To Make a Basha

“This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jan Hewett, a volunteer from BBC Three Counties Action at The British Legion on behalf of Reginald Kirk and has been added to this site with his/her permission. The person fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.”

Name: Reginald Kirk.
Location: The road down to Rangoon.
Title: To make a Basher.

The big battles were raging at Imphal and Kohima, There were proper buildings there. Tea plantations, bungalows and a hospital.
We were moving forward to village after village down the road from Inphal to Rangoon. We had to use the road because of the tanks. When I say we were moving forward we didn’t travel much distance in a day. We didn’t see many Burmese and those we saw we were suspicious of. There was a rumour going about that the Japs were employing them. Most villagers dispersed into the jungle. We took one village, the Japs had moved out. There was very little movement, just a few chickens, a goat and some bashers some destroyed, some burnt. Bashers were timber and rush huts. Luckily the well in this village had not been poisoned. You could see there had been habitation, a few bits of clothing in the huts. The rope bridge over the stream with its steep sides had been destroyed.
The Ghurkhas moved in first. The Ghurkhas showed us how to make bashers that didn’t leak. They showed us how to weave the bamboo and brushwood similar to thatching so that the water ran off. I suppose they were similar to wattle and daub buildings.
There was an earthwork, 4-5ft high and a natural protection behind with the paddy field, but with no water. The Ghurkhas would be cooking their chapattis “Want any?” They’d share anything. Even their rum ration they would share.
So we inched forward slowly, one step at a time, one step at a time down the road towards Rangoon. A couple of times the Japs blew up the road and the engineers had to put down a bridge.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.