Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [64]
The best “oozies” were what Williams called “real Burmans, the Irishmen of the East,” inveterate gamblers who cared as much as he did for their animals. Some were careless, however, causing terrible suffering by allowing battery acid to leak from loads onto elephants’ backs. Williams established a field veterinary hospital to care for the injured, but nothing could be done on the night when a horrified sapper officer drove into his camp to report that one of their favourite beasts, Okethapyah—Pagoda Stone—had trodden on a land mine. “I gave Alex167 a good tot of rum, told him I could not amputate an elephant’s legs, and we could only do our best to prevent such accidents in future.”
Williams scoured parachute drop zones for broken bags of salt, which his animals adored, and strove constantly to prevent the casual cruelty of soldiers. Once, an Indian Army Service Corps driver, enraged by an elephant blocking his road, simply shot it in the leg. In October 1944 Williams’s favourite elephant, Bandoola, forty-eight years old, got loose in a pineapple grove and contacted acute colic after eating nine hundred fruits. Bandoola recovered from this experience only to be found dead a few months later with one tusk removed, and a wound inflicted by a British bullet. Romantic though the elephants were, they suffered grievously for their role in a struggle of which they knew nothing. Many used by the Japanese were wounded or killed by RAF strafing. Most of those recaptured had had their tusks sawn off for ivory. Some 4,000 elephants are estimated to have died in Burma between 1942 and 1945.
It was a strange world, that of Fourteenth Army, divorced from anything its soldiers had known in past life. “We had entered an enchanted zone168—a place of evil enchantment, if you like,” wrote Brian Aldiss. “You could not buy a ticket to get where we were…No women were allowed, or hairdressers, or any kind of extraneous occupation. Lawyers, entertainers, politicians—all were forbidden…To attend this show, you had to be young and part of the British Empire.” There was no loot to be scavenged from the battlefield, such as the armies fighting in Europe enjoyed. There were only the enemy’s swords and pathetic banners, though Aldiss was once bemused to see a man marching with an old Japanese typewriter lashed to his sixty-pound pack.
There were few illusions about the loyalties of Burmans, in whose country this bitter struggle was fought out. A 20th Division report described 10 percent of the locals—often tribesmen from minority communities, persecuted by the Burman majority—as pro-British, 10 percent as die-hard anti-British, and 80 percent as “lukewarm, assisting whichever superior forces169 they are forced or persuaded to.” John Randle once entered a village to find a badly wounded Japanese, obviously dying, “with his left leg shattered170, bloated and gangrenous.” A group of Burmans surrounded him, one of whom was driving a stick up his anus. Randle shot dead both the Japanese and his Burman torturer.
Men learned to beware mist on the hills, which often persisted until mid-morning, screening enemy movements. They were respectful of Japanese 90mm mortars. At night, two green Very lights from the enemy lines usually signalled an attack. Officers found it prudent to dress indistinguishably from their men, to avoid attracting the attention of snipers. The first of 114 Field Regiment to be killed in action was John Robbins, a newly arrived young forward observation officer who went into action alongside the infantry wearing badges of rank, binoculars, and a map case prominently slung round his neck. One burst from a Japanese light machine gun removed Robbins.
In Indian and African units some British officers grew beards, to make their white skins less conspicuous. When Captain Ronnie McAllister joined 1/3rd