But 46 Column faced a long, circuitous and arduous march to reach Blackpool, made worse by several torrential downpours, the first sign that the monsoon was on its way. Sore feet were now getting damp too. ‘I am giving poor comfort to a line of sick men,’ wrote Chris on 27 April. ‘They seem to be sitting everywhere with their big raw feet held ready for inspection. Flavine, elastoplast, more elastoplast, iodine, and they put their boots back on and hobble off.’ A man with a temperature of 104 degrees was given decent treatment; a man with a temperature of only 101 was given a dose of sympathy and told to get back in line.
On they went, one day catching some fish by lobbing hand grenades into a pool, another day getting completely lost. After rendezvousing with several other columns, the officers were called to Brigade HQ and given a briefing on the situation. Afterwards Chris noted, ‘It looks as if we will have some fighting now.’ How right he was. First, though, they still had to reach Blackpool. The closer they got, the harder the march. Climbing a particularly steep hill, one of Chris’s medical mules slipped and somersaulted twenty feet back down into a thicket of bamboo. It took two hours to free it and get it back on its feet again. ‘Yes, very bad country,’ noted Chris. ‘Very slow progress.’
They finally reached Blackpool on the evening of 7 May and Chris was given a patch of ground just below the crest of a ridge facing north for his regimental aid post (RAP). He and his orderlies immediately started digging in. The following morning, Chris clambered to the top of the ridge behind him and got a better picture of their situation. ‘Looking west there is a steep wooded slope down to the paddy fields where our airstrip is to be,’ he wrote. ‘The ground is already littered with white chutes of the supply drop last night. Beyond this, and about a mile away, is the road and railway…Our positions are all among fairly thick bamboo and when I sit at my RAP, it is impossible to see any of the defence positions right below me.’
During the day, everyone was busy, preparing perimeter defence positions, digging weapons pits and slit trenches. A railway bridge was blown up, and machinegun and mortar positions set up covering the road. The following day, after a small probing attack by the Japanese in the night, the airstrip was built. Gliders arrived, crashing into the clearing, but brought with them more equipment – even bulldozers.
The preparations of the Blackpool Block continued. The perimeter was lined with wire and booby-trapped. There was continual digging. Some days they were left alone by the Japanese, while on others, light attacks were made and the position would resound with rifle and machinegun fire. Japanese raiding parties attacked on five nights in a row and although they were always cut down, it meant a severe lack of sleep for many of the troops. But fighting was not Chris’s job, and he was able to spend the time establishing his RAP and rebuilding his strength. ‘The weather was good,’ he wrote, ‘plenty of food, morale very high and personally I am enjoying the bustle and interest of all that is happening.’
He found the nights difficult, however, and would often lie awake listening to the sounds of the jungle and particularly a small insect that tapped the bamboo down below him. ‘As is well known,’ he wrote, ‘tapping on the bamboo is the method by which Japs keep in touch at night, and it didn’t take long before one began to hear footsteps crashing through the dead bamboo.’ One night he watched in ‘breathless excitement’ as the first planes landed on the new airstrip, bringing with them 25-pounder field guns, ammunition and later evacuating the sick.
Then finally, a week after they had arrived at the block, Chris heard his first shell. He was sitting at his RAP when there was a dull ‘crump’ and a few seconds later a ‘horrid whine’ as the shell whistled over them. Unbeknown to Chris, the reason the brigade had largely been left alone was because the Japanese 53rd Division was heading north to meet them, and once there they began digging in their guns in positions that would dominate the newly built airstrip and much of the Blackpool defences.
To begin with the Japanese shelling was inaccurate but they soon found their range, and pounded the main positions. Two officers from 46 Column were killed almost immediately, as were many more men. Even more were wounded. Chris hurried to the brigade dressing station, a couple of miles behind the block in the jungle, and where the brigade’s Senior Medical Officer, Doc Whyte, was in charge. ‘The scene was certainly gruesome,’ jotted Chris. ‘Stretchers wherever a flat bit of ground allowed, with dead and others dying. Dressings and blood everywhere.’ Chris did what he could, dividing his time between there and his regimental aid post treating a number of men who had been wounded during a counter-attack. ‘Pt Wall had his chest opened wide and there was little I could do,’ wrote Chris. ‘He died that night. Sgt Young had a six-inch gaping wound from behind his ear to his Adam’s apple. At the bottom of the wound I could see the Carotid artery beating, quite intact, but I wasn’t half scared. He was staggeringly plucky and I was fortunately able to fly him out the same night.’
It was just about the last plane to fly out from Blackpool. During the next day, the perimeter was breached and the airstrip captured. The brigade was now being bombarded almost constantly. Chris was dashing repeatedly between his RAP and attending severely wounded where they lay. He was, however, quickly learning to distinguish the different sounds of shellfire:
Bang – all right, our own mortar. Bang – hello, grenades down in Dickie Jones’s area – what’s brewing? Faint crump – Jap 105 which gives me about 10 seconds. If I’m at the RAP, I can afford to sit on the edge of my slit trench for a few seconds trying to gauge where it will drop. If I’m further off, run like hell and undignified leap into the trench, landing any old how with my heart beating like mad. Just in time! Crash! And little splinters go whirring and crackling through the bamboo overhead. Crump – here’s another coming. Oh, God – is this the one for me this time? Listen – no. No, it’s going to the right. Thank God. And crash, whoomp, it lands somewhere near Joe Green. And so on and so on. Horrible and degrading to find oneself so frightened that even tho’ a long term agnostic, I offer up a little prayer to God – just in case he is there.
In fact, Dickie Jones, another of the platoon commanders in the column, was also killed during another pointless counter-attack. Then, as the rains finally began to fall, the King’s Own were pulled out of the front line and replaced by the Cameronians. The battle of Blackpool was already all but over, however. It had never been more than a block, but while the 111th Brigade were being blown to bits, news arrived from the north that Stilwell had not yet reached Mogaung. ‘Stilwell’s name was mud,’ noted Chris. On 25 May, they were given the order to evacuate Blackpool entirely. It was a hair-raising process, with the whole brigade leaving by a single narrow path. While mortars and shells fell around them, they slowly inched their way out – but many of those wounded had to be left where they were. The brigade commander even issued an order that those unlikely to survive should be shot rather than leaving them to be tortured and bayoneted by the Japanese.2
At midday, news arrived that the block had fallen. It was, felt Chris, an unbelievable moment, ‘like “Tobruk has fallen”, and with our rations finished, the near-future looked rather gloomy’. Chris and another of the doctors made their way forward to help Doc Whyte at the brigade dressing station. ‘I think it was the most miserable sight I ever wish to see,’ wrote Chris. ‘Poor lads – roughly bandaged and huddled under the trees, with no blankets and some with no shirts or trousers or boots, and the rain pelting down as if the heavens had burst.’ There was, of course, little they could do. Chris went round giving morphine and applying dressings. He found his friend Les Milne, another platoon commander from the column, who was suffering from a bad wound to the wrist. As Chris undid his friend’s filthy bandage, the radial artery began spraying blood. ‘It was a tricky job searching for it in the mass of shattered tissue but between all