Air Attack and Retreat to India

Heroes Remember

Air Attack and Retreat to India

Transcript

Well anyway, we continued this retreat. Well we were trying to get back to India by land, that was the objective. So we had to get to Mandalay, cross the river, and then back in through Assam. But the, I think one of the most unpleasant times was at in Yenangyaun which was the oil fields. Now people think of Burma as jungle, well the piece that, along the Assam, India Burmese border is jungle. But where we were in the central area there was a dry zone, bare as can be. I had the initiative, put it that way, and anyway and of course we never saw any of our planes. Any plane we heard was a Jap plane. I remember one time, I was laughing. I remember laughing to myself. Oh that was a stupid thing to do because it was dangerous. I was driving a truck, I was by myself, I don’t know what I was doing, going along this road. I heard planes up above and I heard machine-gun fire so I stopped and jumped out and down the little bank. And there was a pile of rocks which the public works had stashed there you know, for road repair, and it was about that high. And I had to crouch this way, when the plane came that way, then he comes and I crouch around the other way and thought, this is kind of funny. Which was, I don’t know why I thought it was funny because it wasn’t. But anyway they, the pilot thought he wasn’t getting anywhere, he better target somewhere else and luckily they left. There was two of them at one time.

Description

Mr. Finnis talks about the retreat to India, and being attacked from the air when he was serving in Burma.

John Michael Finnis

John Michael Finnis was born on July 4, 1921, in London, England. His father served during the First World War. When the Second World War began, Mr. Finnis was eager to serve. At age 19, Mr. Finnis enlisted in the Army and was posted to the Fifth Field Training Regiment in Dover, England, and requested to go to India. Mr. Finnis was shipped off to the School of Artillery in Deolali, India where he spent the next few months. Prior to leaving school, he chose to join the 1st Indian Field Artillery Regiment. He was sent to Burma by troop ship and served throughout Burma and India. Mr. Finnis was discharged from the military and upon his return to England he obtained a degree in Forestry and immigrated to Canada where he worked with the British Columbia Forest Service.

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