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Dvr. Frank Edward Brooks
Diary
Burma 1945 to 1947
.....I
left Southampton England in October 1945. Embarked on the Queen of Bermuda
bound for Bombay India.
.....On arrival I was transported to a transit
camp at Kalyan and after a few weeks there it was back to Bombay and then
onto Rangoon, Burma aboard a french boat that was called Cap Tourane.
.....After a short period of time in Rangoon
I joined the 2nd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment at a placed called
Zeyawadi. I am not sure of the name of the Company I was in but we had
a good looking tall Australian Major who was the company commander. I
remember visiting a sugar factory while there. Also while there I was
with two other men xxx xxxxx and xxxxxxx xxxxx, we volunteered for train
guard duty at Thazi which was a big railway junction. I never knew why
but after this we were given a period of leave at a place called Maymyo.
This was a hill station where there were various facilities such as horse
riding, golf etc. After this it was back to Zeyawadi, and from there onto
Kalaw. Whilst there I remember that a snake had got into the water supply
tank and that one of the officers shot it. It was also at Kalaw that I
got the job of Company Pay Clerk.
.....We next moved onto Mingladon, where
I managed to get onto the motor transport section. I had been trained
as a driver when in England. In Mingladon we were billeted in long huts
about fourteen men to a hut, before this we had always been under canvas,
four men to a tent. I first had an American fifteen hundred weight vehicle
and one of my jobs was to collect bins from various residents which were
mostly occupied by officers. I had two Jap prisoners of war who collected
the bins and I just had to drive the vehicle. I later progressed to a
six wheel drive American Dodge which I was to drive and maintain for the
rest of my time in Burma.
.....It was while I was in Mingladon that
the man who had been trying to form a government in Burma was assassinated
together with his entire associates at a political meeting in Rangoon.
After this incident we were instructed to dig in at Mingladon Airfield,
luckily things calmed down after a while and we were back to normal.
.....In about October 1947 my demob number
sixty two had come up, and so it was back to England via Singapore on
the H.T. Navasa. I do remember that I had to have a cholera injection
when going through the Suez Canal on the 16th November 1947, this annoyed
me as I had had one just before leaving Mingladon. The ship stopped off
at Gibraltar to load up with coal. We finally reached Southampton in the
beginning of December 1947, in time for Christmas. This was the last voyage
that the Navasa made. She was laid up in the river Blackwater and then
scrapped at Barrow Furness in 1948.
.....Due to being owed a lot of leave I was
not officially discharged until the April 1948.
Dvr. Frank Edward Stone