Rangoon Battalion: The Armoured Car Section - Part 2

PART 2
The Armoured Car Section

The annual training camp for the Rangoon Battalion BAF duly commenced on 6th December 1941 for a period of eight days. I, you will remember, was No. 4851 Corporal Millem, car commander of “Snipe”. Thus the Armoured Cars gaily proceeded to Mingaladon airport where we were to train for our war role which, in (what we thought then) the unlikely event of the Japs starting anything, was to be the defence of the huge airport against parachutists and saboteurs. We arrived early in the morning and spent the first day setting up our camp in the shelter of a rubber plantation near one of the runways. The cars were in good order and we all looked forward to an enjoyable and interesting week’s training, especially as the RAF had promised to cooperate with us as far as possible.

That night the station commander, who had obviously just received a message of vital importance, finding that we were only carrying our normal issue of 1,000 rounds of ball ammunition in addition to our blanks which we always took on manoeuvres, urged us to get as much ball ammunition as we could. Wondering what was in the wind we sent to HQ. in Rangoon (who cursed us for being scaremongers) at midnight for an additional 20,000 rounds of ball ammo. The following day, the fateful 7th December 1941, we received the astounding news — war with Japan! Off came our blank firing attachments, in went our service barrels, our guns were loaded with ball and the blanks were returned to Rangoon — within a few minutes we stood ready at our war stations!

In a way it was a relief. The suspense had been snapped and we knew where we stood. To me it was no surprise. You will remember that almost a year ago I forecast that sooner or later Japan was going to do something about the Burma Road and that war with Japan was inevitable. When it came we were almost joyful, for it seemed certain suicide for Japan — her last desperate throw. I suppose you must have thought the same. Singapore, utterly and completely impregnable, still stood between the Japs and Burma. Malaya was ready come what may, Burma was ready, our navy in eastern waters had been strongly reinforced and was ready — the air force too was ready, the war with China had exhausted Japan — she could not last more than three months. Japan’s air force was no good, her pilots all had bad eyesight and could not fly by night. And what good was Japan’s fleet with Singapore blocking the way? Etc, etc, etc, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!

The first few days were intensely busy ones. Slit trenches had to be dug, tents and cars camouflaged, sand bags filled. We toiled and sweated, but happily. Our training programme was scrapped. This was the real thing — this was war.

The day after the balloon went up we were due to parade with the rest of the Battalion at HQ for inspection by HE The Governor. Not having received news to the contrary we tootled back to Rangoon at the appointed hour only to find that the parade was off so we hared back to the airport without HE’s blessing.

At the outbreak of hostilities against Japan the whole of the Rangoon Battalion was embodied. After a few days, however, A Company, which consisted mainly of Europeans, was disembodied so that the wheels of commerce could go on turning. Except for very brief periods A Company were never re-embodied and they were never in action.

The Armoured Car Section, on the other hand, were embodied at the outset and were never disembodied. You will remember that despite my repeated attempts to get into the militia, the Burma Corporation persistently refused to let me go. Even after the cars were embodied the firm tried to get me out of it but this time I beat them to it and they were unsuccessful.

The first week or so we were quiet and almost uneventful from a war point of view although there was lots to do getting fully prepared for what might come. We soon settled down to a routine of anti-sabotage patrols, firing practices, trench digging, etc, etc. Daily we expected bombings and parachute attacks which did not materialise. We got a radio in the camp and no one else seemed to worry when the Japs started coming into Burma at Victoria Point so neither did we. We soon began to think of Christmas leave.

At this point I must interrupt my story to tell you that I do not propose to outline the course of the war in the East, the effect of the fall of Singapore and so on, because you must have followed it all pretty closely yourselves at the time. I will merely give you my own experiences but you will find that a good map of Burma will help you to follow the second half of my adventures.

To resume — it was soon found that for the Cars to be constantly ready for immediate action it was unnecessary to maintain the full strength of the Section on the airport all the time so a system was evolved so that each man did one week on and one week off. As we were short of experienced car commanders, however, I did not share in this scheme as I was given Christmas week off which was the only leave I had whilst with the Cars — and what a week it proved to be!

My leave started on the 22nd December and on the morning of the 23rd I was at the office when the sirens went off. Rangoon had heard the sirens many times before when nothing had followed so hundreds of bloody fools were in the open stupidly gazing at our pretty fighter planes amusing themselves high above. I had heard a nasty faint buzz in the far distance so proceeded with some haste to the basement with the rest of the office staff. There I heard my first bombing. There is no need to describe my feelings during this, my first raid, for you all must have felt just the same when you got your first and you must all well know that horrible sensation in the pit of the stomach. Fortunately for me, when the bombs started falling several of the girls started crying and what with all the office clerks being scared stiff, I was too busy trying to pacify people to worry about how I felt.

The bombing was pretty thorough and we had several quite near our building. The docks were the main target but attempts were also made to hit the railway station and the telegraph office. Thus all the objectives were in our area. The bombing lasted about fifteen minutes and long before the “all clear” sounded I was on my way to Battalion HQ in accordance with our previously issued orders. On the way to HQ it was obvious that Rangoon had been pretty badly hit. Large fires were blazing in several parts of the city particularly near the wharves. However I had no time then to have a proper look around as I had to make HQ as quickly as possible in case required for internal security. As it happened we were not called upon although I had to stay at HQ until the following evening (Christmas Eve).

Soon the details of the raid began to pour in. Mingaladon airport had also been heavily raided at the same time as Rangoon and there had been a terrific air battle over the entire area. The Japs paid very heavily for comparatively small success. They lost over 20 planes all told whereas the RAF and AVGs lost only two or three. Although several warehouses were destroyed the docks were comparatively undamaged and most of the damage was to residential areas behind the docks. Damage to the railway station was negligible. The death rate was, however, appalling and the streets were littered with the corpses of the natives who had not had the sense to take cover. At Mingaladon the military barracks were fairly badly knocked about, and some of the other buildings including the South Hangar had direct hits. One of the Bofors guns was hit and most of the crew wiped out, but fortunately there were no casualties amongst our men.

On Christmas Eve I was given a list of the addresses of the families of our men on the airport, and for some hours I toured Rangoon to find them and assure them that our men were OK. This took me through most of the bombed quarters and was a thoroughly depressing job. Whole streets had been completely demolished and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I was able to trace nearly all the families.

Then came the most miserable Christmas Day I have ever experienced. In the morning I decided to go into Rangoon to buy Christmas cake, mince pies, etc for our boys on the airport. Whilst in the shop making my purchases the wretched sirens sounded again. I stayed in the shop and was crouching behind the frigidaire when the bombs began to fall. Once again it was a double raid — Rangoon and Mingaladon. I was determined, however, that the bloody Japs were not going to deprive our boys of their Christmas treat so as soon as the bombs stopped falling I was on my way to the airport where I arrived soon after the “all clear”. Our camp was an amazing sight. It had been the subject of special attention by the Japs. Our mess tent was dangling prettily on the very top of a tree, three of our four cars had been pierced by shrapnel and one was entirely out of action. It was amazing how the shrapnel went clean through the armour plating. Miraculously, none of our men were hurt although some were rather shaken. They were all in trenches when bombs started falling in the camp so they were all able to enjoy my purchases. And that was to be my home in a few days. I returned to bomb scarred Rangoon and got drunk!

You will have heard how heavily the Japs paid for these two raids. The final score was 47 Japs down against only five of ours. The AVGs (American Volunteer Group) were terrific. With a bare handful of Tomahawks they knocked the Japs down right and left. The scores during the early air battles were infinitely better than anything that had been known in any other theatre of war — including the Battle of Britain.

In these two raids the Japs were, however, successful in achieving their main object — they closed the port of Rangoon. The exodus of Indians from Rangoon started immediately after the first bombing and soon there was no labour to be had at the docks or elsewhere. Even at the Silver Grill, where I attempted to have a final beat up on Boxing Day, we had to serve ourselves with drinks. The streets of Rangoon remained littered with debris because no labour could be had to clean them up. Eventually some of the Rangoon Battalion were put on the job and also to unload ships.

On 27th December I returned to the airport and was relieved to find that the Armoured Cars had shifted out of the rubber plantation which had been so badly plastered on Christmas Day. Our new positions, however, did not look too healthy, for we occupied the only two undamaged buildings of the Glosters’ barracks just off the end of one of the runways which had been pasted by the Japs on 23rd December and had been evacuated by the Glosters. The difficulty was, of course, that the Cars could not be stabled far from the runways as the main part of our job was to defend the airport against any parachute attacks. Thus whilst other units and even RAF ground staff were able to move well away from the danger zone we had to stick it out in the target area.

My return to Mingaladon coincided with a change in the Japs’ tactics. Their daylight raids had obviously proved far too expensive, so, with the aid of bright moonlight, they took up night raiding. For twelve nights in succession they hit us and hit us hard, and every night it was the same target — Mingaladon airport, the largest and most important in Burma. In England when the sirens go I imagine you can console yourselves with the fact that there are so many targets that the one you may be near may not be the objective. We had no such consolation — they were after us every time, and, in fact, it was not until many weeks later that Rangoon was hit for the third and last time.

Fortunately at that time the warning system was good and we usually had fifteen or twenty minutes in which to get out of bed, put on our equipment, tin hats and respirators, warm up the engines and then dive for the trenches. We used to sleep in our overalls knowing full well that our night’s slumbers would be disturbed as soon as the moon was up. For the first few nights there was no opposition to the raiders whatever. We had no night fighters and the “ack acks” did not appear to be keen on giving away their positions. Thus we could only crouch in our open slit trenches and take what came — and we got plenty! In the absence of opposition the blighters used to come in for their bombing runs pretty low and their exhaust flares could be easily seen from our trenches.

The Japs were very fond of pattern bombing, that is why they came over in formation, and they all released their full loads together. Each plane would drop a stick of four or five bombs, the usual cocktail being a mixture of high explosives, anti-personnels and incendiaries. My Car was in the most forward position and many was the time when my trench was straddled by a stick. It is no pleasant experience to hear the first of a stick fall some distance away, the second a bit nearer, the third nearer still, so that it seemed that the fourth must get you. I would hold my breath and then with a colossal feeling of relief be almost deafened by the fourth woomphing down on the other side of the trench. The nearest they got to me during the whole of this phase was twenty yards so I was fairly lucky.

It soon became apparent that night bombing of the airport was to be the regular thing as long as there was a moon, so on the fourth day the powers that be decided to stage a fireworks display. Every single gun on or near the airport was ordered to open up irrespective of height or range if the Japs came over again. We went to bed almost eagerly awaiting the nightly visitation and sure enough we weren’t disappointed. After the usual routine on the sounding of the sirens I and my crew happily awaited the show. The drone of the Jap planes got louder and louder and we soon picked them out when they happened to be heading, as usual, straight for our trench. Then everything opened up at once — three point sevens supported by Bofors and Brens firing tracers. The barrage was surprisingly good and it made a refreshing sight. The only trouble was that they did not hit anything. Soon the bursting of bombs mingled with the roar of the ack acks and the din was awe-inspiring and terrific. When it was all over we voted it a better sight than the Crystal Palace on Guy Fawkes night.

And so it went on night after night. Sometimes the ack acks would remain silent and a couple of our fighters would go up to try conclusions. But nothing seemed to deter the Japs who continued their visits with amazing persistency. According to the time the moon rose we could calculate almost to the minute when the Japs would be over — in fact, a daily sweepstake was run by the Glosters on the exact second the first bomb would fall. Remarkably enough, despite our many pastings, we suffered no casualties in the Armoured Cars. After the first week of night rids all the men (except me) were changed and new crews came on. Despite loss of innumerable hours of sleep we cheerfully carried on with our daytime work of patrols and general training against the day when the Japs might try to take the airport by parachutists. I will not go so far as to say that I got used to bombing, for it was always the same bloody awful feeling every time I heard the wretched things whistling down — and that feeling was common or garden fear.

Then the moon waned and was no more and after another couple of raids when they dropped flares, the Japs left us alone for a bit. The short respite enabled us to catch up a bit on our sleep and also helped the old nerves to recover. We also moved our positions further back so that the second spell of night bombing wasn’t quite so bad.

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