Chindit Affair

A Memoir of the War in Burma

Frank Baines

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781844683680
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

In March 1944, some 2, 200 battle trained men of 111 Brigade flew from India into northern Burma to land on improvised airstrips cleared from the jungle, They were part of General Orde Wingates Chindit force sent to fight the Japanese deep behind their lines. Five months later, 111 Brigade was down to 118 fit men eight British officers, a score of British soldiers and 90 Gurkhas. One of those eight officers was Frank Baines, and in Chindit Affair he tells, in vivid language and with shrewd insight, what happened.Frank commanded two platoons of young Gurkhas and was attached to 111 Brigade Headquarters, serving under John Masters, where he had a close-up view for most of the time. His account throws new light on the leadership of the Chindit campaign, but above all it is a soldiers story.All the horrors of jungle warfare are here bodies blood-sucked by leeches and corpses impaled by bamboo; Japanese soldiers reduced to eating human flesh; a court martial and execution; soldiers falling sick and dropping by the wayside, and being killed and wounded in action. He also captures the atmosphere of the jungle; its watercourses, trees, birds and the Kachin villagers simple way of life. No other account of the Chindit operations touches the same raw nerves, and none recreates so immediately the sensations of being there in the jungle and hills which devoured nearly all of them.ABOUT THE AUTHORBorn in 1915, the son of a prominent architect, Frank Baines ran away from school and went to sea on a Finnish four-masted grain sailing ship. He enlisted at the outbreak of the Second World War, trained as an artillery officer in India, saw action on the Northwest frontier before being seconded to 111 Brigade. After the war, he spent three years as a Hindu monk in a Himalayan monastery and he then moved to Calcutta where he set up a business repairing tea chests and started writing. Frank returned to England in 1956 and published four books, including Look Towards the Sea, a widely acclaimed account of his Cornish childhood. At the age of 62, still seeking adventure, he cycled back to India from his home in Coggershall, Essex. He died in 1987 leaving behind this unpublished memoir.

CHAPTER ONE

111 Brigade

My love affair with the Chindits began in a prosaic fashion. I was seconded from my duties as an instructor in field camouflage at the Army School near Poona to 111 Brigade, and posted to Brigade Headquarters as Staff Officer, Grade III (Camouflage) with the rank of Staff Captain. It was June 1943.

During the rail journey to take up my new appointment, I had plenty of time to meditate on its nature. 111 Brigade’s role had been presented to me by the Commandment of Camouflage School as, in effect, a suicide mission. The object of training was to have us ready for action by November 1943. We were then to march unobtrusively through the Japanese front lines and, by avoiding engagements, penetrate into the heart of enemy-occupied Burma. There we were to blow up bridges, demolish railway stations, liquidate ammunition trains, ambush commissariat columns, in such a way that we would create maximum confusion. It was inevitable that I spend some part of that journey reviewing my chances of survival.

I was already acquainted with some of 111 Brigade’s more general aims and objectives. In the light of this information I could not but accept the fact that my chances seemed pretty slim.

111 Brigade were a comparatively new outfit hastily put together by General Wavell in one of his last administrative acts as Commander-in-Chief before becoming Viceroy. Their formation was undoubtedly intended as an expression of Wavell’s confidence in the Wingate concept. They were what was known as a long-range penetration group and were modelled on General Orde Wingate’s original 77 Brigade, with which he had effected the first penetration into Japanese occupied Burma.

The Brigade was constituted of four battalions under the command of Joe Lentaigne, the Brigadier. Each battalion was divided into two independent columns under separate management. The lieutenant colonel in command of the battalion invariably took charge of one column; a senior major the other.

Our battalions, and the columns into which they were divided, were as follows:

2nd Battalion King’s Own Royal Regiment – 41 Column, 46 Column 1st Battalion Cameronians – 26 Column, 90 Column 3rd Battalion 4th Prince of Wales Own Gurkha Rifles – 30 Column, 40 Column

4th Battalion 9th Gurkha Rifles – 49 Column, 94 Column

The Brigade thus constituted was designed to operate on its own, under Lentaigne’s independent leadership. The object of our training was to have us ready by November. We were then to march unobtrusively through the Japanese front lines and, by avoiding engagements, penetrate the heart of enemy-occupied Burma. There we were to blow up bridges, demolish railway stations, liquidate ammunition trains and ambush commissariat columns, in such a way as would create maximum confusion. It was hoped that this would impair Japanese efficiency as well as tie down in the centre of Burma forces which would otherwise have been better deployed along the frontier with India.

Just before my train pulled into Lalitpur in the Central Provinces, which was the railhead for all 111 Brigade’s training operations, it ran through a monsoon rain-squall. Lalitpur station appeared sacked and ravaged. It was scattered with broken branches and bruised leaves as if abandoned after an enemy onslaught. In contrast, its carefully tended flower-beds still looked as if laid out for kit inspection. The rows of rigid zinnias regimented as for a CO’s parade were magnificent in their scarlet tunics. I took it as a good omen – and I could not but feel reassured by this augury.

I was not, however, anticipating being received with enthusiasm. In those days a Camouflage Officer was still a rare bird and was regarded with coolness. It was difficult for infantry officers to take to one. I had to be prepared to be rebuffed, if not refused permission to land at all. To add to my anxieties, I was having a much trouble coping with an aspect of my own personality. I was anticipating taking up my duties with the Gurkhas, memories of whose endearing young charms had stayed with me since I first saw them go into action on the North-West Frontier. These memories had far too ardent a relish not to presage dangers in the future.

This was a difficult situation. Yet I was determined to get away with it. I was much less prepared than formerly to surrender to social conformity. I judged that success in getting accepted by 111 Brigade would depend on luck and on there being some sympathetic officer on hand to appreciate my less evident qualities.

My plan was to suggest that I was an officer with a little more to his credit than just the boring background of an Army School of Instruction – possessing talents in other directions than being able to display dried flower arrangements in tin hats. My aim would be to convince whoever interviewed me that here, in my person, was a spare officer they had not expected, and were not indeed entitled to, whom it would be folly to reject when they could, with my wholly willing co-operation, utilize me for dozens of other purposes having nothing to do with camouflage.

I had been the sole passenger to alight. A relaxed young sergeant came swinging briskly towards me, his boots crunching crisply over the finely granulated stone chips spread across the platform. The smile of welcome which illuminated his innocent English face was homely with pleasure. He was obviously delighted at being able to exercise a bit of authority. He was displaying, at the same time, a splendid indifference to the approving glances darted in his direction by a group of crudely brazen hussies draped provocatively at the windows of the third-class wagon. He could not but have been aware of them and I calculated, on that account, that he would display equal sang-froid on the field of battle.

They, for their part, were in the process of giving his physique an appraisal which was chillingly meticulous. They were speculating pleasurably about the size and shape of his small-arms equipment. He smelt characteristically of sunburnt sweat and soaped flesh. Both his forearms were magnificently tattooed.

I threw these vile creatures on the train some filthy remarks about their fathers, their husbands and their lovers, and they vanished behind the shutters with lewd giggles.

A heavy scent of tuberoses pervaded the air. The scent and the scene were so far removed from sober Camouflage School Mess and Poona Officers’ Club that they made me feel even more insecure than usual. They conjured up images of Benarsi courtesans panting with exhaustion from carrying the over-ripe fruit of insupportable bosoms, or temple dancing girls with scarlet palms and hennaed feet, loaded with gold ornaments and smothered in suffocatingly scented garlands.

These thoughts tempted me to surrender to more personal sensual images. Again I visualized what might await me in the persons of the young Gurkhas.

Until then, I had managed during my career in India to insulate myself fairly successfully from the debilitating gales of libido. Now I felt exposed to them, just as I knew that the preoccupation of soldiers with such bodily things as sweat and salt and sex and shit and toil and blood would fall inevitably within the ambience of operations to be undertaken by 111 Brigade. The scent of the tuberoses, somehow reminiscent of the sickly-sweet stench of death, the sinister banter of the women, the smell from the sergeant’s armpits – these were the first intimations I received of the sore spots to be laid bare.

I was dressed up as if for going into Poona. My uniform was one of which I was excessively proud. It emphasized subtle distinctions by its inconspicuous departure from standard patterns. It was embellished here and there with those insinuating little refinements which gave an air of added elegance to the appearance of every young officer. In the crook of my arm I carried, like a knight his helm, the prized possession of my exaggeratedly pretentious solar topee. It was doubly precious to me on account of the fact that, in the Bombay Presidency, all the Governor’s aides carried one. It was unlike the missionary model, Mark III, associated with the late Dr Livingstone and the Emperor Haile Selassie, as immortalized by General Wingate, and it exemplified, instead, the whole Army School of Instruction approach to war, with its emphasis on gracious living. In front of this young sergeant, with his utilitarian excellence, it made me appear perfectly ridiculous.

The engine puffed spasmodically and the train pulled out. I had been up at the front. Coach after massive coach rolled past me, giving their passengers the opportunity of getting a really good look at me. I felt myself caressed, crushed, cauterized – even controlled – by the hundreds of eyes which observed me with intense, cautious and yet evasive curiosity. It disappeared in the direction of Jhansi, steaming down the long tunnel of over-arching greenery with a slight wobble, like a self-conscious drunk placing each foot before him over-confidently yet insecurely.

The young sergeant and I had been watching it as if hypnotized. I felt as if it were bearing away the whole burden of my past experiences. He smiled and saluted me. We shook hands like blood brothers.

‘111 Brigade, sir?’ he enquired brightly.

‘Yes. But how did you know I was going to be on the train? I might just as easily have taken the next one.’

He laughed good-humouredly. ‘We meet every train, sir. Nothing personal. Rear headquarters are always sending down an extra bit of equipment or some technical officer. What is your particular line, sir – if I may be so bold as to ask the question?’

‘It’s camouflage,’ I said, feeling dreadfully inadequate.

‘Very interesting,’ he commented without a hint of patronage. ‘I shall look forward to attending some of your lectures, sir!’

We jumped into a 15 hundredweight truck and bowled down the clean, red, rain-washed roadways. After a minimal suggestion of shanty-town bazaar, the jungle closed in.

Flocks of green parakeets, as iridescent as humming birds, swarmed about sour smelling fruits rotting on the trees of an orchard. Groups of naughty monkeys, like rude little boys, made obscene signs at us from the side of the road as we flashed past. Occasionally we glimpsed an expanse of lake. The waters lay as polished as pewter, placidly reflecting a sky that alternatively looked luridly threatening or as lifeless as lead, according to the density of the cloud-cover.

Sometimes a deer – one of the great, red Indian sambhur – bounced out of a thicket and bounded along the grass verge of the road beside us. The countryside swarmed with game. The only thing it appeared conspicuously short of was humans.

Presently we arrived where 111 Brigade Headquarters was encamped. A large, muddy pond extended for a quarter of a mile along the side of the road, in the middle of which some water buffaloes were enjoying a wallow. From over the tops of a tangle of various shrubs, conspicuous among which was the prickly, ubiquitous lantana with its characteristic smell of cat’s piss, there could be seen the pitch of several mud-coloured tents. Their prevailing tone, I noted professionally, blended so well with the surrounding terrain that it did not look as if a camouflage officer was needed.

‘Will you be staying with us permanently, sir?’ enquired my sergeant.

‘Honestly, sergeant, I don’t know. It rather depends on the Brigadier.’

‘Well, in any case, sir, I don’t doubt you’ll be wanting to ditch that solar topee. The stores tent is over there. The quartermaster will fix you up with a battledress, a pair of boots, and a bush hat. Also he will see to the storage of your personal possessions.’

‘All the officers’ gear is stored to Rear Headquarters at Gwalior,’ he added, casting a dubious eye over my magnificent Asprey suitcases embellished interiorly with cut crystal bottles, ivory brush-backs, and solid silver fittings (relics of my father), so soon to become food for the white ants.

‘For the time being then, sir, I’ll wish you the very best of luck and leave you. I hope we shall renew our acquaintance shortly. The officers’ mess is over there. You report your arrival to the Brigade Major. His tent is behind that baobab.’

He gave me another perfect salute and left me quivering with trepidation. I made my way along a filthy footpath churned up by hoof prints and fouled with mule-droppings towards my first confrontation with Jack Masters.

I had no idea what to expect. My conception of staff-officers was extraordinarily hazy, composed principally of images of dandified subalterns from old copies of Punch. I half imagined that Jack Masters might be a chinless wonder like Bertie Wooster.

I approached the tent. A trestle table had been placed like a barrier across one end of it, just behind the tent-pole where the flaps folded back. From beyond it glared out the somewhat caustic countenance of a man prematurely aged (for he could not have been much older than I was) by responsibilities, and pale from years of perspiration and heat exhaustion.

It turned out that he was about twenty-eight. He was so pared to the bone by overwork, however – almost humming with the strain of too much tension and as tight as a bowstring – that I appeared mentally and physically quite flabby by comparison, and as inexperienced as a babe. The cast of his features was predominantly intellectual. His whole personality was ablaze with the flame of striking intelligence.

Already, for so young a man, it seemed that deep speculation and profound thought (for it never occurred to me at the time that his haggard look might have something to do with unhappiness) had furrowed his brow and gouged out the eye-holes. From their sockets, a pair of opaque sepia brown eyes gave little away. Currents of placidity and ferocity alternated. Emotive yet innocent, his expression evoked the patient ox rather than the volatile satyr – and yet there was something too of the centaur (I am thinking of Cheiron). Masters looked at the world with a satirical eye, and yet saw it also as his oyster.

He had a high, broad, bony cranium on which the hair grew rather sparsely and was cared for untidily, and he wore ‘bugger’s grips’ – at least they developed into ‘bugger’s grips’ during the later stages of the operation (a sign, no doubt, that his progressive disenchantment with headquarters had succeeded in alienating him from the conventions). On this occasion of our first meeting, however, they were embryonic, and his moustaches orthodox. The only indication that they would subsequently develop into ‘handlebars’ were the tufts of unshorn hair which grew, quite isolated, high on his prominent cheek bones, like hardy alpines. They made him look deliberately and inflexibly unhandsome.

He was, with the solitary exception of General Wingate, the most uncompromisingly inelegant regular officer I have ever met.

As we confronted each other across his office table and I performed the ritual gesture of saluting authority, he gazed at my face so fixedly, bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 – 111 Brigade
• Chapter 2 – Mule Problems
• Chapter 3 – Ready for War
• Chapter 4 – Into the War Zone
• Chapter 5 – Lift-Off
• Chapter 6 – Burma
• Chapter 7 – Across the Irrawaddy
• Chapter 8 – The Gangaw Hills
• Chapter 9 – A Change of Plan
• Chapter 10 – The March North
• Chapter 11 – The Build-Up to Blackpool
• Chapter 12 – Blackpool
• Chapter 13 – On the March Again
• Chapter 14 – A Court Martial
• Chapter 15 – A New Objective
• Chapter 16 – Taking Point 2171
• Chapter 17 – Holding On
• Chapter 18 – Getting Out
• Chapter 19 – Postscript – Farewell to Dal Bahadur