Been reading on the South Pacific campaign:
Kokoda trail, Guadalcanal, New England, The Salomon's etc.
Units with over 120% casualties due to soldiers having two kinds of typhus, Malaria and good knows what horrible skin rotting jungle disease at the same time...
Then you add hidden japs snipers during the day, infiltrators during the night on top of the actual fighting... With NO possibility of evacuation and little to no medical attention.
It's a bloody miracle anybody got out alive.
If hell needs a depiction, this is it.
(, Thu 1 May 2014, 18:18, Reply)
It must have been horrific. My Grandfather was Labour attache to Burma during the second world war.
He would never speak about his experiences, too harrowing I guess.
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skeltonator Needs some new daps., Thu 1 May 2014, 18:36,
Reply)
yes mine too
Was in Burma and he never said a peep about it. Also turned religious.
: (
I say that, I do know that his friend was shot as they were walking along some path somewhere and the war ended later than for other people.
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--- ---, Thu 1 May 2014, 18:38,
Reply)
Mine aso had a friend and colleague killed in sight of him, we never realised that he was fluent in Japanese until his eulogy was read out at his funeral.
Astonishing man, total pacifist.
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skeltonator Needs some new daps., Thu 1 May 2014, 18:47,
Reply)
The only other thing I can remember him saying
was about how they would have scorpions against centipede fights, bet on them and all that. Entertainment.
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--- ---, Thu 1 May 2014, 18:51,
Reply)
Northen Burma was shocking too...
Even Bastogne seems a bit jolly in comparison.
There's places on earth that seem to be "reservoirs" of pestilence... A bit like the message "don't go to Europa" in 2001. Why don't we get it?
(, Thu 1 May 2014, 19:27, Reply)
my nans brother was a japanese pow and no one in the family would talk about what he had been through
after being released and given some medical atention to get him home, the first thing his family did nearly killed him, they made him a huge dinner despite the doctors telling them not to.
he was captured when singapore fell and died when he was in his sixty's he never regained any sort of good health and suffer terrible terrible nightmares for years , despised and hated the japanese but not for what they had done to him but for what they had done to his friends and pals.
apols for glum time memmorys
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fluffybunnykiller Is feasting on the clitoris of life, Thu 1 May 2014, 19:39,
Reply)
Mine too
he was with the BEF in France and got evacuated somewhere north of Dunkirk then got sent out to the Far East. The only time he spoke to me about it as a kid I stupidly asked if he'#d killed anyone (I was 8) and he never spoke to me about it again.
Edit
heres a photo of him and some chums larking around on a downed hurricane somewhere in Burma:
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shitkicker, Fri 2 May 2014, 12:23,
Reply)