THE BOMBINE MAN WHO MET THE WILLIAMSES WHEN THEY ARRIVED in Mandalay provided a grim assessment. The Japanese were, indeed, bombing Rangoon. And on January 20, 1942, the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation had ordered that wives and children of all employees be evacuated immediately. They were the first of the European companies to do so, and some thought it premature. Jim had already missed his chance to get Susan and Treve on the first contingent of evacuees up the Chindwin.
An exodus of biblical proportions out of Burma had begun, and the Williamses were caught short—recalled from forest tour, they had none of their important possessions with them. Jim hurried back to Maymyo. The company would allow one piece of luggage and one bedroll per person. Photographs, books, diaries, gifts, and clothes were abandoned. Horses and pets were left in the care of hired locals, though many of their fellow evacuees shot their dogs, thinking they were better off dead than in the hands of the Japanese if it came to that. Many of their neighbors had buried valuables in their gardens and transferred cash out of the country. Hardly thinking things were so dire, Jim grabbed a few essentials for travel—one small suitcase each for Susan and Treve and a grip for himself containing a clean shirt and a few toiletries.
The family was directed to travel by rail and boat to Mawlaik, their old headquarters on the Chindwin. If necessary from there, they would receive orders to march about 170 miles by foot to a rail station in Manipur, India. Susan was skeptical; the very notion of a march seemed alarmist.
But the Japanese were advancing rapidly. They had begun their invasion of Burma from bases in Siam, or Thailand, and were now infiltrating in the south of the country. During January and February 1942 they poured into Burma in strength—moving forward more quickly than anyone would have dreamed, pushing the ill-prepared, ill-equipped, and poorly supported British forces farther and farther back. The Seventeenth Indian Division dug in at the Sittang River, hoping to make a stand against the onslaught, but after heavy fighting they were outflanked, as they would be again and again.
Burma was an objective of the Japanese, not so much because of the country itself, but for its strategic location. It blocked an overland supply route for the Allies to China, Japan’s bitter enemy. Along the famed Burma Road came ammunition and fuel. Later, Burma was seen as a stepping-stone to India, part of the ever-growing ambitions of the Japanese. It was not far-fetched considering that there were plenty of Indians tired of British rule. At one point, Japan would count forty thousand Indian soldiers on their side, many of whom believed this would be their path to independence.
In Burma, the British began to see that their confidence was misplaced. The Williamses had some hard decisions to make. Who should come along with them? They perceived several so-called servants as members of their family. But were they better off staying in their own country? The Japanese were after the British, not the Burmese, and so many people in Burma appeared to have no political allegiances.
Burma was full of many different ethnic groups. And when it came to loyalties during the war, there was no one national reaction. For the most part, Burmans, who were in the majority, hated colonial rule and longed for independence. For many of them, there was the prospect that the Japanese might just turn out to be liberators; after all, they promoted an attractive ideal with the slogan “Asia for the Asiatics.” A large portion of the Karens (one of the country’s largest minorities who had largely converted to Christianity), Kachins, and Shans sided with the British. Some in Burma fled to the jungles to avoid the Japanese, some welcomed them, some fought alongside the British. About eighteen thousand nationalists joined the Burma Independence Army, which was allied with the Japanese. Of course, later, some who had hoped for liberation encountered only occupation and “Japanese racism and brutality.” A report at the time found that 10 percent (mostly minorities under the thumb of the Burman majority) were pro-British, 10 percent anti-British, and the vast majority “lukewarm, assisting whichever superior forces they are forced or persuaded to.”
Jim and Susan gathered together a few of their closest workers to discuss what to do. It was decided that Aung Net, Joseph, Naw Lah, and San Pyu would all be safest sticking with the Williamses. Others in their group had families at home who needed them. This seemed like the right decision, though they had no idea what would happen when they reached the border of Manipur.
THE PARED-DOWN WILLIAMS GROUP took a train to the river station of Monywa. Jim would stay long enough to see them safely onto the company launch, then, while they traveled up the Chindwin to Mawlaik, he would return to the men and elephants he had left behind in the forest near Maymyo.
When they reached Monywa, they discovered they weren’t so far behind the rest of the company’s families: The second group of evacuees from Bombine was still there, in limbo with no information, as they waited for the launch. The company, now nervous about sending women and children off on their own, took advantage of the arrival of Billy Williams. He was ordered not to return to Maymyo on his own but instead to escort the entire group of more than fifty as far as Mawlaik. Williams argued with his superiors, desperate to return to his own forests to pay the riders and to secure the animals at home. But he was overruled.
Then the company launch arrived. Originally built to provide luxury for half a dozen people, it was now nearly swamped by the crowd. The open deck became a dormitory, with women and children sardined from one end to the other. Behind them, a little boat containing a quarantined family with measles was towed along. Williams had arranged this setup to keep the other families safe, and he was surely thinking of Susan—who they had just discovered was pregnant again.
When they arrived in Mawlaik, the rugged little river village Jim and Susan knew so well, the anxiety of the other travelers deepened. The town was remote and rustic, far from what was considered civilized, and had no access to any kind of major transportation. To be herded to the very edge of the country’s borders and pressed up against a mountain range made it clear that the British had lost control. If Rangoon and Mandalay weren’t safe, what was?
For British refugees in particular, the logging companies and the tea plantations in India would be a godsend, providing supplies, basic shelter, and help. The tough, knowledgeable employees would be invaluable to the British Fourteenth Army, too. As one high court judge wrote at the time, “It was an affair of ‘tea’ to the rescue at one end and ‘teak’ to the rescue at the other.”
There was a great deal of fear and confusion as everyone waited for a directive from the company. Williams put the time to good use by organizing supplies, equipment, and elephants in case the women were to march toward Manipur on foot. Wisely, everyone was inoculated against cholera.
Williams’s friend and boss Geoff Bostock had already been gathering emergency supplies, and halted all logging work so the elephants could be available. To Williams, this was the beginning of elephants entering the war. It was February 1942. The animals were conscripted to carry supplies, to ferry the sick and elderly, and even to widen paths where possible. The company quickly established rest camps, though their administration was soon taken over by the government.
The news continued to be dire. Singapore, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur had fallen to the Japanese. Tokyo was relentless, even dropping bombs on Australia.
Jim understood what this all meant for the families stranded in Mawlaik. They had to get to the safety of India. A march on foot was ordered. The evacuation plan wouldn’t have a chance if not for the elephants who could carry the fresh and tinned food supplies, bedding, and tents. The group would be hiking from Mawlaik to the Burmese village of Tamu, on the border with the state of Manipur, a trip of about six days. This would serve as a staging area to prepare for the next leg: up and over the treacherous mountains that loomed behind Tamu, and then to the Imphal Plain.
The past few weeks had galvanized the foreign population of Burma. By now, countless refugees were fleeing for India. With the larger roads packed, Williams judged it best to keep to the smaller paths. The elephants simply could not contend with such crowds, and where great masses of people were concentrated without access to toilets, conditions were already becoming dangerously unsanitary.
The company evacuees—40 women, 27 children, and 110 elephants—were divided into two groups. Williams and Bostock would be in charge of the first, which consisted of 22 women; 15 children; 83 men, riders, servants, and bearers; plus about 56 elephants, including 18 tuskers. Evelyn Bostock and Susan organized the larder into a meal plan for the journey. The women were Bostock’s responsibility; the elephants were Williams’s. Since this was his old headquarters anyway, Williams even knew most of the animals, though Bandoola was not among them. The elephants were to be used for carrying supplies, not people. Coolies, the lowliest laborers from the nearby Chin Hills in northwestern Burma, were hired to bear makeshift stretchers for the littlest of the children and the infirm.
They left Mawlaik on Monday, February 23, 1942, at 10 a.m., the beginning of the hot season, when each day would become much more stifling than the last. Many of the wives were novices, having never accompanied their husbands on a jungle tour. They did not have proper clothes or shoes for such a journey and were dressed like parishioners heading out for Sunday services. Their city footwear in particular often fell apart in the rough terrain, and to walk barefoot could be a death sentence as blisters and cuts invited infection.
Behind the families and ragged coolies in the caravan came the long line of elephants, unhurried, regal, and laden with luggage, camp equipment, and food, including one hundred chickens and sixty ducks. The experience was new to the elephants, too, who were unaccustomed to seeing so many strangers—particularly white ones who smelled different and even behaved in a different way from the other humans in their lives. At least their familiar uzis were with them.
From the start, the group established a routine. They woke each day at about five thirty in the morning, dressed, and had breakfast—a cup of tea, porridge, and thick slices of bread with marmalade. Within an hour, after organizing and packing, they’d set out on the day’s ten-mile walk. Williams would stay behind, organizing the loading of the elephant packs. Once the elephants were ready, he would double-time it past the human group, scouting ahead for a suitable place to spend the night. He was relieved to find much of the route rich in fodder—plenty of vegetation for the animals, and almost always good sources of water.
The first leg of the journey was fairly flat, which helped condition the least fit among them. Everyone was able to make the marches without complaint, though Treve, much to Susan’s shock, became balky. Accustomed to hiking on his own, he railed against his imprisonment when he was forced to ride in a canvas hammock carried by coolies. He had inherited his father’s independence and stamina.
In the afternoons, when the intense heat set in, the group would stop for the day, and each family could enjoy the privacy of their own tent. The food stocks were plentiful—chicken stew, cheese and biscuits for lunch, pudding, bread and jam at teatime, and a three-course meal for supper. A pleasant feeling of community took over; Williams wrote, “The spirit of the women was remarkable, as every one of them had had to leave a comfortable home and abandon all her possessions at a few hours’ notice.” As time went on, there were inevitable tears in the social fabric. Late in the afternoons when campsites were chosen, several women would vie for the shady spots, which were at a premium. Susan did not participate, because Jim, a group leader, made a point of taking the worst patch for his own family.
Stress was not limited to the humans; the elephants felt it, too, as Jim was acutely aware. This was a new world for them, one in which none of the normal rules or rhythms applied. Gone were their old daily schedules—morning roll call, work, afternoon bath, release into the forest for the night. Here they were marched for hours, deprived of the afternoon scrub, and then chained till morning. Being unable to forage at night was hard on them and on the uzis, too, who had to gather hundreds of pounds of bamboo, grass, and branches.
Williams worried about how the strain would express itself in the sensitive and complex animals, especially as the days grew hotter. At the beginning, they were somewhat irritable and restless. Within days, though, their unhappiness was more palpable. Each night the elephants looked for any lapse in the riders’ attention to run away, though they were always quickly recaptured. Finally a mass breakout occurred one afternoon. A few elephants began to bolt, and in the chaos they caused, the rest were able to escape, too. With dozens of elephants stampeding for the thick of the forest, the men flew into action, racing to grab their trailing fetters, and the women and children sought safety behind big trees. The elephants complied quickly, but “it was lucky no one was killed,” Williams wrote.
That luck didn’t hold.
ON MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1942, at the height of the hot season, they reached the border village of Tamu. It was a madhouse. The large outpost, with perhaps a hundred homes, a courthouse, and a telegraph office, had been a sleepy place. Now, it was “a congested bottle-neck, filled with thousands of refugees, mostly Indians, all wondering how they would negotiate the next fifty miles, along a rough bridle-track, and over mountains five thousand feet high,” Williams wrote.
It was hell in the making, a place of chaos, filth, and fear. Very little had been organized. There were no sanitary facilities. And as bad as things were, everyone knew worse was to come, for after Tamu, there was nothing but mountainous wilderness.
Hardly a refuge for humans, this was no place for elephants. Restraining the animals had been problematic for Williams during the whole trip, and now he felt he was in charge of a ticking time bomb. No matter what, Williams decided, he would send the eighteen tuskers back to Mawlaik. The more even-tempered females would stay with them for the rest of the crowded journey.
Just outside the heaviest traffic of the village, Williams brought the elephants to a halt. While the women and children went to see what was happening in town, Williams and the uzis began to unload the elephants. Packs would have to be reorganized and redistributed as the number of elephants was reduced. In fact, some items would have to be jettisoned altogether.
It was unbearably hot and dusty, and everyone felt exhausted. The riders were handing down the parcels one by one to camp workers on the ground: tents, luggage, cookware, the wireless. Williams walked among the animals, making an inventory of gear and trying to gather things into some semblance of order. For some reason, one small scene caught Williams’s eye. Ten yards away, atop a big tusker, one of the uzis was handing off a particularly colorful “air-travel suitcase,” the kind covered in labels from the Taj Mahal, the Sphinx, and the Eiffel Tower. An experienced camp worker reached up to take it. Seemingly with no provocation, the elephant tilted his great skull and crushed the man into the ground, dumping the uzi off his head in the process.
The crowd erupted around the horrible scene. Williams and all the riders ran in to help subdue the tusker. But it was too late; the force of the animal’s head was enough to pulverize and compress the man’s body. Those who have observed such attacks say the victim is rendered unrecognizable—not just as an individual, but as a human being. This was the sight Williams and the other men took in. They quickly put a cloth over the flattened body and moved him away.
But it was not quick enough to hide the incident from the crowds. It caused near panic among the refugees. One teenage British evacuee recording the event in her diary said that in the aftermath, parties of English travelers found that low-wage coolies were not eager to work for them. Simply carrying suitcases for the British now seemed impossibly risky.
When Susan arrived with the rest of the group, she could see how devastated Jim was. And yet, the focus had to be on pragmatism. Williams convened his party and explained that the allowable luggage per person would now be greatly reduced—just sixty pounds per head. Everyone who had managed to carry some treasured articles beyond their necessities had to give them up. It was a piece of silver here, a fancy green Morocco leather dressing case there. It wasn’t just luxuries that went. Even tents and camp beds were relinquished. “After this,” Susan wrote, “we felt more like the bunch of evacuees which, in fact, we were.”
The Williamses had no valuables to give up, but there was a more wrenching departure for them. Joseph, their cook, had left a wife and children behind, and Aung Net still had some family in Burma. War had a way of slamming borders shut for years. If they continued on to India, they might not be able to return. Faced with this very real prospect, Williams had, in agony, decided they would be safest at home. To take them any farther would just be selfish, he believed. “The time has come,” Jim said to Susan, “to tell them they must return.”
Jim walked over to them. Susan watched. “It was a hard moment for all three,” she wrote. There would never be any way to reward either man for the service and companionship each had brought to Jim for decades. Gathering as much money as he could from his own pockets and those of everyone he knew, he scraped together a year’s wages for each. Aung Net had rarely been out of Jim’s sight for the last twenty-two years; from first thing in the morning till late at night, they were together. And now they were parting under the worst circumstances possible, with no prospect of keeping in touch. All Williams could do was warn this simple and trusting person, who had meant more to him than nearly anyone else in all of Burma, to tell no one about the money he carried. By the time they all said their last good-byes none of them could even speak.
Williams watched Aung Net as he trailed after Joseph into the forest “without a backward look.” He would never see or hear of him again.
TWO DAYS LATER, THE Williams-Bostock party set out, Williams scouting ahead, women and children next, elephants behind. They were heading into the high country of Manipur, where they would be hiking for more than a week. The rocky, narrow path pointed upward, and day after day, they trudged forward single file with thousands of others. Indian travelers passed by with all their worldly goods crammed into boxes atop their heads.
Conditions worsened. Cholera became an increasing problem. Dead bodies, bloated and covered in maggots, were left lying in the track. Sometimes masses of butterflies hovered above them. With no time for burials, Williams would try to heave the corpses over the steep embankments before the children caught up. Still, the “tell-tale stench” of decay would rise up, swamping the path, and the mothers would hurry their children past.
It was getting colder as they ascended to higher elevations. At night they scratched out a little area to sleep in with a thin blanket.
Some of the tea companies in India had dispatched men to build shelters along the route, but most had not been finished, and few were without piles of excrement from the throngs of earlier travelers. The rations were meager, and the hiking became more and more difficult. Everyone lost weight. Their one diversion might have been the wireless, but when they could get a clear signal, the news they heard was terrible.
On March 8, 1942, Rangoon fell to the Japanese. Looters prowled the fancy neighborhoods of the capital, racehorses roamed the streets, and fires—many set by Westerners as they left in an effort to leave nothing of value to the Japanese—burned out of control. It was not only a crushing psychological defeat; there also were dire consequences to losing the only real port in Burma. Now, Allied supplies would have to come overland from India. Given the terrain and the lack of roads and infrastructure, this would be an enormous problem.
War correspondents who had descended on the country painted a bleak picture. Without Rangoon, all of Burma was overwhelmed, and India was threatened. Thousands of refugees poured out of the city, heading northwest for India. Their numbers grew as they were joined by people from all corners of the country all headed in the same direction, clogging the few poor roads available.
With Burma behind them, the Williamses and their fellow refugees were dealing with mountains. At five thousand feet, the water situation worsened. The elephants were often denied a decent drink for more than a day, something Williams thought unconscionable. Little Treve was walking on his own now. It had become an exhausting trek for the skinny four-year-old. No matter the age, everyone was hungry and tired.
The group trudged on. Every turn in the road simply led to another turn. Finally, cornering a bend, they saw a vista open up: miles of flat plains below. They were leaving the mountains. Before them was a single road stretching out for miles and choked with other travelers kicking up plumes of red dust as they scuffed along.
All told, about six hundred thousand desperate refugees headed for India, most heading west, but some taking the inhospitable northern route through the Hukawng Valley. It was the largest migration of people in history up to that point. Only about fifty thousand were British; most were Indian. Eighty thousand may have died in the effort.
As excited as he was about emerging from the mountains, Williams saw that the very end of the trek was going to be tricky. Several ravines lay ahead, all of them bridged by spindly structures that could not hold the weight of an elephant. At each crossing, the uzis would have to steer the animals around the span—down steep banks and then up the opposite one. The uzis were warned that even if a bridge appeared substantial, they were not to attempt it. Ultimately, one did. The bridge gave out under the elephant’s feet, and though she was able to cling to the bank, her rider was pitched forward. The noise and surprise sent the female charging backward in a panic. Williams saw the elephant—no rider, no pack—racing toward him. He tried to stop her by brandishing a walking stick fitted with a spearhead. It did not sway her. He had to leap out of her way as she barreled past him. She turned around then and headed in the same direction as traffic, blowing by him again. Amazingly, he saw her clear the ravine in a motion that science has said is nearly impossible—she appeared to jump it. All was well, though. The elephant, not wanting to be separated from her mates, got back in line with them.
The upside was that, at least momentarily, she had swept the path of the crowds of people. Susan and Jim tried to joke about it with Treve, but, the little boy, who had hiked a hundred miles, “just hung his head—utterly weary, and too done in to be diverted.”
By the time they reached their destination, the town of Palel, over the border of Burma, in the Indian state of Manipur, the group was spent. Susan, despite her pregnancy, looked gaunt. She had lost about fifteen pounds. The elephants, too, were in poor condition, but now could be set free to bathe and eat. The animals and uzis remained in Palel while Williams and Bostock accompanied the women on British Army trucks the next 160 miles to the railway at Dimapur. Williams was grateful that the uzis would have a rest. The men “had sacrificed everything to save British women and children and to get them over the filthiest tracks that evacuees had ever passed.”
ONCE THE FAMILIES WERE on their way, it didn’t matter that the road was bumpy or that the lorries had no decent suspension; everyone was grateful to be sitting. They stopped for two nights in a large refugee camp in Imphal. Set up by the tea plantations, massive airplane hangar–like sheds made of bamboo housed hundreds of evacuees. Each family got its own eight-foot-square platform and the chance to take a bath and have a proper meal. Short messages could be cabled home.
For Susan and Jim, however, the relief of the moment was ruined by terrible news. They were forced to endure another separation. This time officials told them that no “Burmans” would be allowed to cross into India. Jim pulled every string he had, and an exception was made for Treve’s nanny. But no amount of pleading would make a difference for poor San Pyu, who would be allowed no farther. Jim promised San Pyu that after the women were safely on their way, he would come back for him. Susan observed, “He looked forlorn and lost, standing there next morning, as with heavy hearts we waved good-bye.”
From Imphal, it was a 130-mile army truck trip to Dimapur. They arrived at 7:30 p.m. with the rain and were fed the kind of staples they had not seen in some time—tea, toast, and jam. At eleven thirty that night, at the warning of the whistle blasts, they boarded the train. A derailing at the first launch delayed them a day, but then the women were finally safely aboard a moving train. Susan looked out the window at Jim standing in the heat on the platform, waving good-bye. He was dressed in his usual field gear—crisply pressed after their recent laundering opportunity—but the man inside the clothes looked worn out. It pained her. He caught the change in her expression. “Don’t worry!” Jim cried out to her over the sound of the train. He shouted that he was happy she and Treve were safe now. “We’ll meet up again sometime soon!” he promised. The steady rhythmic whoosh of the engine drowned everything out, the train lurched forward, and they waved frantically until they could no longer see each other.