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We were first ashore, I mean, negotiated the mangrove swamp, which wasn't easy. We got to the paddy and we could see Ill 170 in front of us. The Japs opened up on us, but we took the hill fairly easily. But half way up the hill was a young Burmese girl, about 17 or 18, and her baby a few months old, lying in a pool of blood, a stomach torn open. I thought, was it our shelling of the hill that did that? Or was it when we were attacking, or when the Japs mortared us? And it occurred to me that it didn't matter very much. She was in her homeland. And here were two foreign powers fighting each other, and she and her baby had died because of that. And that was Private Victor Ralph, the Four Troop One Commando.

Well, welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk, our series on Burma, Part 2.

And Jim, in the last episode, at Burma 45, I just want to point out,

in the last episode we talked an awful lot about Burma 44.

Yeah, we're now very much in 45.

But you can't do 45 without 44.

So we set the scene scene and we offered the possibility

that we will be going to the Arakhan. And that's where we find ourselves now. We do with a rather

disturbing image. But of course, you know, Burma is a highly populated nation. Yeah.

Particularly in, you know, some of these errors in which the fighting is taking place. Yeah. And, of course, as we know, the Second World War, you know, it was the civilians that suffered the most. Yeah. And the other thing that I think is really, really interesting about the Allied forces in Burma, in 14th Army and in 15 Corps who were doing the fighting in the Arakhan is a sort of multinational nature of it.

And actually, I think it would be interesting to begin this second episode with the story of

Havauda Umbrio Singh, who is an Indian soldier.

And on the night of the 15th of December, 1944, he's in the Caledan Valley, where the 81st West African division are pushing south. And the Caledan is east of the admin box that we discussed in Burma 44 last year. So it's a little way inland from the Erickank coast, sort of, you know, 15, 20 miles as a crow flies, that kind of stuff. Amrero Singh at this time, he's 24, he's from the Punjab. And he's joined the Indian

Army back in 1939. So he's a professional soldier. He's a professional soldier. And in the pre-war Indian Army, that's very much the area where the Punjabis and the Patans and all this kind of stuff and Sikhs, of course, this is the kind of absolute beating heart of old school interwar Indian army.

But he's done well and he's now a sergeant, so a Haveldar.

And he's in the 33rd Mountain Battery of the 30th Mountain Regiment, Indian Artillery.

And he's attached to, his unit is attached to the 81st West African Division.

So Singh has volunteered to take two mountain howitzers forward to an advanced position

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