The Burmese Connection.

Edited by Trevor STUBBERFIELD 52A Arborfield.

Page A3.

Arborfield Memories of…….

Tin Ohn 52A & Tan Shwe 53A
By Ted BLOWERS. P.S.
Fusilier Ted Blowers P.S. Tin Ohn 52A
Tin Ohn stayed with me over one Christmas, probably 1954. He was in the Red Lion, an old coaching inn in the middle of Wokingham town. The inn had a big collection of clocks and large antique Polyphons, music boxes which played from big brass discs with pegs on them to make the notes. These fascinated Tin. We had Christmas dinner at my lodgings in London Road with the Phelps family. Tin also came dancing with me and my wife Daughne, along with our friend Beryl. With another friend, Sheila, we went to meet Tin in London and dined at a restaurant where he introduced us to Chinese food. Sheila got a little bit merry and, despite our warnings and protests, she insisted on trying to eat a teaspoon full of a very hot, spicy sauce. We thought she was going to die, most embarrassing, and it was the end of the romance for Tin. Cultural difference Tin Ohn was a smashing bloke, but even he could be quite volatile. I remember standing in line waiting to get in the cookhouse, I was talking to Tin and some lads in the queue, I think it had something to do with Ice Cream, because one lad said to Tin "I don't suppose you get Ice Cream in Burma?" and it was all I could do to stop Tin from belting him. The lad never said it in a derogatory way, but Tin was incensed. When he calmed down I said "What was all that about?" and he said something like "he should remember that we were civilised while you were all running around painting yourselves blue" Something I have never forgotten and has helped me not to be condescending when dealing with foreigners. Than Shwe's Watch Sometime, I believe it was late 1953 or early 54, I heard that all of C coy was confined to camp until Than Shwe's watch was found which apparently had been stolen from the Blanco room. I went and saw Taffy Hill the Coy Sgt Major and said "Surely this doesn’t apply to permanent staff ?" His reply was "You find the watch and you can go out." I then asked if I could do what I needed to be done? His reply was "Do what you like as long as I don’t know about it." Armed with this knowledge I asked Than Shwe to describe the watch, he did better than that, he drew a pretty good picture of it. I asked Bob Roberts the A/SM if he could help, I cant remember all the details of what he did but I know that at dinner time in the cookhouse we had A/NCOs on both sides of the line ups checking watches and generally letting it be known that we were going to find it and if we didn’t someone was going to suffer. When we got back to the spiders Bob rounded up all the A/NCOs and organized a full kit and room search, again nothing. We did this about three times and the boys themselves were getting very hostile to who ever had the watch, by this time I was getting right annoyed so we hoisted everyone out to search the whole spider. While they were doing that I proceeded to start to take up some floor boards whilst proclaiming that when we had finished we were going to start on the walls, whatever happened we were going to find the watch. I can't remember how long this lasted but at least two or three hours. Suddenly just when we were pretending to start on the walls a shout went up that the watch had been found in the Blanco room which had been searched umpteen times. We never found out who took it nor did it matter, I reported to Taffy just before he went home and the confinement was lifted, I and the boys in 6 div could go out. I don’t know how or if any of the Apprentice NCOs or boys of C coy remember the incident, it probably wasn’t important to them but getting to the dance was very important to me, I remember well Bob Roberts help, and Than Shwe's gratitude.
Tha Win 52A	By Trevor STUBBERFIELD 52A
	I met Tha Win in H.Q. Coy. Room F6, D Squad, the tiny ones. He was a great lad, small but with a giant personality. I took him with me for a visit to my home in Dagenham, Essex, now bureaucratically part of East London. My mother welcomed him with open arms but it was not till some time later that I became fully aware of what it meant to her. Her brother, my uncle Jim, had been with the Essex Regiment behind Japanese lines in Burma during the war. The privations and appalling conditions they served under are well documented and make grim reading. The same conditions were visited on the local population, but they risked all to help our troops, even going short of food themselves. Jim died at Kohima in India, the battle that finally halted the advance of the Japanese. That was in April 1944 and here was I, eight years later, arriving with a young Burmese lad, far from home. No matter who I took home with me, my mother took the view that the lads were away from home and she would treat them in the same way she knew their mothers would treat me in similar circumstances.
Tha Win 52A Trevor Stubberfield 52A
Tha Win 52A.	By Bill GIBSON 52A
It was February 1952 that I first met Tha Win, known as Tommy, at the Arborfield Army Apprentices School. He was one of the first Burmese apprentices to come over to be trained with us and he turned out to be a bit of a character. His father was an English translator on the Burmese Radio so he did speak and understand quite a bit of English. As the Burmese group had arrived before the main intake, Tommy and his friend Aung Myint Thein who were allocated to D Squad, had been Christened Kiwi and Cherry Blossom by Sgt Keech and Guts and Gaiters Curzon, but they soon lost those names. As for Tommy's command of the language, well it came to the fore as Dave Brewer, A/L/CPL i/c room F6 was inspecting the room and, coming to Tommy's bed-space, in which was a radiator, Dave pointed and said "Look at the sh*t under the radiator." to which Tommy replied "That no sh*t, that dust." We became good friends and on asking where he went for his leaves he didn't sound too pleased with where they were all sent in England so I asked him if he would like to come up to Scotland for part of his summer leave. This involved my mother having to write to the Burmese Embassy to assure them that he was welcome, but eventually everything was sorted out and, warrants in hand, off we went. We called in at the Embassy on the way to Euston station and Tommy was supplied with some cigars by a very friendly colonel in uniform. The overnight trains to Glasgow in the early fifties were packed with service people going on leave so seats were at a premium but, lo and behold, Tommy produced a few cigars for a friendly porter who arranged two comfortable seats for us. Who said he wasn't street wise? On arrival in Glasgow I had to explain we had another train journey and also an hour's sailing on the ferry, then a bus ride, arriving home about lunch time. He took all this in his stride and just smiled at everyone who paid him a second glance. My home was on the Isle of Arran and I can assure you that Tommy must have been the first Burmese to set foot on the island. The locals were used to people coming on holiday from Glasgow but definitely not Burma. He settled in well at home and he and my father enjoyed the odd cigar, supplied by Tommy, and of course a light refreshment to go with it. As we wandered around the village a bus or lorry would pull up and the driver would jump down and explain how he served in Burma with the Cameronians during the war. Evening entertainment in the village was a dance in the village hall, courtesy of music by Jimmy Shand and Victor Sylvester, on records of course. Warning Tommy of some of the dangers of the country dances did not deter him one bit and he was thrown from one corner of the hall to the next, and that was by the girls. Time came for him to leave and join the other Burmese boys in England so we put him on the ferry and off he went. A few weeks later my mother received a very nice letter from the Embassy thanking her for having Tommy to stay with us for part of his holiday. Pleasant memories of a very nice man.
Memories by Nyunt Shwe 54A (By E-mail with some text alterations by The Editor)
I was a member of the school Athletics Team and there are some competitors I can still recognise, for example, A/CSM T. I. Bunyard (D Coy), A/Sgt G.W. Ashworth (D), A/Cpl Tiley (D), A/CSM Kibbey (B), A/RSM Owen A/Cpl Tiley and I were partners in the Pole Vault. We jumped for the school team and also for Champion Coy. for two years. He was very generous in giving help. A/Sgt Ashworth and A/RSM Owen were also kind enough in helping with the sports events and were considered as my good friends. There was a fight between A/CSM Kibbey and myself for the Champion Company contest. It was notable and my first experience of boxing. I was lucky enough to have avoided a knock out. At that time Kibbey was Southern Command (Junior) champion. During the fight there were strange noises from the spectators because I was loudly applauded by the audience, including B Coy. Anyhow I could have scored 1 mark for D Coy. Kibbey was a clever boxer. A/CSM Bunyard was my best friend. There were exchanges of letters between us, even after we passed out from the school. The last Christmas card received from him was December 1957, at that time he was at Europa Point, Gibraltar. Then I was attached to 10 Command W/S REME, Mill Hill with four of my friends to study Artillery pieces with on the job training for six months. After that we returned home on the MV Derbyshire, sailing from Liverpool on the 5th May 1958 and the voyage taking 36 days. The vessel cruised down the Atlantic Ocean towards the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal and on to home. Whilst the ship was passing Gibraltar we remembered A/CSM Bunyard and we all agreed to toast him ‘May our friend be happy, success and prosperity throughout his military career’. Alas, since we got back home there was no further contact between us.
First published: 15th April 2007 Layout Revised: 1^st December 2007 Latest Updates: 15th February 2011 ________________________________________________________________________________