Young Man You'll Never Die: A World War II Fighter Pilot In North Africa, Burma & Malaya by Merton Naydler

Author:Merton Naydler [Naydler, Merton]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2006-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

‘Desertion’

The name Burma filled me with deep and genuine horror. Wartime propaganda had driven home the awfulness of conditions out there, not least the unrelenting savagery of the Japanese, quite apart from such minor considerations as snakes, jungle, and dread tropical diseases. It was about the last place I wanted to go; another four thousand miles further from home. I did not mind a second operational tour, indeed I welcomed it now that I really knew how to fly, but why not in Europe where there was still plenty of action in Italy, with a second front in France not far away. I shuddered at the cruel blow, scarcely alleviated by the detailed instructions which followed, to report to Almaza … Almaza of all the places I had never expected to see again; that was really rubbing salt in the wound. Alcatraz, then Burma, came as near as made no difference to a slow, painful death sentence. It was what we airmen called ‘the dreaded end!’ Reeling back I groaned inwardly and hated the guts of the cosy headquarters cream bun-eating bastards who had cooked this one up. I had a companion in adversity. Wuffles Mowbray had done a tour on a desert squadron, been posted to 26 AACU, attained the mighty rank of Warrant Officer, and was now in the same boat with me. Mowbray could both talk and drink the hind legs off a donkey. “Rot their horrid cotton socks!” he maledicted on receiving the news. Sick at heart we packed and jorneyed to the dreaded transit camp.

Except that the fat Commandant had been buried the place hadn’t changed a bit. But we had, and it didn’t take long to discover the date of our departure for Burma and apply for leave to fill in the interval. In Alexandria for five vehement days we gave vent to our unhappiness in a glorious non-stop drinking session, initiated by bottles of breakfast in the frisky bug-ridden rooms of a sleazy hotel, rising at the crack of noon, then starting the day really right with a hefty pre-lunch orgy. Whenever possible we altercated with authority in the shape of the Military Police, heedless of the consequences. In the RAF language of the time, we pressed on regardless, and truly couldn’t have cared less. On reflection, though I doubt whether without Mowbray’s influence I would have behaved thus, in the circumstances we did the only sensible thing there was to do.

June 5th, 1944, saw us aboard an Imperial Airways flying-boat alongside Gezireh, on the Nile, where stood the Sporting Club beloved of the chairborne warriors. During twenty-four hours recuperative sleep which followed I was vaguely conscious of refuelling halts in the Dead Sea, on the lake at Habbaniyah in Iraq, and at Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf. I came to when we were pitched ashore for the night into a sumptuous air-conditioned hotel at Bahrain Island, the hottest place ever: it was midsummer. The air-conditioning induced a kind

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