity so would we please sound our alarm! The reply from our end of the phone was unprintable. That was the night I was awarded the DAO. P/O Pratt, our young MO, had had a bit of a “beat up” earlier in the evening and there were no signs of him when I got to the trench which he, Strong and I usually shared. The planes were getting pretty close so I dashed over to his tent, pulled him out of bed and we both just managed to dive into the trench as the whistle of the bombs started. For this Pratt decorated me on the spot with the Distinguished Awakening Order (the lid of a cigarette tin). We got another raid later that night when the same thing happened and I was presented with a safety pin representing the bar to my DAO.

On our return to base camp at Mingaladon I found that our OC, Major Oppenheimer, had gone sick and Jack Villiers, who had been promoted to Captain, had taken over. My men and I were all given a couple of days leave and I returned to Rangoon for a brief rest. I stayed with Blackadder as my old house-mate, Walter Vochringer, had given up the house and sold all the furniture prior to joining the civil evacuation staff. By this time the majority of the native population had fled the city, the banks had moved to Mandalay and most of the business houses were preparing to follow suit. All European women and children had been sent to India by sea. In fact Rangoon had the wind up pretty badly. I called at the office and was told that they too were shifting to Mandalay if things got any worse. I packed up all my civilian kit and dumped my trunk and boxes at the office where Leach assured me that my stuff would either be shipped to India or taken up country if it became necessary to clear out of Rangoon. I had no time to do more than this as regards the disposal of all my stuff and unfortunately the firm did not keep its promise and all my civilian possessions were eventually left in the office strong room when Rangoon was evacuated.

By this time things were beginning to look pretty grim for southern Burma. Our forces had been driven back from Moulmein and Martaban and the battle of the Sittang River had gone against us. Soon after I left them the Armoured Cars had been taken off their job at Mingaladon and sent to Moulmein to fight rearguard. Whilst on a special mission at Thaton two of the cars were caught in a Jap roadblock. A Gurkha Rifles officer was killed in the leading car and of our six men in the two cars four of them were wounded by armour piercing bullets. Nevertheless by a marvellous exhibition of courage and coolness both cars were got out of the mess after silencing two or three Jap machine-gun posts. One of our lads who drove his car all the way back with a bullet through his shoulder and his car commander who with a bullet through his leg kept his gun firing until the muzzle attachment of his gun was shot off; both got the MM. Our other two cars were lost at the Sittang River but all our men got away and are now safely in India.

The next few days back at base camp were comparatively uneventful apart from the usual nightly bombings which were then being varied by a few daylight raids. After one of the daylight raids the Japs tried rather a cute trick. The bombing had finished and our fighters were returning from the battle, many of them doing “victory rolls” as they came in to land. After several of our fighters had landed over came another half dozen flying very low and we all stood up to give them a wave and a cheer as they passed over us. All we got for our enthusiasm was a burst of machine-gun bullets from these six, who were Japs! Fortunately none of us was hit and we subsequently learned that they had gone right round the airport deceiving everyone else the same way.

From our camp I also had a grandstand view of the fight which resulted in the first bomber being brought down by one of our night fighters. As usual that night we could see the exhaust flares of the Jap bombers as they came over. Then suddenly there was a long streak of tracer right across the sky followed shortly after by a short vertical burst straight upwards from under the bombers. A second afterwards there was another burst of tracer straight down and by the short length of its travel we knew it was a hit. Sure enough there was a roar followed by a terrific flash and explosion as the bomber with its full load hit the ground. A truly wonderful sight.

During this period Rangoon was emptying itself pretty rapidly and presented a sorry sight on the few occasions I was able to visit the town. The few remaining police were hard put to stop looting and had to be helped by the military. Then, on 20th February, up went the “E” sign and all remaining civilians were given 48 hours to get out of the city. The chaos was unimaginable. Past our camp on their way up country went a solid ceaseless stream of lorries, buses, cars, bullock carts, hand carts, bicycles, everything on wheels piled high with all sorts of household goods. Accompanying the wheeled vehicles went a solid mass of the less fortunate Indians on foot with their maximum possible loads on their backs and heads. It was a pathetic procession hardly equalled by the similar evacuations in France and Belgium in the earlier stages of the war. Within two days Rangoon was empty — a city of the dead.

Even then we, whose duty it was to stay put, had no idea that Rangoon would not be defended. We thought that the civilian population was being cleared out to make military operations easier, for, after all, we had been told that Rangoon would be held to the last man. And following close on the heels of the last of the civilians came a far more pleasant sight — a steady stream of tanks and artillery. The Royal Tank Regiment and the 7th Hussars had arrived with the dust of Libya still on their vehicles! Straight from the docks they rumbled past our base camp and were in battle order a very few hours after their ships had tied up — an amazing effort considering that, there being no labour left in Rangoon, all the tanks and equipment had to be unloaded by the troops themselves.

In case of accidents we decided at this time to make ourselves as mobile as possible and to amass as much tinned provisions as we could lay our hands on. The remainder of the Rangoon Battalion had moved up country with the civil evacuation so we of the AA Company were left to fend for ourselves and in such circumstances there was no man better for the job than our new OC, Jack Villiers, an adept at getting what he wanted no matter what methods had to be used. He and I made several lightening visits to Rangoon which usually resulted in an appreciable increase to our stocks of provisions including, of course, liquor and cigarettes. The deserted shops and warehouses of Rangoon had not been emptied of their contents before their owners evacuated so there was plenty of everything to be had. The military authorities took over almost everything so that those units like ourselves who remained in the area could take what we wanted and we made certain of getting our share.

On these brief visits Rangoon presented a wretched sight to those of us whose home it had been. When the “E” sign went up the gates of all the prisons and lunatic asylums had been thrown open with the result that 2,000 convicts and 600 or 700 lunatics all without a penny were added to the Burmese hooligans who were already looting right and left. The police and fire services were among the first to leave Rangoon so that the impossible task of maintaining law and order was in the hands of a few volunteer police and a handful of soldiers with orders to shoot looters on sight. The result was inevitable. The big shops soon presented an incredible spectacle. Anything the looters could not carry away they smashed. I have never seen so much senseless and wanton destruction. Then the fires started and, with no one to put them out, soon whole quarters of Rangoon were in flames (this was all some time before the official demolition). It became quite a perilous adventure to go to Rangoon and Jack and I always had our revolver holsters unfastened and we drew our guns when entering shops. Shots were whizzing round all over the place.

With more and more units leaving the Rangoon area it soon became obvious that Rangoon itself was not going to be defended after all so we began to make tentative enquiries as to how much transport would be allotted to us if and when we had to withdraw ourselves. At that time the only transport we had were two lorries of our own and two on detachment which latter two were under orders to be returned to the MT depot if we moved from Mingaladon. That was all we had in addition to our own private cars. Brigade HQ promised us ten lorries in the event of a move but we thought it wise not to rely too much on these which was just as well because eventually they never materialised. Thus we were faced with the probability of having to make a quick getaway and evacuate our 130 odd men with their rifles and kit, 18 Browning AA guns (each weighing about 2,000 lbs), 4 Bren and 10 Lewis LMGs, dozens of cases of ammunition and all our tentage, stores and provisions with two 3 ton lorries and a half dozen private cars!

Well, things began to move pretty rapidly then and it became apparent that in the final scramble it was going to be every unit for itself and the Japs take the hindmost. The roads out of Rangoon were already littered with abandoned broken down vehicles whose owners, rushing away from Rangoon as if the Japs were already on their tails, had just left by the roadside. This provided us with our opportunity. We collected masses of spare parts from autocars and soon we had built up a fleet of 23 vehicles, all pretty serviceable, out of the junk we found. Our methods of getting some of our fleet were, shall we say, peculiar, but I think were justified by virtue of the fact that when we finally got orders to get out and get out quick we, unlike many other units, did not leave so much as a single round of ammunition behind.

I had had to leave my own little car behind when I left Z airport as the constant bashing about it received during the three months I had used it on the aerodrome proved too much for it and it had cracked up completely. However, in exchange I managed to procure a much better car — a large Austin 14 hp saloon. In addition and in common with the other platoon commanders I had a brand new American “Jeep” of which Jack Villiers, I know not how, managed to get six for use by the Company. The petrol problem also did not worry us for the authorities let us take as much as we could carry rather than have to destroy it to avoid it falling into Jap hands.

By this time (about 15th February) the Jap armies were getting uncomfortably close to Pegu and the RAF decided to evacuate Z aerodrome which was just short of Pegu. We, however, had no orders to withdraw our men so, on the night the RAF evacuated, I was sent out to assure our platoon there that we were making every arrangement to pull them out in time should the Japs break through. Naturally our fellows were getting very anxious when they saw everyone else disappearing from the airport in a cloud of dust. I returned to Mingaladon the next morning and reported that Z airport was then completely deserted apart from our platoon and a Company of Burma Rifles. Even the Bofors had gone. Nevertheless our orders were that our platoon must stay at Z for the time being so as to stop any attempt by the Japs to land there. Six .5 guns and one hundred riflemen against the entire Japanese air force!

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