Plea for the forgotten jungle war heroes who secured British victory
Burmese veterans who fought bravely against Japanese emerge from isolation after 70 years
THAR HTOO emerged from the wooden hut where he lives with several generations of his family, pulled his ageing body ramrod straight and saluted with a flourish.
It was 70 years since he delivered the same gesture to his departing British commanding officer the end of the Second World War, after three years of fighting the Japanese in the tribal highlands of eastern Burma.
He did not see another British visitor for seven decades, as post-independence Burma plunged into ethnic insurgencies and the military junta cut the country off from the world.
But with the former colony heading to the polls next month and a ceasefire in place with some of the tribal armies, Thar Htoo’s village is no longer off-limits to outsiders.
The 89-year-old is among a remarkable but dwindling band of about 455 surviving Burmese veterans who played a key role in the legendary British guerrilla campaign of the war.
Waged in jungles by “forgotten armies”, the Burma campaign was one of the most brutal of the war. Britain’s eth- nic allies were largely “forgotten” after Burmese independence as conflicts broke out along the country’s borders.
The tribal groups, including the Karen, Karenni and Shan, who practised Christianity mixed with traditional beliefs, thought the British would grant them autonomy when they left. Instead, with independence they were incorporated into a country dominated from Rangoon by a predominantly Buddhist majority, many of whom had sided with the Japanese in the war.
There is still disappointment, but remarkably no bitterness, that such fiercely loyal allies were so cursorily abandoned as the era of Empire ended.
“My officers told me at the end of the war ‘Don’t worry, we won’t forget you’,” recalled Thar Htoo, who lives in Daw Sa Klaw in the heartlands of Kayah state. “They said they would come back. But nobody came back until this year.”
That first British visitor was Peter Mitchell, the son of a British officer in Burma and a trustee of Help 4 Forgotten Allies (H4FA), a small charity that pays the tribal veterans and their widows small but desperately-needed annual stipends of £120.
British officers operated from the mountain caves of the Karenni Hills, an area of stunning beauty.
“After the Japanese invaded, our chief told us to fight with the British to defend our lands,” said Thar Htoo, who signed up at 16 in 1942.
As he described the Bren and Sten guns he was trained to use, Bee Lar joined his group gathered on the porch. He believes he is 103, but records list him as 99. “So many friends died so young,” he said. “They killed all the handsome ones.”
In the village of Lwee Ka Htee, the heart of anti-Japanese resistance, Kyaw Aye, 93, remembers being taught to march by his British officers. “Left, right, left, right,” he declares, as he looks out from his hut at a garden of beans and pumpkins. He, too, recalls ambushes from the hills on the Japanese. He described a vicious reprisal when the Japanese burnt down villages and executed any fighting-age man if they believed locals were helping the British.
“Every building burnt down except the church,” said an elderly woman.
The tribal irregulars fought first as part of Operation Harlington, headed by Major Hugh Seagrim, who stayed behind enemy lines after the 1942 invasion. When the occupiers threatened ever crueller atrocities, Major Seagrim gave himself up to save greater retribution. He was executed in 1944 with seven Karen comrades. He still commands a heroic status among the Karen and Karennis more than seven decades on.
His mission paved the way for Operation Character, led by Lt Col Edgar Peacock, when 12,000 locals were recruited and killed about 12,500 Japanese. “Operation Character was spectacularly successful in its objectives,” said Duncan Gilmour, Lt Col Peacock’s grandson and another H4FA trus- tee. “None of this success would have been possible without the total loyalty shown by the Karen and others. They are natural and fearless guerrilla fighters and they supported and protected their British officers and NCOs.”
Among forces in India who went to reclaim the country was Tancy McDonald, who enlisted in the British Army in Mandalay at the age of 18. He returned as part of a special commando force, experiencing several skirmishes as the British advanced on Rangoon in 1944.
“The British officers were all excellent chaps and treated their men very well,” he said, proudly wearing his campaign medals.
Mr McDonald, 92, from northern Rangoon, also receives a grant from H4FA. The charity began with a chance meeting when Sally McLean, a British aid volunteer working with refugees on the Thai-Burma border, met a Karen veteran in a hospital near the site of the infamous Death Railway.
“When I asked him what he would like me to do for him, he replied that I should ‘inform [his] officers’,” said Mrs McLean. His own poverty – one pair of trousers, no medication for his asthma – was clearly secondary.”
She learnt that the veterans had not received a penny from the British government since the war. For decades, they were viewed as enemies of Burma, living in war zones or refugee camps.
Her charity is trying to reach as many old soldiers as possible.
“These men supported us so loyally when we were in the gravest peril, at great and continuing cost to themselves,” said Mr Mitchell. “At this stage of their lives, now is their time of greatest need and we must support them.” For more information on H4FA, see http://www.h4fa.org.uk/veterans