2nd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment

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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.’

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