It's all over, darling! We got the official "cease fire" at one o'clock yesterday afternoon. As you've probably guessed from my last two unsatisfactory letters, I've been in a sticky, muddy, forward area. It's strangely quiet now. No local contact has been made in connection with the Jap surrender. None have come in yet.
Last night a rum ration and a few miraculous bottles of gin and whisky arrived and within 3000 yards of the Jap positions, we had a celebration with Gurkha and Indian troops. Most of us got cockeyed! The Gurkhas and Indians performed ceremonial victory dances with drums improvised from empty petrol drums garlanded with flowers. In response to enthusiastic roars for a "victory dance" from "the English" (Us) we obliged with the Lambeth Walk, the Palais Glide, the Conga and Knees Up Mother Brown. Mass dances that seemed to convince them that they were pukka victory dances! All this on a tarpaulin stretched over bamboos. If you stepped off the edge you were knee deep in mud. One lad, smiling happily, in a gin clouded world, was extracted from a paddy field just outside the celebrating circle. He'd been standing in mud and water up to his waist. It took two of us five minutes, to remove the leeches from him!
And lights! Even with your London blackout, you can't imagine what it was like to have a light at night. In London you could have lights in your home, but in operational areas lights of any sort just ain't. A cigarette end showing would be your lot. You can't imagine how close to the earth you feel after a few months of that, sun down to sun up.
Oh darling, we could truly celebrate, you and I, as was impossible
on VE Day. VJ Day. Somebody remarked that it's fortunate that Denmark
is not among the separate enemies to be defeated!
Two letters arrived from you yesterday and I was pleased beyond words. The mail situation has been bloody these last few days. Your outburst of moral indignation (against the atom bomb) is shared by the majority of people with whom I have spoken. Although for most troops in Burma, it's not so much a case of wiping out Japanese as the ghastly potentialities in another war, that shocks the imagination.
We've still had no sign of the Japs surrendering here. Not much has been happening, just occasional flare-ups. Mountbatten has issued an ultimatum. He wants the Jap envoys in Rangoon by Thursday or else!
For the last few weeks we've been in action on an unpleasant front, from the ground and weather point of view, and yesterday my turn for rest came round and I went back to H.Q. in a dry billet, one of the Burmese wood huts, and damn me - I got a migraine! The first one for thirteen months and with this blasted steam oven climate, it knocked me right out. Bang went my day of rest!
Ye Gods! But I'm absolutely in fine dumps with suppressed rage, irritation, impatience, not to mention boredom and frustration! Now that the war's over our stupid, selfish, thoughtless shower of officers have started "peace-time" soldiering conditions and we're in no fit mental or physical condition to go slaving for a futile perfection of chorus girl evolutions, in 115 degrees in the shade, or to polish and scrub equipment, trucks and all the rest. None of us mind hard work, when there's some purpose behind it, but to spend a day in the sun painting posts at the camp entrance, or laying bricks in useless ornamentation around the officer's mess tents, just about blow me up! A "pukka" guard is mounted, too!
A sentry stands at the camp entrance, as though it were Buckingham Palace, in this blasted sun. Just so that our Majors (all just recently made up ) can receive, for the first time, a guard turn-out and a present arms! The normal procedure is a patrol, much more efficient and less of a strain. Some of these swine ought to do a two hour shift in the afternoon with the sun beating your eyes out, slowly crushing all thought from your brain. They just haven't any conception of what it means, they're not vicious to inflict this torture, it's sheer damned thoughtlessness!
All this, of course, is made worse by the reaction of the sudden
peace. Most of us are now something that we never were in action,
almost permanently browned off and short tempered.
