Jack's Escape from Burma, 1942

All this time we had very worrying news initially, or rather lack of it, about my father who was still in Burma initially [Guli's hair turned white while waiting for news].

I cannot remember when it was that we first heard that he had escaped by walking out through the north west jungles of Burma, but there was a long delay, and various bits of information trickled out about him long before we actually heard from him personally that he was safe, after a trek of 300 miles through the jungle at the age of 50 in the middle of the monsoon season. He lost about 3½ stone and caught typhoid on the way out but survived, though many of his party did not.

In the right hand drawer of my little bureau in the sitting room there is a tape which I had sent from the BBC about a radio play they made ,about the trek out through the Hukawng Valley and was based on the experiences of another evacuee, a British army officer. I have kept it as it gives an exact account of this party's experience, which was virtually identical to our fathers. [I have been unable to find this tape].

At any rate when he eventually emerged in India he was recuperated in hospital, and then went to Simla to join the British Government of Burma in exile. That was not a job for long, and he was eventually redrafted into his old regiment, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). [Actually this did not happen until April 1944].