Gunner Jack Dunkirk to Burma

'Churchill needed a victory and it was decided that we were just the lads to do it, and retake Burma without aircraft, just brute force and ignorance.'
- Alf Smith, D Troop, 316 Battery, 130th (Lowland) Field Regiment

The Lowlanders had a hell of a war. Despatched to the far side of the globe to face the merciless might of the Imperial Japanese Army, this steadfast band of volunteers and conscripts endured operations that are now all but forgotten, overlooked in even the most comprehensive published histories of the Second World War.

They were ordinary men facing extraordinary horrors, a gang of amateurs forged into a crack unit that took on some of the Royal Artillery's toughest engagements in Burma. Drawing upon hundreds of archive documents, unpublished memoirs and declassified reports, their astonishing story of hardship, humour and heroism is told here for the first time. This painstakingly-researched book traces their journey from enlistment to demob, examining the battles they fought, the way they lived, and the triumphs and tragedies they experienced along the way. It weaves together the grand strategies of politicians and generals with first-hand accounts from those at the sharp end, from the gunners on the ground, to the infantry they supported, to the pilots battling for the skies above them.

'Screaming shells were exploding everywhere. I threw myself hard against a fallen tree and could hardly believe it was our own guns... I could feel my body being violently compressed with every explosion. The pungent smell of cordite was everywhere while the shrapnel whined all around us.'
- Bill Bryden, F Troop, 494 Battery, 130th (Lowland) Field Regiment

The narrative follows Jack McLean, who as a reckless teenager joined his local Territorial Army unit (139th Field Regiment: the Lewisham Gunners) shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Sent to join the British Expeditionary Force in France, after gamely standing on the Escaut Line against experienced German troops he was evacuated through Dunkirk. As Britain braced for invasion, young Jack was ordered to join the untested 130th (Lowland) Field Regiment to offer it the benefit of his 'battle experience'.

Despite a faltering start with antiquated equipment, the Lowlanders were soon sent over the ocean to take part in the first foray back into Burma after the Japanese invasion. They were hardened in the Somme-like slaughter of Donbaik and, as 1943's ill-fated Cannibal expedition descended into catastrophe, fought for their lives on the palm-fringed shores of the Bay of Bengal, surrounded on the beach with their backs to the sea.

'The gunners leaned out with their rifles at the ready. If ever men prayed hard, we who watched did then. Lurching and heaving, the good old 'Quad' waded through, and the gunners, yelling like mad, opened fire with their rifles as they passed the ill-fated copse.'
- Ronnie Nicholson, Regimental Headquarters, 130th (Lowland) Field Regiment

Later, as an experimental 'assault' regiment in a unique Combined Operations formation, they held the line against the shock Japanese Arakan offensive of 1944. Ultimately assigned to a fractious multi-national task force headed by notorious American general 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell, their war culminated in a ten-month, thousand-mile slog through monsoon rains and remote mountainous jungle to reach Mandalay, chasing a stubborn enemy rearguard through country that was eminently suited to the tactics of ambush and infiltration for which the Japanese soldier was rightly feared and admired.

Until now, surviving details of their staggering feat of human endurance have lain buried in archives, a neglected sideshow to an ill-remembered theatre of conflict; the forgotten of the Forgotten Army.