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 3

.....Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, I was overseeing guard commander of him once and I was told that I mustn’t turn my back on him. I believe that and 20 years or so later, Richard Attenborough made out he was a saint. When I saw the film (Gandhi) I couldn’t reconcile that with what I had heard about him by our education sergeants from the Education Corp in India, giving us talks and they gave us absolute rules, hard and fast, as to what we should do and what we shouldn’t do, and one thing was that we should never turn our back on Gandhi’s followers, and we believed it. Simerly I believed he was a saint when Richard Attenborough got hold of him.

.....Subhas Chandra Bose was the political leader, a point of interest, you’ve heard of Aung San Suu Kyi? This lady in Burma who is a political leader, and being suppressed, Aung San Suu Kyi, everyone thinks she’s lovely. Her father was on our list of instant elimination, his name was Aung San, I forget the other names, but he was on our list, to be shot on sight, because he was working with the Japanese in Rangoon. He cooperated, I wouldn’t say he was a dynamic leader of aggression on behalf of the Japanese, but he certainly cooperated with them and worked with them, politically he was working to enable them to run Burma, that’s a fact, changes your assessment of values a bit.

.....I was in quite a number of hospitals during my time in Burma; I ended up in 3 BGH at Poona. I was also a wireless instructor at a depot there for nine or ten months. I got to know some of the teachers at a girl’s school. There was a Burmese lady, Miss Shaw, Katy Shaw, she was in her late 40’s I’d think, and she was the daughter of a Burmese member of parliament in Rangoon.

.....I was in hospital for three months before I was shipped out. I was delayed being put on a troop ship because I was bad for two or three months because of my illnesses, the trots mostly. I had some of the worst agonies thrust on me. I had a Anal Fissure (An anal fissure is a break or tear in the skin of the anal canal.), but because I was running 30 odd times a day to the toilet, the motions went through me like water, but as soon as I got back to a normal bowl action, it was sheer agony I was split open, and then an M.O. while I was in hospital, near Calcutta receiving treatment, pushed a machine with three or four prongs up my backside and cranked it open with a screw, the M.O. who had just come out the day before from England was chatting with one of the other doctors about his trip out, and he kept on cranking it open, and he split me again. I was at one side of the hospital and my screams were heard by a surgeon who was operating at the other side of the hospital, and he said, ‘I want to know who screamed, and what caused it?’ the next day they came and asked me what happened and I told them. That officer was put on a plane that same day and sent back to England, being told that he was not wanted out here, he doesn’t consider the patients. It gave me a great joy that some senior officer had acted strongly and condemned a man for doing that sort of thing to me. It was agony; I go hot and cold at the thought of it. It was absolute agony. I’ve never screamed so loud in all my life, I was in Calcutta, they may have heard me in Bombay.

.....Later I was sent home as a hospital patient on the troop ship, I was excused all duties and there were, I think 80 or 100 of the regiment going home, officially as passengers and they were made to do all sorts of duties.

.....After the war the nightmares started, every night for twenty years before it slowed down, I used to wake up waving my arms around a bit, my wife used to go crazy; twenty years; and today the soldiers have counselling. When I read some of the causality lists, sad as it is; my regimental list of casualties was enormous. The colonel’s wife, she had lists of casualties that went on and on and on; half a million troops and half a million support troops.

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