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Transcript Of Recorded Interview
Sgt. Arthur Francis Freer 7945175
3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales's Dragoon Guards)
And
Author Of The Book - Nunshigum On the Road to Mandalay
Page 2
.....It
amazed me that the Japanese stopped at Kohima, they could have bypassed
it and gone on to Dimapur which stockpiled a tremendous amount of stores,
it would have supplied food and equipment for the whole of the 15th Japanese
Army and last a year. Kohima was their target, it was the wrong target,
it was the Japanese senior officers who wouldn’t look further ahead
and it saved the British army, it was their foolishness, not our strength.
.....Well there was only really one battalion with a few other troops there.
The West Kents, they got the publicity for it, and it was a very small
force, they could have easily been bypassed. While that battle was going
on for a good ten days or so we had the battle of Nunshigum which was only
one day. We sent eight tanks up the hill. There were about 250 Japs there;
and we counted 250 bodies after the fighting in one day and we lost 7 or
8 tank commanders and the infantry lost nobody; just the tank commanders
were shot, because the Japs concentrated on putting the tanks out of action.
We had a grenade dropped inside our tank, but it was a dud as we found
out later. It was full of ammunition, about 120 rounds of 75mm ammunition,
if that lot had gone up it would have opened like a tin can.
.....We encountered a number of what we call ‘Road Blocks’, it’s
where the Japanese set an ambush on a road, always under a little bit of
cover, a few Bamboos or trees. They usually put an old Aerial bomb set
with a detonator that they could explode from a distance, and then they
would try and entice us across the trap, but if we came across any we went
around them.
.....We were at Bishenpur, which is where the Silchar Track meets the Dimapur
Road, that’s in Indian, there’s a track that came over the
mountains and down to joined us. We had our biggest latrine just by the
side of us, and it was at that point where I had quite a few unpleasant
experiences. I had the trots, I was going twenty, thirty times a day, I
carried a Tommy Gun which was rather heavy, and 10 magazines on my belt,
5 a side, 10 magazines full of 20 rounds each which was far too heavy.
The M.O. in the end excused me; he said, ‘You don’t need to
carry all that ammunition and take the butt of your Tommy Gun and just
carry the pistol part.’, but even then I was too weak to carry it
so I used to borrow a pistol from one of the two members of the tank crew
who had pistols, the others had Tommy Guns. I borrowed the pistol from
our driver, Paddy Ryan and his belt had a hole between the two buckles
on the back where a splinter had hit the belt, damaged his spine and put
him into a hospital for a week or two, and when he came back he was very
proud of this belt which showed the hole. I borrowed it, went to the loo
on the Silchar Track and I think a shell or something landed which made
me jump and the pistol, belt and holster dropped into the loo, well no
one would go in after it, and it was left there, and that’s still
there. Paddy Ryan was livid, his famous belt had disappeared.
.....Indecently on that same loo on the Silchar Track which was a very famous
one, it was a three seater, we carried this seat with us with three holes
in and every time we dug a new loo we put it on, so three men could be
sat there using it at the same time, eventually we organised a fourth one
opposite so we could have a game of cards while we were sat there, and
we used to sit on the loo crapping away and playing cards. I was on it
once and the Japs had a 105mm Artillery piece up on the hill top which
they used to fire one round at us every day, they hadn’t much ammunition
so that was there ration, one round, and we’d wait for it to come
and then we’d carry on working, and that went on for three or four
weeks while we were in that village, and I was using that loo sometimes
over thirty times a day, I’d hardly get away from it and I would
have to go back, and as I was sat there one day I saw something coming
down the hill, a blur, I couldn’t make out what it was, and it went
below the crest of a little hill and when it appeared the next time I could
see it was an elephant, it was a young elephant, I learnt later it was
about seven years old, a young she elephant, and it came down to me and
I spoke to it in what I call Yorkshire farm language, I was brought up
on two different farms, both my grandparents were farmers. When it came
up to me I spoke, I said, ‘O coosh, come on, come on, Ista gan yam.’,
and it put its trunk up to me in a very friendly way, then I just touched
the tip of its trunk and it rested it in my hand, really affectionate.
.....Now it had a rough time with the Japs, it had a broken chain round its
ankle and I led it into the camp with one hand behind me leading it buy
the tip of its trunk. I went up to the sergeant-majors truck, which was
his office and he said, ‘What have you got there corporal?’,
I said, ‘I think they call them elephants here.’
.....The sergeant major was a bit of a bully actually, he was a champion heavyweight
boxer in the British army before the war and he would never put a man on
a charge he always took them in the ring and thumped the hell out of them.
That’s the way he treated men, so I hadn’t much respect for
him, and had been warned against him. There was one famous occasion when
I threatened to shoot him, and from then on we had a certain amount of
respect for each other. He said to me afterwards, ‘And would you
have shot me if I’d kept on advancing?’ I said, yes, those
are the orders sergeant major, you challenge a man if he’s approaching
you, ‘Halt who goes there?’, and if he doesn’t halt,
you challenge him again, ‘Halt or I’ll fire.’, and the
next order is, you fire; and I’d got to the point of clicking the
hammer back and he then stopped. When I said I would have shot him he was
very careful of me from then on. We admired each other shall we say, because
he was a good man in action, he had his own tank. We always threatened
as soon as we got into action that we’d blow his tank up. But there
were six other men in the tank as well, meant that we couldn’t. I
said to him, ‘We call your tank Zero Tank.’ He said, ‘Why
do you call it that?’ I said, ‘because will all zero on you,
and blow you to hell.’
.....There was only one tank from my troop when we went into Mandalay; the Japs
were still there and the only currency the locals would accept was Japanese,
and we had stacks of it because we captured one of their mints, so we loaded
up with fruit until it was piled high and falling off and took it back
for the squadron to have a good tuck in, a fascinating place.
.....There was a Japanese concentration camp in Mandalay; the inmates were mostly
women with children. They were given every respect by the Japanese Army,
they treated them well. The infantry told us of this camp and said, ‘oh,
there’s all these Burmese women prisoners here and the Japs won’t
open the gates.’ So we went up to this compound, a few huts and that’s
where these women and their children were. The interpreter told them that
if they didn’t open the gates, we would blow the gates down, or we
will drive through the gates, so they opened them and the inmates came
out. I met one of them later in London, in fact she was my sons landlady,
he was in digs in the house that she was running, and so I greeted her
in Burmese and she well remembered the tank coming to the entrance to the
camp and demanding that the gates be opened. The Burmese are a very polite
race, their philosophy is lovely.
.....Rations, pickled herrings; every day that was the main course, of the main
meal, but when we’d been on it every day for, I think it was 10 or
12 days on the trot, we then put the knives and forks down and said, ‘No,
were not having it anymore.’ That was all that was available, it
was boredom.
.....I love corned beef, I still enjoy it, then the fat would be melted because
of the temperature, and I went off it a bit in India, because I found a
finger in one of my tins, a whole finger cut off, the fingernail still
there, it’s off-putting isn’t it?
.....We also had Weevils in the bread that was the norm; you couldn’t
get away from it, we used to call it ‘Seed cake.’
Formation signs