Burma Star Association - B.C. Chapter
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During the Burma Campaign, I served with 258 Squadron RAF in Arakan, Ramree Island, Madras, Kuala Lumpur, Surabaya, Batavia, Medan and Singapore.
My own service record was nothing remarkable; serving as as an airframe fitter with a squadron of Thunderbolts known as 258. Strangely, after not hearing a single word of my old squadron since the war, I came across a story in this very forum of a chap who was attached to this same squadron and possibly while I was there too. Small world!.
He mentioned that the squadron was disbanded shortly after he left it. It was not so much disbanded, simply falling to pieces would better describe it. We left Burma for R&R in Madras with the intention of returning to finish the war out. We went by sea but the planes had to fly around via Calcutta, were probably seconded and we never saw them again. This left us as possibly the only squadron without planes!. However the 'BOMB' was dropped and we were immediately sent to Kuala Lumpur as containment forces. Shortly after we were sent to Surabaya, in Java (again as unwelcome 'hold the line policemen'), then to Batavia and finally to Medan in Sumatra before returning to Singapore to await the boat. The time spent in these locations when the war was officially ended were dangerous times, often more so than in Burma because no one wanted Colonialism back and we were regarded as the the "enemy". At least in Burma we could see who our enemy was but in the role in which we found ourselves we could not tell a good civilian from a rebel. However, the good part was that I was able to return home, pick up the threads of my marriage which had been interrupted after only 3 weeks by an overseas posting. Conditions in England were very bleak at that time for a young family starting out so we emigrated to Canada where I have spent more than 50 years enjoying every day that God sends me.
Now, in Canada I belong to the local branch of the Burma Star Association known as the British Columbia Branch, as opposed to the Victoria Branch which are the only two branches in this province
At our last general meeting we were made aware of this excellent site by copies of a letter sent by Rev. Loseby to the Burma Star HQ in London. The purpose was to plead for support of this site either by BSA HQ directly or commercial sponsorships or both.
Our branch has been 'kicking around' the idea of how best to spread the word of the Burma campaign and the wonderful men and women who were the backbone of it. Also to keep alive the wonderful and very unique comradeship which was engendered. I think more so than any other group or unit of the armed forces of the time.
This site then represents exactly what we have been trying to put in to words, or action. I press this point at each of our meetings (though, sadly, not many members have, or can use, a computer) in the hope that we can submit useful and informative material from time to time. Needless to say, we are sending a letter to HQ in London stating what an excellent opportunity this site holds to reunite us with our comrades and that remarkable Burma Star Spirit.
Hope all of you are too. Good luck,
Joe Arblaster
And below, taken from the Branch newsletter some years ago:-
Joe Arblaster, Burma Star Association
My service record is very undistinguished. I joined up, did my duty, hated a lot of it and enjoyed some of it but never felt that I did anything meritorious or heroic. However I’m glad it happened. The experience and self-discipline I gained plus the friendships and camaraderie that developed would simply not have happened.
After joining the RAF at Birmingham, England, I was rejected for aircrew in the final stages of two days of interrogation, medical and aptitude tests because of a ‘lazy’ left eye. So I was inducted as an AC2 airframe fitter. For the previous two years the Air Ministry had employed me in the same civilian capacity on airfields throughout Britain and Ireland. Because of this I was allowed to enter the RAF with the exalted rank of AC2 instead of AC1, but it did give me a slight pay advantage.
My first call to service life started with a letter telling me to report to RAF Station Cardington for the usual induction fiasco and learn my first lessons in bull….I mean military discipline. After ‘square bashing’ there for three weeks I was sent to Skegness for toughening up and more bull……discipline. Finally I was posted to RAF Cosford to repeat a six-month course in airframes which I had already done in civilian life, but who was I to argue!
After the course I did a brief stint with Wellingtons on an airfield called RAF Peplow which was an MTU or OTU or one of those peculiar acronyms. During this time I married and only two months into our marriage got the dreadful news that I was to be posted overseas. At that time I believed this was the worst happening of the war and still do!
But, life carrying on as it does, I found myself in Blackpool getting my shots and ‘foreign gear’ for the eventual posting. After a week I was issued heavy clothing, including parkas, long johns, heavy sweaters, ear muffs --- the works, fit for Scott’s expedition. Two days before we took the train to Glasgow to board the troopship ‘Mooltan’ we were ordered to return all our clothing. In return we received ‘tropicals’, jungle green underwear and handkerchiefs etc. plus a .303 rifle and a Peter the Planter hat which we were warned, almost under penalty of death, to guard with our lives. Subsequently, after cruising the Atlantic for 3 weeks we entered the Mediterranean, being, I believe, the second convoy in years to do so. Here we encountered a few panic situations but proceeded without incident through the Suez to our final port of Bombay. Now we knew where we were going! The first thing we had to do on disembarking was to literally throw away our guarded possessions – the hard brimmed sun helmet in one Dumpster and our rifle in another. Replacements of course were the standard bush hat and Sten gun.
Bombay transit camp was my home for three weeks followed by the slowest train imaginable (taking another three weeks) across India, circling Calcutta to Chittagong, Cox’s Bazaar then by gharry to join my squadron RAF 258, Thunderbolts, arriving on New Year’s Eve as a complete rookie still with white knees. One of the pilots drunkenly greeted me with a full bottle of gin, which I consumed in the next few hours – neat. Except for the odd half-pint in English pubs I was totally unaccustomed to drinking so the gin knocked me for a loop (or two) and truly believe I spent the next couple of days and nights lying zonked somewhere in the peril of the jungle. Never again!.
From the Arakan I was sent back to Calcutta for an operation on my nose and after recuperating I became almost a nonentity. I had no money and finally pleaded with someone to send me back to my squadron. I do believe that had I not done so I would still be in Calcutta. My squadron meanwhile had moved deeper into Burma then finally ordered to Ramree Island.
It was here that some of the lighter moments of war remain as memories. We have all seen and endured many horrible aspects of our wartime service, which we cannot forget but would prefer to. I tend to think of the lighter, unusual events during our ‘jungle expedition’. One such occasion was during servicing our T’bolts in a jungle clearing. There being no dispersal sites due to lack of cleared jungle resulted in our squadron complement of 16 planes facing each other in two opposing lines. All the ground crews were busy preparing the kites for their strike, intent on our respective jobs, when someone yelled out an alarm. We couldn’t understand what was shouted but glancing to where the sound came from the reason became apparent. A magnificent black panther was casually walking between the rows of planes not even bothering to look right or left. Obviously this was his home and knew exactly where he was going. Our reaction, on the other hand, was total panic. Have you ever seen three or four airmen crammed in the cockpit of a single seat fighter??. That’s where we were. Others had climbed on the engine cowling hugging the propeller, some even shinnied up the tail.
Later, on this same site, with the kites in the same configuration, it was general practice for any available ground crew, of whatever rank or category, to run engine checks prior to the arrival of the pilots. One day I was in the cockpit checking and boosting the engine to half revs. and engrossed with the instrument readings, but on looking up found that the Thunderbolt on my right wing tip was engulfed in flames below the belly. An engine backfire had ignited the underbelly long-range tank and the airman checking that engine could not see it. However frantic arm waving and shouts eventually brought us all to realizing what was happening. The flames spread rapidly. None of us had actually taxied a plane before, but it was a case of do or die. The result was something akin to bumper cars at the fairground, swirling and contacting perilously. I’m sure we caused more damage than it we had left them to burn individually. No doubt the Japs were very proud of us.
Still on this same airstrip we witnessed another strange sight. The entire ground crew was returning by truck to our bashas from the strip late in the late afternoon when an oncoming Jeep raced past in a cloud of dust, hell bent for the airstrip. We stopped and pondered whom it might be then we heard the ominous sound of an engine being started. Over the tops of the bamboo trees we could visualise the progress of the T/bolt from the start of the runway, the roar of it taking off, and knowing that there was not much runway left. Thunderbolts in my opinion were notoriously unstable, being very heavy and seemingly under-powered, often crashing even under the best of circumstances. This was a worst case scenario.
All eyes focused on the tree line where we knew the runway ended. Now we waited for the final bang, the inevitable fire and the ominous cloud of black smoke. But instead, (and impossible as it seems) we saw young bamboo trees being tossed in the air as if by a giant jungle lawnmower, then incongruously the plane lurched into the air, made one circuit and landed. By the time we got back to the strip the pilot, (a Canadian attached to our RAF Sqdn.), drunk as a skunk climbed out, totally unhurt, to be dumped into a waiting jeep like a sack of potatoes. His plane was a disaster. Bamboo trees were spiked into the wings and fuselage, The four bladed propellers were folded back, circling the engine cowling and looking like a giant grotesque Swastika. Another tree trunk was embedded directly between the cylinders of the radial engine– yet it survived all this! Perversely, others less fortunate had merely ingested water into the air intake on take-off, spluttered, crashed and died. Still others had their engine misfire only once, stalled, rolled on their backs and dropped out of the sky like rocks, with no chance of survival.
On a more pleasant note while on Ramree Island, it was a our practice, as soon as the squadron had taken off to attack the target of the day, to strip naked and laze in the surf and on the beach until their return. One day, unknown to us, Vera Lynn was visiting for an evening makeshift concert. When we attended the concert that evening she slyly announced to the audience --- “ I saw all of you boys on the beach today wearing those cute little white shorts!!” As you know, this was the only part of our bodies that never got sunburned and looked for all the world like we were wearing white shorts.
From the dropping of the ‘big one’ to end the war I was sent to Malaya (Kuala Lumpur & RAF Tengah on Singapore Island) then almost immediately to Surabaya, followed by Batavia and then Medan in Sumatra. This period was harrowing, in many ways worse than during the war in Burma. Here the majority of the Malays and Indonesians hated us because they were now reluctant to revert to pre-war colonialism and seemingly preferring the Japanese to us. The worst part of all this was that in this situation it was impossible to know your enemy – until too late. Many of my buddies found out too late.
Fortunately we were evacuated from Medan after running the gantlet to the seaport of Belawan. Here we boarded a ship for Singapore, via the Sundai Straits passing the steaming, infamous volcano called Krakatoa.
After a very short stay at RAF Changi I returned home, without incident, to pick up the threads of my marriage, my life and within two years made the decision to emigrate to Canada, which I have never regretted.
Joe Arblaster, 258 Squadron RAF