Unknown Burma Commandos

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 23/01/2010 18:57:31

The extract below is taken from J.G.Ballard's autobiography, 'Miracles of Life'. He also wrote' Empire of the Sun' for which he is well known. After spending the war as a young boy in a Japanese internment camp, he embarked on the SS Arrawa from Shanghai bound for the UK.

'We docked briefly at Rangoon, and the captain told us that a party of 30 British commandos were joining us. He warned mothers of teenage daughters to be on their guard. These violent and ruthless men had been fighting the Japanese and would pose a danger to any young women they came across.
I and my friends were all agog at the prospect and keenly awaited developments. The commandos came aboard, heavily armed young men with sunburnt faces. They stowed their weapons in the armoury and then made straight for the passenger saloon on the upper deck, where they spent the rest of the voyage. Every morning when they arrived they would each buy 10 bottles of beer from the bar and carry them to their tables, so that the entire surface was filled with beer bottles. Sitting back in the leather armchairs, they passed the rest of the day drinking, rarely saying anything to each other and taking no interest in the teenage English girls who came in to smile at them.
This deeply impressed me, and still does. I and my friends questioned them about the bitter battles they had fought with Japanese soldiers, many of them starving and suicidal, but the commandos were reluctant to talk. Now and then they would praise a dead comrade who had died beside them as they fought off the Japanese bayonet charges. At Southampton, when we moored, they snapped back into life, reclaimed their weapons and marched off smartly without a backward glance. That also impressed me. Some of them were only two or three years older than I was. They has seen death run towards them with a bayonet and a grenade and had fought him to a standstill.

It says it all really, doesn't it.. ? But I wonder who they were ?

Peter Cooper

wow , my ol man couldve been one of them! makes you think