Major Anthony Herbert Jenner
Major Jenner wrote a brief account of his service in Burma and I am grateful to his family for providing a copy of his account. The account was written on the back of five envelopes, possibly for an interview with Radio Oxford.
Like many British and Anglo-Burmese professionals living and working in Burma, Major Jenner joined the Burma Auxiliary Force in 1938. Prior to the outbreak of war with Japan, he trained in antiaircraft gunnery in Singapore before receiving a commission into the Burma Auxiliary Force as 2nd Lieutenant. He was first posted to the 3rd Light Antiaircraft Battery, B.A.F. Shortly before the evacuation of Rangoon, he was transferred to the 1st Heavy Antiaircraft Battery, B.A.F. and subsequently left Rangoon with the Battery when the city was evacuated on 6th March 1942. He remained with the unit throughout the long retreat to India. In 1943, he was commissioned into the Army in Burma Reserve of Officers (A.B.R.O.) and was posted to the Burma Intelligence Corps. He served with No. 5 Platoon, B.I.C., mainly in the Arakan, until the end of the war. After the war he returned he continued to live and work in Burma.
Major Jenner’s account follows:
Burma 1942
After leaving school in 1934 I took a job with an East Indian Merchant company in the city with a view to joining their parent company in Burma, if found suitable & when I had reached an age of discretion, (which was judged to be 20!).
In 1937, I duly sailed from Liverpool for Rangoon & was posted to one of the company’s rice mills – rice export being their main interest in those years when Burma was exporting 3 million tons annually. After a year at the rice mill I was put in charge of a Jungle Paddy Buying Station at Tharrawaddy, 70 miles north of Rangoon.
The paddy was stored in huge heaps in the open at about 10 rail stations & had to be moved into the rice mill by rail before the rains started – usually the first or second week in May. When that had been done I returned to the mill for the monsoon season until November, & then back for the next year (‘the jungle’ was anywhere outside Rangoon!).
I spent 3 years like this & joined the Burma Auxiliary Force (the local Territorials) attending their parades during the rains. In the last year (1941) I went down to Singapore to learn AA Gunnery at the R.A. HQ, Changi – notorious in later times as a Jap prison. I had scarcely left to return to Rangoon when the Japs attacked Singapore & Lower Burma, & I then became a full time soldier with a ‘pip’ on each shoulder.
This must have been about October 1941 & my first posting was to a Bofors unit defending the Rangoon oil refinery. I then had a spell as a liaison officer at RAF HQ, & in early March 1942 I joined a Heavy Mobile AA Gun section just outside Rangoon. Within a couple of days we had orders to evacuate & began what was to be the longest withdrawal ever made by a British army. A day later the Japs were in Rangoon.
After various actions en route we reached Mandalay towards the end of April – shade temperature 113˚F, I remember! We then crossed the Irrawaddy & made for the Chindwin. Here we had orders to destroy our guns & their equipment & all transport, & cross the Chindwin. We then hoofed it for the border with Assam.
By the end of May we had passed through Imphal & Kohima & reached the Brahmaputra. We were taken across by a ferryboat to the railhead on the Indian side & a train took us to our destination, with a wide circuit of Calcutta – they didn’t want to scare the locals with the sight of the war-worn Burma Army!
After a spell of rest & rehabilitation we learnt that it had been decided to wind up our AA Regiment & form the Burma Intelligence Corps from the troops, to be officered by those among us with a knowledge of the country & the people, & most particularly, the language. We should be formed into a number of platoons of about 30 men & farmed out to the various division on the front line to assist them on their advance into a strange country.
As a result of this I found myself before long with a platoon on the Arakan front – the part of Burma abutting the Bay of Bengal. In fact we were to spend the rest of the war in this sector & served with five divisions at different times. One of the most interesting operations was our last, when we proceeded up the Sangu River from Dohazari in Bengal in a small fleet of sampans, crossed some three ranges of hills into Burma & then down to the Kaladan River at Daletine.
The Japanese were very expert at jungle warfare & it had become very obvious that any advance our troops made was very soon followed by the enemy infiltrating through the jungle & cutting our lines of communication, which resulted in our troops having to do an about turn & fight their way back to where they had started from.
Lessons having been learned from this, it had been decided to send the 81st W. African Division down the Kaladan valley behind the enemy lines, being supplied purely by air. My platoon had been ordered to join this Division, hence our rather strange journey through what has been described as the largest bamboo forest in the world (much frequented by elephant, although I only saw the evidence they left behind!)
Without going into details, I can say that we spent six months behind the lines with the W. African Division, being supplied only by airdrops – which I believe to be another ‘first’ for so large a force.
In early 1945, by which time I had been ‘out East’ for 8½ years, the Army very kindly felt it was time for me to take a short home leave – I had in fact expected to be away 5½ years. I was therefore granted a flight to UK, & it so happened that I took off from Calcutta on VE Day itself.