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  ‘Two young West African soldiers shipped halfway across the world in 1943 to fight for the British in Burma find themselves abandoned – wounded, starving and sick – in the unmapped jungle of the Arakan. Their astonishing adventures are reconstructed here in gripping detail… A real-life thriller with sobering implications for the British reader – but I found it impossible to put down.’

  Hilary Spurling

  author of Burying the Bones

  ‘Barnaby Phillips has uncovered a tale which touches the world in every sense. The story is a deceptively simple one, of a lanky boy who runs away from his dusty Nigerian village to join the British Army and is left for dead thousands of miles from home in the Burmese jungle. The miraculous sheltering and survival of Isaac Fadoyebo not only make an irresistible human drama. They also illustrate the terrifying global swirl of the conflict. Told with warmth and colour, this account of a forgotten soldier in a forgotten army in a forgotten war will not itself be easily forgotten.’

  Ferdinand Mount

  author of The New Few

  A Oneworld Book

  This eBook edition published by Oneworld Publications, 2014

  First published in North America, Great Britain & Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2014

  Copyright © Barnaby Phillips 2014

  The moral right of Barnaby Phillips to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78074-522-0

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-78074-523-7

  Note on the Text

  In 1989, Burma’s military government changed the name of the country to Myanmar, and at the same time the capital Rangoon became Yangon. I have used the original names throughout this book, for the sake of consistency, as the greater part of it concerns the years around the Second World War. No offence is intended.

  Typesetting and eBook design by Tetragon, London

  Map artwork copyright by Critiqua

  Oneworld Publications

  10 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3SR, England

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I. Sacrifice

  1. One big man

  2. Let this bayonet drink my blood

  3. A calabash in the wind

  4. The generals are met

  5. Black men held the gate

  6. Full of loneliness

  7. Juju on the River Kaladan

  8. Cover me, Lord

  9. Loyalty and patience

  10. Home again

  11. Great awakening

  12. The cries turn to laughter

  Part II. Debt

  13. Into a ravine

  14. Here you left us

  15. Natives of Arakan

  16. Impregnable

  17. For our children to be free

  Epilogue

  Appendix: Key dates

  Acknowledgements

  Image section

  Notes

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  To my parents

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  ‌Prologue

  2 March 1944

  Burma

  Isaac Fadoyebo would always remember the Kaladan as a wide and calm river, as silent as a graveyard. They had been drifting down it for four days. Trees lined the banks and monkeys played in the branches that reached above them. They were some ninety soldiers, British officers and their West African men, equipment heaped precariously high on the little fleet of bamboo rafts. Most of the West Africans could not swim. When Lance Corporal Felix Okoro fell in a couple of days previously, he had drowned. His body had washed up on the far bank the following morning, and, by the time the burial party reached him, vultures had already started to tear away at the flesh. It had been a horrible accident, Isaac thought, although not one that had created a feeling of impending disaster. He had woken that morning with no sense of foreboding. He didn’t know that, for the rest of his long life, he would always think in terms of before and after this day.

  The officers and men were taking breakfast together around a campfire. A simple affair of bread and tea, washed down with plenty of sugar, but no milk. This would be their last day on the river. That afternoon they hoped to arrive at the town of Kyauktaw, which the 81st Division had captured only the week before. They were a medical unit, trying to keep up with the advance. At Kyauktaw, they’d been told, they would be setting up a small field hospital for the division, because the Japanese were expected to put up more of a fight to the south. There would be casualties, and they would be responsible for them.

  None of the men on the riverbank that morning could have been described as battle-hardened. The officers were doctors, almost all from Scotland. They were volunteers, and most had only signed up after war was declared. The West Africans were from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and had joined the Army in the last couple of years. They’d been trained in first aid and nursing, but given only the most rudimentary of fighting skills. The few that carried guns probably hoped they’d never have to use them. Their unit’s name precisely determined their role in the great British Army’s attempt to recapture Burma: they were the 29th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS), and they belonged to the 6th West African Brigade, part of the 81st Division of the Royal West African Frontier Force.

  It sounded grand, put like that, but the truth was that the 29th CCS was an odd assortment of men of variable quality. When they’d crossed the border from India, they’d heard artillery, and seen British planes strafing enemy positions on distant hills. On one occasion, they’d even treated some injured Japanese soldiers who had been captured by the frontline soldiers. But that was weeks ago now. There were some who’d begun to hope quietly that the Japanese had pulled out of the Kaladan Valley altogether.

  The men dawdled. Most were wearing only vests and shorts. Many were barefoot. If they were going to spend another day back on the rafts, they asked, why bother to put boots on? Some ambled down to the water, to wash their faces. Others wandered off in the direction of the nearby village, a line of bamboo and thatch huts strung along the riverbank. When they’d arrived the previous evening, they were relieved to see that it was an Indian settlement. Indians, that’s what they called the Muslims, because that’s what they looked like. They could be trusted; the officers had drummed this into the men before they’d set out, and it was turning out to be true. It was the others, the Arakanese Buddhists, or Burmese as they called them, who were slippery. Why, they even looked Japanese. The Africans asked the Muslims what name they gave to their village. ‘Mairong,’ they replied.

  The commanding officer, Major Robert Murphy, looked at his watch. Half-past seven, time to load up the rafts. The mist over the river had burnt away, revealing the outline of the trees on the far side. He wondered if he should tell the men to make less noise. He didn’t like this complacency. Looking down the sloping muddy bank, he saw Isaac sipping his tea and chatting to Company Sergeant Major Archibong Bassey Duke, a fellow Nigerian. There are two young men who seem to be enjoying this adventure, thought the Major.

  That morning, Bassey Duke was warming to one of his favourite themes: life after the war. When it was all over, he told Isaac, they’d return home with some money to spend, and some stories to tell. Bassey Duke was a giant of a man. He wore blue shorts and a white vest, and would have been easily visible from the far side of the river. It was the end of the dry season, so the opposite bank was only a hundred or so yards away. Behind it, the sun was rising over the steep hills, the dark
jungle still in shadow.

  Bassey Duke jerked and spun, and only then did Isaac hear the shots. He watched his friend fall to the ground, still clutching his red enamel mug. Tea spilled from it and trickled down the bank. There were flashes of light in the jungle on the opposite side of the river. Bullets buzzed past Isaac’s head. Like angry wasps, he thought. He fell face down into the reeds. His heart thumped against the cold ground. They were in a terrible position, exposed on the steep, slippery bank. Machine guns had opened up now. How many? One, at least, probably two. He caught a glimpse of Major Murphy stumbling past, walking like a drunk. That was strange. From higher up on the bank, he could hear screaming. Then he saw that Major Murphy’s head was covered in blood. The shooting stopped. Someone nearby was gasping in a quiet voice. ‘Take me, O God, take me, O God.’ It sounded like Private David Essien, but Isaac could not be sure. He tried to crawl towards the voice, but as soon as he moved the shooting resumed. More angry wasps spun through the air. The Japanese had Isaac in their sights, and bullets ripped through the reeds around him.

  When the shooting stopped a second time, Isaac reached out with his left hand for Essien, who was no longer gasping. It was strange how still Essien was, how cold he felt, for Isaac could see no blood on his uniform. Isaac tried to crawl up the bank, but one of his legs did not seem to be working properly. He looked down and saw that his khaki trousers were soaked with blood. So was his shirt. He closed his eyes and said to himself, ‘Is this me? Is this really me, boy?’ He saw his father Joshua, sombre and pained, sitting on the veranda of the family house in the village, pleading with him to run away from the Army before it was too late. Good advice, he thought now, but at the time he had shrugged his father away. ‘I am in trouble, I am in deep, deep trouble.’ His leg had started to ache, sending spasms right through his body. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Tears of fear or pain? He didn’t know. He was sure of only one thing: he was going to die.

  Many hours must have passed, because the next thing he can remember is that the sun was low in the sky, and a kind white face was looking down at him. A miracle. It was Captain Brown, who seemed to be unhurt. He was smiling, and still trying to talk like one of the soldiers. ‘Ebo, my boy, you are down o!’ Ebo, the affectionate name the Captain always used for Isaac because, so he explained, Fadoyebo was too long to pronounce. The others must have all run away, but the Captain had stayed, or maybe even come back, to try to help the injured. As far as Isaac could see, Captain Brown did not even have a scratch on him. Isaac reached feebly out towards his officer. ‘I’m thirsty, so thirsty,’ he said.

  The Captain went away, and Isaac could see he was fetching a flask of tea from one of the bamboo rafts that were still tied up on the riverbank. He came back and urged Isaac to sit up, take a sip. He was talking fast, telling Isaac that Major Murphy was badly hurt, he’d been shot in the head, and that he’d been dressing his wounds. It sounded like Captain Brown didn’t think Major Murphy would make it. Now he wanted to take a look at Isaac. He took a knife to Isaac’s trousers, and carefully cut them open, to reveal a bloody mess of a right leg. The Captain was saying something about bullets and a fractured femur, and how he was going to put together an improvised splint. Isaac struggled to raise his head to drink the tea, when he saw the Japanese soldiers running up the bank towards them, bayonets pointed at Captain Brown.

  They had crossed the river.

  The Captain turned around in surprise and jumped to his feet. He remonstrated with the Japanese. ‘I am Captain Richard Brown, a medical officer,’ he said. He did not even reach for the pistol at his waist.

  His words made no difference. The Japanese surrounded him, and led him away. For some time after they’d disappeared from his view, Isaac could still hear the Captain, protesting.

  Isaac watched other Japanese soldiers as they tore through the equipment on the rafts. One of them carried the flag of the rising sun. Then they turned to the dead bodies – there seemed to be two or three near Isaac – and took guns, ammunition, even clothes. They seemed desperate, taking whatever they could get their hands on. Only after they’d finished their plundering did they show any interest in him.

  They spoke so quickly he couldn’t understand. But they repeated a phrase again and again: ‘English people, English people,’ they seemed to be saying. Were they asking him whether there were any other officers? Did they want to know where the survivors were hiding? Now they were gesturing for him to stand up. One of them pointed a rifle at his head. They were saying something else, it must have been ‘Get up, get up,’ but Isaac could not even sit. He wondered at the idiocy of it all. Did they think that, if he could get up, he would still be lying here?

  He knew what was coming. The Japanese, take a prisoner? A white man, like Captain Brown, perhaps, but a black man? No chance. That was not how they did things. He closed his eyes and waited to be shot.

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  ‌Part I

  ‌Sacrifice

  ‌

  ‌1

  ‌One big man

  All they knew was that one big man was quarrelling over God-knows-what with another big man in the whiteman’s land, somewhere far away…One of them was called Hitler. No one knew the name of the other, although it was rumoured that he was related to the District Officer.

  Jolasanmi Olaleye Falore,

  The Life and Times of Moses Oni Ayeko-Falore‌*

  December 1941

  Owo, Nigeria

  Isaac Fadoyebo’s journey to the Burmese jungle began here, by the gates of the palace of the Olowo, in December 1941. An olive-green army lorry groaned and slid up the sandy streets to the meeting place under the palace walls in the small hilltop town of Owo, in the British Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Market women, squatting on the ground beside their little piles of beans or soap or palm oil, or black coils of smoked fish, looked up. An excited crowd gathered and swelled around the vehicle. From a gramophone came the distant, tinny voice of Winston Churchill.

  Everybody in Owo knew about the war. For two years now, they’d seen the posters all over town. Some depicted stern and merciless German soldiers shooting a group of defenceless Africans lined up against a wall. Others showed the same Germans, wearing big black boots, whipping the Africans who laboured for them. The Germans displayed no emotion, but the Africans were depicted as terrified. ‘Hitler has already said that ALL AFRICANS MUST BE SLAVES FOR GERMANS!’ the posters screamed in red letters.*

  People had looked at these posters in morbid fascination. It was true that everyone now called it ‘Hitler’s War’. That the Nazis were ‘wicked people’, and that Hitler was behaving like a wild beast, was beyond dispute. Well, almost. One woman in the market had been overheard saying that this Hitler must be a real man, if all of Europe was so afraid of him. The woman was shouted down. Not only at the market, but also at church, most people agreed that, if Britain fell to this man Hitler, they would come under ‘Ja’man’ control, and that would be a bad thing.

  Some even argued that what Hitler really wanted was Nigeria itself. They said, ‘He knows all about our gold, our precious stones, our cocoa and our groundnuts, and now he wants to take them.’ This seemed to fit with another rumour that a trader had heard in Lagos, that Their Majesties the King and Queen had fled there from London, and were now living in Government House. They went for short walks along the Marina after dark, apparently, taking some care not to be recognised.

  It was hard to know what to make of it all, or of the way the colonial government was becoming ever more insistent in its appeals for contributions towards the war effort. The Oba, or king, of the mighty city of Benin had let it be known he was donating ten pounds a month from his salary. Lesser chiefs said they would give whatever they could afford. The district officer was urging farmers to grow more palm oil and rubber. One school, in the nearby town of Ondo, had scraped together some shillings and pennies to send to London, specifically to help those poor children who had been made homeless in the bombing. At the loca
l school, the pupils had composed their own rude ditty about Hitler:

  Adolf Hitler ma se o

  Ani ko ma se, ani ko dara, o ranri

  Abe o titi iwo se tire o

  Mase, mase olo o se

  O de buse

  O te na

  Adolf Hitler, don’t do it.

  We asked you not to do it, we told you it’s not good,

  But you were obstinate.

  We begged you for a long time, but you did what you wanted to do.

  Don’t do it, don’t do it, but you said you would

  And now it’s all over, you’re disgraced.‌*

  So it was on this December day that the smartly dressed man took up his position by the Olowo’s palace, and began his speech. He was talking about what Hitler might do to Africans, but that wasn’t all. He was urging the men who’d gathered round him to sign up and fight. Not just for Owo, but for Nigeria, the British Empire and King George. At that, someone in the crowd cheered, and Isaac’s curiosity got the better of him.

  He was barely sixteen, but he was an imposing boy, already almost six feet tall, and he knew his own mind. He pushed his way through, closer to the lorry, so he could better hear what the recruiting officer was saying. Nigerians faced a stark choice, said the officer: to live under British justice, ‘the finest system in the world’ he called it, or to be slaves under Hitler. It was a hot day, and the officer knew he would not have his audience’s attention for long if he only stuck to rhetoric. People needed to hear practicalities. Join up, he said, because the pay is good, the uniforms are dashing, and, when the war is over, you will be first in line for all the good jobs, maybe even in government service. The officer kept his message simple, as he’d been told to do, and he was rewarded with murmurs of approval.