It was a misty damp Monday morning, December 8th about eight thirty, as we emerged from our bamboo huts to make our way to breakfast. Someone somewhere shouted, ‘The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!’
‘Pearl Harbor?’ I asked, ‘Where the hell is that?’
‘I don’t know, but it means that the Yanks will be in the war with us now,’ someone answered.
After a hurried breakfast and plenty of chatter we all gathered around one of the wireless sets that we had for communications. There we heard the President of the United States make his speech to the people of the USA, saying that they were at war with Japan.
Overnight the whole situation had changed. Instead of the utmost secrecy surrounding us, everything was now out in the open. We learned that the original intention was for us to go into China as civil advisers or technicians to assist the Chinese in the war against the Japanese in an effort to try to keep them a little more occupied in that area. With the altered situation we were told that we could proceed across the frontier in our own uniforms and trucks marked with the Union Jack flags. The Australian contingent who were also in training with us were the first to move out. They were destined for the Canton region as they had been learning Cantonese. It was well after Christmas when we moved to the southern Shan state of Burma to set up a base at a town called Taunggyi.
Things were really looking black for us. Hong Kong had fallen on Christmas Day, and the Japanese had swept down the Malay Peninsula. The battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse had been sunk by Japanese planes, and the ‘impregnable’ fortress of Singapore had fallen. The Japanese had also taken Indochina and were well into Thailand. Meanwhile, back in North Africa Rommel had taken Tobruk and was pushing up the desert towards Alexandria.
We left our heavy kit back at the school, and only carried necessities. Our lorries had been packed to capacity with all types of ammunition and explosives, and we moved into bamboo bungalows just outside the town of Taunggyi, where we made a supply base. After a couple of days’ rest we set off in the lorries, leaving two men to look after the base, and headed in a southeasterly direction towards a small town called Kentaung. Here we rested for one night, then we travelled further southeast to a very small town called Mong Hsat. Here we had to leave the lorries, as the motor road ended. We picked up mules to carry our gear, and also bid farewell to Captain Gardener and his section, as they were moving on to the southern tip of Indochina.