Nkosi,
Your: "
Perhaps more later". Have a heart ! We've got our plates full already ! To start with, your: "
Imphal, Chittagong, Scwebo and Mandalay".
Chittagong I know well enough (roughly speaking, it's at the top of the Arakan, which runs down south to Akyab Island). There I operated (briefly) in early '43 with 110 (H) ; then in Arakan from mid-Nov'43 to Jun '44 with 8 (IAF).
Imphal is way up North; from Khumbirgram in Assam (Oct '43 - mid Nov'43) I was with 110 on that front. There we got bombed (and lost three airmen and an elephant). All the above on the Vultee Vengeance (unknown at the time and long forgotten now).
Mandalay (on the Road to which, according to Kipling:
"The flying fishes play/ An' the dawn comes up like thunder out o' China 'crost the Bay"), and Scwebo (where is it ?) were well to the NE. Don't know the area.
Your: "In an attractive Burmese house,which the skill of a clean tablecloth and a couple of old car seats covered with mauve material and a homemade cabinet gramophone had made comfortable, I found the East African big game hunter and farmer, Major William Bird, of Rongai, now commanding the only infantry workshop on the Mandalay front".........
Your Dad had it good (but that is the mark of the Old Soldier - danger may be inescapable, but the man who endures unneccesary discomfort is a fool). And there's me, happy in my basha with an air-transportable
charpoy, bedroll, a hurricane lamp and my tin box to sit on, thinking how much more well off I was than the poor 14th Army devils in the jungle 24/7 with a monsoon cape and a mess tin. Everything is relative, after all !
....."The locations mentioned may be familiar to you Danny but my father had the linguistic ability to converse with his artisans from various tribes of East Africa, namely. Nyasia's, Jaluo, Kikuyu and Kamba."
Dog-Hindi would get you along all over the subcontinent and most of the NW Burma where we were. Waste of time learning a local dialect: (I've read somewhere that there were more spoken languages in India than in the rest of the world together). Btw, what does "Nkosi" mean (Swahili, I presume ?) .......D.
MPN11,
Your "
Noooooo".
Sorry old chap - but Yesssss !...
.... D.
Cheers both, Danny.