wardiarist

Al l Dold

Perhaps the circumstance of being in  a foreign land  with an uncertain future, helped us  weld ourselves to people whom we just met at random.Since we suffered the identical demands of the moment--the heat, the military discipline the food --that was really adequate- but insufferably the same day in and day out, unted us in  a way that fostered friendships that lasted long after the war was over.

One was Al Dold, a  Boston German-Irishman who carried the Boston Accent along with a perpetual smile that said " hey don't  worry  this thing will come out all right.

Lost B-25's

At least one month after
World War II was over, several B-25's were flown from Panagarh , 100 or miles east of Calcutta, to bangalore in the south of India.  As (I remember, only three planes made it safely to Bangalore.
A search mission took off several days later from Panagarh and , as I remember, only two arrived and three were lost. Later found crashed against a  mountain range not far from Panagarh.

I remember going to a memorial service where the caskets of 13 airmen were place in a line.
It was a sad  ending for people who had survived so many months in India Burma china and who had to die after the war was over. Friends that were lost included Lt. Nathanson, from Cleveland Ohio, Lt. Clovis Ketron, from Texas. I had at one time a list of  those who were killed but cannot locate it at the time.

Was It All Exciting?

Recent Monsoon in Bombay which took the lives of hundreds of people did much gfreater damage than the monsoon that greeted me and my  fellow replacements who were assigned to the Air Service Command in Northern India(Assam) in June 1944. The intensity of the rain which fell on my first base in Mohanbari was  incredible. For a time in seemed it would never stop. What was surprising was the speed at which the leather in my wallet became moldy.  Then for the first time, I  was exposed to  sleeping in a bed(charpoy) encased in mosquito netting.  Assigned to a service group replacing engines on Curtiss ;Wright C-46's and Douglas C47's (DC 3's) we  worked for several weeks with rain coming almost every day at either Chabua or Mohanbari Airfields.. Occasionaly we were sent on detached service to the 48th service group where we "pickled " engines(preserving the cylinders from rusting) destined for shipment to China.

 

Today's Post

Today I'm with my son Peter in Cincinnati and we're about to review some old photos from my World War II experience.

Bamboo Latrines and Pills of Atabrine

Reflections on life in the China, Burma, India Theatre 1944-46

Today quiet stillness reigns on that Assam Plain
Shadowed by that snow capped-mountain range
Where melt of snow tumbles and   falls miles below
To the great Brahmaputra and its meandering flow.

Thoughts of those years drift back quite clear.
Remembering faces of friends still held most dear
In the war that snatched us from lives barely started
Uniformed us in Khaki and from loved ones departed

The young of a nation shipped to far distant lands
Where fate was held hostage to the luck of a hand
Dealing some to scorching heat and tropical stenches
And others dealt to perish in zero cold trenches

War 's heralded glory, never   matched our teenage fantasies
Imported from Hollywood each afternoon on Saturdays
No war ace Cagney's downing enemies in flames
We had just our gutsy pilots flying beat-up cargo planes

Struggling through Burma our engineers got their orders
“Follow the trail carved out by Merrill's Marauders
Suffer the mosquito,   jungle and ankle deep muck
Just build that Ledo road for our six-by -six trucks.”

Brave airmen topped earth's highest snowcapped lumps
A high risk route to China our flyers named the “Hump.”
To Kunming and back and be counted with the brave
Yet many brother crewmen found rest in mountain graves.

Through driving monsoon rains, our pilots searched the night
For a nearby runway with working landing lights
Almost beardless pilots barely past their teens
In droning coughing airplanes starved of gasoline.

It was a life of “basha” huts and bamboo latrines
Buffalo meat, sacred cows and pills of Atabrine
Towns called Du Dum,, Dinjan and   Lamianr Hat
Mohanbari, Chabua, and Hindu Burning Ghats..

Chowringee Road shows where “Mongoose Kills Snake”
Near Dhoti clad women begging for a stake
Mothers nursing infants, faces wet with sobs
Calcutta's poorest people pleading, Baksheesh sahib

There was a joy at seeing, many of us confessed
Young naïve maidens displaying naked breasts
Infants bound on mother's backs at their work stations
In flooded fields of rice or verdant tea plantations

We did no romancing like the GI's in France
Had no Piccadilly ladies to ask out to dance
No war brides over here to take back home
In mosquito netted charpoys we slept all alone

Learned that Khassi Hill beebes were the choice of some
But most of us took our pleasure from beer and rum
Others spent their leisure time just rolling the dice
Had to exist on Lister Bag water without any ice

China, Burma, India made little front page news
Forgotten were we was the accepted GI view
Our role was political according to Pentagon Logistics
So the headlines came out of Europe and the   South Pacific

When the “Bomb” brought down the curtain on “Our” war
Some twenty million dead could be accounted for.
Perhaps now no sons will have to leave their homes again?
As Hope filled prayers for peace was our thinking then.

Korea then came to prove peace comes no easy way
Soon sons of ours were dying at Can Rahn Bay
The killing fields of Cambodia claimed so many more
So much for boastful promises to end all bloody wars

Clods of broken runway 'neath Chabua's wild weeds
Time and nature's cover-up of man's past deeds
Control towers and windsocks nowhere to be found
That guided weary flyers safely to the ground

No memorials of bronze rest on marble stands
To mark our long stay in that exotic land
No sights of British tents, home for all our days
Only   sacred   cows meandering as they daily graze

Today only quiet stillness reigns on that Assam Plain
Shadowed by that snow capped-mountain range
Where melt of snow tumbles and   falls miles below
To the great Brahmaputra and its meandering flow.

59th Service Group, 377th Air Service Squadron

Bill Blackshaw
June 1944-May 1945
59th Service Group, 377th Air Service Squadron
chabua- Mohanbari, Assam Valley, India

May 1945-February 1946
44th Service Group, 498th Air Service Squadron
Din Jan, India.
In   October 1946, after the war ended,
the entre Group transferred
to Panagarh, 100 miles west of Calcutta

Panagarh was a collecting point where
aircraft was being prepared for shipment to China.

The work had hardly begun when it was abrutly stopped.
The word that we got was that under the terms of the
Yalta Agreement with Russia, made several months earlier
with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin as signatories., no
military   equipment could be transferred even to Allied Countries.
Since Stalin certainly did not want to see China gain strength
I would suspect that was the reason for it.

This is Bill's Test

This is a test to see how well this works.