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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: bamboo43 on Sunday 03 October 10 20:21 BST (UK)
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Hi all,
I am new on the forum and have been researching the Chindits of 1943. My Grandfather, Arthur Leslie Howney became one of these men in 1942 and went into Burma to fight behind Japanese lines.
I have a fairly large amount of information now for this operation and am looking for other families whose father's or Grandfather's fought with the group in 1943.
I have posted heavily on other forums, but have come on Rootschat to find more connections to what was an exceptionally brave group of soldiers in WW2.
Many thanks.
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I am also trying to find out the reason for a mentioned in dispatches medal awarded to Capt Robert Lodge in Burma,but have no luck even at Kew as the record s there were missing.Any information would be appreciated. Stel
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Hi Stel,
I am in the same frustrating position with a Military medal award. Apart from the WO373 series at Kew and the London Gazette entry I can't think of many other avenues to follow.
I was chasing the only MM award to an Other rank for the 1943 Chindits (William Robert Jordan) for general information on the subject. But now I find he was part of the 6 soldier unit that my Grandfather was captured with in Burma.
Steve.
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I have a personal account of my exhusbands great Uncle Alex Edwards about his time in Burma with the Chindits. I'll dig it out again if anyone is interested.
KBG
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HI KBG,
I am very interested in anything for the 1943 Chindits, but it would be great to hear about the following year too. 1944 Chindits tend to be more prevalent as they were flown in by plane and glider and were generally younger soldiers. They would be in their late 80's about now.
Thanks for the offer KBG.
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hi.
i am trying to find information about my husbands late father, he served with the 14th army in burma,.
from what he told us later in life they fought hand to hand combat on a tennis court with the japanese .as far as we know he was awarded the burma star, his name was joseph alfred barker from hull east yorkshire. my husband wondered if he was one of the chindits as he wore a bush hat like the australians wear with a black cat on the side, he remembers seeing this when his father came home. his father joined the army as a boy and served for over 23years. any help with this query will be greatfully appreciated.
my kindest regards..........jean........
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Hi Jean,
The battle over the tennis court took place at Kohima. It was an intense, almost trench warfare situation over the distance of the District Commissioner's tennis court in the grounds of his bungalow residence.
It is unlikely that Joseph was a Chindit, as hardly any of the 1943 men who survived that operation were fit enough to re-join the war. The 1944 Chindits were fighting behind enemy lines at the same time as the battle of Kohima was taking place.
It is impossible to be sure of Joseph's regiment, but I will look up which units were at Kohima and get back to you.
Steve.
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HI STEVE.
thank you for the reply to my message, can you find out for me what the hat and black cat meant, my husband says he his positive it was cat. sorry i have no other information to go on we do not have his regiment no, but he definitly was in 14th army glad of any help ..
my kindest regards.........jean............. :)
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That'll be 17th Indian Light Division.
The British Army units were:
9th Border
1st W Yorks
129th Field Rgt (RA)
82nd LAA
Last two are Royal Artillery.
So, just a matter of finding out which was positioned around the Deputy Commisioners bungalow and tennis court.
Pete
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Neither, apparently!
Royal West Kents held the position
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Tennis_Court
His service number may help, if you have it.
Pete
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Hi I finally found the Chindits book i was looking for, will try and get it scanned tomorrow. Do you want to pm me your email addy and i'll send it through.
KBG
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hi kgb.
i am sending you my email addy so you can send me the chindit book, this will be very interesting to read,my father-in-law never spoke about what happened, until later in life when my husband asked him questions.all we knew was he was in the 14th army and they where called the forgotten army.
my email addy is..(*).............
thank you for the reply, my kindest regards..................jean............... :)
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hi bamboo 43.
i found out that my father-in-laws regiment the 14th army was also known by the name of..
the forgotten army .. i will see if i can find any other information .
my kindest regards............jean........... :)
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Jean
14th Army was the name of the army in Burma.
The army is made up of Corps.
Corps are made up of Divisions.
Divisions are made up of Regiments and Battalions.
Your father-i-l was in 17th Indian Division.
In my earlier post I listed the British units in the 17th.
If , however, he was at the Commissioners bungalow then he was in the Royal West Kent Regt, but the black cat was not their emblem.
His service history will reveal all.
It is unlikely he was a Chindit unless he specifically mentioned it.
The 14th Army were called the 'Forgotten Army' as they felt they came second to the war in Europe, which is probably partly true as the folks at home were more involved in the European war, it being 22 miles away!
Cheers
Pete
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hi bamboo
ive just bee looking thru the replies you had about the chindits .
i served with them in the royal signals i p/m all the info about this and what may have been usefull but i see it asnt been printed .i dont know the reason but we will leave it
:(
bessingby
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Hi Bessingby
Bamboo hasn't been onthe forum for a few days, sure he will be back with us soon!
If there is anything to post please throw it in yourself, or copy the pm to me and I will do so - although I don't have 1% of bamboos knowledge or dedication....
Regards
Pete
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Hi Bessingby,
I have not seen or received anything from you I'm afraid. As Pete says, do try again. The easiset thing would be to post the information here on the thread itself.
Best wishes.
Steve.
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hi pete
i will do my best to recall as many of the events that may of any use.
firstly the second lot of chindits were up of colomes two known as the 77 and111brigade
iwas in the royal sigs in the111bde.attch toa scots regt our men had to load large signal units plus charging engines to barbry mules i allways thought they was as big as donkeys.they went for long route marches every day [idint i was a driver].
after the training we set off for imphal, we carried all the wireless gear up tthe narrowest road ive ever drove up it was all one way up /one way down we set up camp at imphal
the colome went further on to an field some of them walked in thru assam the rest flew in in gliders towed by yankee planes they landed or crashed on ready made strips after the action started thinks got a bit and we had to pack up all our troubles a bit sharpish. we got past kohima in time the japs over ran imphal as we left. the west kents where at kohima they were very lucky .slims lot came up the valley. iwas told the met down there the person that is seeking could be in --77 bde the chindt books are in the libary. are you asleep pete bill bessingby :-*
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Hi Bill
What signals unit were you with?
I know of a couple of other ex-signals drivers who post on various forums, no-one that was in Burma though.
Pete
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hi pete
its a long story i was with a party of 50 fully trained r.a.c men sent to india to make up a new armoured regt which was made up of peace time men ready for blighty but the out brakeof the war stoped that .the rest was thro outs from other regts whilst they were coming down from the frontier we,-----us that got our knees brown were putting up the camp .most of the men were ex cavalry.no knowlege of armour.our tank training was done with 3 ton lorries.and cavalry signals .we got to the best trained armoured reg in india.then wingate got his way ,his had to be english regts .so allsuch as ours where disbanded to make up his colums,all of our regt and others had to examined to see if we were fit for colume duties i was down graded and transfered to r/s special force the only drivers that comes to mind were gurkhas some of the signal men went in with the colume our was the 111bdge.2of my mates were killed :'(
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pete kene
pete have you ever come across my old regt 26th hussarsin your travels around the .roots chat
bessingby
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Hi Bessingby,
Which smaller column unit were you with in 111th Brigade? Columns 26 and 90 were made up of the Cameronians and other attachments.
Steve.
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Hi bessingby
I havent come across anyone else from the 26th Hussars, not yey anyway!
If you let Bamboo have the details of your mates, he may have details of them already.
Pete
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hi bambo
my unit the royal sigs were att to the cameronians,and the gurkhas. i didnt know any of the scots lads only by sight and to talk to after training.at a camp called dukwan dam we stood up against the dam to keep cool.i didnt have much conract with them after imphal most of them had gone in to burmha one way or another.i beleive any films shown on tele or cinama are the 77 bdge led by mike calvert its hardto tell whos/whos bessingby
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I am also new to the forum and have come here trying to find out some more information about my grandfathers time in the chindits. He was in the South Staffordshire regiment and earned the burma star - I believe in 1943. I know very little else other than he served with the chindits in the jungles of Burma. Could anyone give me any advice on places to start for more information?
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Hi staffs01,
Sorry for the delay in replying. The South Staffs were a vital part of the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade led by Mike Calvert in 1944. They took part in all of the major Chindit actions within that Brigade that year.
I would recommend the books 'Prisoners of Hope', by Calvert himself and perhaps 'March or Die', by Phil Chinnery, for an overview of what the battalion got up to.
There are also battalion War Diaries held at our National Archives, Kew, London.
I will find out the file references for the S. Staffs diaries and post them later.
Steve.
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You all seem very knowledgable so I will join in with this discussion rather than start a new one, if that's OK. I have just started researching my father-in-law's activities in Burma. I intend to, but haven't yet, obtained his service record.
I'm not sure exactly when he arrived in Burma but I think it was fairly late on - I know he arrived in Bombay in Sept 1943, was in Shillong area of India in Sept 44, and in Burma by the end of December. I think he was in Signals.
He has used lots of abbreviations and I'm trying to determine what unit (sorry I am just beginning this search and do not know correct terminology) he was in.
He has mentioned 9M and 8M. :-\ Can anyone please tell me what these refer to?
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Ruskie
Hard to know without seeing them in context.
Let us have the abbreviatins and we'll see what we can do (maybe bessingby can help!)
Pete
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Thanks for the reply Pete.
Here are some examples of mentions of 8/9M and the context:
8M are holding a dance
8M are playing a football match
mentions some names and says they are members of 8M
8M are turning out for a parade
28M are in Paris
talks of meeting up with 9M again
played 9M in a football match
Not sure if this helps ... :-\
Thanks. :)
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Ruskie
I dont know is the short answer!
Normally it would be something like A Company, or 1 Platoon, but I cant think what M could stand for - the closest I could think of was Mess, which is unlikely given the context.
Do you know his unit details?
Pete
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No Pete, I don't I'm afraid. It's his unit details etc that I was trying to work out and thought 8M (etc) might give some clues. :-\
As I've discovered in the past couple of weeks since I began looking at my father-in-laws army days, abbreviations were used a lot. Google has helped with many of them, but not in this case.
It's not really important, I was just curious about what this meant. I intend purchasing his service record but need to get around to purchasing, or have someone find, his d/c before I can go ahead and do that.
Thanks anyway. :)
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he doesnt mention the death of anyone in his unit - we could maybe try and identify them from cwgc?
I will ask on another forum about 8M.
As he was a signaller, he may well have been attached to a different unit, ie artillery.
This was my first thought:
http://www.ra39-45.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/med/page8.html
But that theory falls about when you look at 9M, who stayed iin England.
His service history would be ideal, you dont have any letters home, any paperwork with his service number?
Pete
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Thanks for the link Pete. I thought that looked promising at first, but when I looked at 9M they don't appear to have been in Burma, and I know 8M and 9M crossed paths there.
No mention of any deaths or casualties in his unit. As I mentioned, I think he arrived later - some places he describes as being war torn, and mentions discovering a few 'Jap' bodies ...
No service number or letters home - just this diary he wrote about his experiences along the way - no entries for some months, and it stops abruptly in February 1945, and then one final entry almost two years later when he is back in England.
Quite frustrating to try to fill in the missing months ... I think I've come to a standstill until I get his service record.
But thanks again for the help.
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Hi all you military folk
Could someone please explain to a non-UK, non-military person , the significance of the name Chindits? Is it short for something? A nickname?
Interesting reading
Dawn M
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Good ole Wiki:
There's an explanation under "beginnings." ;)
It is interesting isn't it. I'm new to WW2 matters and am enjoying the research. What I think is interesting is how many stories have already been lost, and this is still within living memory. There are a few things I've tried to research and there's very little about it on the net and still some ambiguity and confusion over certain events etc. Maybe not enough was documented at the time.
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The reason a lot of war stuff hasn't been told is that it was so horrific the returning servicemen and women didn't want to talk about it.
Forty or more years ago I nursed returned soldiers at Greenslopes Repat Hospital in Brisbane. Most of them didn't want to relive the horrors. But they often did, in their nightmares!
Sometimes you would walk into a room where they were exchanging stories, and all talk would stop.
My OH was a RAAF Spitfire pilot and apart from a few escapades while over Australian territory, he has always been reluctant to relive a lot of his experiences, especially overseas when, as he says, 'they were all trying to kill you'. A couple of years ago his daughter urged him to dictate his memoirs - we got life in detail up until he joined up, then a complete refusal to go further. In his original squadron, he and one other were the only ones to survive.
When he was discharged from the RAAF he was given a life expectancy of 55. He's now 87! :D
Dawn M
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Well I didn't find the Wiki explanation, but there's another interesting one at
http://chinaburmaindiatheatre.blogspot.com/2010/01/chindits-operations.html
Dawn M
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The reason a lot of war stuff hasn't been told is that it was so horrific the returning servicemen and women didn't want to talk about it.
Forty or more years ago I nursed returned soldiers at Greenslopes Repat Hospital in Brisbane. Most of them didn't want to relive the horrors. But they often did, in their nightmares!
Sometimes you would walk into a room where they were exchanging stories, and all talk would stop.
My OH was a RAAF Spitfire pilot and apart from a few escapades while over Australian territory, he has always been reluctant to relive a lot of his experiences, especially overseas when, as he says, 'they were all trying to kill you'. A couple of years ago his daughter urged him to dictate his memoirs - we got life in detail up until he joined up, then a complete refusal to go further. In his original squadron, he and one other were the only ones to survive.
When he was discharged from the RAAF he was given a life expectancy of 55. He's now 87! :D
Dawn M
That's a fascinating insight Dawn, and I'm sure you're correct. Very different these days with councelling for every traumatic event and people being encouraged to 'talk'. Still it would give a great insight if more were able to tell their stories - not just the traumatic events, but any and every other tale that can be told about these years - happy ones too.
Just my thoughts ....
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Hi all
The word Chindit is a corruption/anglicization of the word Chinthe - which is the name of the dragon on the Chindit badge.
Billyblue - completely agree with your point, I am contact with several members of my grandfathers Regt and there are bits of time they are not willing to discuss - I cant pretend to understand how they feel as I havent been through the same experience, but I take their wishes seriously and always avoid those areas.
Ruskie....any other abbns other than 8M & 9M - I find it very interseting that his diary stops in February 1945 - is there a date....possibly around the 12th/13th, that week?
The 13th Feb was the date the 14th Army started to cross the Irrawaddy - solid fighting after that.
Pete
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Hello again Pete.
Yes there are lots of abbreviations but most don't seem to relate to units or any other kind of identifiable group.
The last diary entry is Friday 23 Feb 1945, so unfortunately doesn't tie in with your Irrawaddy idea. On this day they arrived in Monywa at 1430 and were "met by Capt Sangdon". This entry also mentions that he watched ... "Libs and Mitchells going over to bomb Mandalay et al."
I'm not sure if this will help but I know one of those in charge (I don't know his title) was a chap called Mingaye. An entry covering the days 12 to 17 Feb 1945 mentions that Mingaye tells them "he's been posted to 243 W/T". A couple of days earlier Mingaye flew to Monywa, and Hoekstra (this is my best translation of his handwriting) was their new OC.
Obviously I've googled these names, found this on National Archives Documents Online, and wonder if this is the same chap:
Name Mingaye, Harold William Frank
Rank: Temporary Captain
Service No: 268268
Regiment: Royal Corps of Signals
Theatre of Combat or Operation: Burma
Award: Member of the British Empire
Date of Announcement in London Gazette: 06 June 1946
It's an interesting puzzle to try to solve and I've learned a lot along the way.
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Its got to be a strong possibility.
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pete i just been looking at the chindits well as you know i waswith them but as much as ive tried i cannot think what 8m if it means medim the ra where formed in quetta 41
then i thought is metres but only the yanks used them was it mules ,miles
you was right as ever the chindit badge is a replica of the god that stands at the bottom of the steps at the foot of a burmaes temple
bessingby :-\
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Hi Bessingby
Hopefully his service history (when it is acquired) will reveal all !
Regards
Pete
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Thanks for trying bessingby - oddly enough I came across something the other day which mentioned "medium" and I wondered then if that's what the 8M might mean.
Yes, I think the service record is the only way forward. Does anyone know how much information you usually get for your £30? I've seen some of the WW1 service records - are the WW2 ones similar?
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Hi ruskie as Pete says if (9m) stayed in england how as you say their paths crossed.was it in england or on a map i was in the royal sigs but i never heard of any M .not any w /sets had numbers like that .you are asking of something that happened over 60years ago TIME DIMS MEMORIES
bessingby :)
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Hi ruskie as Pete says if (9m) stayed in england how as you say their paths crossed.was it in england or on a map i was in the royal sigs but i never heard of any M .not any w /sets had numbers like that .you are asking of something that happened over 60years ago TIME DIMS MEMORIES
bessingby :)
Too true bessingby.
These are the mentions of 8M, 9M and 28M:
Here are some examples of mentions of 8/9M and the context:
8M are holding a dance
8M are playing a football match
mentions some names and says they are members of 8M
8M are turning out for a parade
28M are in Paris
talks of meeting up with 9M again
played 9M in a football match
8M were mentioned while in England as well as in Burma, 9m were mentioned while in Burma.
This is just niggling me rather than being really important. When I receive the service record I will let you know what it says.
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EVENING RUSKIE
SORRY THE LETTERS ARE LARGE . BUT I CANNOT UN LUCK THE KEYS.
SOME OF THE EXAMPLES YOU SHOW DONT SEEM TRUE. BUT I THINK THEY ARE REGIMENTS I HOPE HE FINDS OUT SOON THEN WE CAN GET A NIGHTS SLEEP
BESSINGBY
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EVENING RUSKIE
SORRY THE LETTERS ARE LARGE . BUT I CANNOT UN LUCK THE KEYS.
SOME OF THE EXAMPLES YOU SHOW DONT SEEM TRUE. BUT I THINK THEY ARE REGIMENTS I HOPE HE FINDS OUT SOON THEN WE CAN GET A NIGHTS SLEEP
BESSINGBY
;D
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Bessingby
On your keyboard - on the left - is a buttons that saya 'caps lock' - press it and you letters should go back to normal...
Pete
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by gum pete thar knows the stuf
but iam ok now iam sober bessingby
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My late grandfather was in the Chindits. He rarely spoke of his experiences. His name is William Callan, originally from Lancashire.
Would anyone happen to have anything on him that they might be able to share ? I so wish I had been old enough to think to ask him more. I’m fascinated by history, and feel I’ve lost a chunk of him, by never learning about it.
Many thanks!
Lydia
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Welcome to Rootschat. :)
You should remove your email address to prevent spammers etc.
Yours grandfather's service record will be held by the MOD but you can apply for a copy, cost £30. Detail on this link: http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=651361.0
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Thanks so much- I have removed email address!! Excited to learn more now :)
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His service record should have lots of detail for you; I sent for one last year (not Chindits) and several pages arrived. I needed a lot of help from a Rootschatter to "translate" it.
If your grandfather's wife is still living then she can apply and will not have to pay.
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Sadly she passed away 15 years ago, and my grandad 18 years ago. Happy to pay though. Thank you for the share of info.